Culture -- Overview, Origins, Population, War, Economics, Architecture, Time, Gender

"The idea of a Pan-European Celtic culture is a myth; rather, aspects of art and technology were shared over wide areas among diverse cultures." The Carnyx

"During the 19th century, nationalist groups in Great Britain and France took on the mantle of 'Celtic' culture as a way to unify their various movements and to identify themselves with a unique and proud history. A mythology of 'Celtic' tradition was particularly popular in Victorian England...Much of what we now think of as 'Celtic' is a creation of 19th-century romanticism -- and almost nothing in our popular image of Welsh and Irish culture can be directly traced back to the culture of the Celts who fought Julius Caesar back in the 1st century BC." Celtic

Overview

• "In the past, historians have sought to define a cohesive Celtic culture based on the curvilinear artistic style found on archaeological objects excavated at La Tene in Switzerland. Traditionally, archaeologists and historians have assumed that this material culture existed wherever Celtic-speaking people existed. However, there is little archaeological evidence to support this link.
  Many historians and archaeologists would now describe Celts as one of a number of ethnic groups existing in early Europe and would seek to emphasise the spread of a Celtic language -- a language used by amongst others, the Gauls and the Belgae." (Scottish Timeline)
  "The idea of a common Celtic culture across Europe is now regarded by many archaeologists as misleading. There are similarities, but there are also differences." (Scottish Timeline)
• "The word Celt is derived from Keltoi, the name given to these people by Herodotus and other Greek writers. To the Romans, the Continental Celts were known as Galli, or Gauls; those in Britain were called Britanni." (General History of the Celts)
• First, let's remember that there is no single Celtic culture. Even Julius Caesar, whose De Bello Gaullico provides most of the information we have about the Gauls (Celts of present-day Germany, France and Italy), says that the various areas or groups of Gauls differ in languages, laws, and customs. (Humanitas)
• "The definition of Celtic, even among the ancient Greeks and Romans, was a linguistic one. A Celtic people are a people who speak, or were known to have spoken within modern historical times, a Celtic language." (A Brief Appreciation of Celtic Art)
• "The various Celtic tribes were bound together by common speech, customs, and religion, rather than by any well-defined central governments. The absence of political unity contributed substantially to the extinction of their way of life, making them vulnerable to their enemies." (The 7 Celtic Nations)
• Celtic society was "tribal, rural, hierarchical, and familiar (using this word in its oldest sense, to mean a society in which the family, not the individual, is the unit)." (A Guide to Early Irish Law)
• "In this society the status of women was much higher than in many others, with a complex social pyramid...." (The Picts and the Scots, Lloyd and Jenny Laing, p. 57, Wrens Park Publishing)
• the Celtic hierarchy (version 1)
  • king/queen/chief
  • Druids & Druidesses
  • warrior nobles
  • commoners/freemen
  • slaves
• the Celtic hierarchy (version 2)
  • king
  • warrior aristocracy
  • freemen farmers
• "One can speak of Celtic culture and languages, but there is no single Celtic race; Celtic speakers vary in appearance from short and swarthy to tall and fair.
  Under a complicated system of land tenure, everyone's rights and obligations were carefully defined. Some of the land was worked in common for the chieftain, the priests, and the old, poor, and sick tribesfolk; the rest was apportioned as family farms. Grazing and foraging rights were shared on the common lands. Much of the tribal business was conducted at annual assemblies where land disputes were decided, petty offenders were tried, and chiefs and officials, both male and female, were appointed by popular vote." (The Celtic Druids)

