This succinct, accessible two-volume set covers all aspects of Celtic historical life, from prehi... more This succinct, accessible two-volume set covers all aspects of Celtic historical life, from prehistory to the present day. * A helpful subject index * A comprehensive chronology traces the evolution of Celtic culture over time and across regions * A-Z entries allow for easy location of material * A current print and nonprint bibliography of the most essential and accessible resources in English
Este estudio ofrece nuevos datos sobre la apropiación local de los ideales asociados al guerrero ... more Este estudio ofrece nuevos datos sobre la apropiación local de los ideales asociados al guerrero en Europa durante la Edad del Bronce Final a través del nuevo estudio de los grabados de Cancho Roano y Arroyo Tamujoso 8, situados en el Suroeste de la península ibérica, de sus soportes y contextos paisajísticos. Emplea tecnologías digitales de vanguardia para identificar algunos de los particularismos más distintivos de esa iconografía, revelando diversas respuestas a los ideales de guerrero que estaban en circulación en Europa durante dicho período. Para comprender los contextos de circulación desde una perspectiva local, también consideramos brevemente las conexiones multi-escala en las que estaban involucradas las comunidades que crearon estelas de guerrero en Iberia. El objetivo final de este artículo es sentar las bases para un próximo trabajo donde se comparan con mayor detalle la iconografía de las estelas de guerrero y la de los guerreros del arte rupestre escandinavo, teniend...
Dans un examen détaillé de deux passages du Canu Aneirin (épopée en gallois archaïque concernant ... more Dans un examen détaillé de deux passages du Canu Aneirin (épopée en gallois archaïque concernant principalement une attaque brittonique lancée au VIe s. contre la ville de Catraeth), l’auteur suppose des réminiscences remontant au début de l'ére chrétienne — à partir des éléments onomastiques (Tecvann : Tasciovanos, Cynfelyn : Cunobelinos) et à partir du formulaire employé pour l'armement et les techniques guerrières (assedd = assedum, char de guerre).
This succinct, accessible two-volume set covers all aspects of Celtic historical life, from prehi... more This succinct, accessible two-volume set covers all aspects of Celtic historical life, from prehistory to the present day. * A helpful subject index * A comprehensive chronology traces the evolution of Celtic culture over time and across regions * A-Z entries allow for easy location of material * A current print and nonprint bibliography of the most essential and accessible resources in English
Este estudio ofrece nuevos datos sobre la apropiación local de los ideales asociados al guerrero ... more Este estudio ofrece nuevos datos sobre la apropiación local de los ideales asociados al guerrero en Europa durante la Edad del Bronce Final a través del nuevo estudio de los grabados de Cancho Roano y Arroyo Tamujoso 8, situados en el Suroeste de la península ibérica, de sus soportes y contextos paisajísticos. Emplea tecnologías digitales de vanguardia para identificar algunos de los particularismos más distintivos de esa iconografía, revelando diversas respuestas a los ideales de guerrero que estaban en circulación en Europa durante dicho período. Para comprender los contextos de circulación desde una perspectiva local, también consideramos brevemente las conexiones multi-escala en las que estaban involucradas las comunidades que crearon estelas de guerrero en Iberia. El objetivo final de este artículo es sentar las bases para un próximo trabajo donde se comparan con mayor detalle la iconografía de las estelas de guerrero y la de los guerreros del arte rupestre escandinavo, teniend...
Dans un examen détaillé de deux passages du Canu Aneirin (épopée en gallois archaïque concernant ... more Dans un examen détaillé de deux passages du Canu Aneirin (épopée en gallois archaïque concernant principalement une attaque brittonique lancée au VIe s. contre la ville de Catraeth), l’auteur suppose des réminiscences remontant au début de l'ére chrétienne — à partir des éléments onomastiques (Tecvann : Tasciovanos, Cynfelyn : Cunobelinos) et à partir du formulaire employé pour l'armement et les techniques guerrières (assedd = assedum, char de guerre).
Manuscript readings, hypothetical reconstructed text, and translation with historical and histori... more Manuscript readings, hypothetical reconstructed text, and translation with historical and historical linguistic discussion of the Brythonic heroic elegies known as 'Y Gododdin'.
Celto-Germanic: Later Prehistory and Post-Proto-Indo-European vocabulary in the North and West, 2020
Synopsis
This book is a study of the inherited vocabulary shared uniquely by Celtic, Germanic, an... more Synopsis This book is a study of the inherited vocabulary shared uniquely by Celtic, Germanic, and the other Indo-European languages of North and West Europe. The focus is on contact and common developments in the prehistoric period. Words showing the earmarks of loanwords datable to Roman times or the Middle Ages are excluded. Most of the remaining collection predates Grimm’s Law. This and further linguistic criteria are consistent with contexts before ~500 BC. The evidence and analysis here lead to the following explanatory hypothesis. Metal-poor Scandinavia’s sustained demand for resources led to a prolonged symbiosis with the Atlantic façade and Central Europe during the Bronze Age. Complementary advantages of the Pre-Germanic North included Baltic amber and societies favourably situated and organized to build seagoing vessels and recruit crews for long-distance maritime expeditions. An integral dimension of this long-term network was intense contact between the Indo-European dialects that became Celtic and those that became Germanic. The Celto-Germanic vocabulary—like the motifs shared by Iberian stelae and Scandinavian rock art—illuminates this interaction, opening a window onto the European Bronze Age. Much of the word stock can be analyzed as shared across still mutually intelligible dialects rather than borrowed between separate languages. In this respect, what is revealed resembles more the last gasp of Proto-Indo-European than a forerunner of the Celtic–Germanic confrontations of the post-Roman Migration Period and Viking Age. This 2020 edition puts into the public domain some first fruits of a cross-disciplinary research project that will continue until 2023.
