I.—Celtic Bronzes from Lorraine

Abstract

Since the purchase of the Morel Collection in 1901 the British Museum has been able to point to the Somme-Bionne chariot-burial as a notable example of the earliest definitely Celtic art of Europe; but a still finer group is now in process of acquisition, and is shown to the Society before passing into the hands of the Trustees. These four remarkable bronze vessels were found buried together on ioth February 1928, during excavations for a cellar on the site of an old abbey at Bouzonville, Lorraine, now in the Département of Moselle. They had been heaped together pell-mell, one of them inverted, without any protection from the soil. Nothing else was found on the spot in spite of careful search, and the bronzes must therefore be regarded as a hoard or treasure, not as the grave-furniture of a Celtic chieftain. It may be a hurried deposit of loot from various sources, but there is nothing to suggest that the four vessels are anything but contemporary. Wine-vessels may be expected in the interment of a chieftain (Fürstengrab), but a single wine-jar (stamnos) normally accompanies the flagon in such cases (as Weisskirchen, Dürkheim, and Klein-Aspergle). That they were intended to contain wine is inferred from the presence of white pitch or resin (used for flavouring) in the stamnoi of Weisskirchen and Klein-Aspergle. Attention has been called to this recently by our Fellow Mr. J. M. de Navarro (Antiquity, Dec. 1928, p. 435), who quotes Virgil and Pliny in corroboration of the practice, and points out that the Celtic demand for wine, notorious in the ancient world,2 was mainly satisfied by the Rhône-Saône traffic from the Greek port of Marseilles in the sixth and fifth centuries before our era.