the living well-head This object was sold to me as "6th century Celtic", with no more precise provenance than that it hailed from "up north", north of London, England, that is. Allowing for the possibility that it is a later pastiche, it attracted me as arguably representing the image that a mid-first millenium native of the British Isles (neither "Celt" nor "Anglo-Saxon" is here acceptable) might have held of his composite deity. back to collage sequence One authority has suggested
height 20 cm width 18 cm depth 8 cm
water-smoothed carved soft stone, perhaps a limestone
back to "structure"
Pre-Christian (C5th-6th?) stone idol
Caldragh graveyard, Boa Island
Lower Lough Erne, Ireland
© Christopher Hill Photographic
this head could be related to the "fish-head", right, from
c 5000 BC; height 36 cm
Personally I think it has
more in common with the one on the left
Epipalaeolithic carved river boulder
Lepenski Vir, former Yugoslavia
from The Prehistory of Europe
Patricia Phillips, Allen Lane 1980