Szabó Miklós, Petres F. Éva: Decorated weapons on the La Tene Iron Age in the Carpathian Basin. (Inventaria Praehistorica Hungariae 5; Budapest, 1992)

III. THE HUNGARIAN SWORD STYLE - The influence of the Hungarian Sword Style — Connections with the Irish Scabbard Style

as the hatched leaf) and the filler motifs.

369 Recent studies have brought the important recognition that the commencement date of the Irish Scabbard Style can be put in the 3rd century B. C.

370 Consequently, the suggestion that the Hungarian Sword Style had a direct influence on the decoration of Irish sword scabbards can no longer be rejected out of hand. The westward route of various motifs probably involved transmissions through the Marne, a possibility supported also by the morphology of scabbard chapes.

371 The sword finds from the river Thames published recently also suggest that eastern Celtic swords had reached the British Isles by the 3rd century B. C.

372 It must be borne in mind, however, that there is one basic difference between Irish and Hungarian weapons, namely that Irish scabbards are made of bronze plates and not, as in the case of the latter, of iron. This clarifies the nature of the contacts on one point: the Irish workshops adopted ornaments of eastern Celtic origin.

373 Fig. 29 Brno-Malomëfice (Morava), bronze openwork mount of a flagon (after Filip [1956] pl. LXXVII4) A new artistic concept that is closely allied to the scabbard design of the Carpathian Fig. SO Káloz-Nagyhörcsök, incised decoration of a pottery pseudo-kantharos and interpretation some of its motifs (after Duval [1974] fig* 1-% and 5) Basin emerged in the Moravian province of La Tène culture in the 3rd century B. C. The openwork bronze-mounts probably for a wooden flagon from Brno-Malomëïice (Fig. 29) illustrate the almost perfect fusion of zoomorphic and purely decorative motifs (of ultimately vegetal origin).

374 Considering the close links between this region and the Carpathian Basin at the time of the Balkanic invasions,

375 the influence of the Hungarian Sword Style can rightly be assumed in the background. It is hardly surprising that the new artistic trend in metalwork had, similarly to the Waldalgesheim Style, influenced pottery making in the Carpathian Basin. This is most clearly reflected by the incised ornament under the handles of the pseudo-kantharos from KálozNagyhörcsök which can best be interpreted on the basis of Sword Style compositions, such as the magnificent design of the Cernonsur-Coole scabbard (Fig. 30). P.-M. Duval has aptly noted that this would suggest a conscious strive for unity in Celtic art — even in the time of large-scale migrations — , i.e. a tendency to adopt decorative concepts from the mainstream of Celtic art even on more humble genres such as pottery, in this case on a vessel whose form clearly follows regional traditions.

376 At the same time, potters included not only imaginative masters, but also clumsy imitators, and there are several indications that the ornaments incised onto clay vessels tended to simplify radically the original models. Suffice it here to quote but three