Iron age

• Iron technology and Celtic culture arrived in Northern Europe as the Roman Empire expanded


  500 BC
• Celts


  A group of tribes that populated much of Europe from around 700 BC until the 3rd century AD
• The Celts were known to the Greeks and the Romans as the Keltoi
• Celts


  • Renowned as warriors, horsemen and craftworkers, skilled in the production of a wide range of goods and weapons
  • Worked in gold, bronze and iron
• Iron technology


  Improved farming and military equipment and allowed the Celts to expand their area of influence
• Hints of Celtic art and technology reached Ireland but did not seem to take root

  6th century BC
• A new style of Celtic art called La Tène art had developed


  5th century BC
• La Tène art was evident in Ireland, first in the form of imports


  3rd century BC
• Imported Celtic art in Ireland

  • Gold collars found in Roscommon
  • Scabbard plates found in north-east Ulster
  • Sword hilt in the shape of a human figure found in the sea at Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal
• La Tène art


  Combined influences from classical Greek and Roman art, the Etruscans, the Scythians and Oriental art with the Celtic style
• The migrations and invasions of the Celtic peoples throughout Europe in the 5th and 4th centuries BC helped to spread the La Tène style
• Exactly when the Celts arrived in Ireland and how they got there is still open to debate
• Significant sites like hill forts and places of burial seem to have been in continuous use from the Bronze Age into the Iron Age, so Celtic influence may have actually arrived by trading, migration and assimilation, with larger numbers arriving as refugees when the Romans invaded Gaul and Britain
• By the 1st century BC, Ireland had a Celtic culture of some depth and substance, with a Celtic language spoken and a unified social and political system throughout the country
• Celtic society in Ireland

  Tribal society based on family ties, with wealth built on cattle ownership
• The story of The Táin, written down much later, gives some idea of Celtic society in Ireland
• Iron technology in Ireland

  • Improved and simplified the production of tools and weapons
  • Iron was readily available in the environment in the form of clay ironstone nodules, bog iron and other, less easily worked, sources
  • Iron was not melted and cast, but heated until the impurities were burnt off or melted away, then it was hammer forged and shaped
• All metalworkers were highly valued members of society, equal in status with physicians, and their skills were associated with magical powers
• Bronze


  Much of the decorative work from the Iron Age was made of bronze, including horse trappings, tools and utensils, brooches, armbands and rings
• Lost wax casting


  Allowed complicated bronze pieces, like horse bits, to be made
• Sheet bronze


  Turned and hammered to produce vessels and decorative items
• Gold


  The finest decorative pieces were produced in gold, using techniques like hammering, cutting to shape, casting, and chasing
• Chasing


  A metalwork technique that brings a design into relief by pressing back the surrounding area by hammering
• It is difficult to identify specific pieces of architecture as 'typically Iron Age' because some of the larger structures like ring forts were already being built in the late Bronze Age and continued to be built into medieval times
• Houses were mainly made of wood, so little remains of them
• Stone carving


  With the introduction of iron tools, it was easier to carve larger-scale stone sculptures, like the Turoe Stone, which were carved to shape and decorated in relief carving
• Art Elements and Design Principles


  • Changes in Style
• Stone Age art


  • Drawn freehand, without a ruler or compass
• Bronze Age art


  • Created mechanically using a straight edge and compass
• Both Stone Age and Bronze Age art

  • Abstract, did not represent objects in the real world
• Iron Age design


  • Combined freehand and mechanical elements, abstract and stylised representational images
• There does not appear to be much continuity in design from one age to another, although there are some common elements
• La Tène Style


  Flowing, sinuous, abstract style that the Celts used to decorate ornaments and weapons
• Elements of La Tène Style

  • Leafy palmate forms
  • Vines
  • Tendrils and scrolls
  • Lotus flower
  • Spirals
• Insular La Tène


  Style of art used by the first native craftsmen in Ireland, a modified version of the European style
• Characteristics of Insular La Tène


  • Scrolls
  • Leaf and vine forms
  • Trumpet ends
  • Spirals
• The patterns on the Turoe Stone and the Broighter Collar are in the Insular La Tène style
• Innovation and Invention


  • New metal technology in iron created more efficient tools and weapons
  • New ideas and design came with the Celtic influence
  • Trade with Rome and the wider world brought new materials like enamel, and new art elements like the triskele and the pelta
• Enamel


  A coloured glass-like material that can be either opaque or transparent, attached as decoration to metal by a heating process that fuses the enamel to the metal
• Triskele


  A motif of three curved limbs that spring from the same point and turn in the same direction