Exploring Celtic Origins: New ways forward in archaeology, linguistics, and genetics, 2019
E x p l o r i n g C e l t i c O r i g i n s is the fruit of collaborative work by
researchers in ... more E x p l o r i n g C e l t i c O r i g i n s is the fruit of collaborative work by researchers in archaeology, historical linguistics, and archaeogenetics over the past ten years. T his team works towards the goal of a better understanding of the background in the Bronze Age and Beaker P eriod of the people who emerge as Celts and speakers of Celtic languages documented in the I ron Age and later times. L ed by S ir Barry Cunliffe and John Koch, the contributors present multidisciplinary chapters in a lively user-friendly style, aimed at accessibility for workers in the other fields, as well as general readers. T he collection stands as a pause to reflect on ways forward at the moment of intellectual history when the genome-wide sequencing of ancient DNA (a.k.a. ‘the archaeogenetic revolution’) has suddenly changed everything in the study of later European prehistory. How do we deal with what appears to be an irreversible breach in the barrier between science and the humanities? Exploring Celtic O rigins includes colour maps and illustrations and annotated Further R eading for all chapters.
Celtic from the West 3 Atlantic Europe in the Metal Ages: questions of shared language, 2016
CELTIC FROM THE WEST 3. The Celtic languages and groups called
Keltoi (i.e. ‘Celts’) emerge into ... more CELTIC FROM THE WEST 3. The Celtic languages and groups called Keltoi (i.e. ‘Celts’) emerge into our written records at the pre-Roman Iron Age. The impetus for this book is to explore from the perspectives of three disciplines—archaeology, genetics, and linguistics—the background in later European prehistory to these developments. There is a traditional scenario, according to which, Celtic speech and the associated group identity came in to being during the Early Iron Age in the north Alpine zone and then rapidly spread across central and western Europe. This idea of ‘Celtogenesis’ remains deeply entrenched in scholarly and popular thought. But it has become increasingly difficult to reconcile with recent discoveries pointing towards origins in the deeper past. It should no longer be taken for granted that Atlantic Europe during the 2nd and 3rd millennia BC were pre-Celtic or even pre-Indo-European. The explorations in Celtic from the West 3 are drawn together in this spirit, continuing two earlier volumes in the influential series.
https://www.wales.ac.uk/Resources/Documents/Centre/2019/Koch-Celtic-of-the-SW-inscriptions-2019.pdf Common Ground and Progress on the Celtic of the South- western (SW) Inscriptions, Jan 2019
[ ¶ Preface. Our understanding of the emergence of the Celtic languages and their relationship with the rest of Indo-European still rests largely on a three-way comparison of Gaulish, Brythonic, and Goidelic. Until the discovery of the first long Celtiberian inscription from Botorrita (K.1.1) in 1970, little more than this was possible. In the coming years, one important factor for our grasp of Celtic as a subset of Indo-European will be how much Palaeohispanic evidence we can confidently include in the comparisons on which our evolving reconstruction of Proto-Celtic is based. Today, the classification remains uncertain for a large body of material from the western Iberian Peninsula outside the Celtiberian area in the eastern Meseta. The linguistic affiliation of this evidence should be more than an exercise in arbitrary labelling. We will want to know whether the evidence points to distinct branches of Indo-European that had formed somewhere else and then entered the Peninsula in waves or, rather, a pattern of long-term diversification of Indo-European in situ as a dialect continuum, along the lines foreseen by Renfrew. 1 ]
The End and Beyond was launched 8 December 2014 in Cork.
The IRC [Irish Research Council] hav... more The End and Beyond was launched 8 December 2014 in Cork.
The IRC [Irish Research Council] have featured The End and Beyond on their home page!
http://www.research.ie/
What awaits us beyond the grave is perhaps the fundamental human mystery. Visionary accounts of the afterlife are attested long before the Common Era, and loomed large in the imaginative universe of early Christianity. The medieval Irish inherited and further transformed this tradition, producing vivid eschatological narratives which had a profound impact throughout Europe as well as being texts of remarkable literary and spiritual power in their own right.
This collection, comprising editions and translations of thirty-five texts together with several in-depth studies, is the most comprehensive survey of medieval Irish eschatology ever undertaken: included are sources from the Old Irish, Middle Irish and Early Modern Irish periods, and related material in Latin and Old English. A fascinating collection for anyone interested in the spiritual world of the medieval Irish, this book will also be a valuable resource for medievalists and religious historians generally.
Celto-Germanic and North-West Indo-European vocabulary: resonances in myth and rock art iconography, 2020
Conference. Indo-European Interfaces: Building Bridges between Mythology, Linguistics and Archaeo... more Conference. Indo-European Interfaces: Building Bridges between Mythology, Linguistics and Archaeology — Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala, October 2020
Celto-Germanic and North-West Indo-European vocabulary: resonances in myth and rock art iconography
John T. Koch, University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies
The paper reports historical linguistic work undertaken as part of a four-year cross-disciplinary project funded by the Swedish Research Council: Rock Art, Atlantic Europe, Words & Warriors (RAW) [Hällristningar, språk och maritim interaktion i Atlantiska Europa]. New evidence tracing metals in Bronze Age artefacts has revealed that Scandinavia was in trade contact with metal-rich regions in Wales and the Iberian Peninsula. This new knowledge leads to reopening two long-known, but poorly explained phenomena: 1) a large body of inherited vocabulary shared by the Celtic and Germanic languages, but not Indo-European generally, and 2) detailed similarities shared by the Bronze Age rock art of Scandinavia and the ‘warrior’ stelae of the Iberian Peninsula. In the past, the Celto-Germanic words have been explained as reflecting contacts in Central Europe from 500 BC down to the Roman Period. However, that dating seemed possibly too late as most of the words pre-dated Grimm’s Law and lacked any earmarks as loanwords, looking instead like inheritances from-Proto-Indo-European with limited geographic distributions. Recent archaeogenetic discoveries have also undermined the once prevalent view that only non-Indo-European languages were spoken in Ireland, Britain, Brittany, and the western Iberia until ~1000 BC or later. Therefore, we now pursue the hypothesis that shared rock art motifs and Celto-Germanic words can be better explained as reflections of the ideology and language of Bronze Age seafaring warriors who brought copper from Atlantic Europe to metal-poor Scandinavia. The talk draws from a new monograph: Celto-Germanic: Later Prehistory and Post-Proto-Indo-European vocabulary in the North and West, which will appear as an open-access e-book in 2020. The highlighted CG word stock has to do with myths, beliefs, and ideology. Some can also be related to Bronze Age rock art iconography.
