Ancient Celts Did Not Exist...

[DecimusCaesar]

Around the begininng of this decade, Professor Simon James wrote a book about the Atlantic Celts. In this book he made the startling claim that the 'Ancient Celts' did not exist in Britain. Since then many other Professors such as Barry Cunliffe have come agree with him saying that the people who lived in Britain during the Iron Age were not Celts, claiming that there is no satisfactory evidence to prove that they lived here. In subsequent years I have seen many books, articles and documentaries stop referring to the Celts and have since started to refer to them as 'Iron Age Tribes' or whatever name the tribe living in a particular area called themselves (eg Veneti, Brigantes etc) .

 

These historians say that because there were no one calling themselves Celtic before 1700 in Britain and because there was a lack of evidence about Celtic DNA (since when were Celts a race and not a linguistic group?) that there were no Celts. Others have criticized their theories claiming it has not much to do with ancient history and more to do with modern politics, Simon James for instance refers to the dangerous rise of nationalism in Celtic countries that might break apart the UK.

Now Prof. Christian Goudineau in France has claimed that there were no Continental Celts either and many others have agreed with him. Others such as Peter Berresford Ellis have decided to support the old idea that the Celts did exist, claiming that if we took Prof. James interpretation we could also claim that many other groups of people or nations did not exist (Vikings, Anglo-Saxons etc)

 

What is your opinion on this debate? Are they right to claim that the Celts did not exist? If so does that mean a change in the interpretation of other Ancient tribal peoples (the Germans perhaps?)

 

Have there been further developments in this theory? Do more or less historians or groups agree with Professor Simon James?

[docoflove1974]

These historians say that because there were no one calling themselves Celtic before 1700 in Britain and because there was a lack of evidence about Celtic DNA (since when were Celts a race and not a linguistic group?) that there were no Celts.

 

I was under the impression that the Celts were an ethnic 'entity', just as the Germanic tribes, the Romans (of Latium, that is), the Etruscans, etc., and the linguistic group of the Celts happened to coincide with the same group?

[Moonlapse]

I understand Celtic as relating primarily to the language followed by culture, since not all Celts shared the same culture. Linguistic and cultural change tend to spread more pervasively than genetics.

 

This seems silly, it's all centered on the various subjective definitions of 'Celtic'.

[DecimusCaesar]

That's one of the reasons why this theory is so flawed, you can use Professor James definitions to call a whole number of groups exsistance to be false. Yet in a number of other ways his theory is correct there are a number of things absent between the the Celts on the continent and the one's on Britain. But weren't they different in the beginning? There was a lot of differance between a Celt from Iberia, one from Northern Italy and another from Northern Gaul.

 

Should we be using a very narrow definition of what is Celtic and what is not?

[WotWotius]

I have seen many books, articles and documentaries stop referring to the Celts and have since started to refer to them as 'Iron Age Tribes' or whatever name the tribe living in a particular area called themselves (eg Veneti, Brigantes etc) .

 

Some Ancient Britons were in fact part of the island's indigenous 'Iron age' tribes, and were of a unique ethnic stock; they just assigned themselves to the Celtic language and, to a certain extent, were influenced by Celtic culture.

 

However, you cannot simply refer to all the Iron Age inhabitants of Britain as being of the of the same ethnic origin. As with any period of the island's history, Britain at this point was a seat of migration. Yes, Iron Age Britain did have aboriginal inhabitant, but many of her tribes

[DecimusCaesar]

Even before the time of Caesar great influxes of tribes were entering Southern Britannia: evidence for this is manifests in the vast amounts of hill forts (

[Pertinax]

The trading links (via Venetii controlled transportation) to Southern Britain were heavily trafficked prior to the Caesarian expeditions, modern Poole in Dorset being the entrepot for the area ( I do not say country as such a mental construct did not exist at that time).The "Southern Tribes" had a more material culture, so making them susceptible to Roman trade (and ad hoc intelligence ) penetration. The Northern peoples tended to have wealth concentrated in cattle as a portable resource (over a wider physical range ) with "nodal" concentrations of physical strength.In Wales the lack of a culture based on physical possesion of wealth , and conspicuous consumption of goods was an underlying reason for the relative strength of resistance to Roman incursion: ie-no softening up by "luxuries" and informal contact ,and no sharp eyed merchants gathering informal intelligence.

