The Celts
The Celts at war
In about 500 BC, the hill forts of central Germany suddenly became redundant and vanished. At the same time, a new force emerged in the Celtic world.
La Tène
Today Lake Neuchâtel in Switzerland is a holiday resort, but more than two-and-a-half centuries ago, one place on its shore was the site of ritual offering and sacrifice. Its name has become synonymous with the Celtic world and with beauty and violence. It is called La Tène.
In about 500 BC, La Tène was a sacred religious site. The ancient Celts saw water as the gateway between this world and the next, and it was here that they offered tribute to their gods, using their most precious objects. In 1857, a Swiss archaeologist stumbled on a huge hoard of more than 2,500 Celtic offerings, preserved in the muddy lake bed. Because of them, the name ‘La Tène’ would be forever associated with the Celtic world.
The archaeology at this site changed the way in which Celtic art and technology was viewed by the modern world. The most striking feature of this culture was the uniquely sophisticated style in which the great number of weapons found were decorated – the swirling patterns that we have come to recognise as distinctively ‘Celtic’. The magical and symbolic reworking of animal, plants and spiral designs would define the international Celtic look for centuries.
But from the lake bed at La Tène came other, more grizzly artefacts – swords and shields … and evidence of human sacrifice. These Celts are more like those described by the Romans. No longer simple traders, they had become warrior tribes, highly ambitious and mobile, and Europe was ripe for a takeover.
The Celtic warrior
The migrations that occurred throughout Europe during this period carried so-called ‘La Tène’ Celtic culture from what is now modern Turkey into the Balkans and Italy and westward into France and northern Spain. No longer passive, the Celtic tribes were seen as important and powerful, something to be feared. Their spread across Europe was made by force of arms.
Before 300 BC, most Celtic warriors preferred to fight naked in battle, their only defence being body paint, a shield and trust in their gods. Around their necks, they also wore torcs – rigid circular necklaces that are open in the front and made from intertwined gold or bronze strands – which were a sure sign of nobility and may have had religious significance.
Celtic success at warfare was all about impact and display. One of the most terrifying sounds on the battlefield was made by the boar-headed war carnyx, an Iron-Age musical instrument. Scores of these war trumpets would be sounded to instil fear into the enemy.
Battle tactics were simple but usually effective. First, the enemy was taunted and ridiculed. The bravest warriors would then charge forward, and then the whole force would rush headlong at the enemy, with the intention of making the opposition panic and run. If it didn’t work first time, the Celts would simply start all over again.
We tend to think of the Celts as underdogs – a people who would easily have been pushed aside by superior Roman technology – but this just isn’t true. Celtic technology was technically and artistically superior to that of their Greek and Roman counterparts. For example, chain mail was a Celtic invention of the 4th century BC, and their iron nails would revolutionise ship building.
With their swords, iron-wheeled chariots and iron horseshoes, the Celts mounted successful military expeditions against neighbouring tribes and also against the Greeks and Romans – in 390 BC, the Celtic Gauls even sacked Rome. Celtic warriors had such a good reputation that they were in great demand as mercenaries.
Heroes or head-hunters?
Anthropologist Richard Rudgley and the reconstruction of the Celtic skull shrine.
The Romans stole lots of ideas from the Celts – but there was one Celtic practice that appalled them: head-hunting. They said that the Celts kept heads both as trophies and as offerings to the gods. One Celtic shrine found in southern France took the form of a free-standing decorated doorway with six skulls housed within it.
So were the Celts heroes or head-hunters? Many thought that most of what the Romans had said about the Celts was negative propaganda – until, that is, forensic archaeologists uncovered a mass Celtic grave in northern France.
During World War I, on the battlefields of the Somme, soldiers digging trenches at Ribemont stumbled on evidence of a battle that had occurred more than 2,200 years earlier. They found the bones of about 500 men aged from 15 to 40 years old, all bearing the marks of violent trauma. This was, in fact, a Celtic war memorial on the site of a battle in which thousands of warriors had fought and died. It gives us a remarkable insight into the Celtic world’s attitude towards war and death.
The battle was fought in 290 BC between two Celtic armies. One was from a Breton tribe called the Armoricans, and the victors were the Ambiens, a Belgic tribe. This is a further indication that Celtic Europe was a patchwork of competing tribes, all jostling for territory.
But these bones have another story to tell. Among the hundreds of bodies of both victors and vanquished, no heads were found. According to Dr Jean-Louis Brunaux, an archaeologist at Ribemont, some of the neck vertebrae show signs of having been cut by knives – evidence of beheading. All the skulls would have been taken back to the victors’ villages.
The archaeologists were puzzled not just by the beheadings, but also by the curious way in which the bones were scattered on the ground. It appears that a ritual had taken place after the heads were removed. The bodies of the vanquished were hung in wooden frames with their weapons, and when the frames rotted, the bones were crushed and burned. The treatment of the victors’ dead was quite different: the heroes’ bones were neatly stacked together to form an altar or shrine. The ashes from the defeated warriors’ corpses were eventually placed in the centre of this.
It’s little wonder that the Romans were horrified by such savage practices, but for the Celts, it all made perfect sense. ‘The Celts were very religious,’ says Dr Brunaux. ‘They treated their enemies’ remains with the same religious respect that they treated their own warriors’ corpses.’
The discoveries at Ribemont show that the Celts placed a spiritual value on the human body, particularly the head. These weren’t meaningless acts of brutality; they were part of a complex religious system. But the Celts had little or no organisation beyond the tribal level, and warfare was an occupational hazard.
