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Abstract Celtic Horse on Reverse of Boudicca Silver Unit Coin If this portrait of a horse had been created as a coffee table sculpture in glass during the 1960's, it would surely have evoked comments from those who viewed it concerning their love of or distaste for "Modern Art". As it was, this image graces the reverse of a First Century A. D. Celtic coin from a small district of Roman (albeit hotly contested at the time!) Britain near modern Colchester. The Iceni loved their horses and light wickerware chariots and blue woad war paint, as did the Catuvellani and Trinovantes.

Ninteenth and early Twentieth Century archaeologists and scholars who found and studied these coins were in the habit of classifying and categorizing the ancient objects they found. Classifying gave them a common vocabulary and frame of reference whereby they might add new discoveried to the growing boky of knowledge in an orderly fashion. It also allowed them compare their findings in context with discoveried made by others and build theories of what happened, why, and when by interpreting the discrete findings and points of data, interpolating between the discrete pieces of knowledge, and even going out on a limb and extrapolating from "known good" theories.

They looked at the Celtic interpretations of horses in abstract on the reverse of their coins and immediately decided that they were primitive, simplistic, or degenerate copies of Greco - Roman types which primarily included Macedonian Staters. So, until this interpretation was challenged by recent scholarship, these coins were classified as "barbarous". They could be had for only a few pounds at auctions and from dealers' junk boxes.

Let it be remembered that the race of people who produced these coins was the same that only five of six hundred later produced a high point in the artistic history far to the Western edge of Europe. Were it not for the monk copyists at Iona, Lindisfarne, and other tiny sanctuaries of learning throughout Early Scotland, Ireland, Strathclyde, and Dalriada there would be no Western civilization as we know it today, Few, if any Classical manuscripts would have survived the onslaught of the hordes of Lombards, Franks, Avars, leftover Ostrogoths, and misguided Byzantines that were busily thrashing what was left of Western Europe during the Sixth and Seventh Centuries. A few pieces might have been saved at places like Monte Cassino and the Vaican. A fine library survived at Alexandria until about 641 until its contents were ordered burned to heat the public baths of this ancient metropolis. He was only following the Will of Allah. They were saecular books and Not the Koran and had no business hanging around and polluting minds in the modern Islamic world.

These barbarians, these Celts whose descendants insisted on hacking each other to pieces in the Scottish Highlands and giving the English Crown so much trouble in Belfast even today were the race that produced minds such as those of Columba, Bede, and Alcuin. The Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels represent a high point in the illumination and decoration of early Medieval manuscripts.

It is easy for one to make up his or her mind based solely on personal experience, cultural background, or a comparison what is currently in vogue,. tasteful, or accepted conventional wisdom. By classifying overzealously and neglecting to examine an object of art or a historical event from a variety of perspectives, official scholarly opinions sometimes do more to hinder than to aid the cause of learning. As the science of archaeology and the discipline of interpreting history continue to refine their efforts, it is nice to see Celtic coinage elevated to, what is in this author's opinion is its rightful position as legitimate abstract art.

Compare this image with those on the succeeding two pages. On one coin, an elegant Celtic geometric pattern of dots and crescents can be seen. On the reverse of that coin can be found the worn remnants of the disjointed horse style of the Celts. The flat spots on obverse and reverse of the other coin are probably the legitimate result of an error in striking, but the stylized horse nevertheless shows through. This piece is an example of a Gallic Celtic design.