Last updated Tricephalic head found at Roquepertuse, a major Celtic religious centre dated to the 3rd century BCThe three faced Corleck Head, Irish, 1st century AD
Celtic stone idols are Northern European stone sculptures dated to the Iron Age, that are believed to represent Celtic gods. The majority contain one or more human heads, which may have one or more faces. It is thought that the heads were often placed on top of pillar stones and were a centrepiece at cultic worship sites. They can be found across Northern Europe but are most numerous in Gaul (roughly today's France, Belgium and Luxembourg) and the British Isles, with the majority dating to the Romano-British (between 43 and 410 AD) and Gallo-Roman periods. Thus, they are sometimes described as a result of cultural exchange between abstract Celtic art and the Roman tradition of monumental stone carving. Parallels are found in contemporary Scandinavia.[1][2]
The faces tend to share a number of characteristics, including unsophisticated or crude features such as closely set eyes, a long face, broad noses or a slit mouth.[3] Praising this simplicity, the idols were described by the scholar Paul Jacobsthal as bearing "the mark of Greek humanity, shining through primitiveness and weirdness".[4]
A number of similar, usually earlier, wooden idols have survived, including the Braak Bog Figures (2nd or 3rd century BC) and the Ralaghan Idol (c. 1000 BC).
The earliest European stone idols appeared in the Nordic countries during the late Bronze Age, where they continued to be produced, including in Iceland, until the end of the Viking Age in the 11th centuryAD. The very early examples resemble contemporary full-length wooden figures. Both types are assumed to have been created for cultic sites, but early examples are rare, especially in wood. Only around eight prehistoric Nordic stone heads are known to have survived.[5]
The type spread across Northern Europe, with the most numerous examples appearing in the northeast and southeast of Gaul (notably at Roquepertuse, a major Celtic religious center near Marseille, France)[6][7] and across the northern British Isles during the Romano-British period. Most scholars believe that the heads were a combination of non-representational abstract Celtic art and the monumentalism of Roman sculpture[1] The early forms of Celtic religion were introduced to Ireland around 400BC.[8]
Dating stone sculpture is difficult as techniques such as radiocarbon dating cannot be used.[10] The heads are thus usually dated based on stylistic similarities to works whose dating has been established.[11] However, this approach has been challenged by the writer John Billingsley, who points out that there was a folk art revival of stone head carvings in the early modern period.[11]
Although many of the heads are believed to be pre-Christian, others have since been identified as either from the Early Middle Ages or examples of 17th- or 18th-century folk art. Thus modern archaeologists date such objects based on their resemblance to other known examples in the contemporary Northern European context.[12][13]
Function
Head of a man wearing a cap or helmet, English, possibly c. 2nd or 3rd century AD
Archaeologists believe that the pre-Christian stone idols were intended as centerpieces for worship sites. A majority of the surviving examples were rediscovered near sacred wells, rivers or trees. On the British Isles especially, these locations typically adapted by early Christians for churches and monasteries.[15][16]
Many of the Celtic era stone carvings are of human heads, sometimes with multiple faces or heads. The modern consensus, first articulated by the historian Anne Ross, is that the Celts venerated the head as a "symbol of divinity" and believed it to be "the seat of the soul".[17][18]Classical Greek and Roman sources mention that Celtic peoples practised headhunting and used the severed heads of their enemies as war trophies, and would, in the words of Ross, "tie them to the necks of their horses, bearing them home in triumph...the more severed heads a warrior possessed the greater was his reputation as a hero."[17] According to both the Greek historian Posidonius and the geographer Strabo, the Gauls returned from battle with their enemies' heads hanging from the necks of their horses, before nailing them outside their homes. Strabo recorded that heads of noble enemies were embalmed in cedar oil and "exhibited to strangers".[19][20]
There are numerous Insular Celtic—(that is, Celts living in Great Britain and Ireland) myths in which severed but living heads preside over feasts and/or speak prophecies.[19] Medieval Irish legends recount severed heads returning to life when placed on standing stones or pillars.[21][22] This has led to speculation as to the existence of a Celtic head cult.[19] Decapitated human skulls have been found at Iron Age sites associated with rituals and sacrifice, such as those at Loughnashade, County Armagh.[3] While the Roman and Insular accounts resemble others from contemporary Britain and mainland Europe, the Irish vernacular records were mostly set down by Christian monks who would have had, according to the folklorist Dáithí Ó hÓgáin, theological reasons to slant the oral traditions in an unfavourable light compared to their own beliefs.[8]
