These treasures changed everything we thought we knew about the Celts

During the Iron Age (circa 1200-500 B.C.), a large swath of non-Mediterranean Europe was occupied by a people who became known for their craftsmanship, religion, and warfare. Different groups, now known collectively as Celts, spoke languages belonging to the Celtic family and shared a common ideological framework reflected in a series of divinities they worshipped in religious festivities.

The Romans built up a stereotype of the Celts and other enemies, like the Germanic peoples, as barbarians. They caricatured them as blond, white-skinned giants from the north with a primitive tendency for drunkenness and violence. This cliché helped condition how researchers regarded the Celts. But in recent decades, new readings of the classical sources and some fascinating archaeological discoveries have overturned the stereotype of the Celts as primitive.

New findings show that the Celtic culture was in fact a complex and refined civilization with various art styles, architecture, religious customs, technology, and social structures. In terms of urban planning and metallurgy, there were similarities with the Greco-Roman world. And like many other ancient peoples, the Celts had a culture that was both influenced and influential.

The vast territories of Celtica, where the Celts lived, stretched from Ireland to the Balkans and into the Iberian Peninsula. The different Celtic groups were highly fragmented politically, and it’s virtually certain they didn’t consider themselves a single people, although there were common features. In fact, some scholars have debated the continued use of the term Celt, believing it might be insufficient in describing the diversity among these groups, especially over different time periods. Gauls, Celtiberians, Britons, and many others were included in this classification.

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However, all the Celtic societies were hierarchical, with a ruling aristocratic minority. Most of the working majority were dedicated to agriculture, but there were also artists and merchants. Celtic nobles distinguished themselves by their military prowess. At first, in the Hallstatt culture, considered the proto-Celtic era, these nobles were also set apart by their access to luxury goods of Mediterranean origin that they obtained through trade. This is evidenced by treasures discovered in the royal tombs of Hochdorf and Hohmichele, two Hallstatt settlements. During this period, an initial phase of urbanism developed with the appearance of settlements such as Heuneburg and Hohenasperg, which, with their protective walls, distinct neighborhoods, and public spaces, closely resembled cities.

Marked by war

These urban centers were abandoned during the fifth century B.C., with the transition from the Hallstatt to the La Tène culture. The shift is often attributed to a decline in natural resources, including salt production, a change in trading opportunities, and a wealth disparity among settlements. Celtic society took on a more rural character, with people dispersed among scattered farmsteads, each inhabited by a few families. Many early La Tène sites were near rivers.

At the same time, the Celtic aristocracy accentuated its warlike character. It was then that the Celts burst onto the scene in the written sources of the Greco-Roman world through their dazzling military expansion—often in conflicts against Rome. The most dramatic moments were the Sack of Rome by the Gauls (390 B.C.) and the attack on the famous Greek sanctuary of Delphi (279 B.C.). In addition to participating in such sacking expeditions, many Celtic warriors joined the Hellenistic armies of the time as mercenaries.

An image of the Celts as ferocious barbarians was seared into the collective consciousness of the Greeks and Romans. During this period, the Celts were also engaged in full-scale migrations in which entire groups of families settled new territory. Celtic populations established themselves in areas of the Danube Valley, the northern Balkans, and even outside Europe, in the Anatolian Peninsula.

There’s clear evidence from this period to show that Celtic culture, like that in much of the ancient world, was based on honor and status. A key element was the establishment of relationships between a powerful individual, the patron, and an individual subordinate to him, the client. This unequal relationship implied obligations on both sides: While the patron granted his client protection and ceded land, the client pledged to obey the patron and serve in his army. These clientelistic networks allowed aristocrats to accumulate entourages of hundreds, even thousands, of followers.

From the second century B.C. onward, the expansionist trend of the previous two centuries was reversed as the territories of Celtic Europe began to fall one after the other, subdued by the aggressive Roman Republic. The collapse started with the Celts of Hispania; only Ireland and Scotland escaped a Roman takeover. But it would be a mistake to interpret this final phase of Celtic civilization as a period of decline. On the contrary, a last burst of urban development occurred, and dozens of fortified urban centers, called oppida, were built.

This urban growth was based on a strong development of economic activities, such as agriculture, handicraft production, and trade. The population was likely also growing at this time. Ongoing discoveries of artifacts has painted a more informative picture for scholars about Celtic culture and practices outside of the classical sources. Given this rich history, it’s fascinating to wonder what would have happened to the Celtic civilization if Roman expansion hadn’t stopped it in its tracks.

The Celtic art of warfare

From the fifth century B.C. onward, the dominant Celtic culture that archaeologists call Hallstatt evolved into the more aristocratic warrior society known as La Tène, heavily influenced by Greek and Etruscan styles. The weaponry of the Celtic warriors became established in this period: a double-edged iron sword, iron-tipped spears, and an oval wooden shield. Aristocratic warriors of the period also carried defensive equipment, such as helmets and armor. The warrior sculpture known as the Prince of Glauberg wears armor similar to the Greek linothorax, made of hardened linen or leather.

