You're quoting that part as persuasive? I was going to attack it as a wobbly argument, but I didn't want to be cruel, it falls over all by itself.
The article is full of special pleading for the Celts being capable of making good copies, but refraining from doing so because they didn't ever feel like it and were permanently swept up by the abstract muse.
> Instead, it’s thought that the dies were larger than the flans [blanks] so that part of the image always resided in the unseen spiritual world that the Celts worshiped so much.
How about they just weren't keen on thinking ahead? Then they make the dies first, and as an afterthought they make the blanks the correct weight. This would also explain how Apollo was mostly hair - start engraving hair, get carried away, now coin is full of hair, cram a face in the remaining space. But no, no, they were in superb control of every aspect of metalwork at all times, and anything that seems like a fuck-up was actually spirituality.
I can accept that part of the reason for abstract coins is that they weren't motivated to make accurate copies, but I think also they couldn't.
You're arguing for laziness, where there's more effort. The blanks don't just have to be a certain weight. They use a balanced metallurgy that is difficult to get right - especially as most peoples in that time and place had lost that particular level of skill.
If you reject abstract from Celtic culture, you reject the Celts. The Dagda isn't exactly some solid figure. They're an artistic people, in everything from their laws to... Their coins.
And as most family meals also intentionally left one part unfinished... For a deeply spiritual people, maybe you shouldn't be rejecting it out of hand.
As a small example, one of the most severe forms of punishment, was to ban an individual from religious rites, and another was to ban them from the construction of anything considered a 'craft' - something that would take skill.
Neither of those punishments banned the individual from the tuatha. They weren't exiled. They were still allowed to speak and be heard. They were still allowed to buy and sell. But they were no longer allowed to worship, or to create.
>The article is full of special pleading for the Celts being capable of making good copies, but refraining from doing so because they didn't ever feel like it and were permanently swept up by the abstract muse.
Some of the copies require as much effort as the originals though.
>This would also explain how Apollo was mostly hair - start engraving hair, get carried away, now coin is full of hair, cram a face in the remaining space.
That's silly, you could easily start over if ran out of space.
The article is full of special pleading for the Celts being capable of making good copies, but refraining from doing so because they didn't ever feel like it and were permanently swept up by the abstract muse.
> Instead, it’s thought that the dies were larger than the flans [blanks] so that part of the image always resided in the unseen spiritual world that the Celts worshiped so much.
How about they just weren't keen on thinking ahead? Then they make the dies first, and as an afterthought they make the blanks the correct weight. This would also explain how Apollo was mostly hair - start engraving hair, get carried away, now coin is full of hair, cram a face in the remaining space. But no, no, they were in superb control of every aspect of metalwork at all times, and anything that seems like a fuck-up was actually spirituality.
I can accept that part of the reason for abstract coins is that they weren't motivated to make accurate copies, but I think also they couldn't.