Celtic Art in Iron Age Wales
By Jody Deacon
Celtic art reflects the way Iron Age people interpreted the world around them. The designs they used help us understand how they viewed themselves, their environment and their gods.
The Celtic art found in Wales is part of a much wider tradition in Britain and Europe, often called La Tène art, which developed during the Iron Age from about 500BC.
The earliest example from Wales is the Cerrig-y-Drudion bowl which was found in 1924 in a stone-lined grave in the county of Conwy. It is one of the few decorated artefacts from Britain to date to the 4th-century BC and was probably made by British craftsmen influenced by Continental traditions.
Many more decorated objects are known from about 200BC by which time Britain had developed its own distinctive style. British craftsmen continued to produce swords, daggers, spears, brooches and horse equipment, but added other objects such as tankards, mirrors and spoons to their repertoire.
Particular motifs are introduced and often repeated, reinforcing their meaning. Archaeologists interpret these as symbolic and powerful with religious connotations. For example the three-fold character of the triskele (a three-legged design radiating from a centre) may represent the relationships between the living, the dead and the gods or the ongoing cycle of birth, life and death.
Stylised representations of people and animals become more common after 100BC with faces often hidden within complex patterns. Human heads surrounded by a flowing plant-like design can be seen on plaques from the Tal-y-Llyn hoard while a variety of cows, horses, boars and birds adorn a wide range of other artefacts. Ox head escutcheons (bucket-fittings) have been found in Wales, showing the stylised characteristics and flowing lines of native British artistic styles. Mythical beasts are also hinted at, for example in the imaginatively constructed horse-cow heads that ornament the Capel Garmon firedog.
Celtic designs did not disappear with the Roman conquest, but continued to influence art. A bronze trulleus (saucepan) from Coygan Camp in Carmarthenshire was repaired with a sheet of metal sometime in the 3rd-century AD. It was not decorated with a typical Roman design, but with a triskele motif, showing a continuing appreciation of Celtic art.
Background Reading
- Early Celtic art in Britain and Ireland by Ruth and Vincent Megaw. Published by Shire Archaeology (1986).
Images:
The Cerrig-y-Drudion bowl (Conwy).
Image about 15cm (6 inches) wide.
When the fragments of this object were first studied it was thought they formed a bowl. More recent research has shown the ‘bowl’ to be oval shaped suggesting that it may actually be a helmet or headdress.
The flowing sequence of palmettes (palm leaf designs) and leaves with a hatched background incised onto the metal is typical of continental art in the 4th-century BC.
[Image © National Museum of Wales].
Crescentic plaque from Llyn Cerrig Bach (Anglesey).
About 11cm (4.3 inches) across.
This item is one of an important collection of bronze and iron objects cast into a lake sometime between 200BC and AD100.
The plaque is decorated with an elaborate triskele (three-legged design radiating from a centre), each limb ending with a trumpet and raised circle that suggests a stylised bird head.
The plaque may have been used to decorate a shield, to ornament the pole of a chariot, or even as the neck jewellery of a wooden cult figurine or deity.
[Image © National Museum of Wales].
Plaque from Tal-y-Llyn (Gwynedd), thought to date to the 1st-century AD. 15cm (6 inches) tall.
[Image © National Museum of Wales].
Ox-head bucket fittings (known as escutcheons) found in a hoard at Little Orme (Conwy).
Width of largest object 10.5cm (4.1 inches).
The hoard also contained two Roman trumpet brooches, indicating that this Celtic style continued in use after the Roman conquest.
[Image © National Museum of Wales].
Celtic coin from Tintern (Monmouthshire).
Here the image of the horse is highly stylised, with the body, head and limbs of the animal abstracted to such a degree that it is barely recognisable.
This coin was produced by the Dobunni tribe which occupied parts of Gloucestershire and Somerset - the tribes in Wales did not produce their own coins.
[Image © National Museum of Wales].
Head of a cow/horse, from the Capel Garmon firedog.
Image about 40cm (16 inches) high.
The firedog would once have sat beside the hearth of an Iron Age roundhouse.
[Image © National Museum of Wales].
National Museums & Galleries of Wales
Published: 20 April 2004