Origins

• Info above and on my Celtic history pages gives most of this info.
• Some postulate Phoenician origins of the Celts.
• A few other cultures that deserve more mention:
  • Beaker Culture [3,000 BCE]
    One of many new groups of people who emerged in Central Europe during the late Neolithic. The Bell Beaker (usually just "Beaker") folk are distinguished by their drinking vessel, which gives them their name. They may have originated in Iberia, though no one knows with certainty. They emerge as an independent group around 3000 BCE.
  • Battle-Axe Culture [3,000-2,000 BCE]
    This group is characterized by a perforated stone battle-axe. "Evidence points towards origins in the steppe-lands of southern Russia, between the Caucasus and the Carpathian mountains. The Battle-Axe folk may be attributed with the initial spread of the Indo-European group of languages.
    In Central Europe the Beaker folk and Battle-Axe folk fused to become one European people. Shortly thereafter began the Bronze Age in Europe."
  • Únêtice Culture [2,000-1,500 BCE]
    "From this period onwards the line of continuity which leads directly to the historic Celts may be traced from the archaeological evidence. This is identified by the successive Únêtice, Tumulus and Urnfield cultures of the Central European Bronze Age. The Únêtice culture appears to have emerged from the fusion of Battle-Axe and Beaker peoples and their immediate descendants. The Únêtice culture became the pre-eminent culture in Central Europe by the middle of the second millennium B.C.E.. Because of rich mineral deposits and control of trade routes between the south-east (early Mediterranean cultures) and the more distant parts of Europe, the Únêtice people prospered."
  • Tumulus Culture [1,500-1,000 BCE]
    The Tumulus culture which followed the Únêtice, and from which they descended, dominated Central Europe during much of the second part of the second millenium B.C.E.. As the name implies, the Tumulus culture is distinguished by the practice of burying the dead beneath burial mounds. During this period trade contacts with the south-east remained intact and were probably expanded. The Tumulus culture flourished without any disruption of local peoples by large-scale immigration. This was to end, however, toward the close of the second millennium B.C.E., when there is evidence of wide-spread disruption which affected the "higher civilizations" to the south-east and curbed trade."
  • Urnfield Culture [1,000 BCE]
    "With the emergence of the Urnfield culture of Central Europe, there appear a people whom some scholars regard as being 'proto-Celtic', in that they may have spoken an early form of Celtic. As the name suggests, the people of the Urnfield culture cremated their dead and placed the remains in urns which were buried in flat cemeteries without any covering mound.
    From the Urnfield Culture, the Celts emerge as an agricultural people."
  • Hallstatt Culture {1,250 BCE] and La Tene Culture [500 BCE to 200 CE]
    Descendants of the Urnfield Culture, the Hallstatts were "fully Celtic. The Hallstatt culture and its successor, that of La Tène, together represent the iron-using prehistoric peoples of much of Europe. These are the Keltoi, the Galli and Galatae of classical writers. The two cultures are named after sites at which were found archaeological artifacts now considered to be representative of a particular stage of each culture. Hallstatt is a village in Central Austria at which was found an important cemetery; La Tène is near the north-eastern end of Lake Neuchâtel, in western Switzerland." (Quoted material: Origin of the Celts)
    

