The Roots of Celtic Civilisation

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The Roots of Celtic Civilisation

• The Prehistory of Europe

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The Roots of Celtic Civilisation

• The old theory about the invasion of Celtic
  peoples westward across Europe.
• Largely rejected now.
• Celtic civilisation, far from being a barbaric
  culture developed in the context of the ancient
  and largely indigenous peoples of neolithic
  Europe.

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The Roots of Celtic Civilisation

• Today we will be travelling rapidly across time
  from the remote period of c7000BC to the
  beginnings of the Hallstatt Culture in the period
  c600BC).
• Halstatt is usually viewed as one of the
  culminations of a new wealth-based aristocratic
  Celtic culture.

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The Roots of Celtic Civilisation

• By 7000BC Europe was peopled by communities whose
  subsistence depended solely upon collecting food.
  (ie they did not farm as yet).
• By 4000BC all this had changed. By then most
  European communities had become food producers.
• .

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The Roots of Celtic Civilisation

• Sometimes this explained in terms of the arrival
  of Indo-European speakers from the Caucasus.
• Farming elites came with carts (wheels), tamed
  horses and their language (Indo-European).

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The Roots of Celtic Civilisation

• They cultivated crops of grain and herded
  domesticated animals.
• This led to a sedentary mode of existence. It
  created the first village communities which were
  occupied over many generations.
• Mesolithic hunter-gatherers were replaced by
  Neolithic food producers.

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The Roots of Celtic Civilisation

• In this new package (Neolithic), we find
  evidence of ground stone tools, pottery,
  rectangular timber buildings, sheep, goats,
  cattle, pigs and the cultivation of cereals.
• This major change was originally explained by
  waves of people from Anatolia (western peninsula
  of Asia) or the Near East.

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The Roots of Celtic Civilisation

• This paradigm suggests a replacement of
  population, but today this change is more
  frequently explained as including inflow of
  population but also cultural change amongst the
  indigenous population.

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The Roots of Celtic Civilisation

• Genetic studies have tried to understand this
  problem.
• The mitochondrial DNA (female) shows an inflow of
  females from the east in approximately 20 of the
  European population, but the Y chromosome DNA
  (male) is more complex.

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The Roots of Celtic Civilisation

• In Greece and SE Europe 85 of the male
  population appears to have come from further east
  (Anatolia, Black Sea areas and beyond), but this
  percentage becomes only 15-30 in France, Germany
  and NE Spain.
• A new and more powerful tool is the study of
  ancient DNA. Early results from Germany from
  Neolithic burials of the 6th millennium BC
  suggest a population derived from indigenous
  hunter-gatherers.

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The spread of farming

• In contrast to the varied farming communities of
  south-eastern Europe (Balkans, Greece), the
  earliest farmers (c5000BC) to spread into
  temperate (mild temperatures) forests of Middle
  Europe (ranging from western Hungary to the
  valley of the Seine in France) display a
  remarkable cultural similarity.

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The spread of farming

• This area of similarity is called the
  Linearbandkeramik group. (their pottery).
• Here we find the remains of long houses, large
  villages. The expansion of this culture
  probably owes much to a kind of pioneer spirit
  as anything where a movement westwards was the
  main dynamic.

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The spread of farming

• This Neolithic culture only reached northern
  areas of Europe by c4000BC.
• The spread of neolithic farming culture to France
  is still hotly debated.
• The arrival of the same culture in Britain and
  Ireland of course requires sea-journeys on an
  extensive scale.

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First Farmers in Britain and Ireland

• It is not clear if this was the result of pioneer
  farmers or indigenous efforts to imitate. It may
  have been that mesolithic hunter-gatherers who
  had been to the continent brought back the ideas
  and the animals and grain necessary to start
  pilot schemes based on sedentary farming.

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First Farmers in Britain and Ireland

• The first signs of farming in Britain are from
  the east of the island for c 4300BC. It had
  reached Wales (western Britain) by 4000BC, and
  Scotland (northern Britain) by 3800BC.
• Basically Britain went neolithic in the short
  space of time between 4100-3800BC.
• Climactic changes may well have played a part in
  this change continued rise in sea-levels may
  have decimated traditional foraging environments.

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Language

• As already mentioned, it is quite likely that
  Indo-European (IE) accompanied the Neolithic
  surge, and way of life.
• One branch followed the route through the Balkans
  across the Great Hungarian Plain reaching Middle
  Europe. This branch probably contained the roots
  of the later Germanic, Slavic, Baltic and Celtic
  sub-branches.

