- Sanctuaries and Sacred Places -
IslandsThere is some evidence that islands were favoured as cult sites by Atlantic Celtic
peoples. Several texts may be noted in this context. Posidonius described a Gallic
lEpOV on an island off the mouth of the Loire (Strabo IV.4.6), served by female
religious specialists. Tacitus, describing Suetonius' attack on Mona (Anglesey),
associated the island with the druids and with women whom he compared to the
Furies (Annals Xlv.30). After the conquest, Mela (III.6.8) referred to virgin priest-
esses on the island of Sena (Brittany). Female religious specialists are linked to islands
in all three passages. The implication is possibly of sexual boundedness (explicit in
Strabo IV.4.6). Islands are also physically bounded, relating them conceptually to
other forms of enclosure noted here. In Britain, archaeological evidence for an island
sanctuary occurs in the form of a wooden circular temple on Hayling Island (King
and Soffe 1991).
A link theme in the above discussion is that of water as a boundary. Brunaux
(1988: 43) has suggested that lakes were natural sanctuaries, without enclosure or
protection. This may not always have been the case, but water, or islands in water,
clearly offer a ready-made form of enclosure.
Both textual and archaeological evidence for iron age 'natural' foci is thus very
restricted, the latter being largely limited to certain water categories. It is very likely
that Celtic peoples did employ natural forces as cult foci, without restructuring their
space. In the Graeco-Roman world, for example, such loci co-existed with formal,
public, cult centres (Ferguson 1970: 65-9), and the same is clearly probable for Celtic
peoples. Indeed, it is possible to argue that our concept of Celtic religious life is dis-
torted by the poor recognition of 'natural' cult loci by both classical commentators
and archaeologists. In this context, the lack of textual data may reflect the fact that
non-structural loci would not have been easily recognizable to external observers.
But at the same time, natural forces, including trees and springs, were familiar cult
foci in the Graeco-Roman world (Virgil, Aeneid VIII. 3 52, 597; Ovid, Metamorphosis
lILLI, III.13.7 (groves); Pliny XIL3, XV.77, XV.137 (trees)), and such foci among the
iron age Celts might have invited comment for precisely this reason. It remains sig-
nificant that almost all iron age textual references suggest, with varying degrees of
certainty, that the designation of Celtic cult sites involved the restructuring of space.
Equally, while the difficulties of archaeological recognition of 'natural' sites must be
borne in mind when assessing their importance to the Celts, it is also reasonable to
expect some positive archaeological evidence in their favour. In many of the cases
examined above, this is clearly lacking.
WELLS AND SHAFTS
Wells and shafts have long been argued as Celtic cult sites (Alcock 1965; Ross 1968;
Ross and Feachem 1976; Wait 1985; Green 1986: 155-7). The British record has been
comprehensively documented (Ross 1968: 255-85; Wait 1985: 51-82) but evidence
for iron age usage is extremely poor (Webster 1991: 220-5). The present writer has
argued (1991: 250-5) that wells and shafts have entered the British iron age cult site