- Celts of Eastern Europe -
WEAPONRY AND DRESS
At the beginning of the early La Tene period, the grave assemblages can also be
shown to retain Hallstatt cultural elements. This is true for weaponry and for style
of dress - in both, dose contacts with northern Italy and Slovenia are apparent. The
addition of lances to the warrior's equipment in eastern Celtic graves accords well
with male graves in other contemporary cemeteries. Lances are part of standard
equipment for warriors, as can be deduced from representations of fighting men on
situlae (Frey 1968, 1969; Stary 198 la, 1981 b). Battle-axes were used predominantly
in the south-east alpine regions; they occur less commonly in the north. Sword and
scabbards from well-dated grave complexes were current from the fifth century Be
onwards. The scabbard and chape-end were particularly finely decorated in many of
the earlier examples (Figure 30.5). The sword was initially worn with a belt (Figure
30.6) and was only later suspended from a chain (Rapin and Brunaux 1988; Rapin
1993; Szabo-Petres 1992 ).
In early examples, triangular perforated belt-hooks were attached to the leather
and often have decoration with an apotropaic function (Lenerz-de Wilde 198o;
Megaw and Megaw 1989b; Serafini 1984, 1993). Their distribution has important
centres in northern Italy and also in the eastern Alpine region. In recent years there
has been a major controversy over the question of whether the previously mentioned
artefactual assemblages described from Venetian cemeteries could be regarded as
'(WI
Figure 30.6 'Plastic' -decorated sword from the Szob cemetery (third century Be, Hungarian
National Museum, Budapest). (After Szabo and Petres 1992.)