This is the home page of Constanze Witt's dissertation proposal in the McIntire Department of Art at the University of Virginia. This document uses Netscape extensions throughout; there may be difficulties in viewing if you are using a browser that does not support those extensions, gif or jpeg image viewing, or ISO 8879 Latin 1 character entities. If you are using the WWW for the first time, please click on the button immediately below for instructions.

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The images in this prototype are digitally altered, assembled, redrawn, painted, and cropped; the originals were mainly derived from published photographs, and the images here are presented for single-use study purposes only, pending their replacement by original photographs.

This dissertation will examine the material evidence for the great stylistic change that took place in fifth century Celtic art, the highly complex and distinctive cultures that produced it, and their relationships with the Mediterranean. It cites recent alternative anthropological reconstructions of the history of the period, and re-evaluates art-historical interpretations of cultural and stylistic change from Hallstatt to La Tène. In so doing, limitations of the "Hellenization" model as an interpretational tool are demonstrated. Early Celtic art reveals an autochthonous, indigenous aesthetic development that is essentially different from, even incompatible with, that of the Greeks.

Proposal Abstract.

	(I) Background.
	(II) "Hellenization" and the European Context.
	(III) Evidence: Art Objects.
	(IV) Celtic Style.
	(V) Conclusion: Celtic Europe and the Mediterranean.

	List of Works Cited in the Proposal.
	List of Images Used in the Proposal.

Winner of Celtic Thistle Award, July 1996

This document has been visited times since November 8, 1995.

Send comments to me using this form or at constanze@virginia.edu