3rd century BC-1st century AD. A carved granite head with reserved facial features and lateral lobe ears, almond-shaped eyes and columnar nose, elliptical reserved mouth; mounted on a custom-made stand. See Ross, A., Pagan Celtic Britain, London, 1967 for overview of the iconography of pre-Christian Britain and Ireland; Rynne, E., Figures from the Past, Studies on Figurative Art in Christian Ireland in Honour of Helen M. Roe, Dublin, 1987.4.6 kg, 29.5cm including stand (11 1/2"). Found near Great Massingham, Norfolk, UK, in 1950; accompanied by a scholarly note TL5322 by Dr Ronald Bonewitz; this lot has been checked against the Interpol Database of stolen works of art and is accompanied by AIAD certificate number no. 10369-168784. Professor Ian Armit has written several books and papers on the significance of the 'severed head' motif in Celtic (Iron Age) culture. In Death, decapitation and display, the Bronze and Iron Age human remains from the Sculptor's Cave, Covesea, north-east Scotland, Cambridge, 2011; and later in Headhunting and the Body in Iron Age Europe, Cambridge, 2012, Armit demonstrates that the human head was symbolically associated with power, fertility, gender, and other social themes in the context of Iron Age Europe. The range of evidence for beheading and the subsequent curation and display of severed heads includes classical literary references, vernacular iconography and the physical, skeletal remains of the victims of this custom. The notion of a 'head-cult' which extended across most of Continental Europe and the islands of the North Atlantic, including the British Isles, has been suggested, used to support the idea of a unified and monolithic 'Celtic culture' in prehistory. However, head-veneration was seemingly practised across a range of Bronze Age and Iron Age societies and is not necessarily linked directly to the practice of head-hunting (i.e. curation of physical human remains"). The relations between the wielders of political power, religious authority and physical violence were more nuanced than a simple reading of the literary and physical evidence would suggest. The stone heads of Ireland are an enduring expression of this strong association between the human body and the numinous powers of the intellect.