Namyn y·Đuυ vchaf | nys dioferaf (‘DADOLWCH URIEN’) A’R FFORMIWLA ANGLADDOL DARTESEG uar(n)baan t... more Namyn y·Đuυ vchaf | nys dioferaf (‘DADOLWCH URIEN’) A’R FFORMIWLA ANGLADDOL DARTESEG uar(n)baan tee(e)·ro-baare |u̯araman de·ro-bāre| ‘WEDI CARIO I FFWRDD I’R UN UCHAF’ [Namyn y·Đuυ vchaf | nys dioferaf (‘DADOLWCH URIEN’) AND THE TARTESSIAN FUNERARY FORMULA uar(n)baan tee(e)·ro-baare |u̯araman de·ro-bāre| ‘HAS CARRIED AWAY TO THE HIGHEST DESTINATION’]
Professor John T. Koch, Canolfan Uwchefrydiau Cymreig a Cheltaidd/Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, Aberystwyth
Yn yr hen gerdd Gymraeg, mae’r bardd, sef ‘y Taliesin hanesyddol’, yn rhag-weld marwolaeth ei noddwr, sef Urien Rheged, cymeriad hanesyddol o’r chweched ganrif. Ni fyddai Taliesin yn fodlon ymadael ag Urien tan hynny, a bryd hynny dim ond i’w gysegru i’r Duw uchaf. O bosibl mae tinc anuniongred neu hyd yn oed amldduwiol [polytheistic] tu ôl y syniadaeth hon. Ond nid hynny yw prif bwynt y papur presennol.
Yn y corpws o ryw gant o arysgrifau o dde Portiwgal a de-orllewin Sbaen, angladdol gan mwyaf, sy’n dyddio o Oes yr Haearn Gynnar, mae fformiwla geiriol gydag amrywiadau. Ffurf fwyaf cyffredin y ‘Fformiwla’ Darteseg yw fel a ganlyn: {enw(au)’r ymadawedig} uar(n)baan tee(e)·ro-baare (baa) naŕkeentii. Gan ystyried y system o ysgrifennu a ddefnyddid yn ‘Arysgrifau y De-Orllewin’ mae’n bosibl trawslythrennu’r geiriau perthnasol fel |u̯araman de·ro-bāre ma narkenti|. Ar sail etymoleg a chyd-destun, fy nealltwriaeth bresennol y Fformiwla yw ‘[mae’r bedd hwn neu angau] wedi cario i ffwrdd yr ymadawedig i’r un uchaf’. Os yw’r dehongliad hwn ar y trywydd iawn, un peth diddorol yw fod y syniad a’r geiriau yn hynod o debyg i beth sydd yn nwy linell y Cynfardd: hynny yw Tarteseg uar(n)baan |u̯araman| < *u(p)eramām ‘uchaf’ ~ Cymraeg uchaf < *u(p)samo- a hefyd Tarteseg tee(e)·ro-baare |de·ro-bāre| < *de+(p)ro+ber- ~ Cymraeg dioferaf < *dē+u(p)o+ber-. Tybed ai geiriau’r farwnad Geltaidd hynaf yw’r rhain.
Rwy’n bwriadu cloi gyda thrafodaeth fer am arwyddocâd enwau lleoedd Hen Gelteg fel brigā ‘lle uchel’, Uxama ‘uchaf’, Ουαμα ‘uchaf’ < *u(p)amo-, a rhai duwiesau, e.e. Brigantia.
[In the early Welsh poem, the poet, that is ‘the historical Taliesin’, foresees the death of his patron Urien Rheged, a historical character from the 6th century. Taliesin would not leave Urien until Urien’s death, and then only to consecrate him to the highest God. Possibly, there is an unorthodox or even polytheistic ring to this idea. But this is not the main point of the present paper.
In the corpus of some hundred inscriptions from south Portugal and south-western Spain, funerary for the most part, dating from the Early Iron Age, one finds a verbal formula with variations. The most common form of this Tartessian ‘formula’ is as follows: {name(s) of the deceased} uar(n)baan tee(e)·ro-baare (baa) naŕkeentii. Considering the writing system used in the ‘South-Western Inscriptions’, we can transliterate the relevant words as |u̯araman de·ro-bāre ma narkenti|. On the basis of etymology and the contexts, my current understanding of the formula is ‘[this grave or death (understood)] has carried the deceased away to the highest destination’. If this interpretation is on the right track, it is interesting that the idea and the words are very similar to what we find in the two lines of the Cynfardd (‘early Welsh poet’): that is Tartessian uar(n)baan |u̯araman| < *u(p)eramām ‘highest’ ~ Welsh uchaf < *u(p)samo- and Tartessian tee(e)·ro-baare | de·ro-bāre | < *de+(p)ro+ber- ~ Welsh dioferaf < *dē+u(p)o+ber-. Could these be the words of the earliest Celtic elegy?
I intend to conclude with a short discussion regarding the significance of old Celtic place-names such as brigā ‘high place’, Uxama ‘highest’, Ουαμα ‘highest’ < *u(p)amo-, and some goddesses, e.g. Brigantia.]