The number three seems to have had a special significance to Roman-period Celts, both in Gaul and on the British Isles.[24]Three-headed figures are a common feature of Celtic art, especially of Gaulish origin, and according to the archaeologist Anne Ross had a religious significance "fundamental" to early Celtic outlook.[25] The concept was likely imported to Britain and Ireland Celts by the Guals during the pre-Roman period, with the Rimi altar becoming a major influence on Insular Celtic art. Sculptures from the period often show deities with either three faces or heads, while sacred animals such as lambs, have three rather than two horns.[26] The British Isles already had a mythological tradition of triple Mother goddesses such as the Irish gods Danu, Macha and Boann.[27]
From surviving artefacts, it can be assumed that both multi-headed (as with the Irish "Dreenan" figure on Boa Island and the Corraghy Heads) or multi-faced idols were a common part of Celtic iconography. Such figures are assumed by archaeologists to represent all-knowing and all-seeing gods, that probably symbolised the unity of the past, present and future.[28]
The Celts or Celtic peoples were a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia, identified by their use of Celtic languages and other cultural similarities. Major Celtic groups included the Gauls; the Celtiberians and Gallaeci of Iberia; the Britons, Picts, and Gaels of Britain and Ireland; the Boii; and the Galatians. The interrelationships of ethnicity, language and culture in the Celtic world are unclear and debated; for example over the ways in which the Iron Age people of Britain and Ireland should be called Celts. In current scholarship, 'Celt' primarily refers to 'speakers of Celtic languages' rather than to a single ethnic group.
Cernunnos is a Celtic stag god. His name is only certainly attested once, on the 1st-century Pillar of the Boatmen from Paris, where it is associated with an image of an aged, antlered figure with torcs around his horns.
The La Tène culture was a European Iron Age culture. It developed and flourished during the late Iron Age, succeeding the early Iron Age Hallstatt culture without any definite cultural break, under considerable Mediterranean influence from the Greeks in pre-Roman Gaul, the Etruscans, and the Golasecca culture, but whose artistic style nevertheless did not depend on those Mediterranean influences.
A torc, also spelled torq or torque, is a large rigid or stiff neck ring in metal, made either as a single piece or from strands twisted together. The great majority are open at the front, although some have hook and ring closures and a few have mortice and tenon locking catches to close them. Many seem designed for near-permanent wear and would have been difficult to remove.
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.
Ancient Celtic religion, commonly known as Celtic paganism, was the religion of the ancient Celtic peoples of Europe. Because there are no extant native records of their beliefs, evidence about their religion is gleaned from archaeology, Greco-Roman accounts, and literature from the early Christian period. Celtic paganism was one of a larger group of polytheistic Indo-European religions of Iron Age Europe.
The Britons, also known as Celtic Britons or Ancient Britons, were the indigenous Celtic people who inhabited Great Britain from at least the British Iron Age until the High Middle Ages, at which point they diverged into the Welsh, Cornish, and Bretons. They spoke Common Brittonic, the ancestor of the modern Brittonic languages.
Miranda Jane Aldhouse-Green, is a British archaeologist and academic, known for her research on the Iron Age and the Celts. She was Professor of Archaeology at Cardiff University from 2006 to 2013. Until about 2000, she published as Miranda Green or Miranda J. Green.
The various names used since classical times for the people known today as the Celts are of disparate origins.
The gods and goddesses of the pre-Christian Celtic peoples are known from a variety of sources, including ancient places of worship, statues, engravings, cult objects, and place or personal names. The ancient Celts appear to have had a pantheon of deities comparable to others in Indo-European religion, each linked to aspects of life and the natural world. Epona was an exception and retained without association with any Roman deity. By a process of syncretism, after the Roman conquest of Celtic areas, most of these became associated with their Roman equivalents, and their worship continued until Christianization. Pre-Roman Celtic art produced few images of deities, and these are hard to identify, lacking inscriptions, but in the post-conquest period many more images were made, some with inscriptions naming the deity. Most of the specific information we have therefore comes from Latin writers and the archaeology of the post-conquest period. More tentatively, links can be made between ancient Celtic deities and figures in early medieval Irish and Welsh literature, although all these works were produced well after Christianization.