This link gives some ad hoc points we touched on previously-

 

http://www.unrv.com/forum/index.php?showto...amp;#entry33568

 

The tribal structure of the South seems to indicate that suzerainty of a given tribe could pass to a "European" noble who would assume control of a "British" tribe based solely on personal social ranking. I think it s best to keep remembering that "Britain" as a cultural construct has no cohesive force until the Romans had colonised, I certainly catch myself projecting a Brittannic identity "backward" into this period.

 

and I think this thread touches it also:

http://www.unrv.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=3575&st=0

 

Here im talking Brigantes , but the underlying theme is similar.Dont forget that climatically the south is an easier climate , and that the Kentish weald is the most significant iron processing area in the time frame we are discussing.

[P.Clodius]

"All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae inhabit, the Aquitani another, those who in their own language are called Celts, in our Gauls, the third." De Bellum Gallicum, Caesar

 

Caesar's word is law.

[Pertinax]

"All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae inhabit, the Aquitani another, those who in their own language are called Celts, in our Gauls, the third." De Bellum Gallicum, Caesar

 

Caesar's word is law.

 

Indeed , and I suspect therefore that perceived identity is therefore adduced. As to wether these squabbling tribes could ever be a coherent entity, witness Rome's strategy in the conquest of Britain.The Belgic link to Britain is most interesting.

[Ursus]

Someone, I believe perhaps Cunliffe (though I could be wrong), said Celts is a modern shorthand for many different groups sharing loosely related languages and culture - but that this is no more meaningful than using "Latins" to lump together French, Spanish and Italians.

[Moonlapse]

Someone, I believe perhaps Cunliffe (though I could be wrong), said Celts is a modern shorthand for many different groups sharing loosely related languages and culture - but that this is no more meaningful than using "Latins" to lump together French, Spanish and Italians.

Its a stipulative argument over a stipulative term. lol

[WotWotius]

In Wales the lack of a culture based on physical possesion of wealth , and conspicuous consumption of goods was an underlying reason for the relative strength of resistance to Roman incursion: ie-no softening up by "luxuries" and informal contact ,and no sharp eyed merchants gathering informal intelligence.

 

The topic below may be of use to this discussion.

http://www.unrv.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=4000

[DecimusCaesar]

NOTE: The original thread heading has a mistake, It is Dr. Simon James not Professor as I previously stated.

 

 

I have been reading more of Dr. Simon James's work and he does make some very good points about Ancient Britain not being Celtic. The problems with his ideas still remains though. He says that the term 'Celtic' is too vague and generic and that there is no evidence of anyone in Britain calling themslves Celts and as a result the term 'Iron Age Tribes' is more appropriate. Yet this term is vague, generic, and doesn't tell you anything about the people who occupied the land. The people of that time certainly would not have referred to themselves as 'Iron Age Tribes'.

We can never be sure what they called themselves because they haven't left any real descriptions of themselves only as what the Romans referred to them (Britanii, or the names of the individual tribes).

So what is the differance therefore of calling them 'Celts' or 'Iron Age Tribes' ? At least 'Celts' sounds better.

There are numerous names that historians have coined for peoples who share similar language and culture: The Aztecs never called themselves by that name, they referred to themselves as 'Mexica' and their language as 'Nahuatl'. The same could be said for the Byzantines who called themselves 'Romaioi' yet the name 'Byzantine' was created by a French historian in the 19th century.

Seeing as the peoples of Iron Age Britain (especially Southern England) shared a common language, art, religion, mythology and culture with those on mainland Europe and that these tribes were similar, wouldn't it make sense to call them 'Celts' unless historians find a better or more appropriate term than 'Celts' or 'Iron Age Peoples/Tribes'?

I am not saying that these peoples were part of a unified political group (they obviously weren't - they were warring tribes) but neither were the Mayans, yet historians still talk of a Mayan people who shared similar traits with each other, even though they were disunited and scattered over a large area.

 

I think that Dr. Simon James said a few years ago that he wanted to stir debate in the subject and that is why he brought the idea up - and like I have said there are many valid points in his theories. Yet, unfortunately his ideas have become popular in the rest of Europe too and now French historians like Christian Goudineau have gone one step further and claiming that the Celts did not exist at all. Period. When Caesar wrote the line -

 

All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae inhabit, the Aquitani another, those who in their own language are called Celts, in our language Gauls...

