The Celts were far from primitive barbarians. In fact, the Romans adopted many technological innovations from the (Celtic) La Tène material culture in what is now Switzerland. This includes the gladius and spatha swords, the Montefortino helmet, the lorica hamata chainmail armor and the oval scutum shield. In fact, most of the armament of a Roman soldier was based on La Tène originals or Celto-Iberic ones.
Right? It's almost like every conqueror debases and dehumanizes the conquered.
I sometimes sit and think how different the world might be if Caesar was defeated in Gaul, and if the Roman State religion (Catholicism) hadn't spread a few centuries later.
Even if you don't read the article, and even if (like me) you don't particularly care about coin collecting, you should still scroll to the bottom for the cool photos showing how the designs became more abstract over time.
100% this. Really trippy abstraction path over time. Reminds me of how Picasso's style evolved over his career (his early output is amazingly realistic, but his style shifted over time to inform his much-better-known abstract works later in his life).
There is a parallel to this Celtic imitations that is found primarily in modern Ukraine[1], attribute to Cherniakhov culture[2].
The theory for them is that once the trade with Roman Empire ceased, the locals needed bigger supply of coins and started minting their own.
There is a curious thing with this "branch", I'm not sure if it's the same in the Celtic one. The last time I talked to people researching this, I was told that:
a. The findings are mostly unique, it's hard to find two copies of the same coin. Sometimes obverse of one coin could be found on another, but reverses don't match.
b. These coins are not cast, they are minted through "hammering", which requires a stamp. However, not a single stamp has been found so far.
A much easier way to make currency out of existing one would be to just slap existing coin into some clay, make a casting mold and just pour molten metal into it.
This of course is more of a curiosity/rumor level, I don't have any qualifications to back it up.
Watch for Chinese coin fakers. They have a huge presence on Ebay with coins that look good, but some have huge errors, wrong years, wrong mint marks. They also do it with other old coins.
They are into the $10-$50 coins. The Tungsten coins that are all over China now are so valuable that few buy on Ebay. Sonic chirp meters detect them. On youtube = fake gold china will give hits.
One good method is a scintillation detector. Few old gold coins or Roman/Celtic coins have any nuclear isotopes from WW2 or the atmospheric test era. Geiger counters are usually not good enough.
The modern fakes are easily spotted with the correct scintillation detector, which has a fair sized scintillation stone. The low cost ali-express radiation detectors are a lot less sensitive
>They have a huge presence on Ebay with coins that look good, but some have huge errors, wrong years, wrong mint marks.
I always wonder why that is, they are copying something that exists, so why not copy it correctly? You see it with knock off electronics and such too, all the text will be there, but it won't be centered correctly, or a slightly different font will be used. In these times it's not any harder to do it correctly than it is to do it slightly incorrectly.
Honestly it doesn't look like the Celts were "practitioners of abstract art" and more like they just lacked the concept of mass producing from an original. "When they tell me make copies of silver staters, I pulls one out of my pocket and I makes the copies." Humans instinctively recognize whether a face is well-smithed and genuine, but you would have to train everyone what these designs were supposed to represent and how to appreciate that.
It just seems like they let things degenerate because they weren't trying to do art but just do things the way they'd always done them, with no controls on data degradation between generations.
> One final thing the Celts did that can give the impression of crudeness is that they sometimes created dies that were larger than the flans they used. This means that the full design would never appear on any one coin, and this can make it look like they just didn’t know what they were doing. However, the Celts produced the flans with very tightly controlled weights and alloy compositions, so the idea that they could do this but not get the dies the correct size is absurd.
The tooling was improving, becoming more detailed and complex over time. Nothing was staying the same over the generations. The coins changed in the midst of technological revolution.
You're quoting that part as persuasive? I was going to attack it as a wobbly argument, but I didn't want to be cruel, it falls over all by itself.
The article is full of special pleading for the Celts being capable of making good copies, but refraining from doing so because they didn't ever feel like it and were permanently swept up by the abstract muse.
> Instead, it’s thought that the dies were larger than the flans [blanks] so that part of the image always resided in the unseen spiritual world that the Celts worshiped so much.
How about they just weren't keen on thinking ahead? Then they make the dies first, and as an afterthought they make the blanks the correct weight. This would also explain how Apollo was mostly hair - start engraving hair, get carried away, now coin is full of hair, cram a face in the remaining space. But no, no, they were in superb control of every aspect of metalwork at all times, and anything that seems like a fuck-up was actually spirituality.
I can accept that part of the reason for abstract coins is that they weren't motivated to make accurate copies, but I think also they couldn't.
You're arguing for laziness, where there's more effort. The blanks don't just have to be a certain weight. They use a balanced metallurgy that is difficult to get right - especially as most peoples in that time and place had lost that particular level of skill.
If you reject abstract from Celtic culture, you reject the Celts. The Dagda isn't exactly some solid figure. They're an artistic people, in everything from their laws to... Their coins.
