Celtic motifs in the late classical and Hellenistic toreutics of North Pontic area

Abstract

The author discussed some find of the IVth-IInd century B.C. jewelry in Kuban basin in South Russia. The find of a gold stamped plaque in shape of a male head, reflecting the typical motif of Early La-Tène art, in a tumulus near stanitsa Ivanovskaya in Kuban basin suggests the penetration of the motifs of Celtic art in distant periphery of antique world in the kingdom of Bosporus already in the IVth century B.C., i.e. before the well known after literary and archaeological sources evidence of the Celtic penetration in North Pontic area. It was due to the fact that since the first half of the IVth century B.C. the Celts were hired as mercenaries, first by the Dionysius I, the king of Syracuse. With the broad use of mercenaries in Greek armies the soldiers, also barbarian, with their own amunition and armaments, may had found their way in distant parts of oikumene. The possibility of the Celts penetration via South Italy seems to be indirectly proved by the complex find at Sergievskaya of the helmet of Etrusco-Italic type and two small “phalerae” with the design, having prototype among the Celtic and South Italian antiquities of the IVth century B.C. It seems also that some other peculiar motifs in the Hellenistic toreutics of Kuban basin (eight-shaped fibulae) also reflect the influence of the IVth-IIIrd century B.C. Celtic art.