Small heads are more common, mainly surviving as ornament in metalwork, and there are also animals and birds that may have a religious significance, as on the Basse Yutz Flagons. It is possible that wooden monumental sculpture was more common. In general, even early monumental sculpture is found in areas with higher levels of contact with the classical world, through trade. There are also a number of Celtiberian standing "warrior" figures, and several other stone heads from various areas. The most significant are the Warrior of Hirschlanden and " Glauberg Prince" (respectively 6th and 5th-century BCE, from Germany), the Mšecké Žehrovice Head (probably 2nd-century BCE, Czech Republic), and sanctuaries of some sort at the southern French oppida of Roquepertuse and Entremont. Monumental stone sculptures from before conquest by the Romans are much more rare, and it is far from clear that deities are represented. The Pillar of the Boatmen from Paris, with many deity figures, is the most comprehensive example, datable by a dedication to the Emperor Tiberius (r. Surviving figurative monumental sculpture comes almost entirely from Romano-Celtic contexts, and broadly follows provincial Roman styles, though figures who are probably deities often wear torcs, and there may be inscriptions in Roman letters with what appear to be Romanized Celtic names. Most surviving Celtic art is not figurative some art historians have suggested that the complex and compelling decorative motifs that characterize some periods have a religious significance, but the understanding of what that might be appears to be irretrievably lost. Various archaeological discoveries have aided understanding of the religion of the Celts. Nonetheless, the interpretation of this evidence can be coloured by the 21st century mindset. The archaeological evidence does not contain the bias inherent in the literary sources. The only problem is to assemble it in a systematic form which does not too greatly oversimplify the intricate texture of its detail." Archaeological sources Cunliffe went on to note that "there is more, varied, evidence for Celtic religion than for any other example of Celtic life. The archaeologist Barry Cunliffe summarised the sources for Celtic religion as "fertile chaos", borrowing the term from the Irish scholar Proinsias MacCana. Therefore, all there is to study their religion from is the literature from the early Christian period, commentaries from classical Greek and Roman scholars, and archaeological evidence. However, polytheistic traditions left a legacy in many of the Celtic nations, influenced later mythology and served as the basis for a new religious movement, Celtic Neopaganism, in the 20th century.Ĭomparatively little is known about Celtic paganism because the evidence for it is fragmentary, due largely to the fact that the Celts who practised it wrote nothing down about their religion. Christianity had resumed missionary activity by the later 5th and the 6th centuries, also in Ireland, and the Celtic population was gradually Christianised, which supplanted the earlier religious traditions. In Roman Britain, it had lost at least some ground to Christianity when Romans left in 410, and in the next century, it began to be replaced by the pagan Anglo-Saxon religion over much of the country. After the Roman Empire's conquest of Gaul (58–51 BCE) and southern Britannia (43 AD), Celtic religious practices began to display elements of Romanisation, which resulted in a syncretic Gallo-Roman culture with its own religious traditions with its own large set of deities, such as Cernunnos, Artio, Telesphorus, etc. Figures from medieval Irish mythology have also been interpreted as iterations of earlier pre-Christian Insular deities in the study of comparative mythology.Īccording to Greek and Roman accounts, Gaul, Britain and Ireland had a priestly caste of "magico-religious specialists" known as the druids, but very little is definitely known about them.
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Among the most prominent ones are Toutatis, Taranis and Lugus.
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The Celtic pantheon consists of numerous recorded theonyms, both from Greco-Roman ethnography and from epigraphy. It comprised a large degree of variation both geographically and chronologically, but "behind that variety, broad structural similarities can be detected" allowing there to be "a basic religious homogeneity" among the Celtic peoples. After 14 AD.Ĭeltic paganism was one of a larger group of Iron Age polytheistic religions of Europe. Model reconstructing the Pillar of the Boatmen in the Musée de Cluny, Paris.