Gaelic Folklore (29): Gallic Bloodrites

Gallic Blood Rites: Pleasing the Gods, Terrifying the enemy.

Excavations of sanctuaries in northern France support ancient literary accounts of Violent Gallic rituals:

“When their enemies fall they cut off their heads and fasten them about the necks of their horses; and turning over to their attendants the arms of their opponents, all covered with blood, they carry them off as booty, singing a paean over them and striking up a song of victory, and these first-fruits of battle they fasten by nails upon their  p175 houses, just as men do, in certain kinds of hunting, with the heads of wild beasts they have mastered. 5 The heads of their most distinguished enemies they embalm in cedar-oil and carefully preserve in a chest, and these they exhibit to strangers, gravely maintaining that in exchange for this head some one of their ancestors, or their father, or the man himself, refused the offer of a great sum of money. And some men among them, we are told, boast that they have not accepted an equal weight of gold for the head they show, displaying a barbarous sort of greatness of soul; for not to sell that which constitutes a witness and proof of one's valour is a noble thing, but to continue to fight against one of our own race, after he is dead, is to descend to the level of beasts.”

Diodorus Siculus, V.29

Modern historians, relying on reports by Caesar and others, have characterized the religion of the Celts in Gaul as spontaneous rites, in contrast to the well-planned cultic practices of the Greek and Romans.

Archaeologists have now revealed that the Gauls did, in fact, build permanent ritual sites at places like Gournay-sur-Aronde and Ribemont-sur Ancre in northen France. Dated to the end of the fourth or beginning of the third century B.C. these cult centers were the work of warlike tribes called the Belgae, thought to have arrived in northern Gaul from central Europe at the end of the great Celtic invasions of the fourth century B.C.

The rituals performed at Gournay-sur-Aronde and Ribemont-sur-Ancre, however, went well beyond animal sacrifice, a commonplace rite among the Greeks and Romans, and included the triumphant display of the remains of enemies killed in battle or sacrificed to the gods of the underworld, from whom the Gauls believed they were descended.  Evidence from excavations at these sites suggests similarities between Gallic religion and Greek chtonic (underworld) cults. A sunken altar recovered at Gournay-sur Aronde is similar to a Greek escharon, also consecrated to underworld deities. Although Greeks and Romans used stone while the Gauls used wood and mud brick, Gallic sanctuaries, like their Greco-Roman counterparts, were rectangular in plan, between 90 and 150 feet to a side.  Imposing wooden palisades enclosed the sacred inner precinct of these sanctuaries, accessible only by a monumental eastward-facing gateway.

Access to the inner precincts would have been restricted to priests, initiates and aristocratic dignitaries: the majority of congregants would have stood in the flat, open space outside the enclosed area. A structure within the enclosure housed and further protected the sunken altar. Animal sacrifice was the most common ritual offering of the Gauls. Relying on ancient texts and Gallo-Roman sculptures, historians of religion have long believed the Gauls caught wild animals for this sacrifice. Excavations of the sanctuaries, however, have revealed that from the end of the fourth to the beginning of the second century B.C. the Gauls, like the Greeks, also sacrificed common domestic animals principally cattle, pigs and sheep. Priests would offer the divinity a skinned animal carcass, which remained on the altar until it had decomposed. The skulls were usually nailed to the gateway, probably to fend off evil spirits.

Corroborating the accounts of the first century B.C. Roman historian Diodorus Siculus and other ancients, excavation clearly shows that human sacrifice was practiced as well. In the interior corners of the sacred inner precinct at Ribemont-sur-Ancre, human bones belonging to nearly 1000 enemy warriors were burned as sacrificial offerings in open-topped ossuaries, square-shaped structures five feet to a side, adorned on the outside with crisscrossed bones. The priests first crushed the bones, probably to expose the marrow, where the Gauls, like the Greeks, located the soul on which underworld deities feasted. After breaking the bones, the priests dumped them into the hollow central chamber of the ossuaries where they were buried. That the Gauls sacrificially burned their enemies  would surely have daunted anyone planning to wage war against them. Upon approaching a ritual site, a potential attacker might have seen smoke from burning bones rising from the sacred precinct. Or he might have seen the captured armor of conquered enemies fastened to tall poles or a tangled assemblage of headless corpses lying along the outer wall.

Two thousand iron weapons and pieces of armor found by archeologists in a ditch adjacent to the sanctuary at Gournay-sur-Aronde were once displayed as intimidating war trophies. Examination showed that the swords and scabbards, war girdles, shields and lances were originally arranged as some 500 individual suits of armor, either standing on the platform of the gate way or hung from poles around the sacred inner precinct. The number of suits of armor in the deposit indicates nearly a century of battles and of intensive use of the sanctuary as a depository for war trophies that both commemorated tribal victory and informed other tribes of the consequences of war with the Belgae, whom Caesar in his Gallic War said were the bravest of the Gauls. The weapons, exposed for many years, fell to the ground when the wood and leather parts rotted: they were then ritually destroyed by the priests, a custom corresponding to a Roman practice described by the late first century A.D. historian Plutarch, and thrown into the ditch were they were found more than 2200 years later by archaeologists.

Evidence of human sacrifice was even more striking at Ribemont-sur-Ancre, where war trophies included headless human corpses and crushed, burned human bones. A particularly spectacular deposit of bones comprising some 80 skeletons was found outside the sacred area along the sanctuary’s outer wall. All headless, the skeletons had been piled up and tangled together along with weapons, the bodies contorted into unnatural positions. Beheading is mentioned by Diodorus Siculus, recalling an account of the Greek historian and philosopher Posidonius, who travelled in Gaul at the end of the second century B.C. Posidonius related that Gallic warriors regularly cut of the heads of enemies conquered in battle to keep as personal trophies. Diodorus added that, after having cut off the head, the bodies and captured weapons were given to servants. Since no skulls have been found at Ribemont, it is likely that warriors indeed kept the heads of their enemies, leaving servants to create communal trophies of bodies and weapons found at the sanctuaries. A sanctuary may have also served as a communal trophy depository not only for victorious warriors of a particular tribe, but also for tribes allied in battle. Since different tribes often shared one or more gods, common trophies at cult sites may have facilitated treaties between them, secured by divine covenant.

The sanctuaries seem to have served a double function, martial and cultic. The Gauls designed them to celebrate victory in war and intimidate potential enemies while pleasing the gods of the underworld, whom they believed made them great warriors.

Considering the archaeological evidence from excavations at Gournay and Ribemont it is time to reevaluate our understanding of the religion and cultic sites of the Gauls. Ancient sources offer a promising jumping-off point for archaeologists who, with each new excavation, are clarifying some of the vague and confusing descriptions offered by Greek and Roman historians. The human remains and weapons at Ribemont are examples of the dedicatory heaps of booty piled up in consecrated areas that Caesar mentions in his account of the Gallic war. The human bones nailed to what ancient historians thought were Gallic houses we now understand to be intimidating ornaments for the permanent cultic sites. Little by little, archaology has added to our understanding of the warlike Belgae, whose brutality features so prominently in ancient literature.

 

Archaeology, vol. 54, no.2, 20001, J. L. Brunaux.