Continuing the tradition of the Everyman Art Series,combining learned yet lively text by acknowledged scholars in the field with high quality illustrationin colour throughout.

Celtic art: Reading the messages (The Everyman art library)

Green, Miranda J.

Weidenfeld&Nicolson

Miranda Green examines iconographic themes in Celtic cult-imagery, and considers how they contribute to our understanding of belief systems before and during the Roman period (around 500 BC - AD 400). This book should be of interest to students and lecturers of archaeology, anthropology, classical studies, art history.

Symbol and image in Celtic religious art

Religion & Spirituality

Routledge

The ancient Celts were the greatest and most powerful of the early European peoples residing north of the Alps. Warlike, exuberant, and superstitious, they saw divinities in every facet of life and nature, venerating deities of the sun, thunder, water, war, healing, hunting, fertility, and death. They practiced human and animal sacrifice, and a powerful priesthood--the Druids--presided over much of their religious life. The Dictionary of Celtic Myth and Legend covers every aspect of Celtic myth, religion, and folklore in Britain and Europe between 500 BC and AD 400. In parallel with the fruits of archaeological research, the testimony of Classical writers and the earliest recorded versions of the pagan oral traditions of Wales and Ireland provide us with a complete overview of Celtic lore. This guide presents that knowledge in over 400 copiously illustrated articles, together with a comprehensive historical introduction.

Dictionary of Celtic Myth and Legend

Thames&Hudson

The ancient European sun-cults are remarkable for their diversity and complexity. From at least the Neolithic to the Roman period, pagan European communities drew symbols of the sun, built shrines and fashioned images which acknowledged its daily and seasonal behaviour, its essential heat and light-giving properties and its manifold associations. The author examines the diverse archaeological and iconographic evidence of sun worship from 2000 BC to AD 400, a period when, in much of central, eastern and northern Europe, a reverence towards the sun as a divine phenomenon appears to have dominated man's attitude to the supernatural. The book begins by tracing the chronological developments of sun-worship, from the megalithic tombs and structures of the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, through the great expansion of sun-worship in the later Bronze Age, possibly stimulated by climactic deterioration in northern Europe, to the complex anthropomorphic perceptions of the Celtic and Roman periods. Later chapters analyze the diverse ways in which humans perceived and depicted the sun, from wheels, circles and swastikas to human figures with solar attributes. From one of the many supernatural forces that had to be appeased and invoked, the sun-god had developed into ruler over the cosmos, protector-guardian, and symbol of the most important of earthly concerns: fertility and death. This book is a comprehensive analysis of the degree of penetration of the sun-cult into many divergent religious practices, and will be useful to students of archaeology and anthropology.

The sun gods of ancient Europe

B.T. Batsford

An examination of the religious beliefs of the people of the Roman province of Britain, from the Celtic background to the composite religion which eventually emerged.

The Gods of Roman Britain (Shire Archaeology)

History

Ancient Civilizations

Shire