In the third century B.C., the first chain mail was developed, a Celtic innovation that the Romans would copy. Influenced by Mediterranean cultures, Celtic fighters evolved from warrior bands into armies. Their orders were produced by the war horns, or carnyxes, whose sound was intended to subdue the enemy. For the Celts, warfare was a heavily ritualized activity, involving the performance of ceremonies before battle and often the ritual offering of some of the loot and sacrificing of captives after the combat was over.

The horse in the Celtic world

Although horses were valued as military and status symbols across Celtic societies, they were rarely part of agricultural work. The harnesses used in the Iron Age lacked a collar to spread weight to the horse’s neck and shoulders; without such a collar, the animal’s windpipe became compressed when pulling a plow and limited the weight it could drag. Untainted by rural toil and costly to maintain, horses became the animal par excellence of aristocrats. They played a prominent role in warfare, at first to pull light war chariots. Normally a pair of animals was used for each chariot, and in the fourth century B.C. full cavalry units appeared.

In time, the Celts would become renowned as horsemen throughout the ancient world, especially among the Romans, who often employed them as mercenaries to bolster their mounted forces. In the Celtic world, the value of the horse was not limited to the pragmatic: It also held religious significance. The Gauls recognized a horse divinity called Epona, whose cult spread throughout the Roman Empire. The Irish Celts had a war goddess called Macha, who was linked with horses. Sculptural reliefs, including those found at the Celtic sanctuaries of Roquepertuse and Nages in southern Gaul, depict the horse as a psychopomp, responsible for leading the souls of the deceased into the afterlife.

Jewelry in life and the afterlife

As in most societies, the Celtic aristocracy used the ownership and display of jewelry to proclaim and advance their privileged position in the hierarchy. Among the Celts, the custom of burying the deceased with grave goods was widespread, and ornaments occupied a preferential place. Archaeologists have found a large number of luxury items, both personal jewelry and ornaments for horse harnesses, inside burials. These pieces were appreciated for their materials—precious metals including silver and gold—and for the excellence of the craftsmanship. One piece of jewelry most associated with the Celts is the torque. This type of necklace, which can take many different forms, was worn by other peoples as well, such as the Thracians and Scythians.

The Roman army gave torques to reward their soldiers, although in this case they were not worn around the neck, but on the armor. The torque was a symbol of authority and prestige and was worn by members of the nobility. It also appears in representations of divinities. A clear example of this appears on the famous Gundestrup Cauldron, where the horned god Cernunnos tames a snake in one hand, while holding a torque in the other. Other types of grave goods typically found in aristocratic Celtic burials were phalerae (decorative disks for horses’ harnesses), fibulae (pins for fastening clothes), and mirrors.

Who’s who in the pecking order

Banqueting played a fundamental part in Celtic life; it enabled aristocratic guests and their followers to socialize, and aristocratic hosts to flaunt their wealth. The position occupied by participants and the amount of meat they received were determined by their social status. The banquet reinforced hierarchies while confirming and strengthening existing relationships. In return for the generosity of the hosts, the bards (poet-singers) would laud their virtues.

Irish literary sources explain that the banqueters faced each other in duels of eloquence in which they defended their respective merits. The champion received the best cut of the cooked animal, which was usually a pig. The Story of Mac Da Thó’s Pig, a ninth-century Irish tale, is likely influenced by this older Celtic tradition. It describes a banquet between the men of Ulster and Connacht, who are competing for a prize, a colossal pig that has been fattened for seven years. Like the pig, the banquet contest is larger than life, involving a huge cast and spreading across large areas of Ireland. A banquet also had a clear symbolic meaning in Celtic beliefs: The inclusion of banquetware among grave goods reflects the idea that through funeral rites, the deceased was led to a supreme banquet in the company of heroes and gods.

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Druids, gods, and severed heads

Throughout Europe, Celtic culture was expressed in worship of common gods. The name of the god Lugh or Lugus occurs across the Celtic world; he was of special importance in Irish mythology, and is commemorated in the names of the French city of Lyon and the Spanish city of Lugo. In other cases, equivalent divinities had different names, such as the Gallic god Sucellus and the Irish god Dagda, which were both connected with agriculture and forests. The religion of the Celts was polytheistic and centered on rituals. Classical sources refer to a priestly class in some territories of Celtic Europe, including Gaul and Britannia. These were the famous Druids, an intellectual elite that acted as a repository of tradition and as a a mediator between men and gods. Unluckily for historians, they distrusted written texts and relied on transmitting their knowledge orally.

(Why do we know so little about the Druids?)

Archaeologists have located a large number of sites that were originally Druid sanctuaries, such as Gournay-sur-Aronde (France), Emain Macha (Northern Ireland), and Libenice (Czech Republic), piecing together the rituals that took place there from the archaeological finds. These rituals involved sacrificing animals (and in some cases, humans) and exhibiting spoils, such as weapons or severed heads. The decapitation of enemies and the exhibition of skulls are rituals attested to in many places in Celtic Europe.

This story appeared in the May/June 2025 issue of National Geographic History magazine.