Population -- tribal

• Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Cornwall versus Britain -- Prof. Stephen Oppenheimer (Oxford University), in his book, The Real Eve: Modern Man's Journey Out of Africa, has a theory about the original inhabitants of Britain. He says that "the Celts of Western Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Cornwall are descended from an ancient people living on the Atlantic coast while Britain was still attached to mainland Europe, while the English are more closely related to the Germanic peoples of the interior." To support his theory, he uses genetic data that shows the Celts to be "more closely related to the Basque people of south west France and the Celts of Brittany and Spain, while the English are closer to the Germans descended from the Anglo Saxons." According to his conventional wisdom, "the split was attributed to 'migration, invasion and replacement',"; according to Prof Oppenheimer, the difference was established long before Britain was even an island. He said: "The first line between England and the Celts was put down at a much earlier period, say 10,000 years ago." If this theory is true, the Scots, Irish, Welsh and Cornish people are "descended from the original settlers, rather than later invasions...." (Scots and English)
• The British Isles -- "The arrival of the Celts in Britain is an event shrouded in mystery and myth. There is no direct physical evidence of invasion or even of immigration, but it had long been believed Celtic invasions of the British Isles were part of the north and west expansion of these Iron Age people.
  As artefacts began to be found, there seemed to be a common Celtic artistic style across Europe, with characteristic curving lines and the mingling of human, animal and plant forms. There also seemed to be other shared ideas, with an emphasis on war and weapons. Even religious beliefs were thought to be shared, with all Celtic peoples having some kind of priesthood, usually known as Druids. The Iron Age people in Britain were seen as being part of the European Celtic culture and were accordingly labelled as Celts.
  But many people now regard the use of the word Celtic as a term that serves only to hide the separate identity of the Iron Age people in Britain. We have no idea of what these people called themselves - they wrote nothing down. But it is highly unlikely that they would have regarded themselves as part of a European culture." (Scottish Timeline)
• "Gaul is the name given by the Romans to France. The name "France" comes from the Franks, one of the germanic tribes that invaded the country after the fall of the Roman Empire (France is called "Frankreich" in German)."
  Gaul is the "...Anglicized form of Gallia, which in the time of the Romans included France and Upper Italy (Transalpine and Cisalpine Gaul)." (Gaul)
• Other Tribes
• 3rd century "Scandinavians" (now called Germans, although the original Germanii was named for a Celtic tribe it means'True Men' in Gaullish) (Notes)
• Scotland (emigrated from Ireland)
• Ireland
  • Archaeological Ages of Ireland The Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age (7,000 to 4,000 BC)
  • The Neolithic or New Stone Age (4,000 to 2,400 BC)
  • Copper Age (2,400 to 2,200 BC)
  • Bronze Age (2,200 BC to 600 BC)
  • "It is likely that Roman expansion north of the Alps, and the victories of Julius Caesar in particular, encouraged Gaulish kings and chieftains to lead their peoples into Britain and on to Ireland." (Northern Ireland Timeline)
  • "The oldest foreign reference to Ireland, in the sixth century before Christ, gives it the name Ierna. Aristotle in his Book of the World also favoured this name." (The Gaels)
  • "The basic units of Gaelic society were the tuatha, or petty kingdoms, of which perhaps 150 existed in Ireland. The tuatha remained independent of one another, but they shared a common language, Gaelic, and a class of men called brehons, who were learned in customary law and helped to preserve throughout Ireland a remarkably uniform but archaic social system. One reason for the unique nature of Irish society was that the Romans, who transformed the Celtic societies of Britain and other societies on the Continent with their armies, roads, administrative system, and towns, never tried to conquer Ireland." (Irish Timeline: A Chronology of Events)
• The Celtic tribes in Britain and Ireland were as follows:
  • The Dumnonii who occupied what are now Devon, Cornwall and Somerset.
  • The Iceni, who under Boudicca rebelled against the Roman rule of ancient East Anglia.
  • The Trinovantes and the Catuvellauni were the neighbouring tribe of the Iceni, and who joined in their rebellion.
  • The Ordovices who waged guerrilla warfare from the North Wales hills.
  • The Silures likewise resisted the Romans in present-day South Wales.
  • The Brigantes were an important tribe in Northern England.
  • The Dobunni lived in the Cotswalds and the Severn valley.
  • The Caledonians inhabited present-day Scotland.
    Celtic Tribes in the British Isles, Wikipedia
• Wales
  • "The early Welsh were an association of tribes united in a common cause against a common foe; and whilst they were designated by that foe "the aliens", they called themselves "the federated patriots". In the main the Welsh were Britons. The reason why they did not continue to style themselves Britons was that they were not wholly British, nor even wholly Celtic. Some of their tribes were Celts of the Brythonic, or British, stock, others belonged to the earlier Goidelic, or Gaelic, division of the Celtic race, whom the Britons, a later Celtic immigration, had subdued and partially absorbed. The Goidels, moreover, were in great part made up of yet older, non-Aryan, peoples whom they and their predecessors had successively conquered. The Welsh, therefore, racially represent an unknown series of the earliest settlers in Britain; they are not merely Ancient Britons, but the heirs of all the aborigines of the island, from the cave-men downwards." (Wales)
• Spain and Portugal
  • "About 1200 BC the Celts came across Pyrenees in two or three waves invasions.
  • "The different tribes of Germanics and Celts in Spain where: tartiesi, mastieni, bastetani, lusitani(portuguese) deitani, oretani, contestani and edetani, ilergeti, lergavoni. layetani ausetani, indigeti, vacceo, vetoni, carpetani, cantabri, etc." (Stormfront Latin)
  • Celtic Tribes in Spain:
    • Gigurri
    • Turdetanian (probably Iberian)
    • Laietans/Layetanos (probably Iberian)
    • Tartessos (probably Iberian)
    • Ausetanos/Ausetans (probably Iberian)
    • Astures (probably Iberian)
    • Vettones (probably Iberian)
    • Sardinians (Celtiberian) -- ancestors of the Catalans and the Sardinians
    • Cantabri (probably Iberian)
    • Carpetani (probably Iberian)
    • Suessetani (probably Iberian)
    • Endetants/Erdets (probably Iberian)
    • Lactorates (probably Iberian, but in France)
      

War --

• "The bravery of the Celts in battle is legendary. They often spurned body armour, going naked into battle. Celtic society was typically more equal in terms of gender roles. Women were on more or less equal footing as men, being accomplished warriors, merchants and rulers." (Celtic History)
  

Economics --

• Hallstatt Culture was named for the cemetery and salt-mining center at Hallstatt in Austria."From about 600 BC, there is evidence of trade in luxury goods and of contacts with Greek and Etruscan cities in the Mediterranean." (Hallstatt Culture)
• "There is evidence of trade and contact throughout the Neolithic period between the trans-Alpine Europeans and the civilizations of the Mediterranean rim. With the coming of the Bronze Age, commerce between the two regions accelerated dramatically. Northern and Western Europe had something the more developed societies to the South and East needed - copper and tin, the basic raw materials for the production of bronze. The primitive tribes had it in abundance in some areas, whereas the civilized areas had very little of it." (History of the Celts)
• "Excavated graves of chieftains (in Hallstatt), dating from about 700 BC, exhibit an Iron Age culture...which received in Greek trade such luxury items as bronze and pottery vessels. It would appear that these wealthy Celts [3rd century BCE], based from Bavaria to Bohemia, controlled trade routes along the river systems of the Rhone, Seine, Rhine, and Danube and were the predominant and unifying element among the Celts." (Celtic Chronology)

