Fitz Jenő (szerk.): The Celts in Central Europe - István Király Múzeum közelményei. A. sorozat 20. A Pannon konferenciák aktái 2. (Székesfehérvár, 1975)

J. V. S. Megaw: The orientelizing theme in early celtic art: East or West

recent textiles found in one of the most northwesterly of early La Tène Fürstengräber, that of Altrier, Luxemburg^7). If not necessarily Chinese, one should recall the textual evidence for silk in the first-millennium trade of Assyria)48).

Notwithstanding P. Jacobsthal’s warning, it is beyond doubt that the still increasing evidence for Celtic intercourse with the Mediterranean through Italy and the intermediate transapline zone far outweighs that for contact direct or indirect with Asia Minor or South Russia and it is the material witnesses of this intercourse in early Celtic art which I wish now toreview.

To commence, as has much other recent discussion, with the easternmost example of early La Tène Fürstengräber art, the bronze plaque from a disturbed flat cemetery at Stupava, okr. Teplice in south-west Slovakia(49) (PI. 1,1- fig. 3). There is, I think, no dispute as to the obvious westerly pendants for the clean-shaven head, a separate casting with a square shank passing through the sheet bronze (to which the discoverers noted remains of leather adhering). The head may be matched with that on the Kleinmittersdorf, Ldkr. Paisberg brooch(50) (PI. 1,2) with a less close parallel in the fascinating but less accomplished and probably locally produced brooch from Manëtin-Hràdek, Plzen, gr. 74(51) (PI. 1,3). The reversed ornament of Stupava (first really analysed by T. Powell) lightly incised with a graver)5-), with its heraldic opposed griffons has been claimed as yet another link in the invisible chain of orientalizing motifs between east and west. Consider, however, first the technique of the incised pattern itself (fig. 3) with dot and hatched-filled areas making up the body and wings of the twin beasts. This, as I have remarked in another paper, is similar not only to the treatment of the struggle depicted at the tip and elsewhere on the scabbard from Hallstatt, gr. 994(53) (fig. 1,) but the surviving fragment of a

(47) Unpublished information from Prof. Hundt; cf. G. Thill, Frühlatènezeitl. Fürstengrabhügel bei Altrifr Hémecht, XXIV/4, 1972, esp. 497, 50Ó — 1.

(48) A. L. Oppenheim, Essay in overland trade in the first millennium BC.J. Cuneiform Studies XXI, 1967, 252 f. — I owe this reference to Professor T. G. E. Powell. See also Z. Gansiniec, Note on silk in Greece. Arch. Polona, XIV, 1973, 87 — 88.

(49) AEIA, no. 64; add to the references cited there L. Márton, A korai La Tène sírok leletanyaga = Das Fundinventar der Frühlatène — Gräber. Dolg., IX-X, 1933-34, 118-9, 154-5, T. XLVI:3; S. Piggott, Early Celtic art: an exhibition . . . Edinburgh 1970, no. 161 ; M. Szabó, o. c., EC, XIII/2,

1973, 761 — 2 ; Por Stupa va’s place in the distribution of early La Tène culture in Slovakia see B. Benádik, Obraz doby Laténskej na Slovensku. SlovArch, XIX, 1971, 470 — 1 and Obr. 1.

(50) EC A, no. 316; AEIA, no. 63.

(51) AEIA, no 31.

(52) I owe comments on the technology of the Stupava plaque to Messrs. P. R. Lowery and R. D. A. Savage

(53) EC A, no. 96; AEIA, no. 30; W. Dehn and 0. -H. Frey, Ein keltisches Hauptlingsgrab aus Hallstatt. Krieger und Salzherren, 1970, 72 — 81 and esp. Taf. 81; 91 -95.

?crouching animal on the rim of the Hoppstädten sieve (fig. 2), the latter, as we have noted already exhibiting in its incised ornament a combination of eastern and western La Tène elements. As to the actual form of the Stupava griffons, the down turned lower jaw and up-swept horn or ear — typically Celtic in their ambiguity of identity — find parallels also in three-dimensional Early La Tène pieces such as the catch-plate head on the brooch from Ostheim, Ldkr. Mellriehstadt(54) (PI. 11,4). Through the .Eurasian’ backward-looking lyre pair of an openwork ?swingle-tree mount from the Bad Dürkheim, Kr. Neutstadt chariot grave (PI. 11,5) and its relative, the open-work plate of the Schwabsburg Ldkr. Mainz(55) belt-hook (PI. 11,6) — both pieces of Fürstengrab art — Ostheim and Stupava lead on to the dragon- and bird-pairs of J.—M. de Navarro’s Swiss sword style of Early Middle La Tène date, material to which we shall briefly return)56).

The relationship of the Hallstatt, gr. 994 scabbard to the Veneto-Illyrian ,situla’ style needs no rehearsal here; equally, I hope, one need no longer have to consider the craftsman responsible for its engraving as coming from Este or even necessarily having made it in a transalpine workshop. To borrow a well-turned phrase of P o w e 11 ’ s, is it, the work of men in rather exceptional places, and with opportunities for wider visual experiences than obtained on the Rhine’? Certainly arguments have been recently offered against my view of the possible importance of the itinerant craftsman in the production of early Celtic art(57). The procession of Hallstatt can be matched in detail of course on the Matzhausen, Burglegenfeld, Ldkr. Parsberg Linsenflasche with its abstract stamped as well as narrative scene (fig. 4) — typically Celtic and non-,situla’-like in the antithetic placing of several of the animal pairs(58). The treatment of the boars’ shoulders of Matzhausen recalls Hallstatt while stamped animals are also known on sherds ofF. Schwappach’s Eastern group. There is the now lost sherd from Libkovice, Duehcov, northern Bohemia (with arc designs)

(54) EC A, no. 315; AEIA, no. 69.

(55) EC A, no. 351.

(56) J.-M. be Navarro, The finds from the site of La Tène I: Scabbards and the swords found in them. London 1972, 216 ff.

(57) Cf. review of AEIA by J. Driehatts, BJ, CLXXII, 1972, 613-6. See also M. G. Spratling, The Iron Age settlement of Gussage All Saints. Pt. II The bronze foundry. Antiquity, XLVII, 1973, 126; J. V. S. Megaw — M. G. Spratling, Gussage All Saints: discussion. Antiquity, XLVII, 1974, 307 — 8. My arguments for a specialist metal-engraver will be found in: J. V. S. Megaw, Une epée de la Tène I avec fourreau décoré. Rev. Arch, de l’Est et du Centre-Est, XIX, 1968, 129 — 44; Id., o. c., World Arch., Ill:3, 1972, 280 ff.

(58) EC A, no. 201; AEIA, no. 27. For a discussion of Linsenflaschen and their distribution see Th. Voigt, Zur Problematik der frühlatènezeitl. Linsenflaschen. Jahressohr. f. mitteldt. Vorg., LIII, 1969, 415 — 36.

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