Pendant Digital Sketch © Sage Starwalker. All rights reserved. (based on scanned photo, Bountiful Celtic Burials)

Overview ~ Brief History of the Development of Celtic (La Tene) Art ~ What Celtic Art Reveals About Celtic Culture

"Celtic art is the highly stylized curvilinear art that originated during the second half of the 1st millennium BC among the Celtic peoples of Iron Age Europe." Celtic Art

"The Hallstatt Culture was the seeding of Celtic Art, but the La Tène Culture was the flower."
(Frank Delaney, 1987 Videocasette, The Celts, as quoted at Karen and Jean's Celtic Art Page)

Overview

• There are three separate traditions referred to as Celtic Art:
  • La Tene art, named for a major Celtic site in Switzerland, produced by the pre-Christian Celts from the 5th century BCE until the 2d century CE
  • Celtic Christian art, produced in Britain and Ireland from CE 400 to 1200. The major example of this art is the Book of Kells.
  • Contemporary work (and other work, primarily Scottish and Irish, dating from the 16th century to the present) that borrows primarily from Celtic Christian art.
    
• Since Western cultural esthetics are based on Greek culture, Celtic art has been substantially overlooked, but it is certainly the second greatest body of art and esthetic produced by western culture. Celtic art differs from Greek/Roman art in these three ways:
  • It is curvilenear, geometric, highly patterned, and stylized (as opposed to a more representational Greek esthetic).
  • It is made mostly from metals -- bronze, iron, silver, gold.
  • It is primarily decorative, almost certainly due to the nomadic nature of Celtic tribal life. The Celts tended to carry their art with them, by creating highly decorated useful objects, adornments, jewelry and weapons. (Their art constituted a major portion of their wealth.)

A Brief History of the Development of Celtic (La Tene) Art

• Bandkeramik (Ribbon Ceramic) Culture (5,700-5,000 BCE)
  This culture probably developed "from Late Starcevo-Körös-Cris roots and/or Serbian Vinca influences in Transdanubia." (The Earliest Bandkeramik)
  These are probably people populating central Europe from before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans.
• Beaker Culture (up to 4,000 BCE).
  Named after its geometrically decorated pottery and distinctive bell-shaped beakers, and descended from the Bandkeramik Culture, this was a warlike stock whose "extensive search for copper (and gold), in fact, greatly accelerated the spread of bronze metallurgy in Europe." Some suggest they originated in Spain. (Nannerch)
• Battle-Ax Culture
  • "In central Europe (the Beaker folk) came into contact with the Battle-Ax (or Single-Grave) culture, which was also characterized by beaker-shaped pottery (though different in detail) and by the use of horses and a shaft-hole battle-ax." (Nannerch)
    These people buried their dead individually (unlike the mass graves of the Neolithic), "with grave goods, in a circular barrow or earthen mound (tumulus) enclosed with a timber mortuary house. This method of burial has been traced to the Pontic Steppes of Southern Russia." (History of the Celts)
  • "The Battle Axe Culture was spread in Scandinavia, Central Europe down to Switzerland and Bohemia, Poland, Central Russia and Ukraine. (Battle Axe Culture)
  • Some suggest the Battle-Ax people were not Indo-European.
  • "Corded Ware / Battle Axe / Boat Axe Cultures (CWC) are known on a wide area in northern, central and westen Europe: Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Netherlands, NW-Germany, Denmark and southern parts of Norway and Sweden. Everywhere the cultures mark the end of the Neolithic...." (Corded Ware Culture in Estonia)
• Urnfield Culture
  The merger of Beaker and Battle-axe tribes of central Europe resulted in peoples known as proto-Celts and the Urnfield culture, dating from about 1250 B.C. These tribes were not only the ancestors of the Celts but probably also of the Angles and Saxon tribes. The Battle-axe people rode horses instead of eating them, and they probably introduced the first metal axe heads into Europe.
  • first stage of Urnfield Culture: Hallstat, Austria (1250-500 BCE)
    • "During this phase, Hallstatt artists started experimenting with different ornamentation that can be determined as primarily Celtic. Visible ornamentations are abstract representations of forest wildlife and waterfowl. (Celts)
  • second stage of Urnfield Culture: La Tene, Switzerland (about 500 BCE)
    • This is considered to be "Celtic" culture, which "spread from (its) original area of settlement on the Northern edge of the Alps across wide parts of western and southern Europe during the last pre-Christian millennium. To the north, (its) expansion was inhibited by the so-called "Germanic barrier". (The Development of the Cultural Landscape in Prehistoric Times)
    • First developed in an area extending from the upper Danube to the Marne and centered in southern Germany, the La Tene art style spread widely through continental Europe. It appeared principally on objects of fine metalwork, including bracelets, torcs (neck rings), weaponry, and household and ritual vessels fashioned of bronze, gold, silver, and iron. La Tene sculptures in stone and wood have also been unearthed, the most notable being the 2d century BC stone head of a Celtic warrior found near Prague, Czechoslovakia (now in the National Museum, Prague), and a series of wooden figures (now in the Archaeological Museum, Dijon) from Sources-de-la-Seine in northern France, dated from the 1st century BC. A few objects of decorated woodwork and painted pottery have survived, but examples in other materials have for the most part perished. (Celts)
    • The stylized animal forms characteristic of La Tene art came from the Steppe Art of the nomadic Scythians, and though the Celtic art of this period shows influences from Greek and Etruscan motifs and other sources, the Celts' borrowing from other cultures was only additive (in other words, adapted to their art, not replacing it)/
    • As it evolved, La Tene art yielded fine gilt-bronze flagons, plaques with human figures, and gold torcs bearing the characteristically curvilinear ornament of the period and became "characterized by the use of high-relief ornament and by a delight in complex transformations of form, from abstract to figurative and from plant to animal.
    • Though continental La Tene art died out as a result of Julius Caesar's campaigns against the Celts, "an insular tradition of Celtic art developed in Britain from the 3d century BC on. It flourished and reached its peak in the early years of the 1st century AD."
      "The full flowering of the insular tradition can be seen in the so-called Mirror style of southern Britain, which flourished in the late 1st century BC and early 1st century AD."
      "Characterized by symmetry and the use of basketry patterns, this style is seen at its best on mirror backs, an outstanding example of which is the incised and richly patinated example from Desborough, Northamptonshire (British Museum, London)."
      "Insular art continued to be produced after the Roman conquest of Britain in AD 43. In the 1st century AD two major hoards of ornamental metalwork were deposited in Wales: the Llyn Cerrig Bach (Anglesey) and Tal-y-Llyn (Merioneth) treasures (both in the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff). During the 1st and 2d centuries AD enameling became popular, and various types of horse fittings were the main products." (Celts)

What Celtic Art Reveals About Celtic Culture

• the art was produced by members of nomadic tribes instead of settled communities
• art was not done so much for the sake of art but as part of an economy of metal
• much of the art was made for use by the wealthy and powerful (according to grave goods)
• though there are important non-IndoEuropean origins of Celtic culture, some of which survive into classical Celtic culture (La Tene, 500 BCE-50 CE), it is predominantly an IndoEuropean (warrior, hierarchical) culture