Paper short abstract:

This paper will examine shields and shield fittings from the British Iron Age through a series of different lenses to explore the intersections between art, power, conflict. martial performance and identity.

Paper long abstract:

The intricately decorated bronze shield cover discovered in the Thames at Battersea in 1857 was the principal object in the recent British Museum and National Museums Scotland exhibitions entitled 'Celts: art and identity', and also adorns the cover of the associated publication (Farley and Hunter 2015). A striking yet enigmatic icon of British Celtic art, the 'Battersea shield' represents the ambiguity with which Iron Age shields have become associated. They have been caught in the gulf between contrasting ideas surrounding power and protection - viewed as defensive, but often excluded from catalogues of weapons, weapons burials and weapons caches.

This thesis will challenge that assumption by arguing for the central role of the shield as a richly symbolic yet dangerous object with both protective and offensive intent. It will be examined through a series of different lenses - as a typological class, as Celtic art, as an Iron Age weapon, and as a museum object; but the ways in which these different concepts intersect will also be considered. This will allow the shield to become more integrated into the wider body of interdisciplinary work on 'martial culture' in which the wearing of weapons is caught up in wider discourses of gendered power, bellicose performance, skill and status. The paper will also briefly consider the impact of historic attitudes to shields and other Iron Age weaponry from portrayals in Roman classical sculpture to modern educational comics and video game titles.