Tammy Macenka Brown

University of Wisconsin -Milwaukee

2554 South Howell Avenue

Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53207

tamacenka@earthlink.net

This paper will attempt to analyze the relative status of Celtic women who were not members of the elite class. Little work has been undertaken on gender relations among non-elites as most of the attention has focused on the spectacular interments of the late Hallstatt period and their place within Celtic society. I will examine two La Téne cemeteries: one from the European continent and the other from the British Isles as a means of gaining a cross cultural comparison with a critical eye toward sex, age and grave distribution. This comparison will look at whether there is a distinction in burial offerings between males and females, paying particular attention to whether one group was more richly outfitted than the other, as a means of identifying gendered patterns of relative inequality. I will also look at several early La Téne burials from the Continent and the British Isles, comparing and contrasting them with the non-elite graves as a means of exploring the intersection between class and gender. This is a distinction that needs to be made, but is rarely incorporated into mortuary analysis of this period