Iron Age Ireland

Iron Age (800 BC–AD 400)

Examples from Iron Age Ireland of La Tène style, the term for Iron Age Celtic art, are very few, to a "puzzling" extent. In Ireland, La Tène artefacts are mostly confined to the northern two-thirds of the island; concentrated in east Ulster and an east-west band across the midlands. Northern County Antrim has the greatest concentration of La Tène finds; among these are the metalwork from Lisnacrogher, outside Ballymena. Examples of La Tène artefacts in Ireland are the Broighter Gold, the Bann disc, the Petrie Crown, the Turoe Stone and Castlestrange Stone. This was well after Celtic art elsewhere had been subsumed into Gallo-Roman art and its British equivalent. Despite this it was in Ireland that the style seemed to revive in the early Christian period, to form the Insular art of the Book of Kells and other well-known masterpieces, perhaps under influence from Late Roman and post-Roman Romano-British styles. The 1st century BC Broighter Gold hoard, from Ulster, includes a small model boat, a spectacular torc with relief decoration influenced by classical style, and other gold jewellery probably imported from the Roman world, perhaps as far away as Alexandria.