- Chapter Twenty-Four -
corpus as the result of an over-reliance on accounts of water worship in the medieval
Irish literary sources. The appropriateness of these texts as evidence for iron age
practices is highly questionable.
Stronger evidence for ritual wells and shafts comes from the continent. Shafts have
been recovered, for example, inside or under the banks of southern German
Viereckschanzen. Bavarian examples occur at Holzhausen (Schwarz 1962, 1975),
Tomerdingen (Ziirn 1971; Ziirn and Fischer 1991), Schonfeld and Kreutzpullach
(Schwarz 1962). Fellbach-Schmiden (Baden-Wiirttemberg) may also be noted in
this context (Planck 1985). At Holzhausen, three shafts up to 36.5 m deep were
sunk in the Iron Age. The presence of organic material, burning within shafts, and
the deliberate placement of a wooden stake and a flesh-hook in two shafts led the
excavator to suggest these had been used for the disposal of sacrificial remains. At
Fellbach-Schmiden fragments of three deer figurines were recovered from an oak-
lined shaft (by dendrochronology to 123 BC). The cult interpretation afforded such
shafts remains uncertain. Brunaux (1989: 13) and Mansfeld (1989: 31-2) have
recently questioned Schwarz' interpretation of the Holzhausen shafts. At Fellbach,
although the excavator suggested the enclosure itself served a cult function, the
shaft was interpreted as a functional well, a role also suggested by Mansfeld
(19^8 9: 32 ).
Beyond southern Germany, shafts with iron age fills are rare. Gallic examples
are mainly restricted to the Provincia. The fills of some Toulouse shafts date to the
first century BC (e.g. the ceramic-filled shaft from Vieille-Toulouse: Fouet 1958), but
none securely predates the Roman intervention. Pre-conquest fills occur elsewhere
in the Provincia, as at Nimes (Gard: Bessac et al. 1984: 187-222), but these shafts
seem to have had utilitarian roles. Most Gallic examples postdate the Augustan era,
as at Argentomagus (Indre) where shafts date to the first century AD (Allain et al.
1987-8: 1°5-14) and the first-to second-century AD examples at Chartres (Eure-et-
Loir: Gallia 1978: 278-8; 1980: 319). Given this dating, it is important to recall that
the use of shafts for cult purposes was common in the Graeco-Roman world (see e.g.
Homer, Odyssey X1.25-50, 97-9; Philostratus, Life of Apollonius v1.2.18) and it seems
very possible that wells and shafts are essentially post-conquest cult foci.
CELTO-LIGURIAN SANCTUARIESThese well-documented stone-built structures of Provence include Entremont
(Benoit 1955), Roquepertuse (de Gerin-Ricard 1927) and Glanum (Salviat 1979).
They comprise monumental propylaea, decorated with sculptured reliefs, frequently
of the human head, and often associated with free-standing sculptures of cross-legged
anthropomorphic figures. The dating of some examples is uncertain, but Entremont
and Roquepertuse were probably destroyed during the Roman intervention in
c. I 2 5 Be. These sites provide much information on sanctuary structure, but they
represent an exceptional, localized development, owing much to the long Greek
contacts in the Bouches-du-Rhone area, and, with the exception of a dieu-accroupi
from Argentomagus (Indre: Gallia 1984: po), do not appear to be replicated
elsewhere in Celtic Europe.452