This paper will examine non-traditional ways of viewing ancient Iron Age Celtic coinage, found mainly in the region of North-west Europe. The emphasis will be upon the coins as three-dimensional objects rather than as the seemingly two-dimensional objects that the rigors of numismatic description have postulated. By defining coins as two-dimensional objects, traditional descriptive methods have often characterized the coins as poor imitations of Greek and Roman prototypes, and have focused on the apparent stylization and reduction of the images to patterns. This method belies the reality of the artifacts. The model used in this paper proposes that the Celts reinterpreted the Roman and Greek prototypical coins according to a culturally influenced viewpoint of all three-dimensional objects. Celtic artifacts from the fifth century BCE onwards exhibit the phenomenon of shape changing, a feature also evidenced in their mythology. Faces can be detected on the surfaces of some artifacts, and as the object is rotated, these faces are often transformed into animals and back into human faces. When coins are rotated on their axes and viewed from an oblique angle, the images are transformed from stylized profiles into foreshortened, more realistic three-quarter view heads. The consistent transformation of the images on coins when viewed from an oblique viewpoint would indicate that the artists and die engravers responsible for these coins intended the coins to be seen primarily as three-dimensional objects that were not limited to a single, frontal viewpoint. The Celts did not leave a written legacy of their culture, but their coins provide a unique means of demonstrating that this ancient culture read images in a fashion that is unfamiliar and unexpected in modern cultures dominated by the theory of perspective, and the presentation of three-dimensional material using two-dimensional media such as drawings or photographs.

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