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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781786830449 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Wales Press |
| Publication date: | 02/01/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 160 |
| File size: | 11 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Ray Howell is Reader in History and Medieval Archaeology at the University of Wales Newport. He has directed archaeological excavations on Iron Age, Roman and medieval sites in Gwent and has published widely on the history and archaeology of Wales.
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CHAPTER 1
Celtic Wales in its European Context
Questions of 'Celticity'
It is inevitable that a book entitled Celtic Wales has to engage with the question of whether or not it is justifiable to use the term 'Celts' to describe certain ancient European communities. This problem is the subject of much lively current debate in academia, particularly among scholars of European Iron Age archaeology. Some prehistorians argue that it is invalid to conflate evidence for material culture, the comments of Classical observers on their 'barbarian' neighbours and early linguistic evidence to create a 'Celtic' past. However, it is occasionally possible to bring together language and material culture: a prime example of how this can happen is the discovery of a 'typical' La Tene sword from Port in Switzerland, which bears its maker's Celtic name KORISIOS stamped on it.
The polarization of current opinion on Celticity is exemplified by the views of John Collis and Simon James, on the one hand, who vigorously challenge the validity of the term 'Celtic' as a means of labelling the later prehistoric European past, and of Vincent and Ruth Megaw and Barry Cunliffe, on the other, who argue in favour of 'Celts' and 'Celtic' as useful descriptors for a loosely knit but, in some ways, coherent group of ancient communities. Those opposed to this use of 'Celtic' argue their case on several fronts. They claim that the concept of Celticity is largely a construct of the early modern period in western Europe; they also protest that, as an ethnic label, the term 'Celtic' has the potential to be hijacked as a means of exclusive, separatist and, ultimately, dangerously nationalistic political determination. They also see it as imposing a misleading homogeneity on a diverse range of Iron Age cultures, and, moreover, they correctly point out that the use of the 'Celtic' label for ancient Britain is particularly problematical since it was never so used in antiquity. Caesar, for example, spoke of Britanni, not Galli or Celtae for the inhabitants of Britain in the mid-first century BC, although he also admits to the close connections between Gaul and at least the south-east of Britain.
Those in favour of using 'Celtic' for the classification of material culture argue that it is a term employed widely by ancient writers (such as Herodotus, Caesar, Polybius, Pausanias and Strabo) to describe the peoples of Gaul and Central Europe. In addition, pro-Celticists perceive the presence of sufficient commonality in aspects of Iron Age European material culture – art is perhaps the best example – to justify the use of a single identifier for this final phase of European prehistory. Furthermore, these recurrent elements in material culture seem to correlate geographically – to an extent – with evidence (from place-names, for instance) for the distribution of Celtic languages. The pro-Celtic scholars would not, for one moment, attempt to equate the Celtic labelling of archaeological communities with acknowledgements of ethnicity: such an equation would, indeed, be totally unjustifiable; ethnicity is a special problem which it is, arguably, impossible to verify by archaeological means. Followers of Celtic studies are acutely aware that groups of disparate evidence – language, material culture and the testimony of Classical writers – are not coterminous and must never be treated as though they are.
The position of the present authors on Celticity is somewhat of a middle way between two extremes. We fully accept that there are dangers is using a single term to label a chronologically and culturally diverse set of communities living in Europe at the time of the Roman conquest, and for half a millennium beforehand. Huge diversities between regions were clearly present: within Britain alone, during the first millennium BC, considerable differences in material culture between – say – Wales and south-eastern England and, indeed, between north, west and south Wales can be discerned. On the other hand, it is impossible to ignore or deny the existence of recurrent idiosyncracies of material culture that present themselves over huge areas of temperate Iron Age Europe. These 'markers' of commonality include coins, torcs (neckrings), the prominence given to the human head (in terms of both ritual treatment and imagery), the aquatic deposition of prestigious – frequently martial – objects and, above all, motifs in (La Tene) art, mainly on metalwork, including such elements – repeated over time and space – as leaf-crowns, triskeles, yin-yangs, fantastic animals and human heads. Such common features of material culture must be explicable in terms of close relationships, of whatever kind, between large tracts of Europe. Moreover, many of these 'markers' continue to feature during and after the Roman occupation, suggesting that the links survived this cultural disruption imposed by Roman imperial colonialism.
