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 had hook and ring closures and a few had mortice and tenon locking catches to close them. Many seem designed for near-permanent wear and would have been difficult to remove. Torcs are found in the Scythian, Illyrian, Thracian, Celtic, and other cultures of the European Iron Age from around the 8th century BC to the 3rd century AD. For the Iron Age Celts, the gold torc seems to have been a key object. It identifies the wearer as a person of high rank, and many of the finest works of ancient Celtic art are torcs. The Celtic torc disappears in the Migration Period, but during the Viking Age torc-style metal necklaces, now mainly in silver, came back into fashion. Torc styles of neck-ring are found as part of the jewellery styles of various other cultures and periods.
A brooch is a decorative jewelry item designed to be attached to garments, often to fasten them together. It is usually made of metal, often silver or gold or some other material. Brooches are frequently decorated with enamel or with gemstones and may be solely for ornament or serve a practical function as a clothes fastener. The earliest known brooches are from the Bronze Age. As fashions in brooches changed rather quickly, they are important chronological indicators. In archaeology, ancient European brooches are usually referred to by the Latin term fibula.
Filigree is a form of intricate metalwork used in jewellery and other small forms of metalwork.
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.
This article refers to the jewelry of the Etruscan civilization and its differences in various eras.
The prehistory of Ireland has been pieced together from archaeological evidence, which has grown at an increasing rate over the last decades. It begins with the first evidence of permanent human residence in Ireland around 10,500 BC and finishes with the start of the historical record around 400 AD. Both the beginning and end dates of the period are later than for much of Europe and all of the Near East. The prehistoric period covers the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age societies of Ireland. For much of Europe, the historical record begins when the Romans invaded; as Ireland was not invaded by the Romans its historical record starts later, with the coming of Christianity.
The Gold lunula is a distinctive type of late Neolithic, Chalcolithic or early Bronze Age necklace or collar shaped like a crescent moon. They are normally flat and thin, with roundish spatulate terminals that are often twisted to 45 to 90 degrees from the plane of the body. Gold lunulae fall into three distinct groups, termed Classical, Unaccomplished and Provincial by archaeologists. Most have been found in Ireland, but there are moderate numbers in other parts of Europe as well, from Great Britain to areas of the continent fairly near the Atlantic coasts. Although no lunula has been directly dated, from associations with other artefacts it is thought they were being made sometime in the period between 2400–2000 BC; a wooden box associated with one Irish find has recently given a radiocarbon dating range of 2460–2040 BC.
The Broighter Gold or more correctly, the Broighter Hoard, is a hoard of gold artefacts from the Iron Age of the 1st century BC that were found in 1896 by Tom Nicholl and James Morrow on farmland near Limavady, in the north of Ireland. The hoard includes a 7-inch-long (18 cm) gold boat, a gold torc and bowl and some other jewellery.
The Celtic brooch, more properly called the penannular brooch, and its closely related type, the pseudo-penannular brooch, are types of brooch clothes fasteners, often rather large; penannular means formed as an incomplete ring. They are especially associated with the beginning of the Early Medieval period in Ireland and Britain, although they are found in other times and places—for example, forming part of traditional female dress in areas in modern North Africa.
Gold working in the Bronze Age British Isles refers to the use of gold to produce ornaments and other prestige items in the British Isles during the Bronze Age, between circa 2500 and c.800 BCE in Britain, and up to about 550 BCE in Ireland. In this period, communities in Britain and Ireland first learned how to work metal, leading to the widespread creation of not only gold but also copper and bronze items as well. Gold artefacts in particular were prestige items used to designate the high status of those individuals who wore, or were buried with them.
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.
The Sintra Collar is a Bronze Age gold neck-ring found near Sintra in Portugal. Since 1900, it has been part of the British Museum's collection and has long been admired for the sophistication and geometric beauty of its design and technique.
The Breadalbane Brooch is a silver and gilt Celtic penannular brooch probably made in Ireland, but later altered and then found in Scotland. Probably dating to the 8th century, with 9th-century alterations, it is an intricately designed, silver-gilt dress fastener that is closely related to a select group of brooches that were produced in Ireland and Britain during the 'golden age' of late Celtic art. The brooch has been in the British Museum since 1919, and is normally on display.
Heathery Burn Cave is a cave near Stanhope, County Durham, England, in which a large collection of Late Bronze Age weapons and tools was discovered and excavated between 1859 and 1872.
Scottish jewellery is jewellery created in Scotland or in a style associated with Scotland, which today often takes the form of the Celtic style. It is often characterised by being inspired by nature, Scandinavian mythology, and Celtic knot patterns. Jewellery has a history in Scotland dating back to at least the Iron Age.
Anglo-Saxon brooches are a large group of decorative brooches found in England from the fifth to the eleventh centuries. In the early Anglo-Saxon era, there were two main categories of brooch: the long (bow) brooch and the circular (disc) brooch. The long brooch category includes cruciform, square-headed, radiate-headed, and small-long brooch brooches. The long brooches went out of fashion by the end of the sixth century.
The Heights of Brae hoard is a group of at least eleven Bronze Age gold ornaments, currently held in the National Museum of Scotland. Gold bracelets, 'cup-ended ornaments' and a corrugated gold band were discovered through ploughing, and later excavation, in a field in the Highland region in Scotland. The objects date to the Late Bronze Age in Britain, around 950-750 BC, and represent the largest hoard of Bronze Age gold objects from Scotland.
The Kilmainham Brooch is a late 8th- or early 9th-century Celtic brooch of the "penannular" type. With a diameter of 9.67 cm, it is a relatively large example, and is made from silver, gold and glass, with filigree and interlace decorations. Like other high-quality brooches of its class, it was probably intended to fasten copes and other vestments rather than for everyday wear, as its precious metal content would have made it a status symbol for its owner; less expensive Viking-style brooches were typically worn in pairs on women's clothing.
The Ballinderry Brooch is an Irish penannular brooch dated to the late 6th or early 7th centuries. It was found in the 1930s, along with a number of similar objects, underneath a timber floor of the late Bronze Age Ballinderry Crannóg No.2, on Ballinderry lake, County Offaly. Made from copper-alloy, tin and enamel, and decorated with millefiori patterns, it is relatively small, with a maximum ring diameter of 8.6 cm, while its pin is 18.3 cm long.
The Moylough Belt-Shrine is a highly decorated 8th-century Irish reliquary shaped in the form of a belt. It consists of four hinged bronze segments, each forming cavities that hold strips of plain leather assumed to have once been a girdle belonging to a saint and thus the intended relic. It remains the only known relic container created as a belt-shrine, although such objects are mentioned in some lives of Irish saints, where they are attributed with "remarkable cures", and there are surviving reliquary buckles in continental Europe. The belt may have been influenced by 7th-century Frankish and Burgundian types.
