- Jewellery and Adornment -
occasionally with beaded lines imitating granulation. There are rare examples of
exceptionally decorated gold earrings, such as the pair from La Butte, Ste Colombe
(Cote d'Or), with two rows of profiled cups, found in association with other gold-
work of high quality. Also known in the Hallstatt period are bronze band rings,
frequently with hook-and-eye fastening (the long hook presumably ran through the
pierced ear), decorated with geometric or punched circle ornament.
These earrings generally occur in pairs, though they also come singly or in sets of
up to six (and exceptionally, as at Esslingen-Sirnau, eighteen); some scholars believe
it unlikely that large sets like this could have been worn in the ears at anyone time,
and have suggested that such rings may rather have been attached to headgear such
as a hairnet or shawl. Ethnographic parallels show that sets of rings may well be
worn in the ear; alternatively, the placing of sets in the grave does not necessarily
mean that all the rings were worn simultaneously. The possibility that sets of rings
were attached to some kind of headgear or indeed formed part of a hairstyle ('lock
rings') cannot, however, be ruled out.
NECK-RINGS/NECKLACESThe neck-ring or torque has been characterized as a major identifying feature of
the Celt, both in representations by classical artists and sculptors, and in the archaeo-
logical literature. In some parts and in some periods of iron age Europe there were
certainly large numbers of these ornaments being worn (or at least deposited,
whether in graves or in potentially ritual contexts such as rivers or 'hoards'); and
there are representations, such as the head from Msecke Zehrovice or the male statue
from Hirschlanden, which are likely to be the work of indigenous sculptors. It is
therefore of some interest that in the Hallstatt period the neck-ring is not in wide-
spread use, though it occurs in rich graves, often in gold, associated with both males
and females.
The broad decorated band of gold worn round the neck by some incumbents
of the 'princely graves' of later Hallstatt Europe has been characterized as a status
symbol, and it is true that both female (e.g. Vix, Reinheim) and male (e.g. Eberdingen-
Hochdorf, La Motte d' Apremont) burials with these or similar neck-rings are
amongst the most richly equipped inhumations of the Hallstatt world. Other burials
may have hollow or solid, open or closed bronze rings, and there are rare instances of
iron rings too.
In the La Tene period in many areas the gold or bronze neck-ring (often called a
torque because some were made by twisting a rod or band of metal: the word has
become a generic term for the neck-ring) did become a widespread form of personal
adornment. There are chronological and apparently gender differences, however: in
La Tene I the neck-rings, particularly those in bronze, are found mainly (though
not exclusively) in female graves, whereas in La Tene II and III they are frequently
in gold and, where associated with human remains at all, are largely (though again
not exclusively) in male contexts. It is from this period onwards that many of the
stone sculptures of male warriors or gods wearing buffer-ended neck-rings probably
date.