The Clan Hierarchy

Inside each clan, there were three major groups of people. At the top were the nobles, which included warrior leaders and landowners. In the middle were the artisans and druids (bards, priests, teachers). At the bottom were the common people, the peasants. Whatever their position in society, all people lived well. Everyone in Celtic society belonged to a clan. Everyone belonged to a fine. And everyone had a job to do.

Nobles

The Nobles were landowners. They were warrior leaders. The nobles had slaves occasionally, but these were people captured in war. Most of the work was done by the peasants, and that left the nobles lots of free time.

Noble Men: When noble men were not off fighting, they were farmers. They spent time playing fighting games, games of chance, and board games. They hunted and swam and fished. They conducted trade.

Noble Women: What a noble woman could and could not do was clearly spelled out, although it varied from clan to clan. A noble woman could own property. She could choose her own husband. Women could become warriors, but few chose to do so. Most ran the household, raised the children, and spent a great deal of time on their personal appearance, weaving jewerly into their braids.

Kids: The nobles sent their kids off at quite an early age to live with another clan for training and education. Training could take years. This was one way the ancient Celts developed close ties between various clans. It was called fostering. Sometimes kids were sent away to their mother's clan, but they could be sent to any clan. Some kids became more loyal to their foster clan than they were to their blood clan. After all, they grew up there. Still, in times of war, if things went wrong, kids could be held by their foster clan for ransom. The foster clan might even threaten to kill the kids in their care unless they got their way. It was an odd system, but it was the system of the ancient Celts.

Marriage: When a woman married, she joined her husband's clan. You were always a member of your own clan. You never escaped that obligation and membership. But your husband's clan took precedence.

Artisans

Celtic art is full of patterns and spirals and animals and color. Like their daily life, their art was lively. They made colorful jewelry, fabulous fabrics, beautiful pottery, shapely figurines of bronze and gold, strong wheels for carts and wagons and strong weapons out of iron.

Artisans were highly respected. They did not owe any military service to the nobles. They did not work in the fields. If they were talented, they gained wealth and comfort. They were free to travel and sell their goods to other clans. Artists were appreciated and encouraged.

The Celtic cross, popular for over a thousand years, was not designed by the Celts until the early middle ages.

Peasants:

The peasants were free to come and go. Unless they married out of their clan, or studied to become an artisan, a bard, a druid priest, or a warrior, they had no reason to venture very far from their homestead.

Each fine had several buildings that they shared. One building called a roundhouse was a big home made of straw and mud. This is where the members of a fine slept and sheltered from the elements. The Celts did not have chairs or furniture other than a scattering of low tables. They slept on furs or mats. They sat on the floor. The biggest piece of furniture in each home would be the large looms where fabrics were woven all winter long.

They also built several outbuildings that they used to cook food, tan leather, store food, and shelter their animals. Again, these outbuildings were shared by everyone in the fine. Sometimes, these buildings were shared by several fines. These were farming communities. But that's about as big as a single "village" grew. The ancient Celts did not build cities. It was not their way.

Each homestead (group of buildings) was surrounded by the fields in which they grew crops. Beyond that, at the edge of their boundary, the fine built a short wall made of rocks. This wall was used to define the fields that belonged to the fine, and also acted as some protection from attack.

In times of attack from another Celtic tribe or from the Romans, the fine retreated to a hill fort, a home built on top of a hill, surrounded by enclosure of stakes. Hill forts were huge things that could hold everyone in times of attack. They builts huts and cattle enclosures standing ready. But the Celts did not like to live so closely together. To them, the hill fort was crowded, because everyone was there, but it was only a temporary retreat.

Peasant Men: Along with hunting and fishing, the men did the heavy labor on the farms. They were wonderful farmers. The Celts invented a reaping machine, an invention that was copied by the ancient Romans. The reaping machine let them harvest more rapidly. With the reaper, they were far less likely to lose crops to an early frost. It also saved on labor. They stored grain in pits for the winter.

Peasant Women: The women gathered berries and other foods that could be harvested. They cooked and cleaned and sewed and looked after the children.

Kids: The girls helped their mothers, the boys helped their fathers. At night, everyone would collect in the big home that served them all. Around age 15, both boys and girls began to think of marriage. Most would marry someone they met at a clan festival. The tallest boys might be selected to train as warriors. Some might learn an artisan skill. Most would be farmers. With their free time, kids would play war games. Also popular was a game they played similar to field hockey.