Rodney Castleden - The Element Encyclopedia of the Celts

The development of religious paraphernalia shows an increasingly complex religious symbolism and more integrated and uniform ways of expressing religious ideas.

Other changes were under way as well. By about 800 BC horseswere used not just as draft animals but for riding. The horse became a symbol of the warrior elite, just as the horse-drawn chariothad been the symbol of the Mycenaean warrior heroes.

By 700 BC the Hallstatt culture had emerged out of Urnfield. This is the first of the classically recognized Celtic cultures. It was at Hallstatt, a picture-postcard lakeside village in Austria, that archeologists first identified new types of metal horse harness. The salt mines in the mountains were the basis of the prosperity and fame of this area between 700 and 400 BC. For the first time iron-working appears on a big scale. Hundreds of years before, the Mycenaeans evidently knew about iron, but they did not think of using it for tools or for weapon-making. The practice of iron-making was quickly copied at site after site. By 600 BC, the Atlantic Celts were making iron in Britain and Ireland.

The Hallstatt culture in central Europe has distinctive hallmarks. One is the rich burial of a warrior-prince or king in a timber mortuary-house, often with a four-wheeled wagon (sometimes in dismantled kit form), covered by a burial mound made of earth. Often in these burials there are three sets of horse-harness. The wagon-team would have comprised a pair of horses, just like a Mycenaean chariot, so what is the third set of trappings for? It is possible that it represented the prince’s or king’s personal steed: his charger.

The elite men, and sometimes women, buried in these opulent graves were rich enough to import wine from the Mediterranean lands.

By 500 BC the power centers had moved away from Austria, north and west toward the Rhineland and the Marne Valley in northern France. Changes in burial custom at the same time led archeologists to identify this development as a new culture: La Tène. The culture was named after a site in Switzerland, on the shore of Lake Neuchatel. La Tène means “The Shallows” and it was a location along the lakeshore that was seen as sacred: a fit place to leave offerings to please the gods. When the site was excavated in 1906–17, it yielded a rich haul of objects that were of new types, including iron swordsand everyday ironwork.

There was still a warrior aristocracy and it still went in for burials with funerary carts, but now the carts were a more elegant two-wheeled type rather than the heavier four-wheeled type: a chariot more on the lines of the Mycenaean chariot; a two-wheeled vehicle was far more maneuverable. The old four-wheeled wagons were more the vehicles of fighting farmers; the new two-wheeled chariots were skillfully designed, showing collaboration between carpenters, blacksmiths, and wheelwrights to produce a professional fighting machine.

More arresting still, the accoutrements of the warrior-princes were elaborately decorated with what we now see as typical Celtic designs. The La Tène style is familiar to us: it is the root of all the later artwork that we recognize as Celtic. The S-shaped line that endlessly repeats suggests a variety of things, including rippling waterand plant tendrils. But there are also surprises. In the middle of a swirl of lines we sometimes recognize an animal head, so stylized that we cannot be sure whether it is really there, intended by the artist-craftsman, or we ourselves are projecting it—like the giantsor mountain landscapes we sometimes see in cloud formations. And here is a hint of the Celtic love of shapeshiftinglegends.

According to the threefold model for Iron Age Britain, a third wave of innovation came with a third lot of migrants, the Belgae, who arrived in south-east England late in the first century BC. The Belgic culture area extended from Belgium across northern France into south-east England. Distinctive objects associated with the Belgae in Britain were wheel-made pottery and Gallo-Belgic coins.

But this threefold model has been shaken by the general acceptance that there were no mass movements of people into Britain in the first millennium BC. There were no invasions, apart from Julius Caesar’s; instead we should think rather of a complex evolution of an indigenous culture.

King of the Catuvellauni tribe, son of Tasciovanus, and grandson or great-grandson of Cassivellaunus. He was the successor of Dubnovellaunus, King of the Trinovantes, the Catuvellauni’s eastern neighbors, when he died in about AD 10. Dubnovellaunus had fled to Rome, taking refuge at the court of Augustus when the Catuvellauni had annexed his territory and had no doubt been hoping that the emperor would intervene on his behalf. Cunobelin anticipated trouble from Rome and prudently became a Roman ally. As a client king he could expect favorable treatment from Augustus.

Cunobelin was a strong ruler and under his leadership the old imposed alliance between the Catuvellauni and the Trinovantes was re-asserted. This expanded kingdom was undoubtedly the strongest political entity in Britain on the eve of the invasion by the emperor Claudius in AD 43, and the Roman historian Suetonius described Cunobelin as “King of Britain.”

Cunobelin ruled the large joint kingdom from Camulodunum, near modern Colchester, which was previously the chief settlement of the Trinovantes. This move appears to have been made in order to tap into the European trading network more easily.

Camulodunum was a large urban complex covering 12 square miles (30 square km) and marked out by flanking riversand big earth ramparts. It was a major industrial focus that included a mint. At Gosbecks there was a massive concentration of expensive imported pottery in one area, which was probably Cunobelin’s palace. Nearby there was a royal burial ground.

Cunobelin and his court were Romanized Celts. They were native Britons, but they were also keen to acquire all the luxury goods they could from Rome. They may have adopted Latin; some Latin graffiti have been found, though they could have been inscribed by Roman visitors. The Catuvellaunian aristocrats were in effect being bought or groomed by Rome in advance of the Claudian invasion. Having some client kings in Britain made invasion and annexation much easier.

Strabo observed that certain British kings “procured the friendship of Caesar Augustus by sending embassies and paying court to him.”

Cunobelin is the original of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, and the only pre-Roman chief to be remembered in later times. Shakespeare’s portrayal of Cymbeline bears little relation to history, except for the idea that a client king was expected to pay annual tribute to Rome and that he found this hard to suffer:

…Britain is

A world by itself, and we will

nothing pay

For wearing our own noses.

The Lexden Tumulusin Colchester may be the grave of Addedomarusor of Cunobelin. It is about the right date to be Cunobelin’s, and of the right status. It contained chain-mail armor, Roman bronzes, furniture, and 15 wine amphorae . The bronze ornaments in the grave date from the eve of the invasion by Claudius. One of the grave goods is a pendant made out of a silver coin with a fine portrait bust of the young Augustus on it (see Places: Lexden Tumulus ).

Cunobelin may have worn the pendant: he saw himself as the British Augustus. On his own coins he had the portrait of Augustus imitated and labelled CVNO .