Classical sources — Greek and Roman writers who described the peoples they encountered or heard about at the margins of the Mediterranean world — refer to practices of skull collection and display among Celtic peoples of Gaul and Britain.

Caesar’s account of the Gauls mentions the preservation of human heads, and other sources describe the taking of heads in warfare and the display of skulls at sacred sites.

These accounts have been debated extensively by archaeologists and historians, who have pointed out that classical sources often exaggerated or distorted the practices of the peoples they described, particularly when those peoples were enemies of Rome.

But the convergence of classical textual evidence with the physical archaeological evidence of skull handling in Iron Age Britain suggests that skulls were indeed significant objects in the material and symbolic world of Iron Age communities.