Who were the Celts

[Jesus is King]

Who were the Celts?

This is a complex question, as different people have absorbed a ‘Celtic’ identity over time.

The first references to Celts (Keltoi) were made by Greek travellers at around 600/500 BC (2,600-2,500 years ago). The Greeks were referring to people they encountered living at points along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts of Western Europe. They ultimately identified these groups as coming from an area north of a Celtic-Phocaean (Greek) colony called ‘Massalia’ (now called Marseilles) on the coast of present-day France.

There is also linguistic evidence (via the study of language) for ‘Celtic’ language in North Italy by at least 600 BC (2,600 years ago) and for ‘Celtic’ language in Spain, a few centuries later, by the 3rd century BC. Additionally, we find Celtic language on coins in southern England by the 1st century BC (2,100 years ago).

To complicate things, the term ‘Celtic’ has also been used by scholars over the last few centuries as a label for different languages, types of art, and archaeological remains which are unrelated to the original Celts from the Early Iron Age. For example, the term has been used to describe a group of related languages spoken in the western Atlantic region, as a label for western Christianity and its art, for tales written down in early medieval Ireland and, more recently, a modern political identity.

Celts have been and remain many things.

Why do we call them ‘Celts’?

Keltoi (which in Greek means ‘the shouty ones’) seems to be what these groups of people from Early Iron Age central France called themselves. The term only survived throughout the ages because it was written down in Greek texts.

From these Classical texts, we know that the Early Iron Age name/identity then transferred to their descendants in Middle Iron Age North Italy, and beyond.
Where did Celts live?

Celts were never a pan-European culture, meaning that they were not found everywhere in Europe. At their height, the texts suggest that they settled in groups from the mouth of the Rhine River in present-day Netherlands to the source of the Danube River in present-day Germany. The archaeological discoveries which coincide with the time of the first Greek mentions of ‘Celts’ reveal a number of well-documented groups living at points along river valleys in present-day northeast France and southwest Germany.

However, there was never something like a Celtic ‘empire’ or ‘state’, as Professor John Collis FSAScot, leading expert on the European Iron Age, reminds us. Instead, each Celtic ‘social group’ was independent and may have seen themselves as distinct from other groups, even between valleys in the same region.

Despite this, they were undoubtedly connected by social and economic ties. A lavish burial which took place at 500 BC (2,500 years ago) at Vix, now in modern Burgundy in France, is a perfect example of these relationships. Here, an elder woman was buried beneath a large mound with a massive metal vessel from Greece called a Krater (which could hold 1,100 litres of wine). She wore a gold torc (neck ring), a symbol of Celtic authority, and was a descendent of a series of earlier women—buried in high-status barrows (mounds)—who had connections east to Germany and Austria.
Châtillon-sur-Seine (21) Musée du Pays Châtillonnais - Cratère de Vix - 10

Detail on the Krater (Image Credit: GO69, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
What was the lifestyle of the Celts?

Most experts now agree that the ‘Celts’ in France were a matrifocal (women-led) society and perhaps matrilineal (meaning descent and inheritance were traced through the female line). This was first proposed by leading German archaeologist Ludwig Pauli in 1972 and continues to hold true in our ever-deepening archaeological analysis. The burial at Vix is an example of these powerful women in society, and many more exist both through archaeology and in the Classical texts for this period.

With regards to other elements of their lifestyle (what they ate, their beliefs, social structure, etc.), experts are only just beginning potentially to link the term with the correct sites in the archaeological record, so much of the previously written material on this remains problematic at present.

However, the ‘high status’ Vix site does give us some clues. The burial was at the bottom of a hill called Mont Lassois, on the River Seine, and crowned by a 3-hectare settlement, something like our earliest hillforts in Scotland but on a slightly grander scale. Unlike our hillforts, however, this settlement had a central roadway, enclosures, and rectangular buildings, including an enormous hall (35 m by 22 m) with an estimated interior height of 15 m. Finds from the site included wine amphorae (vessels) from Massalia, Greek pottery, and high-quality local pottery and metalwork.

The Early Iron Age Celts seem to have been very focused on contact and exchange. The Classical texts refer to what we can now see as ‘outposts’ on the Mediterranean in North Italy, southern France, southwest Spain and possibly also even in Austria. This may be linked to their control of access to the tin of Brittany in France and Cornwall in England, which we know had already been recognised as an important resource from about 2,200 BC (4,200 years ago).

This topic is now a work in progress, so keep your eyes peeled for future updates.
When were the Celts in Scotland?

If we mean the people living in Scotland during the Iron Age (approximately 2,800 years ago to 1,600 years ago) rather than the more modern ‘Celtic’ identity adopted across Scotland and Ireland, then the answer to this question is technically that they weren’t. If we go back to the Classical texts, at the time of the Iron Age Celts, we find that whilst Britain was known to the Greeks, it was not considered by them to be Celtic.

That said, there are one or two pieces of evidence to suggest that a very small number of Iron Age Celts might have settled on the Scottish coast. The owner of the Newbridge chariot, which was found near Edinburgh Airport, for example, may have been one such individual. However, generally we don’t recognise Iron Age Celts as living in Scotland.
Reconstruction of a chariot, made from wood (mostly ash), rawhide, iron and feathers

“Reconstruction of Newbridge chariot, made from wood (mostly ash), rawhide, iron and feathers, made by Robert Hurford, with ironwork by Pete Hill at Ratho Byres Forge, 2007″ (Image © National Museums Scotland)
So why do we call Scotland ‘Celtic’?