One crucial issue which, as mentioned briefly above, it is impossible to resolve is the question of self-determination. How far, if at all, did 'Celts' recognize themselves as part of a wide network of cognate communities and who, if anybody, identified themselves as Celts in the ancient world? Since the Iron Age communities in question were, to all intents and purposes, non-literate, we cannot gain insight into their self-identification. All we have is the literature of contemporary observers from the Mediterranean world, who identified certain peoples living to their north and west as Keltoi, Celtae, Galli or Galatae and – in Britain – as Britanni. So we cannot know to what extent these labels were simply external impositions or were meaningful to these people themselves. We do not encounter the same problem with the Greeks and Romans since authors belonging to Greece and Rome clearly so identify themselves and their fellow citizens. However, in voicing difficulties about using such a blanket term as 'Celtic' to describe divergent communities, it should be remembered that Herodotus, in the fifth century BC, used the term 'Greek' (as do Classicists today) to describe vigorously independent city-states whose citizens (despite a common language) thought of themselves primarily as Athenians, Spartans or Corinthians rather than as Greeks. Similarly, there seems no difficulty about using the cultural label 'Roman' to identify peoples living in regions as widely separated as Spain and the Rhineland, Britain and North Africa, despite obvious cultural differences. The generic term 'Celtic' might be equally valid to describe divergent groups with certain characteristics in common, particularly if they shared sufficient cultural features to cause their Mediterranean neighbours to bestow on them a common identifier.
Avoidance of the term 'Celtic' to describe Iron Age European communities – despite the problems of its use – causes its own difficulties which can be seen as at least as serious. Perhaps the most obvious stumbling-block lies in finding an alternative. Opponents of 'Celticism' might argue that no alternative is needed, but that answer is not, to our minds, satisfactory. Certain scholars favour the term 'barbarian Europe' to describe communities beyond the Mediterranean littoral. We would protest that such a term is, at best, meaningless and, at worst, unacceptably pejorative. Others suggest using the term 'La Tene', since the Swiss Iron Age lake-shore site has given its name to a distinctive group of artefacts and art-styles found widely within temperate Europe from the fifth century bc to the Roman conquest and beyond. But this label is equally problematical, both because it is a totally artificial, modern, label and because it can only accurately describe discrete forms of metalwork and art which are by no means universally distributed. Despite its problems, the use of the term 'Celtic' at least has the advantage of being an ancient term used by literate peoples of antiquity to describe their contemporary neighbours. Caesar begins his De Bello Gallico by commenting of the peoples of Gallia Comata, '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 ours Gauls, the third'. Purists would argue that – sensu stricto – the term 'Celts' should, therefore, only be used to identify people living in central Gaul, but Caesar is not our only literary source for the term, and other ancient writers use it much less specifically. We would argue that, as long as the Celtic nomenclature is specifically and precisely defined, it remains a convenient descriptor for certain past communities living north of the Classical world, even if it is as modern and artificial as 'Bronze Age' or 'Iron Age'.
Finally, we have to take cognizance of present-day Celtic self-identification. Even supposing that the archaeological Celts were to be nothing more than a label imposed on the past by modern archaeo-historians, it is none the less the case that today Celtic self-identification is very real for millions of people living on the western periphery of Europe (in Cornwall, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man, Brittany and Galicia). However spurious or mythical the foundations of 'Celts' and 'Celticity', it is necessary to be aware that latter-day Celts have a strong sense of unity, not only in terms of language but also in music, literature and independence from the powerful nation states of England, France and Spain.
Geography, chronology and culture
In attempting to identify a remote 'Celtic' past, it is necessary to consider the evidence from archaeology, linguistics and contemporary literature. Even when combined, these three sources of information can do no more than produce a fragmentary, elusive and distorted picture and one which has to be regarded with a degree of scepticism.
In terms of the archaeological evidence, the emergence of a Celtic material culture in temperate Europe coincides – broadly speaking – with the introduction of iron technology and the use of iron for functional objects (particularly those requiring a hard edge), such as swords, spears and knives. The Continental Iron Age has been divided by archaeologists into two main phases, each named after a 'type-site' (a findspot for a large assemblage of diagnostically distinctive material). The first phase, the Hallstatt Iron Age (c. 750-500 BC), derives its title from a small lakeside village in Austria, which was the centre of a thriving salt-mining industry during the first millennium BC. Here, at Hallstatt, a huge cemetery has been excavated, containing a wide variety of grave-goods, including pottery, weapons and jewellery. The archaeological classificatory labels for the Hallstatt period follow the chronology of the cemetery, which spans the later Bronze Age (Hallstatt A and B) and the earlier Iron Age (Hallstatt C and D). Although very little true Continental Hallstatt material has been found in Britain, the Welsh site of Llyn Fawr, with its Hallstatt C-type iron sword together with other exotic metalwork (see chapter 2) of the period from the eighth-seventh century BC, has produced some of the earliest Iron Age artefacts from Britain.
We know most about the Hallstatt Iron Age from the Continental graves of the wealthy elite, who made their fortunes from salt-trading and the control of other mineral resources such as copper and tin. Some tombs, particularly in Baden-Württemberg, southern Germany, comprised great mounds covering wooden mortuary enclosures containing the inhumed bodies of the deceased. Tomb-furniture might include a four-wheeled wagon or hearse on which the body was conveyed to the grave, together with all the paraphernalia the dead person might require in the afterlife.
