page_title: Ancient Celtic women
section_title: Jewelry
hierarchical_section_title: Ancient Celtic women / Women in Celtic society / Appearance of Celtic women / Jewelry
caption_attribution_description: English: Tombstone showing a celtic woman (CSIR II/2, 126) at the apsis of the subsidiary church Saint James the Greater in Lendorf, 14th district “Wölfnitz” of the Carinthian capital Klagenfurt, Carinthia, Austria, EU Deutsch: Grabstele mit Medaillon und Reliefbüste einer keltischen Frau (CSIR II/2, 126) an der Apsis der Filialkirche hl. Jakob der Ältere in Lendorf, 14. Bezirk „Wölfnitz“ der Landeshauptstadt Klagenfurt, Kärnten, Österreich, EU &#160; This media shows the protected monument with the number 68122 in Austria. (Commons, de, Wikidata)
context_page_description: The position of ancient Celtic women in their society cannot be determined with certainty due to the quality of the sources. On the one hand, great female Celts are known from mythology and history; on the other hand, their real status in the male-dominated Celtic tribal society was socially and legally constrained. Yet Celtic women were somewhat better placed in inheritance and marriage law than their Greek and Roman contemporaries.
  Our knowledge of the situation of Celtic women on the European mainland is almost entirely obtained from contemporary Greek and Roman authors, who saw the Celts as barbarians and wrote about them accordingly. Information about Celtic women of the British Isles comes from ancient travel and war narratives, and possibly the orally transmitted myths later reflected in Celtic literature of the Christian era. Written accounts and collections of these myths are only known from the early Middle Ages.
  Archaeology has revealed something of the Celtic woman through artefacts, which can provide clues about their position in society and material culture. Reliefs and sculptures of Celtic women are mainly known from the Gallo-Roman culture.
context_section_description: Gold jewelry (necklaces, bracelets, rings) were worn as symbols of social class and were often of high craftsmanship and artistic quality. Girls of the Hallstatt and early La Tène culture wore amber chains and amulets as individual chains or multiple string colliers; the colliers had up to nine strings and over a hundred amber beads. Amulets were both decoration and apotropaic charms. They were probably added to the tombs of women who were killed violently, to protect the living. Torcs (neck rings) are found in graves of important men and women up to about 350 BC, after that they are usually restricted to male graves. The "Lady" from the tomb at Vix had a torc, placed on her lap, as a grave good; the woman in the tomb at Reinheim wore one around her neck. Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni in Britain around 60 BC is described as wearing a torc, which might reflect her exceptional circumstances as a war leader or be an embellishment of the Roman chronicler.
  Over a colourful shirt she wore a twisted gold torc and a thick cloak closed with a fibula.
  — Cassius Dio, Roman History 62.2.4
  The Hallstatt-period limestone statue of a Celtic woman found at the entrance to the tomb of the "Lady of Vix" wears a torc and sits on a throne.
caption: Bust of a Norican woman with a Modius cap, Wölfnitz-Lendorf, Carinthia)