Architecture --

• "Besides crafts and trade as the fundamental economic basis of the Celts, the intensification of agriculture played an important role as well. In the growing of grain, rye and oats were used in addition to wheat and barley. Leguminous plants were being increasingly grown. It has been proved that, since the Hallstatt period, man began to influence the development of cattle and horse by breeding. New breeds of poultry and sheep were imported via the trade connections. The diversity of the economic structure which was accompanied by a highly complex (and hierarchically structured) society found its expression in the character of the settlements, though these were not at all standardised.
  Nonetheless the building of houses and types of settlements was very much in the tradition of the northern Alps. Among the residential buildings, long (single or double aisle) post or stilt constructions with walls made of wattle and daub, and roofed with a construction of ridge pillars or rafters. Stables and out-buildings were usually situated separately from the residential ones. In many areas these settlements were fortified with a wall and a moat and were situated in a high position in a naturally sheltered place. In more open areas, the settlements - here usually scattered farms or a small farm groups - were protected by palisades.
  The development of such a complex society based on the division of labour resulted in the building of the earliest non-agricultural settlements. During the Hallstatt period the first forts were built which were only used as refuge for the people in case of attack and not at all equipped for permanent residence. In the La Tene period the first forts were founded as permanent residences for princes, often linked to larger, fortified settlements which had developed for the first time north of the Alps during the second pre-Christian century. Caesar called those settlements Oppida (sing.: Oppidum) which referred to a centre of production, administration, trade and religion. Their function as centres reaching much farther than the local surrounding can be seen in the various coinages of the Oppida. Celtic art was especially rich and is documented in many cases among other things with burial objects [34] (Picture [35])."
  (The Development of the Cultural Landscape in Prehistoric Times)

Time --

"The Celtic calendar was lunar based, with thirteen months. Extra days as needed were added at new year's as a "time between times." Their year was divided into eight segments, each with a corresponding festival. The four fire festivals take place on the last evening of a month and the following day because the Celts, like the Jews, count a day from sunset to sunset." (Celtic Mythology and Celtic Religion)

Gender --

"The Tuatha de Danaan were a confederacy of tribes in which the kingship went by matrilinear succession, some of whom invaded Ireland in the middle Bronze Age." (Peter Ellis, The Druids, p. 50)

I've mentioned gender several places in this report. Here are various other observations:

• There seems to be great diversity among the Celtic tribes in terms of the extent to which gender differences were socially, politically and religiously significant. In grave goods of the Celtic tribe from Picardie in northern France. male burials contained weapons -- swords, lances, and javelins, as well as some bronze personal items such as tweezers and razors, whereas female burials contained torques, bracelets, bronze earrings, and amber or colored glass beads.
• "It is striking that a field of archaeology in which a large number of the most opulent and significant sites are female burials has concerned itself so little with the issues of sex and gender.
  "...it is particularly disheartening to read in Brothwell that 'there is a constant danger of incorrect sexing, and indeed ... there is a 12 per cent bias in favour of males' (1981, 59). We may add that, in the case of Iron Age Europe, there is an almost overwhelming bias in favor of the particular scholar's list artifactually-based criteria. This leads to such bizarre phenomena as the resexing of skeletons from female to male based solely on the presence of weapons in the tomb. Grave 116 in the non-elite cemetery at the Dürrnberg, for example, contains projectile points and other weapons; although the skeleton is clearly female according to anthropological criteria, it is considered male because of the weapons and counted as such in the demographic analyses of the site (Schwidetzky 1978, 562)."
  "Iron Age Europe exposes, more clearly than perhaps any other field of archaeological inquiry, to what degree modern interpretations of ancient gender are the products of our modern-day constructs of the male and female. A simple example is the distress caused archaeologists by the inclusion of drinking vessels in apparently female burials. In 1934, Jacobsthal was horrified at the suggestion that the Kleinaspergle burial might be female, thus exposing the ancient women of Swabia as lushes the equals of their Etruscan counterparts (1934, 19). It is in the same tone of horror that young scholars and excavators react today when asked about the possibility that a burial containing weapons might be female (oral communications, Spring 1995).
  (And So Much More, From a Must-Read Article: Sex and Gender)
• Look for future info on:
  • Brehon law and women (referenced elsewhere on this site).
  • Druidesses (more coming from French sources, especially about the "island of women" or island of the druidesses or island of the old woman at the source of the Loire River).
  • Tribal Queens