Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

crossing the carpathians
6.15 Bronze shield boss dredged from the River Thames at Wandsworth (third or second century bc). Its
design is composed of two fearsome birds with hooked beaks, their wings dissolving into typical Celtic
tendrils.
Wandsworth boss is probably from the centre of a shield and the creatures dissolve
into Celtic scrolls, but the iconography of the two pieces, found 6,000 km
apart, could not be closer.
What we are seeing, in the few examples quoted here, is not a simple borrowing
of artistic styles but a continuity of ideas expressed in similar ways across
different cultures briefly interacting in the centre of Europe in the fourth and
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