ABSTRACT
Stone statue is the earliest and one of the finest pieces of monumental stone sculpture in the Early Celtic world, dating to the close of the final Hallstatt phase at the point of transition to the earliest La Tene period. It is impossible to interpret the iconography of the piece: wheeled cult-vehicles have a long ancestry in late Bronze Age Europe. But the influence of Greek Geometric bronzes in the naturalistic figures is very clear, especially in the largest figure and in the treatment of the horses, and shows early contacts between the Celtic and Classical worlds. It comes from an extraordinary series of votive deposits in a limestone cave, including many bronze and pottery objects as well as the skeletons of sacrificed women and horses: the offerings are mainly of Hallstatt date but continued into La Tene times.