Recent chemical and isotopic sourcing of copper artefacts in Scandinavia and amber in Iberia reve... more Recent chemical and isotopic sourcing of copper artefacts in Scandinavia and amber in Iberia reveal a trade system that arose and ended in the Late Bronze Age, 1400/1300–900 BC. Much remains to be explained about this previously unrecognized episode of Iberian–Scandinavian contact. What were the exact dates and volume of this trade? What regions and communities were involved? Did people and ideas move with valuable raw materials? A preliminary look at 1) rock-art motifs shared by these regions at this time and 2) the earliest layer of vocabulary shared by Germanic and Celtic (but not Indo-European as a whole) suggests that seafaring warriors were the primary agents of this trade. Parallels between Iberian warrior stelae and Scandinavian rock art were noted long ago. Only recently have shared motifs been begun to be recognized more fully and closely dated to the span 1300–900 BC. Advances in linguistics and archaeogenetics allow rock-art iconography to be linked to word meanings in Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Celtic, and Proto-Germanic, most notably the extensive shared Celto-Germanic (CG) vocabulary for warfare, weapons, and ideology. Chemical and isotopic sourcing of metal reveals that copper from Great Orme, North Wales, was imported to Scandinavia from 1600–1400 BC, after which copper came from the south-western Iberian Peninsula 1300–900 BC. Many items of CG vocabulary correspond to iconography shared between Bronze Age Scandinavian rock art and warrior stelae from the south-western Iberian Peninsula, also dating to the period 1300–900 BC. Evidence for metal exchange and a shared iconography and vocabulary of warfare leads to the hypothesis that seafaring warriors were the primary agents for this long-distance exchange. We are undertaking an in-depth investigation of this hypothesis as part of a new international four-year project hosted at the University of Gothenburg and funded by the Swedish Research Council: Rock Art, Atlantic Europe, Words & Warriors (RAW).
Celtic origins reconsidered in the light of the ‘archaeogenetics revolution’
In 2016 full-genome ... more Celtic origins reconsidered in the light of the ‘archaeogenetics revolution’ In 2016 full-genome sequencing of four prehistoric individuals by a team at Trinity College Dublin became the basis for a hypothesis that a migration of Indo-European speakers entered Ireland between the Middle Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (so roughly the Irish Beaker Period, 2400–2100 BC) and their language then evolved in situ to become Gaelic. In brief, the evidence for this proposal was (1) a Neolithic woman (dated 3343–3020 cal BC) from Ballynahatty, near Belfast, whose DNA could be traced to the ancient Near East and was similar to that of many other early European farmers and modern Sardinians, and also showed admixture from western European hunter–gatherers; (2) three men from an Early Bronze Age cist burial (dated 2026–1534 cal BC) from Rathlin Island, whose DNA, unlike that of the Ballynahatty woman, contained high levels of ancestry from the Pontic–Caspian steppe with central European admixture. The Neolithic and EBA samples also differed in that the latter showed detailed similarities with the modern Irish population absent from the older genome. Subsequent studies have found similar transformations of populations—from gene pools lacking the steppe component to those with it substantially present—occurring during the period 2500–2000 BC in other parts of western Europe, including Britain and the Iberian Peninsula. The paper uses linguistic, archaeological, and archaeogenetic evidence to consider the hypothesis that the Proto-Indo-European that became the attested Celtic languages reached Europe’s Atlantic façade with the mass migration of groups with steppe ancestry at the beginning of the Bronze Age.
Slides for paper presented at the 'Brenin Arthur' conference, University of Wales Trinity Saint D... more Slides for paper presented at the 'Brenin Arthur' conference, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Carmarthen 25 May 2019.
John T. Koch*
Formation of the Indo-European Branches in the light of the Archaeogenetic Revolut... more John T. Koch*
Formation of the Indo-European Branches in the light of the Archaeogenetic Revolution
Philology and archaeology evolved in tandem for over a century in a general awareness that reconstructed proto-languages (such as Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Germanic, Proto-Celtic) and later prehistoric cultures inhabited the same world. In effect, the two disciplines were studying the same thing. However, mapping reconstructed linguistic evidence onto text-free archaeology presented a near insurmountable challenge. The widespread astonishment that greeted the decipherment of Linear B as Late Bronze Age Greek illustrates the unreliability of carefully argued circumstantial inferences, even at the protohistoric horizon. David Anthony’s The Horse, the Wheel, and Language (2007) impressed many readers, but I know of no prior adherents of the Anatolian hypothesis of Indo-European origins who changed views upon reading it. By then, we knew that ancient DNA evidence was coming. What we had not expected is that it would reveal, not incremental changes of population, but changes so dramatic that they very probably came with a change of language. In particular, this was the case with massive gene flow from the Pontic–Caspian steppe in the 3rd millennium BC, which transformed the Siberian Altai and central, northern, and western Europe. In other words, this new data seemed to confirm, for at least some key elements, the steppe hypothesis that had been constructed and won adherents on the basis of completely non-genetic evidence, rather linguistic and archaeological. There were also less dramatic negative discoveries. For example, Cassidy et al. 2016 shows that three Early Bronze Age men from Rathlin Island were very different genetically from Neolithic woman from near Giant’s Ring outside Belfast. But the men were much closer to the modern Irish. In other words, the shift at the Neolithic–Bronze Age Transition was much greater, and relatively little had happened since. The authors accordingly suggested that the Rathlin men spoke the Indo-European language that then evolved into Gaelic in situ. We can anticipate that genome-wide samples of ancient Europeans will soon number many 10,000s, filling gaps in most parts between the expansion from the steppe and historical populations speaking attested pre-Roman languages. We shall soon see whether this new evidence (archaeogenetic and isotopic) provides a conclusive advance for mapping nodes of the Indo-European family tree onto prehistoric populations and archaeological cultures. The paper will attempt a snapshot, reviewing results of some recent archaeogenetic studies and what they might imply about languages in later prehistoric Europe. What gaps and uncertainties remain? And where might answers come from?
