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the living well-head

height 20 cm       width 18 cm       depth 8 cm
water-smoothed carved soft stone, perhaps a limestone

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.

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Pre-Christian (C5th-6th?) stone idol Caldragh graveyard, Boa Island Lower Lough Erne, Ireland © Christopher Hill Photographic

One authority has suggested 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

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