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This chapter analyzes the pottery of late prehistoric Europe. Jars, bowls, and cups were the three main categories of pottery vessels that were in use in the Early Bronze Age. Bowls and cups were decorated differently from jars, and their surfaces were finished differently. Jars are the only category that had a purposely roughened surface. Bowls and cups were polished smooth. And jars are the only category within which each individual vessel was distinguished from every other by the pattern of its ornament. From the latter fact, it is argued that jars in the Early and Middle Bronze Age were individualized in a way that bowls and cups were not; each was deliberately made different from all others in order that the household that owned it could mark it as its own, and perhaps even use it to display to others in the community that it had abundant stores of grain.

This chapter first discusses the concept of the frame and how it helps us to understand the visual patterning of space in late prehistoric Europe. Frames, whether they are wooden picture frames that hold paintings on museum walls or boundary ditches around prehistoric sites, perform the important function of establishing for the viewer the boundaries of that which is to be viewed. The frame tells the viewer what is inside and therefore to be considered and what is outside and therefore can be ignored. The things that prehistoric Europeans placed within frames, their foci of attention, can be understood as diagrams. The chapter then considers some of the visual patterns that persist from the Early Bronze Age through the Late Iron Age, before turning to the character of the changes that took place in ways of seeing in later prehistoric Europe.

This chapter is devoted to fibulae, which are clothing pins that operated on the same principle as the modern safety pin. The style of fibulae changed relatively rapidly throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages, and they have long been used as the principal chronological indicator for a given grave or settlement. Of all of the common objects preserved from late prehistoric Europe, fibulae are the most attractive, in the sense that even today people are drawn to them, finding them intriguing to look at. The reason that they are so appealing is that they embody a number of the visually commanding features outlined in Chapter 2. In their shapes, they are unlike anything in nature and thus immediately seize our attention. In addition, fibulae had a unique property among material culture items of late prehistoric Europe. In order to operate a fibula—to attach it to a garment—the user had to apply considerable force with the thumb and forefinger to the pin in order to lift the end out of the catch. Then, after sliding the pin through a textile garment or removing it from one, he or she released the pin to sit in the catch again. No other objects required this kind of bodily manipulation in order to serve their intended purposes.

This chapter discusses the visual world of late prehistoric Europe. It first uses Teniers's painting of the interior of an inn at the beginning of the chapter in order to introduce the topic of light as an important issue in any consideration of seeing in times previous to the ready availability of electric light. It then describes changes in the landscape, in the character of settlements, houses, and in other aspects of the visual environment during the two millennia between the beginning of the Early Bronze Age and the end of the Iron Age. These changes were most often gradual. A number of significant trends are recognizable in the environmental evidence pertaining to changes in the landscape; and there is archaeological evidence pertaining to changes in tool use, the digging of ditches, the building of walls, and the construction of settlements and houses.

This chapter focuses on sword and scabbards. Swords were important visual objects, larger than most other objects in Bronze and Iron Age Europe, and their shape made them visually striking. Two parts of the sword were especially important in this regard. In the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age, the hilt and pommel were often the vehicles for elaborate eye-catching ornament. When a sword was in its scabbard, whether worn at the side of the bearer, hanging on a wall, or placed in the burial chamber, the only parts of the weapon that were visible were the handle and its end. During the Middle and Late Iron Age, the scabbard became especially important as a vehicle for decorative elaboration. Bronze and Early Iron Age scabbards were mostly made of wood, and we do not, therefore have much information about how they were decorated. From the end of the Early La Tène period on, however, swords were long, and scabbards of bronze and iron offered extensive rectangular surfaces for decoration.

This chapter analyzes coins and writing in late prehistoric Europe. The development of coinage in temperate Europe and the first regular signs of writing are innovations that share some important features. Both were introduced from outside the region, specifically from the Mediterranean world, toward the end of the Middle Iron Age. Although both had existed in the Mediterranean world for centuries before their introduction and adoption in temperate Europe, both appear in temperate Europe at about the same time, during the third century BC and more abundantly during the second and first centuries. They were both adopted at a particular time in Europe's developmental trajectory, and under specific economic and political circumstances.

This chapter analyzes the arrangement of objects in grave in late prehistoric Europe. Graves provide direct views onto how people arranged objects so as to make those objects visually meaningful to them. Arrangements on the floors of graves, in burial chambers, or in other kinds of funeral settings enable us to see those objects in the way that the people who participated in the event saw them—from the same viewpoint, in their relation to one another, and in relation to the overall frame (walls) of the grave. In many, if not most, instances, the placement of objects in a burial setting was a critical and dramatic part of the funeral event. It is likely that participants witnessed the placing of each object in the grave chamber, while perhaps a few words were spoken about each and its significance to the occasion.

The preceding chapters examined three categories of objects—pottery, fibulae, and swords with their scabbards—and two ways of manipulating objects—arrangements in graves and performances involving human bodily action with objects—over the two-thousand-year period from the Early Bronze Age to the end of the prehistoric Iron Age. The focus has been on visual aspects of objects and the changes in their visual character over time. This chapter synthesizes the material laid out in chapters 5 through 10. It draws attention to the consistency of the patterns in the visual character of material culture in each of the three main periods of time considered in this book, and to the character of the changes that took place in the fifth century BC and in the second century BC.

This chapter discusses the extent to which communities in temperate Europe became increasingly integrated into the larger world of the Mediterranean basin and beyond, and how the process of integration worked. Major changes in the visual structure and patterning of objects took place in the context of major changes in the relationship between societies in temperate Europe and societies in the Mediterranean basin, in Asia, and in Africa. The changes emerged internally, from within the societies of temperate Europe. They were in no sense “caused by” outside societies, nor by trade relations with outside societies. The changes in the visual character of fifth-century-BC objects resulted principally from the expanded dissemination of ideas, embodied in new objects, styles, motifs, and designs. The changes in the second century BC resulted mainly from the expansion of commerce—of trade in goods.

This chapter argues that the “Roman conquest” of parts of temperate Europe was not as all-changing as most history books would suggest. The idea of a “Roman Europe,” in the sense of European provinces practicing Roman culture—in particular, Roman ways of seeing—needs considerable revision. Much evidence suggests that Middle Iron Age modes of visual perception and ways of crafting objects continued throughout the period of Roman political domination to reemerge in the so-called “early Germanic” style of the early Middle Ages, as well as in “Celtic” objects such as the Book of Kells and the traditions known as “Anglo-Saxon” and “Viking” art.

This chapter deals with performances, which refer specifically to actions that people carried out in social contexts—“with an audience” and with their material culture. To be a performance, an action must be aimed at communicating with others. A performance involves some kind of movement by a person or persons, and the focus here is with those movements that involved the manipulations of objects. These include throwing swords into the lake at La Tène; arranging bent and broken scabbards in the ditch at Gournay-sur-Aronde; and placing iron tools in the fire at Forggensee. At Snettisham, they buried gold neckrings. All these actions were performed by prehistoric people and were held in open spaces where they could be seen by others, in some cases by large numbers of them.