*University of Wales, Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies
slides for Bronze Age Seminar Group, Gothenburg, 2 December 2015, based on research developed in ... more slides for Bronze Age Seminar Group, Gothenburg, 2 December 2015, based on research developed in the AHRC-funded Atlantic Europe in the Metal Ages (AEMA) project
Slides for the panel discussion 'In search of the Celts: beyond art, language and genetics', The ... more Slides for the panel discussion 'In search of the Celts: beyond art, language and genetics', The British Museum, Friday, 16 October 2015, 18.30
Fernando Fernández Palacios & John T. Koch, Gods epigraphically attested in ancient times with co... more Fernando Fernández Palacios & John T. Koch, Gods epigraphically attested in ancient times with counterparts in the Early Medieval texts from the British Isles; XIIIth F.E.R.C.AN. workshop, The 13th international & interdisciplinary conference on ‘Celtic’ religion(s), Lampeter, Wales, 17th - 19th October 2014
Indo-European from the east and Celtic from the west: reconciling models for languages in later p... more Indo-European from the east and Celtic from the west: reconciling models for languages in later prehistory John T. Koch Canolfan Uwchefrydiau Cymreig a Cheltaidd Prifysgol Cymru University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies
Linguistic and archaeological evidence suggests that Celtic branched off from Proto-Indo-European in south-west Europe, in contact with p-less Iberian and Aquitanian/Palaeo-Basque. An overview of some current theories of the Indo-European homeland reveals the limitations of the family-tree model and favours alternatives. Evidence for the Celticity of the South-western (a.k.a. Tartessian) inscriptions of the Early Iron Age (750–500 BC) will be briefly summarized. The archaeological context of the SW stelae shows a survival or revival of funerary rites of the same region (south Portugal) of the Early and Middle Bronze Age (1800–1300 BC). These rites articulate an indigenous cultural identity predating the arrival of the Phoenicians, iron working, and literacy in Atlantic Iberia, all of which occurred by 900 BC. Looking into the deeper prehistory of the Copper Age of the 3rd millennium BC, the distinctive features of the SW necropolises (e.g. anthropomorphic stelae depicting high-status weapons and reused as lids over single-burial cists at the centres of paved circular barrows) have antecedents in the ‘Yamnaya package’ of the Pontic steppes, rather than the local Beaker complex. This steppe culture, which expanded west to Hungary 2900–2700 BC, has been associated with the expansion of Indo-European languages in the traditional ‘kurgan’ theory of Gimbutas and Mallory.
Cynhadledd Fechan ar Iaith y Pictiaid
Pictish Language Mini-Conference
Ystafell Seminar, Canolfan... more Cynhadledd Fechan ar Iaith y Pictiaid Pictish Language Mini-Conference Ystafell Seminar, Canolfan Uwchefrydiau Cymreig a Cheltaidd, Aberystwyth Seminar Room, CAWCS, Aberystwyth Dydd Gwener, 21 Mawrth 2014 9.30–13.15 Friday, 21 March 2014
Formation of the Indo-European branches in the light of the Archaeogenetic Revolution
John T. Ko... more Formation of the Indo-European branches in the light of the Archaeogenetic Revolution John T. Koch University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies Draft of paper read at the conference ‘Genes, Isotopes and Artefacts. How should we interpret the movement of people throughout Bronze Age Europe?’ Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, 13–14 December 2018.
Introduction Using the historical-comparative method, linguists can recover many details of prehistoric languages. With enough of the right kind of data, it is possible to reconstruct detailed lexicons and grammatical descriptions of unattested languages. Even so, it can be difficult to determine an absolute date, geographical location, or cultural context for some of the most fully reconstructed prehistoric languages. The common ancestor of the attested Indo-European languages is such a case, and the question of its homeland has been disputed since the 19th century, through the 20th, and into the 21st. In recent years, with the availability of ancient DNA data, the situation has suddenly improved, now adding to the evidence base genetic relationships between populations in the historical period speaking attested languages and prehistoric groups. This essay works from recently published archaeogenetic evidence, drawing attention to what it might imply for some longstanding issues in historical linguistics. Seven working hypotheses are presented concerning prehistoric languages in western Eurasia. These hypotheses aim to situate speech communities in time and space, and to identify archaeological cultures and genetic populations associated with them. Hypotheses 1–6 deal with particular nodes and splits on the tree model of the Indo-European macro-family, the seventh with the prehistoric ancestor of the non-Indo-European language Basque.
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Papers by John Koch
This book is a study of the inherited vocabulary shared uniquely by Celtic, Germanic, and the other Indo-European languages of North and West Europe. The focus is on contact and common developments in the prehistoric period. Words showing the earmarks of loanwords datable to Roman times or the Middle Ages are excluded. Most of the remaining collection predates Grimm’s Law. This and further linguistic criteria are consistent with contexts before ~500 BC. The evidence and analysis here lead to the following explanatory hypothesis. Metal-poor Scandinavia’s sustained demand for resources led to a prolonged symbiosis with the Atlantic façade and Central Europe during the Bronze Age. Complementary advantages of the Pre-Germanic North included Baltic amber and societies favourably situated and organized to build seagoing vessels and recruit crews for long-distance maritime expeditions. An integral dimension of this long-term network was intense contact between the Indo-European dialects that became Celtic and those that became Germanic. The Celto-Germanic vocabulary—like the motifs shared by Iberian stelae and Scandinavian rock art—illuminates this interaction, opening a window onto the European Bronze Age. Much of the word stock can be analyzed as shared across still mutually intelligible dialects rather than borrowed between separate languages. In this respect, what is revealed resembles more the last gasp of Proto-Indo-European than a forerunner of the Celtic–Germanic confrontations of the post-Roman Migration Period and Viking Age.
