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Rethinking Celtic Art

edited by Duncan Garrow, Chris Gosden and J D Hill

The decorated metalwork from the later Iron Age and Roman periods has long been acknowledged as an important body of material, but has been mainly analysed in terms of its styles and continental links. It has often been known as 'Celtic art' and both of these terms are ripe for reconstruction. The term 'Celtic' has been much discussed, with the notion of 'art' relatively ignored. This volume focuses on this latter term. Given the interests current in archaeology in the material nature of objects and their social effects, there are now many new possibilities for analysis both of the metalwork itself and its place within Iron Age and Romano-British cultural forms. The twelve papers in this volume bring together a variety of insights into production, art syles, dating and social significances by specialists in those fields. The authors argue that British early Celtic art is distinctively different from that found in other parts of Europe (though not a sign of isolated development), that we should move away from a notion of art towards a notion of aesthetics and how objects relate to people's senses and relations with each other, and that decorated metalwork, in spite of its rarity, can shed light on the social world of the time, and the strangeness of British society at the very end of prehistory. 208p, 131 b/w & col illus. (Oxbow Books 2008)

Review Quote

"This project aims to take stock of the entire British corpus, reassess dates and consider art's context and role... The best papers are the commentaries by Niall Sharples and David Mattingly which put the art in context to give the reader a view of the big picture."

Mike Parker Pearson
British Archaeology (March 2009)

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: re-integrating 'Celtic' art (Chris Gosden and J.D. Hill)
2. The time and space of Celtic art: interrogatin the 'technologies of enchantment' database (Duncan Garrow)
3. A Celtic mysteryL some thoughts on the genesis of insular Celtic art (Vincent and Ruth Megaw)
4. Seeing red: the aesthetics of martial objects in the British and Irish Iron age (Melanie Giles)
5. Reflections on Celtic art: a re-examination of mirror decoration (Jody Joy)
6. What can be infered from the regional stylistic diversity of Iron Age coinage? (Ian Leins)
7. Technologies of the body: Iron Age and Roman grooming and display (Hella Eckardt)
8. Celtic art in Roman Britain (Fraser Hunter)
9. Material, style and identity in first century AD metalwork, with particular reference to the Seven Siters Hoard (Mary Davis and Adam Guilt)
10. On the aesthetics of the Ancient Britons (Mansel Spratling)
11. Comment I. Contextualising Iron Age art (Niall Sharples)
12. Comment II. The unmaking of Iron Age identities: art after the Roman conquest (David Mattingly)

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