11th November 2010, 02:00 AM
I'm afraid that all the up-to-date technical books covering artefacts, buildings, etc I know are in French, but I could post a list if you like. I'm afraid that nearly all my German texts are philological:I
In English, I could only recommend:
Celts, Image & Their Culture byHelmut Birkhan. It's basically a glossy picture book of artefacts arranged thematically. I like it because it doesn't just show the "usual suspects." Indeed, it contains over 800 illustrations. The book has been criticised in reviews for being text-lite. I think this is unfair as it was intended as a companion volume to Kelten - Versuch einer Gesamtdarstellung ihrer Kultur and anyway, there's a middle-brow introductory chapter in German, English and French, which in itself is handy for getting into the vocabulary of talking about "stuff." Currently, it's very expensive, but sometimes it turns up at a reasonable price on ABE.
For pictures alone, there's the now pretty old, but stunning exhibition catalogue for I Celti: [catalogo della mostra a Venezia, Palazzo Grassi, 1991] (please Santa....) It's fair to say that stumbling onto that book in my local library when it was hot off the press was instrumental to the subsequent course of my life. Highly recommended.
For a general overview The Celtic World ed. Miranda Green is a ragbag of essays by eminent scholars. Most of them have held up pretty well since its publication in 1995, although it's much easier now to see the zeitgeist it was written in. (The eve of devolution, anyone?)
The Megaw's Celtic Art has a lot of nice photos and is useful for the evolution of design aesthetics, but doesn't have enough social context for my liking. But then, that was never the point of the book.
If I could only go for one, I'd go for the Birkhan.
Hope Santa's good to you :face-kiss:
TM
In English, I could only recommend:
Celts, Image & Their Culture byHelmut Birkhan. It's basically a glossy picture book of artefacts arranged thematically. I like it because it doesn't just show the "usual suspects." Indeed, it contains over 800 illustrations. The book has been criticised in reviews for being text-lite. I think this is unfair as it was intended as a companion volume to Kelten - Versuch einer Gesamtdarstellung ihrer Kultur and anyway, there's a middle-brow introductory chapter in German, English and French, which in itself is handy for getting into the vocabulary of talking about "stuff." Currently, it's very expensive, but sometimes it turns up at a reasonable price on ABE.
For pictures alone, there's the now pretty old, but stunning exhibition catalogue for I Celti: [catalogo della mostra a Venezia, Palazzo Grassi, 1991] (please Santa....) It's fair to say that stumbling onto that book in my local library when it was hot off the press was instrumental to the subsequent course of my life. Highly recommended.
For a general overview The Celtic World ed. Miranda Green is a ragbag of essays by eminent scholars. Most of them have held up pretty well since its publication in 1995, although it's much easier now to see the zeitgeist it was written in. (The eve of devolution, anyone?)
The Megaw's Celtic Art has a lot of nice photos and is useful for the evolution of design aesthetics, but doesn't have enough social context for my liking. But then, that was never the point of the book.
If I could only go for one, I'd go for the Birkhan.
Hope Santa's good to you :face-kiss:
TM