Abstract
Celtic Art in Britain.A counter theory on Celtic to that developed by Mr. T. D. Kendrick in his recent advocacy of a Romano-British source for the hanging bowl (see NATTJBE of July 2, p. 27) is put forward by Dr. R. E. Mortimer Wheeler in Antiquity September. Two main phases of Celtic art in tin are recognised, a pagan Celtic art beginning le fifth century B.C., and ending in the second century A.D., and a Christian Celtic art beginning in the sixth century A.D., and lingering on until about the ninth century. Though linked by an essentially similar informing spirit, they are separated by a hiatus of three centuries, a feature rare in the history of a single school of art. Further, when Celtic art reapears after the hiatus, it is not in the dominantly Celtic parts of Britain, but in the pagan Saxon area, Takting the distribution of pagan Celtic art in time and space, it reaches its zenith during the first century B.C., coinciding with the area in which political authority in the island was consolidated, indirectly and afterwards directly, under Roman rule, while north of the Humber the northern school of this art awaits the settled conditions of the second century A.D. In the Christian phase, it was the Saxon settlement and the Saxon peace which afforded the Celtic craftsman the security and leisure he needed for the development of his art, while he was free from the competition of Roman mass production. on his line of thought the sequence of Celtic art becomes logical. On four occasions the Celtic artist in a sympathetic environment. First in the Belgic and earliest Roman occupation; secondly during the earlier Roman occupation of northern Britain; thirdly during the Saxon settlement of central and southern Britain; and fourthly during the regime of a strong and wealthy church in Ireland; that is, four periods when political and economicity were forced upon the Celts.
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Research Items. Nature 130, 583–585 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/130583a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/130583a0