The origins of Scotland being called ‘Celtic’ are found not in the archaeology of the Iron Age or Classical texts, but rather in 16th-century linguistics. In 1582, George Buchanan, Gaelic speaker and tutor to Mary, Queen of Scots’ son, labelled the language group (of Scotland, Ireland, Spain) Celtice – a label taken from the Classical texts to make the point that these languages were older than Latin. ‘Celtic’ in this case essentially meaning ‘pre-Roman’.

This work of our first Celtic scholar, George Buchanan, was developed over a century later by the Welsh scholar, Edward Lhuyd. In 1707, Lhuyd continued to use Buchanan’s term ‘Celtic’ and further suggested, from his own analysis of the linguistics, that what he termed ‘Q-Celtic’/Goidelic (Irish, Gaelic, Manx) was earlier than ‘P-Celtic’/Brythonic (Breton, Cornish, Welsh). This idea then, that western Atlantic Europe, including Scotland, was ‘Celtic’ became established in modern scholarship. However, this was only really a label employed to describe the languages as ‘pre-Latin’.

Both Buchanan and Lhuyd considered that ‘Celtic’ language was related to migration, and that pre-Roman people brought these languages with them when they migrated to Britain. This was how scholarship explained change in the 16th-19th centuries. Most recently, however, Sir Barry Cunliffe, Emeritus Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford, has suggested that the ‘Celtic’ language groups of the western Atlantic may have deeper prehistoric origins; that they did not ‘arrive’ in the Iron Age, but may in fact have Bronze Age origins, and potentially even earlier.

As we continue to develop a more detailed understanding of the 1st millennium BC, those old ‘Celtic’ labels have been retained to this day, especially in the fields of linguistics and art history (despite us beginning to realise that this ‘Celtic’ label is not technically correct). Thus, books on Iron Age Scotland will still often use the term Celtic in their titles.

Now, as we bring together evidence from the history of philosophy, archaeology, Classical texts, linguistics, and scientific techniques like isotope studies and ancient DNA, we’re rapidly improving our knowledge of what ‘Celtic’ means in different social contexts.
Green and grey carved head of a person with a beard and old-fashioned clothes

George Buchanan memorial detail, Greyfriars Kirkyard, Edinburgh (Image Credit: Kim Traynor – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.p ... d=19060346)
What is Celtic art?

By the 19th century, when early archaeologists began working out time-depth in prehistory, that ‘Celtic’ label from the Classical texts remained a convenient way to say ‘not Roman’ – so anything understood to be pre-Roman in date was called ‘Celtic’. This even includes Middle Bronze Age field systems, named ‘Celtic fields’, but actually 2,000 years older than the Celts!

In the same way that pre-Roman languages were labelled ‘Celtic’ by 16th-to 18th-century linguists, 19th-century archaeologists called all pre-Roman archaeological sites ‘Celtic’ too, including the influential site of La Tène. La Tène is a ritual lake in Switzerland, dating from around 450 BC (2,400 years ago), with a collection of artefacts so important that it gave its name to the whole Later Iron Age period. The archaeological site was called ‘Celtic’ on its discovery in 1857. As a result, we also began to call La Tène period art ‘Celtic’ too. Despite the fact that La Tène art styles developed 150 years later than the Celts that the Greeks first identified in the 6th century BC.

As for Iron Age art, what we can say is that the Early Iron Age Celts were very interested in the ideas and art of the Mediterranean world. Etruscan (a civilisation in ancient Italy) or Greek objects were often selected for their burials, sometimes alongside locally-produced vessels with an element of geometric design.

However, after 450 BC, a new art-style developed on the Continent: a distinctive, curvilinear style employing sinuous (curved) lines, often with anthropomorphic (human-like) elements, and sometimes coral (from Italy). This is the art style that we have traditionally call ‘Celtic’, following our 19th-century naming of the whole Iron Age period as ‘Celtic’.

This is the art style that goes on to develop further in Britain on locally-made objects (such as pottery, coins, swords, mirrors, torcs, etc.) and continues to develop in Scotland and Wales beyond the Roman conquest almost 2,000 years ago. Whether we retain the ‘Celtic’ label for this art style remains a topic for debate. The people who developed the style on the Continent seem to have been the descendants of the Celts, so it’s perhaps not a major problem.

One thing is certain, as we improve our methods in the 21st century – especially tightening our archaeological chronologies in relation to the Classical texts – we now recognise the problems that we’ve created historically by having used this ‘Celtic’ label so liberally.
Two spiral armlets with animal heads at the end - one is green and one is gold

“Spiral snake armlet of bronze from Bunrannoch, 1st – 2nd century AD” (Image © National Museums Scotland)

So, having travelled through current thinking from the disciplines of archaeology, ancient linguistics, and ancient history, the important point for us to take away around the question ‘Who were the Celts?’ is this:

We now understand modern Celtic identity in Scotland as entirely real, with roots centuries-deep in scholarly linguistics, and as represented too by those prehistoric language groups themselves. However, as we currently understand it, this identity is not primarily related to the Celts of the Iron Age.

If you want to know more, you can watch the ‘Reapproaching Celts’ lecture on the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland’s YouTube channel and read the open-access article ‘Re-approaching Celts: Origins, Society, and Social Change’.

By Dr Rachel Pope FSA, FSAScot, Reader in European Prehistory at the University of Liverpool.

https://www.digitscotland.com/who-were-the-celts/