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Language

• This of course was the language of the pioneer
  farmers, but the language (or its dialects) must
  have become adopted by the indigenous population.
  This is called contact-induced language shift.
• This process may have been rapid, but in any case
  the process would have occurred during the period
  4000-2500BC.
• Young men would have gained status by leading
  contingents into the European hinterlamd to find
  farming land.

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Metals

• Although neolithic implies the continued use of
  stone implements, the use of metals now began.
• At first copper and gold from the 5th millennium
  BC onwards. This implied the ability to extract
  metals from ore. Also we see the beginnings of
  high quality ceramics and other technologies. The
  use of horses for mobility brought from the
  Steppe. Wheel vehicles (3rd millennium), woolly
  sheep.

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The Corded Ware /Single grave Culture

• The megalithic tombs that are part of the earlier
  neolithic culture were used for mass graves, and
  they give way to single-graves during this
  period.
• This starts to take place c2900BC-2400BC.

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Megalithic tomb
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Bronze Age (c2800-1300BC)

• Over time, farming led to a a greater
  sophistication of production of food.
• This was a society based on livestock (as
  wealth), consumption of dairy products (this was
  the period when the European population developed
  lactose tolerance), the use of woollen fabrics
  for clothing.

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Bronze Age (c2800-1300BC)

• The large scale slaughter of animals led to
  social events such as the feast (which became
  central to Celtic civilisation later on).
• The feast itself became the focus for
  gift-giving, contracts and welcoming of
  strangers, in fact a whole panoply of
  ceremonials.
• Kingship develops or at least the concept of
  elite families and their right to control the
  goods.

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Bronze Age (c2800-1300BC)

• Paramount leaders were seen as semi-supernatural
  (or divine) beings, wielding secular and
  religious power.
• Their barrows (burial sites) became
  time-markers, ie over generations their right
  to a territory, and the right of certain families
  to rule the roost.
• All this also led to networks of exchange with
  the outside.

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Bronze Age
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Bronze Age (c2800-1300BC)

• Interestingly the first evidence of a
  bronze-using economy comes from Britain and
  Ireland. 2200-2000BC.
• Bronze is made from copper and tin. Tin is
  relatively rare, but was available in parts of
  the Islands, especially the SW of Britain.
• By 1400-1300BC bronze was being used throughout
  Europe (networks and local ore extraction).

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Bronze Age (c2800-1300BC)

• The emerging elites who controlled the production
  and distribution of bronze became ambitious, and
  their innate aggression could easily flare up
  into warfare. Many weapons were made of bronze.
• A wide area of western Europe now seems to
  conform to single kind of culture sometimes
  called the bell-beaker culture. It implied a
  rite of single burial (the ceramic beaker and
  equipment), based on a set of beliefs and values
  that spread rapidly along networks of exchange.

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Extent of beaker culture
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Bronze Age (c2800-1300BC)

• The Bell beaker culture reached Britain at about
  2800BC, and may have implied some inflow of
  people as well.
• During this period gold was mined and used for
  ornamentaion in Ireland c2600BC
• The major religious site of Stonehenge also was
  constructed and used in this period c2600BC.
  (Note Stonehedge is not a Celtic monument).

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Bronze Age (c2800-1300BC)

• The Late Bronze Age (when it reached a peak of
  perfection in artistic terms) 1300-800BC.
• This society across Europe focused on weapons.
  The warrior had become an ever-present figure in
  this period (cf the Iliad). In its spiritual
  life, there was an uniformity of belief which
  could be discerned across Europe.

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Bronze Age
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Bronze Age (c2800-1300BC)

• An important development at this time was the
  change from inhumation (burying the body) to
  cremation after 1300BC. This is called the
  Urnfield culture.
• This must have implied a religious shift with
  different attitudes to the dead. Earth versus sky?

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The Urnfield culture
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From Urnfield to Halstatt
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The Iron Age c1500BC

• In Europe, the use of iron is first found in
  Greece. It was soon used by the Hittite
  civilisation (a Hittite iron dagger was found in
  Tutenkhamuns tomb c1327BC).

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HUB OF IRON AGE CELTIC CIVILIZATION.
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IRON AGE CELTIC LANGUAGES
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