The Insular Celts were speakers of the Insular Celtic languages in the British Isles and Brittany. The term is mostly used for the Celtic peoples of the isles up until the early Middle Ages, covering the British–Irish Iron Age, Roman Britain and Sub-Roman Britain. They included the Celtic Britons, the Picts, and the Gaels.
The Waterloo Helmet is a pre-Roman Celtic bronze ceremonial horned helmet with repoussé decoration in the La Tène style, dating to circa 150–50 BC, that was found in 1868 in the River Thames by Waterloo Bridge in London, England. It is now on display at the British Museum in London.
Celtic mythology is the body of myths belonging to the Celtic peoples. Like other Iron Age Europeans, Celtic peoples followed a polytheistic religion, having many gods and goddesses. The mythologies of continental Celtic peoples, such as the Gauls and Celtiberians, did not survive their conquest by the Roman Empire, the loss of their Celtic languages and their subsequent conversion to Christianity. Only remnants are found in Greco-Roman sources and archaeology. Most surviving Celtic mythology belongs to the Insular Celtic peoples. They preserved some of their myths in oral lore, which were eventually written down by Christian scribes in the Middle Ages. Irish mythology has the largest written body of myths, followed by Welsh mythology.
A druid was a member of the high-ranking priestly class in ancient Celtic cultures. Druids were religious leaders as well as legal authorities, adjudicators, lorekeepers, medical professionals and political advisors. Druids left no written accounts. While they were reported to have been literate, they are believed to have been prevented by doctrine from recording their knowledge in written form. Their beliefs and practices are attested in some detail by their contemporaries from other cultures, such as the Romans and the Greeks.
Prehistoric art in Scotland is visual art created or found within the modern borders of Scotland, before the departure of the Romans from southern and central Britain in the early fifth century CE, which is usually seen as the beginning of the early historic or Medieval era. There is no clear definition of prehistoric art among scholars and objects that may involve creativity often lack a context that would allow them to be understood.
Anthropomorphic Iron Age wooden cult figures, sometimes called pole gods, have been found at many archaeological sites in Central and Northern Europe. They are generally interpreted as cult images, in some cases presumably depicting deities, sometimes with either a votive or an apotropaic (protective) function. Many have been preserved in peat bogs. The majority are crudely worked poles or forked sticks; some take the form of carved planks. They have been dated to periods from the Mesolithic to the Early Middle Ages, including the Roman Era and the Migration Age. The majority have been found in areas of Germanic settlement, but some are from areas of Celtic settlement and from the later part of the date range, Slavic settlement. A typology has been developed based on the large number found at Oberdorla, Thuringia, at a sacrificial bog which is now the Opfermoor Vogtei open-air museum.
The Corleck Head is a 1st or 2nd century AD three-faced Irish stone idol discovered in Drumeague in County Cavan c. 1855. Its dating to the Iron Age is based on its iconography, which is similar to that of contemporary northern European Celtic artefacts. Archaeologists agree that it probably depicts a Celtic god and was intended to be placed on top of a larger shrine associated with a Celtic head cult.
The Tandragee Idol is the name given to a carved sandstone figure, generally dated to the Iron Age, with some sources suggesting a date as early as 1,000 BC. The sculpture was found in the 19th century in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. It is 60 cm (24 in) in height, and shows of the torso and head of a grotesque and brutish figure who crosses his body with his left arm to hold his right arm in what appears to be a ritualistic pose. The idol has a vulgar and gaping mouth, pierced nostrils and the stubs of what maybe the ends of a horned helmet.
The Pfalzfeld obelisk is a Celtic carved sandstone monument, an example of the sculpture of the Iron Age La Tène culture. The obelisk, removed from its original site to the churchyard of Pfalzfeld, is believed to have been a funerary monument from one of the nearby burial grounds. The obelisk has been dated to the 4th or 5th century BC. It is currently in the collection of the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn.
The Euffigneix statue or God of Euffigneix is a Celtic stone pillar statue found near Euffigneix, a commune of Haute-Marne, France. The statue has been dated to the 1st century BC, within the Gallo-Roman period. The statue is a human bust with a large relief of a boar on its chest. The boar was a potent symbol for the Celts and the figure has been thought to represent a Gaulish boar-god, perhaps Moccus.
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