And as most family meals also intentionally left one part unfinished... For a deeply spiritual people, maybe you shouldn't be rejecting it out of hand.
As a small example, one of the most severe forms of punishment, was to ban an individual from religious rites, and another was to ban them from the construction of anything considered a 'craft' - something that would take skill.
Neither of those punishments banned the individual from the tuatha. They weren't exiled. They were still allowed to speak and be heard. They were still allowed to buy and sell. But they were no longer allowed to worship, or to create.
>The article is full of special pleading for the Celts being capable of making good copies, but refraining from doing so because they didn't ever feel like it and were permanently swept up by the abstract muse.
Some of the copies require as much effort as the originals though.
>This would also explain how Apollo was mostly hair - start engraving hair, get carried away, now coin is full of hair, cram a face in the remaining space.
That's silly, you could easily start over if ran out of space.
> Honestly it doesn't look like the Celts were "practitioners of abstract art" and more like they just lacked the concept of mass producing from an original.
That's an interesting take considering we still marvel at their abstract art and craftsmanship in metals thousands of years later, and contemporary artists and manufactures still copy it.
This is something I've spent a fair amount of time studying (abstraction of language, writing, culture) and often material changes such as this come from changes in tooling and process. An example: A small change comes about due to pencil -> pen, and then very abruptly from pen->keyboard.
You start seeing it in everything the more you learn.
Are there any books or articles that discuss this that you think are worth reading and aren't too dense/academic? I find in interesting but I wouldn't say it is something I've studied.
I sometimes sit and think how different the world might be if Caesar was defeated in Gaul, and if the Roman State religion (Catholicism) hadn't spread a few centuries later.
There is a curious thing with this "branch", I'm not sure if it's the same in the Celtic one. The last time I talked to people researching this, I was told that: a. The findings are mostly unique, it's hard to find two copies of the same coin. Sometimes obverse of one coin could be found on another, but reverses don't match. b. These coins are not cast, they are minted through "hammering", which requires a stamp. However, not a single stamp has been found so far. A much easier way to make currency out of existing one would be to just slap existing coin into some clay, make a casting mold and just pour molten metal into it.
This of course is more of a curiosity/rumor level, I don't have any qualifications to back it up.
[1]: http://barbarous-imitations.narod.ru/ (apologize for a .ru website, but it's the best catalogue to my knowledge.)
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernyakhov_culture
Like maybe coins are rare enough that they're not completely fungible, there is a slight preference for being able to know which one is which?
Say, people want to have affordances to trace the provenance if that starts to matter.
It could also be a legitimate aesthetic preference for currency units to be unique rather than uniform.
Maybe uniformity is hard but why make the dies much bigger than they need to be and use different parts?
Striking is downstream of casting, technologically because you need to make harder things and perform extra steps to do that.
I always wonder why that is, they are copying something that exists, so why not copy it correctly? You see it with knock off electronics and such too, all the text will be there, but it won't be centered correctly, or a slightly different font will be used. In these times it's not any harder to do it correctly than it is to do it slightly incorrectly.
It just seems like they let things degenerate because they weren't trying to do art but just do things the way they'd always done them, with no controls on data degradation between generations.
The tooling was improving, becoming more detailed and complex over time. Nothing was staying the same over the generations. The coins changed in the midst of technological revolution.
The article is full of special pleading for the Celts being capable of making good copies, but refraining from doing so because they didn't ever feel like it and were permanently swept up by the abstract muse.
> Instead, it’s thought that the dies were larger than the flans [blanks] so that part of the image always resided in the unseen spiritual world that the Celts worshiped so much.
How about they just weren't keen on thinking ahead? Then they make the dies first, and as an afterthought they make the blanks the correct weight. This would also explain how Apollo was mostly hair - start engraving hair, get carried away, now coin is full of hair, cram a face in the remaining space. But no, no, they were in superb control of every aspect of metalwork at all times, and anything that seems like a fuck-up was actually spirituality.
I can accept that part of the reason for abstract coins is that they weren't motivated to make accurate copies, but I think also they couldn't.
If you reject abstract from Celtic culture, you reject the Celts. The Dagda isn't exactly some solid figure. They're an artistic people, in everything from their laws to... Their coins.
And as most family meals also intentionally left one part unfinished... For a deeply spiritual people, maybe you shouldn't be rejecting it out of hand.
Neither of those punishments banned the individual from the tuatha. They weren't exiled. They were still allowed to speak and be heard. They were still allowed to buy and sell. But they were no longer allowed to worship, or to create.
Some of the copies require as much effort as the originals though.
>This would also explain how Apollo was mostly hair - start engraving hair, get carried away, now coin is full of hair, cram a face in the remaining space.
That's silly, you could easily start over if ran out of space.
That's an interesting take considering we still marvel at their abstract art and craftsmanship in metals thousands of years later, and contemporary artists and manufactures still copy it.
You start seeing it in everything the more you learn.