Three Stages of Celtic Art essays

Three Stages of Celtic Art essays The Three Main Stages of Celtic Art Remnants of the Celtic people have been around for at least 4,000 years. Archaeologists mainly interpret Celtic history and art from relics left over in graves and garbage dumps. Roman documents are also a source for scholars yet they can be one sided description of the Celts. Many of the elements in Celtic art are not totally Celtic. Many of the relics and Artifacts that are found are borrowed from many parts of western Europe. The Celts picked up some of these styles from other areas that they may have been trading with or even attacking at the times the artifacts were constructed. Scholars divide Celtic art into three stages. These three stages consist of Hallstatt Culture, La Tene, and The age of Celtic Renaissance. The first stage that was identified was the Hallstatt Culture. This culture lasted from two-thousand BC to six-hundred BC. Artifacts found from this time period were named after a small town in western Austria. Artifacts from this era stretch from Austria to Brittany in France. The art found from this time period is believed to have influence from the Mediterranean. The Hallstatt zone was split into a eastern section and a western section. Pottery found from the western part of the Hallstatt strictly showed geometric designs, whereas the eastern part some narrative scenes where found along with many geometric designs. During the Hallstatt time period, central Europe artists started experimenting with abstract representations of forest wildlife and waterfowl. One specific example I found was: The horse was in a way a symbol of the rise and expansion of the Celtics. (Finlay 31). By putting horses in pictures and on different artifacts leads us to believe that they were and important part of the Celts culture. There were many forested valleys which limited the numbers of horses that they had. This points out why horses played such a main role because they were not very a...