This 2020 edition puts into the public domain some first fruits of a cross-disciplinary research project that will continue until 2023.
https://www.wales.ac.uk/Resources/Documents/Centre/2020/Celto-Germanic2020.pdf
researchers in archaeology, historical linguistics, and archaeogenetics
over the past ten years. T his team works towards the goal of a better
understanding of the background in the Bronze Age and Beaker P eriod
of the people who emerge as Celts and speakers of Celtic languages
documented in the I ron Age and later times. L ed by S ir Barry Cunliffe
and John Koch, the contributors present multidisciplinary chapters
in a lively user-friendly style, aimed at accessibility for workers in
the other fields, as well as general readers. T he collection stands as
a pause to reflect on ways forward at the moment of intellectual
history when the genome-wide sequencing of ancient DNA (a.k.a.
‘the archaeogenetic revolution’) has suddenly changed everything in
the study of later European prehistory. How do we deal with what
appears to be an irreversible breach in the barrier between science
and the humanities? Exploring Celtic O rigins includes colour maps
and illustrations and annotated Further R eading for all chapters.
Keltoi (i.e. ‘Celts’) emerge into our written records at the pre-Roman Iron Age. The impetus for this book is to explore from the perspectives of three disciplines—archaeology, genetics, and linguistics—the background in later European prehistory to these developments. There is a traditional scenario, according to which, Celtic speech and the associated group identity came in to being during the Early Iron Age in the north Alpine zone and then rapidly spread across central and western Europe. This idea of ‘Celtogenesis’ remains deeply entrenched in scholarly and
popular thought. But it has become increasingly difficult to reconcile with recent discoveries pointing towards origins in the deeper past. It should no longer be taken for granted that Atlantic Europe during the 2nd and 3rd millennia BC were pre-Celtic or even pre-Indo-European. The explorations in Celtic from the West 3 are drawn together in this spirit, continuing two earlier volumes in the influential series.
[ ¶ Preface. Our understanding of the emergence of the Celtic languages and their relationship with the rest of Indo-European still rests largely on a three-way comparison of Gaulish, Brythonic, and Goidelic. Until the discovery of the first long Celtiberian inscription from Botorrita (K.1.1) in 1970, little more than this was possible. In the coming years, one important factor for our grasp of Celtic as a subset of Indo-European will be how much Palaeohispanic evidence we can confidently include in the comparisons on which our evolving reconstruction of Proto-Celtic is based. Today, the classification remains uncertain for a large body of material from the western Iberian Peninsula outside the Celtiberian area in the eastern Meseta. The linguistic affiliation of this evidence should be more than an exercise in arbitrary labelling. We will want to know whether the evidence points to distinct branches of Indo-European that had formed somewhere else and then entered the Peninsula in waves or, rather, a pattern of long-term diversification of Indo-European in situ as a dialect continuum, along the lines foreseen by Renfrew. 1 ]
The IRC [Irish Research Council] have featured The End and Beyond on their home page!
http://www.research.ie/
What awaits us beyond the grave is perhaps the fundamental human mystery. Visionary accounts of the afterlife are attested long before the Common Era, and loomed large in the imaginative universe of early Christianity. The medieval Irish inherited and further transformed this tradition, producing vivid eschatological narratives which had a profound impact throughout Europe as well as being texts of remarkable literary and spiritual power in their own right.
This collection, comprising editions and translations of thirty-five texts together with several in-depth studies, is the most comprehensive survey of medieval Irish eschatology ever undertaken: included are sources from the Old Irish, Middle Irish and Early Modern Irish periods, and related material in Latin and Old English. A fascinating collection for anyone interested in the spiritual world of the medieval Irish, this book will also be a valuable resource for medievalists and religious historians generally.
Celto-Germanic and North-West Indo-European vocabulary: resonances in myth and rock art iconography
John T. Koch, University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies
The paper reports historical linguistic work undertaken as part of a four-year cross-disciplinary project funded by the Swedish Research Council: Rock Art, Atlantic Europe, Words & Warriors (RAW) [Hällristningar, språk och maritim interaktion i Atlantiska Europa]. New evidence tracing metals in Bronze Age artefacts has revealed that Scandinavia was in trade contact with metal-rich regions in Wales and the Iberian Peninsula. This new knowledge leads to reopening two long-known, but poorly explained phenomena: 1) a large body of inherited vocabulary shared by the Celtic and Germanic languages, but not Indo-European generally, and 2) detailed similarities shared by the Bronze Age rock art of Scandinavia and the ‘warrior’ stelae of the Iberian Peninsula. In the past, the Celto-Germanic words have been explained as reflecting contacts in Central Europe from 500 BC down to the Roman Period. However, that dating seemed possibly too late as most of the words pre-dated Grimm’s Law and lacked any earmarks as loanwords, looking instead like inheritances from-Proto-Indo-European with limited geographic distributions. Recent archaeogenetic discoveries have also undermined the once prevalent view that only non-Indo-European languages were spoken in Ireland, Britain, Brittany, and the western Iberia until ~1000 BC or later. Therefore, we now pursue the hypothesis that shared rock art motifs and Celto-Germanic words can be better explained as reflections of the ideology and language of Bronze Age seafaring warriors who brought copper from Atlantic Europe to metal-poor Scandinavia. The talk draws from a new monograph: Celto-Germanic: Later Prehistory and Post-Proto-Indo-European vocabulary in the North and West, which will appear as an open-access e-book in 2020. The highlighted CG word stock has to do with myths, beliefs, and ideology. Some can also be related to Bronze Age rock art iconography.
[Namyn y·Đuυ vchaf | nys dioferaf (‘DADOLWCH URIEN’) AND THE TARTESSIAN FUNERARY FORMULA uar(n)baan tee(e)·ro-baare |u̯araman de·ro-bāre| ‘HAS CARRIED AWAY TO THE HIGHEST DESTINATION’]
Professor John T. Koch, Canolfan Uwchefrydiau Cymreig a Cheltaidd/Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, Aberystwyth
Yn yr hen gerdd Gymraeg, mae’r bardd, sef ‘y Taliesin hanesyddol’, yn rhag-weld marwolaeth ei noddwr, sef Urien Rheged, cymeriad hanesyddol o’r chweched ganrif. Ni fyddai Taliesin yn fodlon ymadael ag Urien tan hynny, a bryd hynny dim ond i’w gysegru i’r Duw uchaf. O bosibl mae tinc anuniongred neu hyd yn oed amldduwiol [polytheistic] tu ôl y syniadaeth hon. Ond nid hynny yw prif bwynt y papur presennol.
