Celtic warfare

The Celtic Warrior

To start with, the typical Celtic warrior was male. Even hints that armed females existed are extremely rare. Not a single instance of a female burial containing a shield or a sword has yet been uncovered. About 50 percent of the males, about 25% of the total population, were buried with weapons. Caesar, in his report about the Helvetian census, tells us that of about 350,000 people about 90,000 carried arms, which amounts to about 25% of the Helvetian population that decided to move into Gaul.

A Celtic warrior's basic equipment consisted of a set of one to four spears. One was a 1.8 meters long fighting spear called a "lancea" that sometimes had very large spearheads of up to 50 centimetres in length. The others were shorter throwing spears called "gaesum" with relatively small, normally shorter than 10 centimetres long spearheads. A warrior also had a large--about 1.2

The Roman world in 58 BC, before Gallia's conquest...

English: Celtic warrior`s garments, replicas. In t...

Gallo-Roman statue of a Gaul warrior wearing Roman...

meter high and 0.5 meters wide--leather-covered, wooden shield with a metal shield-boss. This was likely to have been decorated with painting and sometimes metal ornamentation. With this basic equipment, the average warrior usually wore his everyday clothing consisting of trousers, a shirt, and a mantle.

A must for the Celtic noble, besides his torc (neck ring), was a long-sword with a blade-length of about 0.8 to 1 meter. Those from the early period had definite swordpoints, enabling them to be used for slashing and piercing. In the later period, these swords often had rounded points that allowed only slashing attacks. In rare cases, especially in finds from the eastern Celtic world, such swords had anthropomorphic handles, the pommel most often cast from bronze in the form of a human head. Additionally, the typical noble warrior probably wore armor and helmet, all made from leather. Depending on how rich...