The tombs of the wealthy demonstrate that the elite were essentially a warrior-aristocracy, for whom trading, riding, fighting and feasting were favoured occupations. The contents of these graves are also testimony to close trading (or gift-exchange) links with the Classical world. That women, as well as men, could enjoy high rank is shown, for instance, by the grave-mound at Hohmichele in Germany, where a couple were interred side by side, each furnished with rich grave-goods, including Chinese silk. Another rich Hallstatt burial, at Vix in Burgundy, has long been accepted as that of a woman, although some scholars are now questioning the gender-identity of the body entombed there. If it is a female grave, it is of particular interest because the Vix burial may be that of the chief who ruled at the nearby stronghold of Mont Lassois. A number of fortified high-status centres, or hillforts, of this period are known, perhaps the best documented being the Heuneberg in Germany. But knowledge of the settlements inhabited by ordinary people is sadly deficient, although the well-preserved organic remains of wood-built 'lake-villages' are recorded, for example at the Federsee in Germany.
La Tène metalwork has been identified over a very broad sweep of Europe: from Ireland to the Carpathians and from Scotland to Italy. Apart from specific weapon-types, the most striking characteristic is an idiosyncratic, highly distinctive art, decorating functional and ornamental objects (primarily but by no means solely of metal) which, although derived ultimately from vegetal, faunal and anthropomorphic themes, and despite undoubted inspiration from the Classical world, was driven by an individualistic and innovative delight in schematism, abstraction, ambiguity and fantasy. Thus, horned, bulbous-eyed human faces peer from sinuously curving tendrils; animals are transformed into monsters; realism merges with design to produce triskeles with birds' heads and seemingly abstract patterns resolve themselves into cartoon faces.
On the Continent, La Tène art had tailed off by the first century BC but, in Britain, many of the most technically brilliant pieces belong to the first centuries BC and ad. In regions on the peripheries – Wales and northern Britain – La Tène-derived art was still being actively produced in the second century ad and, in Ireland, never conquered by the Romans, the La Tène of the pagan period became the foundation for a new flowering of manuscript-art in the early medieval Christian period. Thus, the ninth-century Book of Kells is decorated with motifs and symbols, such as triskeles, which can be traced back at least as early as the fifth century BC.
Commonality and diversity
La Tène metalwork formed only a part of a distinctive 'package' of material culture that possessed considerable regional and chronological diversity. A striking aspect of this archaeological evidence, once again, comes from tombs: in some regions, notably in the Marne area of eastern France, élite burials were characterized by the interment of some individuals with light two-wheeled carts (or chariots), occasionally accompanied by the horses that had drawn them. The graves at La Gorge Meillet and Somme-Bionne in France typify this tradition. Cart-burial took place in Britain, too, being clustered in east Yorkshire: here both men's and women's graves were furnished with these high-status vehicles. But methods of British and Continental body-disposal varied greatly, both spatially and temporally. During the first centuries BC and AD, a distinctive type of prestige burial rite, occurring in certain areas, consisted of the cremation of people with elaborate feasting equipment, including jars of wine and olive oil from the Mediterranean world, together with locally made, bronze-bound buckets, sheet-bronze cauldrons and pottery. Such graves are exemplified by those belonging to Treveran noblemen at Göblingen-Nospelt in Luxembourg and to high-ranking Catuvellaunians at Welwyn in south-east England. But despite the prominence of graves like these and the earlier cart-burials, the great majority of the Iron Age population, particularly in Britain, was apparently accorded no formal funerary rites that have survived in the archaeological record; indeed many people's bodies may have been subjected to excarnation (exposure until the flesh decayed) and their bones scattered.
In terms of settlement, in the La Tène phase of the European Iron Age, people lived in various configurations of community, both urban and rural. Some inhabited large, well-fortified communal hillforts, like Maiden Castle in southern England and Bibracte in Burgundy; others in small 'villages', like Gussage All Saints in Dorset; others again in individual families farming smallholdings, like Little Woodbury in Wiltshire. There was considerable regional variety of dwelling: only in Scotland, for instance, are the idiosyncratic stone tower-houses, or 'brochs' known. In Ireland, large and so-called 'royal sites', like Emhain Macha in Co. Armagh and Tara in Co. Meath are unparalleled elsewhere. In the later Iron Age, very large proto-towns, or oppida (a term used by Caesar in his De Bello Gallico), often in lowland areas, are exemplified by Manching, which controlled traffic along and across the Danube in Bavaria, Guignicourt in the Aisne Valley of France, and Camulodunum (modern-day Colchester) in south-east England. Communal settlements like these were true urban centres, with centralized organization and production of commodities, large-scale import and export and coin-minting.
(Continues…)
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements, ix,
List of illustrations, xi,
Preface, xiii,
Map of Wales, xiv,
Prelude, 1,
1 Celtic Wales in its European Context, 7,
2 The First Welsh Celts: Iron Age Wales, 23,
3 Celts and Romans, 51,
4 The First Christians in Wales, 85,
5 The Early Medieval Period, 105,
6 Celtic Myths of Wales, 127,
Further Reading, 151,
Glossary, 159,
Index, 163,