Celtic Art in Europe: Making Connections. Essays in Honour of Vincent Megaw on His 80th Birthday

The ancient Celtic world evokes debate, discussion, romanticism and mythicism. On the one hand it represents a specialist area of archaeological interest, on the other, it has a wide general appeal. The Celtic world is accessible through archaeology, history, linguistics and art history. Of these disciplines, art history offers the most direct message to a wider audience. This volume of 37 papers brings together a truly international group of preeminent specialists in the field of Celtic art and Celtic studies. It is a benchmark volume the like of which has not been seen since the publication of Paul Jacobsthal’s Early Celtic Art in 1944. The papers chart the history of attempts to understand Celtic art and argue for novel approaches in discussions spanning the whole of Continental Europe and the British Isles. This new body of international scholarship will give the reader a sense of the richness of the material and current debates. Artifacts of rich form and decoration, which we might call art, provide a most sensitive set of indicators of key areas of past societies, their power, politics and transformations. With its broad geographical scope, this volume offers a timely opportunity to reassess contacts, context, transmission and meaning in Celtic art for understanding the development of European cultures, identities and economies in pre- and proto-history.
Essays in honor of Vincent Megaw on his 80th birthday.
Nominated for Current Archaeology Book of the Year 2016

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
1. Introduction to Celtic Art in Europe: making connections. Chris Gosden, Sally Crawford and Katharina Ulmschneider.

2. Once again, Herodotus, the Κελτοί, the source of the Danube, and the Pillars of Hercules. John T. Koch.

3. The Sheffield origins of Celtic Art. John Collis.

4. Theorie der keltischen Kunst. Ein Versuch. Felix Müller.

5. Les codes de représentation visuelle dans l’art celtique ancien. Laurent Olivier.

6. Hidden faces and animal images on Late Iron Age and Early Roman horse harness decorated using the champlevé technique. Jennifer Foster

7. The human masks of unknown provenience. Mitja Guštin.

8. Heads, masks and shifting identities: a note about some Danubian kantharoi with anthropomorphic decoration. Mariana Egri.

9. Off with their heads…! once again: images of daggers and severed heads on an Iberian falcata sword. Fernando Quesada Sanz.

10. A Celtic severed head, or Lazarus in the arms of Abraham? Natalie Venclová and Jan Royt.

11. Zur Attachenzier der Schnabelkannen von Basse-Yutz. Otto-Herman Frey.

12. The not so ugly duckling – an essay on meaning. Flemming Kaul.

13. Fragments of a carnyx from Leisach (Austria). Paul Gleirscher.

14. Between ruling ideology and ancestor worship: the mos maiorum of the Early Celtic ‘Hero Graves’. Thomas Stöllner.

15. Alfred and Alexander. John Boardman.

16. La fibule de Moscano di Fabriano: un jalon important de l’évolution de l’art celtique au IVe siècle avant J.-C. Luana et Venceslas Kruta.

17. Zum Wenden: der Halsring aus Gehweiler-Oberlöstern im Saarland. Rudolf Echt.

18. Late Hallstatt and Early La Tène gold and silver beads in southeast Pannonia. Hrvoje Potrebica and Marco Dizdar.

19. East meets West... The stamped pottery from the La Tène cemetery at Fântânele-Dealul Popii (Transylvania, Romania). Aurel Rustoiu.

20. A vessel with stamped decoration from the Želiezovce collection. Gertrúda Březinová.

21. Balkan Kantharoi. Petar Popović.

22. La Tène and Przeworsk strap shield bosses from Poland. Tomasz Bochnak.

23. De l’anneau en bronze à têtes de béliers de Chermignac (Charente-Maritime) et de quelques pièces de harnais de La Tène finale de Gaule de l’Ouest. José Gomez de Soto.

24. A mould for Celtic-type rings from Sanzeno in the Valle di Non, Trentino. Franco Marzatico.

25. ‘Leopold Bloom I’ and the Hungarian Sword Style. Paul Jacobsthal, with introduction by Katharina Ulmschneider and Sally Crawford.

26. The Celtic mercenary reconsidered