page_title: Celtic art
section_title: La Tène style
hierarchical_section_title: Celtic art / La Tène style
caption_attribution_description: This bronze pan dating from the 2nd century AD. It was found in a very well preserved condition with intact enamel inlays. It is inscribed with the name Aelius Draco and the names of four forts on Hadrians Wall MAIS (Bowness-on-Solway) COGGABATA (Drumburgh) VXELODVNVM (Stanwix) CAMMOGLANNA (Castlesteads) Photo by Dominic Coyne, Young Graduates for Museums and Galleries programme August 2007.
context_page_description: Celtic art is associated with the peoples known as Celts; those who spoke the Celtic languages in Europe from pre-history through to the modern period, as well as the art of ancient peoples whose language is uncertain, but have cultural and stylistic similarities with speakers of Celtic languages.
  Celtic art is a difficult term to define, covering a huge expanse of time, geography and cultures. A case has been made for artistic continuity in Europe from the Bronze Age, and indeed the preceding Neolithic age; however archaeologists generally use "Celtic" to refer to the culture of the European Iron Age from around 1000 BC onwards, until the conquest by the Roman Empire of most of the territory concerned, and art historians typically begin to talk about "Celtic art" only from the La Tène period onwards. Early Celtic art is another term used for this period, stretching in Britain to about 150 AD. The Early Medieval art of Britain and Ireland, which produced the Book of Kells and other masterpieces, and is what "Celtic art" evokes for much of the general public in the English-speaking world, is called Insular art in art history.
context_section_description: About 500 BC the La Tène style, named after a site in Switzerland, appeared rather suddenly, coinciding with some kind of societal upheaval that involved a shift of the major centres in a north-westerly direction.  The central area where rich sites are especially found is in northern France and western Germany, but over the next three centuries the style spread very widely, as far as Ireland, Italy and modern Hungary.  In some places the Celts were aggressive raiders and invaders, but elsewhere the spread of Celtic material culture may have involved only small movements of people, or none at all.  Early La Tène style adapted ornamental motifs from foreign cultures into something distinctly new; the complicated brew of influences including Scythian art and that of the Greeks and Etruscans among others. The occupation by the Persian Achaemenid Empire of Thrace and Macedonia around 500 BC is a factor of uncertain importance.  La Tène style is "a highly stylised curvilinear art based mainly on classical vegetable and foliage motifs such as leafy palmette forms, vines, tendrils and lotus flowers together with spirals, S-scrolls, lyre and trumpet shapes".
  The most lavish objects, whose imperishable materials tend to mean they are the best preserved other than pottery, do not refute the stereotypical views of the Celts that are found in classical authors, where they are represented as mainly interested in feasting and fighting, as well as ostentatious display.  Society was dominated by a warrior aristocracy and military equipment, even if in ceremonial versions, and containers for drink, represent most of the largest and most spectacular finds, other than jewellery. Unfortunately for the archaeologist, the rich "princely" burials characteristic of the Hallstatt period greatly reduce, at least partly because of a change from inhumation burials to cremation.
  The torc was evidently a key marker of status and very widely worn, in a range of metals no doubt reflecting the wealth and status of the owner.  Bracelets and armlets were also common.  An exception to the general lack of depictions of the human figure, and of the failure of wooden objects to survive, are certain water sites from which large numbers of small carved figures of body parts or whole human figures have been recovered, which are assumed to be votive offerings representing the location of the ailment of the supplicant.  The largest of these, at Source-de-la-Roche, Chamalières, France, produced over 10,000 fragments, mostly now at Clermont-Ferrand.
  Several phases of the style are distinguished, under a variety of names, including numeric (De Navarro) and alphabetic series. Generally, there is broad agreement on how to demarcate the phases, but the names used differ, and that they followed each other in chronological sequence is now much less certain.  In a version of Jacobsthal's division, the "early" or "strict" phase, De Navarro I, where the imported motifs remain recognisable, is succeeded by the "vegetal", "Continuous Vegetal", "Waldalgesheim style", or De Navarro II, where ornament is "typically dominated by continuously moving tendrils of various types, twisting and turning in restless motion across the surface".
  After about 300 BC the style, now De Navarro III, can be divided into "plastic" and "sword" styles, the latter mainly found on scabbards and the former featuring decoration in high relief.  One scholar, Vincent Megaw, has defined a "Disney style" of cartoon-like animal heads within the plastic style, and also an "Oppida period art, c 125–c 50 BC".  De Navarro distinguishes the "insular" art of the British Isles, up to about 100 BC, as Style IV, followed by a Style V, and the separateness of Insular Celtic styles is widely recognised.
  The often spectacular art of the richest earlier Continental Celts, before they were conquered by the Romans, often adopted elements of Roman, Greek and other "foreign" styles (and possibly used imported craftsmen) to decorate objects that were distinctively Celtic.  So a torc in the rich Vix Grave terminates in large bal
caption: The Staffordshire Moorlands Pan, 2nd century AD Romano-British, with enamel.
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