Yn y corpws o ryw gant o arysgrifau o dde Portiwgal a de-orllewin Sbaen, angladdol gan mwyaf, sy’n dyddio o Oes yr Haearn Gynnar, mae fformiwla geiriol gydag amrywiadau. Ffurf fwyaf cyffredin y ‘Fformiwla’ Darteseg yw fel a ganlyn: {enw(au)’r ymadawedig} uar(n)baan tee(e)·ro-baare (baa) naŕkeentii. Gan ystyried y system o ysgrifennu a ddefnyddid yn ‘Arysgrifau y De-Orllewin’ mae’n bosibl trawslythrennu’r geiriau perthnasol fel |u̯araman de·ro-bāre ma narkenti|. Ar sail etymoleg a chyd-destun, fy nealltwriaeth bresennol y Fformiwla yw ‘[mae’r bedd hwn neu angau] wedi cario i ffwrdd yr ymadawedig i’r un uchaf’. Os yw’r dehongliad hwn ar y trywydd iawn, un peth diddorol yw fod y syniad a’r geiriau yn hynod o debyg i beth sydd yn nwy linell y Cynfardd: hynny yw Tarteseg uar(n)baan |u̯araman| < *u(p)eramām ‘uchaf’ ~ Cymraeg uchaf < *u(p)samo- a hefyd Tarteseg tee(e)·ro-baare |de·ro-bāre| < *de+(p)ro+ber- ~ Cymraeg dioferaf < *dē+u(p)o+ber-. Tybed ai geiriau’r farwnad Geltaidd hynaf yw’r rhain.
Rwy’n bwriadu cloi gyda thrafodaeth fer am arwyddocâd enwau lleoedd Hen Gelteg fel brigā ‘lle uchel’, Uxama ‘uchaf’, Ουαμα ‘uchaf’ < *u(p)amo-, a rhai duwiesau, e.e. Brigantia.
[In the early Welsh poem, the poet, that is ‘the historical Taliesin’, foresees the death of his patron Urien Rheged, a historical character from the 6th century. Taliesin would not leave Urien until Urien’s death, and then only to consecrate him to the highest God. Possibly, there is an unorthodox or even polytheistic ring to this idea. But this is not the main point of the present paper.
In the corpus of some hundred inscriptions from south Portugal and south-western Spain, funerary for the most part, dating from the Early Iron Age, one finds a verbal formula with variations. The most common form of this Tartessian ‘formula’ is as follows: {name(s) of the deceased} uar(n)baan tee(e)·ro-baare (baa) naŕkeentii. Considering the writing system used in the ‘South-Western Inscriptions’, we can transliterate the relevant words as |u̯araman de·ro-bāre ma narkenti|. On the basis of etymology and the contexts, my current understanding of the formula is ‘[this grave or death (understood)] has carried the deceased away to the highest destination’. If this interpretation is on the right track, it is interesting that the idea and the words are very similar to what we find in the two lines of the Cynfardd (‘early Welsh poet’): that is Tartessian uar(n)baan |u̯araman| < *u(p)eramām ‘highest’ ~ Welsh uchaf < *u(p)samo- and Tartessian tee(e)·ro-baare | de·ro-bāre | < *de+(p)ro+ber- ~ Welsh dioferaf < *dē+u(p)o+ber-. Could these be the words of the earliest Celtic elegy?
I intend to conclude with a short discussion regarding the significance of old Celtic place-names such as brigā ‘high place’, Uxama ‘highest’, Ουαμα ‘highest’ < *u(p)amo-, and some goddesses, e.g. Brigantia.]
Parallels between Iberian warrior stelae and Scandinavian rock art were noted long ago. Only recently have shared motifs been begun to be recognized more fully and closely dated to the span 1300–900 BC. Advances in linguistics and archaeogenetics allow rock-art iconography to be linked to word meanings in Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Celtic, and Proto-Germanic, most notably the extensive shared Celto-Germanic (CG) vocabulary for warfare, weapons, and ideology.
Chemical and isotopic sourcing of metal reveals that copper from Great Orme, North Wales, was imported to Scandinavia from 1600–1400 BC, after which copper came from the south-western Iberian Peninsula 1300–900 BC. Many items of CG vocabulary correspond to iconography shared between Bronze Age Scandinavian rock art and warrior stelae from the south-western Iberian Peninsula, also dating to the period 1300–900 BC. Evidence for metal exchange and a shared iconography and vocabulary of warfare leads to the hypothesis that seafaring warriors were the primary agents for this long-distance exchange. We are undertaking an in-depth investigation of this hypothesis as part of a new international four-year project hosted at the University of Gothenburg and funded by the Swedish Research Council: Rock Art, Atlantic Europe, Words & Warriors (RAW).
In 2016 full-genome sequencing of four prehistoric individuals by a team at Trinity College Dublin became the basis for a hypothesis that a migration of Indo-European speakers entered Ireland between the Middle Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (so roughly the Irish Beaker Period, 2400–2100 BC) and their language then evolved in situ to become Gaelic. In brief, the evidence for this proposal was (1) a Neolithic woman (dated 3343–3020 cal BC) from Ballynahatty, near Belfast, whose DNA could be traced to the ancient Near East and was similar to that of many other early European farmers and modern Sardinians, and also showed admixture from western European hunter–gatherers; (2) three men from an Early Bronze Age cist burial (dated 2026–1534 cal BC) from Rathlin Island, whose DNA, unlike that of the Ballynahatty woman, contained high levels of ancestry from the Pontic–Caspian steppe with central European admixture. The Neolithic and EBA samples also differed in that the latter showed detailed similarities with the modern Irish population absent from the older genome. Subsequent studies have found similar transformations of populations—from gene pools lacking the steppe component to those with it substantially present—occurring during the period 2500–2000 BC in other parts of western Europe, including Britain and the Iberian Peninsula. The paper uses linguistic, archaeological, and archaeogenetic evidence to consider the hypothesis that the Proto-Indo-European that became the attested Celtic languages reached Europe’s Atlantic façade with the mass migration of groups with steppe ancestry at the beginning of the Bronze Age.
