THEME: Hunting in antiquity WARFARE AND RITUAL IN IRON AGE GAUL
The ancient Celts are hard to pin down precisely, since the term is a vague one that has been used in different ways by different people. For the Classical Greek and Roman authors, the Celts (or Gauls – the terms were often used interchangeably) comprised a broad grouping of peoples that occupied much of Central and Western Europe during the Iron Age (ca. 800–100 BC). Over such a wide geographical range there was clearly a great deal of cultural variation. Nonetheless, certain aspects of art, culture, and of course language, were shared across great tracts of Europe. The importance of the human head appears to have been one such common feature.
The literary evidence
Writing in the first century BC, the Roman author Livy describes how, after being killed by the Celtic tribe of the Boii, the Roman consul Lucius Postumius’ head was cleaned and gilded and used as a ritual drinking vessel (23.24.11–and the ritualized use of the consul’s skull in an explicitly religious setting. This potent mix of violence and ritual is something that seems to pervade Iron Age life across much of Europe and is especially clear in the treatment and depiction of human heads. Herodotus, for example, describes a similar practice among the Scythians (4.65).
