Celtic Brooch Oberwittighausen 2, Bronze

Celtic brooch, La Téne Mask Fibula

Discover the fascinating world of the Celts with our beautiful mask brooch!

Thanks to its functionality, the lovingly handcrafted brooch is also ideal as a modern brooch, making it an extravagant addition to an attractive outfit. It is also ideal for educational purposes and for Celtic re-enactors looking for authentic replicas for their costumes.

The brooch is also perfect as a gift for history lovers or collectors who want to bring a part of Celtic culture into their homes. It comes with a certificate in a jewellery box!

Celtic Head Depictions

As outstanding artefacts from the early Celtic period, the mask brooches open a window into the art and religious world of the Celts. The powerful depictions of human heads on various artefacts from the Celtic Latène period point to the importance of the head as the seat of a person's spirit and vital energy. Sanctuaries with headless human bodies and finds of skulls in stone niches bear witness to this, as do contemporary sources that describe the fearless Celtic warriors as headhunters who hung the skulls of slain enemies on the bridles of their horses or proudly kept them as trophies.

In addition, the depictions of masks and grimaces are also often hybrid creatures with bulbous eyes and noses and pointed ears, possibly due to the Mediterranean influence of Greek and Etruscan culture, where creatures such as harpies or satyrs / silenes are frequently encountered. Particularly in comparison with the Dionysian cult, ideas of metamorphoses and metorphoses could also have been incorporated here.

The Celtic fibulae from Oberwittighausen

Wittighausen is a municipality in the Tauber Valley in the north-easternmost corner of Baden-Württemberg, from whose surroundings numerous archaeological sites from the Hallstatt and Laténe periods are known.

The discovery of the finds in the "Gries" field was due to the removal of a burial mound, which was carried out to improve the agricultural use of the arable land, forcibly bringing the precious artefacts to light. Despite these circumstances, some important observations could be made about the find situation:

The skeleton of a female lay stretched out on a stone pavement in the centre of a burial mound surrounded by large stone blocks and measuring around 7 metres in diameter. On her left forearm and in the area of her upper body were the four fibulae that represent the remains of her traditional clothing. At the foot end, to the right of the deceased, lay the shards of a tall, flask-like vessel with simple grooved decoration, which presumably once contained food or rather drink - as food offerings for another, otherworldly world.

The grave find included four exquisite bronze clasps (fibulae) and a clay vessel. The find dates to the early Latène period (Lt A, 450-380 BC).