Dacian Bracelets - Iron Age II (La Tene)

Iron Age II (La Tene)

Dacians replaced gold, the popular Transylvanian metal during the Iron Age I period, with silver during Iron Age II. The types of ornaments also changed, perhaps due to new social structures and hierarchy or due to changes of the preferences of the populous and sacerdotal aristocracy.

Dacians absorbed influences from the western Celts and eastern Scythians, but also proved their artistic originality. The bracelet style of the former is more individual, as they synthesized the older local elements originating from the Bronze Age into a new combination adapted to include the contemporary decorative forms and motifs.

Objects specific to warriors (armors, harnesses etc.) became preponderant from the 5th century BC onwards, in contrast to the decorative objects (bracelets, torques and pendants) that predominated in the Bronze Age, and in the transition period leading up to the Iron Age. In the 2nd and 1st centuries BC gold and silver military objects are replaced so that the treasures of the late Dacian La Tene comprise ceremonial ensembles of silver ornaments and clothing accessories, bracelets along with some mastos or footed cup vases .

The geometrical and spiral motif ornamentation of earlier bracelets is more often replaced with zoomorphic and vegetal representations. The decorations of bracelets that have been found, across the whole territory inhabited by Dacians, consist of lines cut into fir-tree shapes, dots, circlets, palmettes, waves, and bead motifs.