Formation of the Indo-European Branches in the light of the Archaeogenetic Revolution
Philology and archaeology evolved in tandem for over a century in a general awareness that reconstructed proto-languages (such as Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Germanic, Proto-Celtic) and later prehistoric cultures inhabited the same world. In effect, the two disciplines were studying the same thing. However, mapping reconstructed linguistic evidence onto text-free archaeology presented a near insurmountable challenge. The widespread astonishment that greeted the decipherment of Linear B as Late Bronze Age Greek illustrates the unreliability of carefully argued circumstantial inferences, even at the protohistoric horizon. David Anthony’s The Horse, the Wheel, and Language (2007) impressed many readers, but I know of no prior adherents of the Anatolian hypothesis of Indo-European origins who changed views upon reading it.
By then, we knew that ancient DNA evidence was coming. What we had not expected is that it would reveal, not incremental changes of population, but changes so dramatic that they very probably came with a change of language. In particular, this was the case with massive gene flow from the Pontic–Caspian steppe in the 3rd millennium BC, which transformed the Siberian Altai and central, northern, and western Europe. In other words, this new data seemed to confirm, for at least some key elements, the steppe hypothesis that had been constructed and won adherents on the basis of completely non-genetic evidence, rather linguistic and archaeological.
There were also less dramatic negative discoveries. For example, Cassidy et al. 2016 shows that three Early Bronze Age men from Rathlin Island were very different genetically from Neolithic woman from near Giant’s Ring outside Belfast. But the men were much closer to the modern Irish. In other words, the shift at the Neolithic–Bronze Age Transition was much greater, and relatively little had happened since. The authors accordingly suggested that the Rathlin men spoke the Indo-European language that then evolved into Gaelic in situ.
We can anticipate that genome-wide samples of ancient Europeans will soon number many 10,000s, filling gaps in most parts between the expansion from the steppe and historical populations speaking attested pre-Roman languages. We shall soon see whether this new evidence (archaeogenetic and isotopic) provides a conclusive advance for mapping nodes of the Indo-European family tree onto prehistoric populations and archaeological cultures. The paper will attempt a snapshot, reviewing results of some recent archaeogenetic studies and what they might imply about languages in later prehistoric Europe. What gaps and uncertainties remain? And where might answers come from?
*University of Wales, Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies
conference on ‘Celtic’ religion(s), Lampeter, Wales, 17th - 19th October 2014
John T. Koch
Canolfan Uwchefrydiau Cymreig a Cheltaidd Prifysgol Cymru
University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies
Linguistic and archaeological evidence suggests that Celtic branched off from Proto-Indo-European in south-west Europe, in contact with p-less Iberian and Aquitanian/Palaeo-Basque. An overview of some current theories of the Indo-European homeland reveals the limitations of the family-tree model and favours alternatives. Evidence for the Celticity of the South-western (a.k.a. Tartessian) inscriptions of the Early Iron Age (750–500 BC) will be briefly summarized. The archaeological context of the SW stelae shows a survival or revival of funerary rites of the same region (south Portugal) of the Early and Middle Bronze Age (1800–1300 BC). These rites articulate an indigenous cultural identity predating the arrival of the Phoenicians, iron working, and literacy in Atlantic Iberia, all of which occurred by 900 BC. Looking into the deeper prehistory of the Copper Age of the 3rd millennium BC, the distinctive features of the SW necropolises (e.g. anthropomorphic stelae depicting high-status weapons and reused as lids over single-burial cists at the centres of paved circular barrows) have antecedents in the ‘Yamnaya package’ of the Pontic steppes, rather than the local Beaker complex. This steppe culture, which expanded west to Hungary 2900–2700 BC, has been associated with the expansion of Indo-European languages in the traditional ‘kurgan’ theory of Gimbutas and Mallory.
Pictish Language Mini-Conference
Ystafell Seminar, Canolfan Uwchefrydiau Cymreig a Cheltaidd, Aberystwyth
Seminar Room, CAWCS, Aberystwyth
Dydd Gwener, 21 Mawrth 2014 9.30–13.15 Friday, 21 March 2014
John T. Koch
University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies
Draft of paper read at the conference ‘Genes, Isotopes and Artefacts. How should we interpret the movement of people throughout Bronze Age Europe?’ Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, 13–14 December 2018.
Introduction
Using the historical-comparative method, linguists can recover many details of prehistoric languages. With enough of the right kind of data, it is possible to reconstruct detailed lexicons and grammatical descriptions of unattested languages. Even so, it can be difficult to determine an absolute date, geographical location, or cultural context for some of the most fully reconstructed prehistoric languages. The common ancestor of the attested Indo-European languages is such a case, and the question of its homeland has been disputed since the 19th century, through the 20th, and into the 21st. In recent years, with the availability of ancient DNA data, the situation has suddenly improved, now adding to the evidence base genetic relationships between populations in the historical period speaking attested languages and prehistoric groups.
This essay works from recently published archaeogenetic evidence, drawing attention to what it might imply for some longstanding issues in historical linguistics. Seven working hypotheses are presented concerning prehistoric languages in western Eurasia. These hypotheses aim to situate speech communities in time and space, and to identify archaeological cultures and genetic populations associated with them. Hypotheses 1–6 deal with particular nodes and splits on the tree model of the Indo-European macro-family, the seventh with the prehistoric ancestor of the non-Indo-European language Basque.