 

He must have been slightly mad as he was fighting against a group of people who didn't exist. It's one thing to say that there were no Celts in Britain (which has some truth in it as Dr. Simon James has pointed out) it's another to deny their exsistance entirely when we have written evidence of the Greeks and Romans calling these people 'Celts'.

He denies there were a racial group of Celts (which didn't exist in all of Britain) and a linguistic and cultural group of Celts, so the the Helvetii, Aedui and all the other Gallic tribes had no similarities. They had nothing in common. It is true that many ancient geographers lumped the barbarian tribes of western Europe into one group which they called Celtic (this includes the tribes of Germania and numerous other entities) and that this was obviously an error on their part, yet to deny that there were similarities between the Tribes of Gaul seems odd. They were distinct from those in Germania who were part of the Jartoff culture (The Celts of Gaul were part of the La Tene culture) so it makes sense therefore to say that the Aeduii, Helvetii etc were 'Celts', or at least part of the same La Tene culture.

 

Perhaps this argument is really just about the human need to put groups of similar things into boxes so that they can become easily identifiable. Perhaps there were no Celts. Perhaps there were. What we do know is that across Western Europe groups of people shared the same language, culture, mythology, religion, art etc and that these groups might have or might not referred to themselves as Celts. We also know that many things about them, especially language and to a lesser extent culture, have survived (in an evolved form) to the modern day. Will people start referring to the 'Celtic' style art as 'Iron Age' art? Will 'Celtic' Music be called 'Iron Age' music...more importantly will the languages of the Celts be called 'Iron Age languages' ? (It's a joke among some 'Celtic' scholars today to refer to anyone who speaks 'Breton, Cornish, Welsh or Gaelic' as 'Iron Age speakers').

 

Dr.Simon James's attempt to curb Celtic ultra-nationalism is noble. All too often history is distorted to fit into an agenda for political reasons. We have seen ourselves that Ancient Rome became a beacon for Fascists in the 20th Century, yet to claim that there were no Romans seems an odd way to stop nationalism...put simply the nationalists will find another symbol if they are denied one. The nationalists would still be around even if there was 100% proof that there were no Celts, because they(the nationalists) exist due to modern grievances not because of ancient ones. It would therefore seem that instead of damaging the credibility of a tiny group of nationalists, this theory has muddled and confused our image of an ancient people. Without the label of 'Celts' and lacking a new identity, it's becoming increasingly hard to grasp the idea of who these 'Iron Age Tribes' were.

[edgewaters]

So what is the differance therefore of calling them 'Celts' or 'Iron Age Tribes' ? At least 'Celts' sounds better.

 

I think the main difference is that it clears up confusion surrounding issues of identity, culture, and so forth.

 

Not only were the inhabitants of Britain not politically united, judging from archaeological remains, they weren't culturally united either - settlements of a very different style coexist contemporaneously, in a kind of heterogenous mixture with patterns apparent only at a very large scale.

 

There are numerous names that historians have coined for peoples who share similar language and culture: The Aztecs never called themselves by that name, they referred to themselves as 'Mexica' and their language as 'Nahuatl'.

 

Yes, but it's a shame, because it tends to misguide people into not realizing the richness and complexity of the cultures of the time, or even of the nature of the Triple Alliance itself.

 

I am not saying that these peoples were part of a unified political group (they obviously weren't - they were warring tribes) but neither were the Mayans, yet historians still talk of a Mayan people who shared similar traits with each other, even though they were disunited and scattered over a large area.

 

Ah ... it's even worse with the Maya ... at least the Aztecs and Celts generally shared similar languages ... the Maya have an entire constellation of languages, 33 proper languages, up to 69 if you count dialects:

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...e_in_colour.png

 

 

Without the label of 'Celts' and lacking a new identity, it's becoming increasingly hard to grasp the idea of who these 'Iron Age Tribes' were.

 

A good case could be made to divide what is now called "Celtic" down into several distinct groups, dependant on time period and location. In Caesar's day, I think it would be fair to recognize that there were very distinctive differences between the culture that straddled the Channel, with its druids and chariots, and the culture we find in the eastern Alps or Iberia, which had neither of those things. It would be easy to subdivide down into a half-dozen different groups and thus be alot more accurate about how much cultural relationship these people were sharing.

[Ursus]

So what have we all decided, if anything? What is the bottom line? Is "Celt" still useful to describe these iron age tribes, or is it more trouble than it is worth, requiring other descriptors?