The Celts

The word keltoi (Celtic) was first used by historians of the sixth century BC to describe these people who shared a family of languages rooted in a lost ancestral tongue . Their fully Celtic descendants in central Europe were the people of the Iron Age Hallstatt culture (800-450 BC) named for the rich grave finds in Hallstatt, Austria. By the later La Tène period (450 BC up to the Roman conquest), this Celtic culture had expanded over a wide range of regions, whether by diffusion or migration; however, Britain and Gaul (northern France) seemed to have become their primary homeland. Celtic cultures had numerous, diverse characteristics, but the commonality between these diverse peoples was the use of Celtic language. There is no doubt that Christianity and the resulting Christian Community of the Celts in Great Britain was unique from that of the Romanized west. It is certain that Christianity was well established in Britain by the beginning of the third century of the Christian era and remained largely uninfluenced by Rome until the Norman conquest.

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 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.

American Anthropologist 96: 584-605., 1994

Archaeological Journal, 2019

2013

There are three main fields of study which have, at differing times, labelled peoples as " Celts " : classical scholarship, linguistics, and archaeology. Although, at the time of applying this term, the assumption has been that all peoples thus identified are related and are all Celtic, this need not be at all the case, and it therefore behoves us first to examine the criteria used by each discipline and the rigour with which the label has been applied. Only then will we possibly be in a position to define what it actually means for a people from ancient Europe to be considered Celtic, and hence which criteria to apply. At first glance, classical scholarship seems the most reliable method of deciding whether or not to admit a particular people to celticity; after all, if a geographer or historian from a literate society calls a neighbouring tribe " Keltoi " or " Celtae " , we should surely give his words a great deal of weight. Unfortunately, classical sources are not necessarily consistent with each other, neither are they all as geographically well-informed as one would wish. The earliest use of such a label is by Hecataeus of Miletus, who stated in the late sixth or early fifth century BC that Massalia (present-day Marseilles) was situated close to the land of the Celts1, and that Narbon (now Narbonne in southern France) and Nyrax were Celtic cities2. Although no complete copy of his Periegesis survives, these three town names are on surviving fragments. From the more than three hundred scraps of this work that have survived, it appears that Hecataeus, although probably not speaking from personal experience at all times, did travel by ship around the perimeter of the Mediterranean, and thus visited most of the places he discusses, supplementing this personal experience by talking to locals and sailors at ports along the way3. Various theories have been proposed for the location of Nyrax, but even without being able to identify it with any certainty, the other two towns mentioned enable us to conclude that there were people called Celts in some parts of what is now southern France around 500 BC. Herodotus, in the fourth century BC, talks about the Celts, although with a degree of geographical confusion. He states that " the Ister, beginning in the lands of the Celts and the city of Pyrene, flows through the middle of Europe. The Celts live beyond the Pillars of Hercules and border the Cynesii, who are the westernmost inhabitants of Europe " 4, and repeats much the same information in 4.41. The Ister was the classical name for the Danube, which actually rises in the Black Forest, so there has been much scholarly debate regarding

This text is a guide to archaeological information from Iron Age sites in mainland Europe, conventionally associated with people described as 'Celts' by Greek and Roman authors

Th. Stöllner, in: P. Anreiter, E. Bánffy, L. Bartosiewicz, W. Meid, C. Metzner-Nebelsick (eds.), Archaeological, Cultural and Linguistic Heritage Festschrift for Erzsébet Jerem in Honour of her 70th Birthday. Archaeolingua 25 (Budapest 2012) 551-568