Szabó Miklós, Petres F. Éva: Decorated weapons on the La Tene Iron Age in the Carpathian Basin. (Inventaria Praehistorica Hungariae 5; Budapest, 1992)
Introduction
Celtic art: scabbards and spearheads with engraved ornament. 10 At the same time, Márton's repertory and Hunyady's catalogue of finds remains a goldmine for research and contains a wealth of information which reveals the difficulties of the analysis by registering the poor state of preservation of iron objects. 11 The descriptions are invaluable, for many of these pieces have deteriorated further since then, 12 and also because important documents disappeared or perished during the Second World War. 13 P. Jacobsthal 's Early Celtic Art appeared at roughly the same time as Hunyady 's monograph. A recognition of the importance of the material from the Carpathian Basis is reflected not only by the the fact that some forty pieces from this region had been included in the catalogue, but also by the introduction of the term "Hungarian Sword Style". Consequently, a group of the finds from this region were now considered and included in discussion of the development of "early Celtic art". 14 Hungarian research not only failed to react to Jacobsthal's scholarly masterpiece in the two decades following the Second World War, but also steered clear of an analysis of the art of pre- and protohistoric periods. 15 The La Tène research inspired by J. Filip which also dealt with the finds from the Carpathian Basin also neglected such investigations and even caused some misunderstandings by its inconsistent usage of the terminology elaborated in Early Celtic Art. 16 In the 1960s — but independently of the above — the revision and modification of Jacobsthal's system was begun. 17 P.-M. Duval aptly noted the heterogeneous nature the terminology and suggested the introduction of new categories with a view to uniform classification, for which he worked out his own system. 18 Duval's activities, the conferences organised by him and his personal inspiration all contributed to a renewed interest in Celtic art during the 1970s. 19 Before continuing our review we must deal briefly with the terminological controversies which also affect this study. The basic question can be formulated as follows: should we retain categories such as "Hungarian Sword Style" or should we introduce new ones? The acceptance of the category of "Free Style" (style libre) — which was designed to include, among others, the Hungarian Sword Style — would have entailed radical changes. 20 In contrast, proposals to broaden this category can be regarded as a sort of compromise: in this sense one can speak of a sword style (or styles) 21 with the logical consequence that the Hungarian Sword Style was degraded into a sub-style. 22 This debate brought the startling recognition that there are several unclarified points in the interpretation of Jacobsthal's terminology. 23 In other words, most critiques chose to neglect the fact that P. Jacobsthal was an eminent scholar of classical archaeology and that in his elaboration of the stylistic categories of Early Celtic Art (including the Hungarian Sword Style) he relied heavily on the methodology of art historic research of ancient Mediterranean cultures. The essence of his categories is that they condense the distinctive characteristics and are unmistakably unique. This is undoubtedly a basic advantage of the label " Hungarian Sword Style". It expresses that the vast bulk of evidence of this style consists of swords or, more precisely, of sword scabbards found in Hungary. At the same time, this category is restricted to Celtic art and cannot be related to a given group of either Thracian, Scythian or Etruscan relics. It must also be emphasized that the acceptance of the category of "Hungarian Sword Style" does in no way imply that objects decorated in a similar style from France or Yugoslavia, or other artefacts decorated in the same taste (such as spearheads, daggers, razors, pottery, etc.) must be excluded from this category. 24 With this little detour we wished to justify why we shall not reject the stylistic terminology introduced by Jacobsthal. The fact that the study of the designs on La Tène weapons has — for the time being — advanced furthest following in the footsteps of P. Jacobsthal is in itself paradigmatic. This can primarily be ascribed to J. M. De Navarro who based his investigations on the swords and scabbards found at the eponymous site of La Tène. 25 His studies on dragon-pair swords led to an increased interest in this subject and it is hardly surprising that in little more than a decade De Navarro's original corpus has more than doubled, and there has been a proliferation of studies focusing on these swords. Disregarding now minor details we shall here only quote J. Stead's contribution which offers a good survey of the former and which is complemented by J. V. S. Megaw and M. R. Megaw 's recent paper. 26 As regards the Swiss engraved scabbards which are roughly contemporaneous with the Hungarian swords, Jacobsthal merely remarked that they "have a repertory of their own", and following up this remark De Navarro elaborated the stylistic history of the "Swiss Sword Style". 27 It must also be noted that the
