Kirsten Wellman

Hall: "Ethnicity in the Classical World"

Term Paper

Celtic Ethnicity: Fact or Fiction?

Insert paragraph here about who the Celts were, where they lived, etc, and then question the general belief that they were one homogonous people.

*Break the paper into sections based on Renfrew's catagories of ethnicity

The Celts, the so-called 'hidden people,'1 were indeed enigmatic. Who were they? What did they tell us about themselves? And more importantly, what did they call themselves? To answer these questions if posed about other ancient peoples, one might look to their histories and literature. Unfortunately, in the case of the Celts, they left no written works to be studied by modern scholars. It is not a matter of written materials not surviving the centuries, but rather a matter of written materials never existing. After contact with the Mediterranean world, the Celts did use the Greek script on occasional religious or funerary inscriptions and to keep records of business transactions. However, they never committed their histories, folklore, poetry, or religious practices to writing, preferring to rely strictly on their oral tradition. Julius Caesar is the only author to address this lack, speculating that "they [did] not wish the rule to become common property, nor those who learn the rule to rely on writing and so neglect the cultivation of the memory."2

With no input from the Celts3 themselves, therefore, establishing an ethnic identity for them or proving that they did not have one, is a difficult and controversial challenge. By default, the only sources left to modern scholars to study are the writings of the Greeks and Romans, and the evidence in the archaeological record. The greatest shortcoming of the latter is that it is incomplete because of the varying conditions in which materials are preserved. Only in rare circumstances are delicate items such as textiles, bodies, wood, and writing materials preserved, making a thorough study of archaeological remains impossible. The problem with Greek and Roman works is that the authors were frequently biased, were writing without first-hand knowledge, and were often promoting some agenda of their own without strict attention to details. Nonetheless, with virtually no other sources to go on, scholars must utilize these materials to try to draw some conclusions about the identity of the Celts.

The next roadblock in studying the ethnicity of the Celts comes from the very idea of ethnicity itself. There is no standard of universal characteristics that apply to and thus identify all ethnicities. There are, however, certain similarities that can be loosely used when examining them. In Cultural Identity of the Roman Empire, R. Laurence lists Colin Renfrew's eight guidelines for identifying an ethnicity: 1) shared territory or land, 2) common descent, 3) shared language, 4) a community of customs, or culture, 5) a community of beliefs, or religion, 6) a name, an ethnonym, to express group identity, 7) self-awareness, or self-identity, and 8) a shared history, or myth of origin.4 By studying the presence of these eight characteristics in the Celtic world, the argument regarding the ethnicity of the Celts may be more easily addressed.

To analyze the idea of common descent and the idea of a shared history, one must examine the historical origins of the Celts. The most generally accepted idea is that they derived from the Bronze Age Urnfield culture of Central Europe which had itself descended from an earlier tumulus culture.5 Both cultures were defined archaeologically by their burial methods, namely inhumations in tumuli and cremations in urns. These people, often termed Proto-Celts because they are thought to have spoken an early form of the Celtic language, spread across southern France and into Spain.6 As the Proto-Celts were migrating, the similar Hallstatt culture arose in that same area between the Danube and Rhine rivers.7

The Hallstatt culture, named for one of the earliest discovered sites in Austria, is divided into four periods, A, B, C, and D. Hallstatt A and B, lasting roughly from 1200 to 800 BCE, were Late Bronze Age civilizations.8 They were characterized by a lack of major centers of power and by the establishment of vast trading networks. The people were organized into petty chiefdoms sometimes centered around hillforts, usually consisting of farms and small villages. The Iron Age ushered in Hallstatt C around 800 BCE; with the introduction of iron came a greater growth in the construction of hillforts and a greater wealth of goods traded into Celtic lands.9 People began to be ruled by kings at this time, the dead were buried with more costly goods in tumuli, and many of the graves of wealthier or more powerful people began to contain chariots as well.10 The period of Hallstatt D, which lasted from about 600 to 475 BCE, saw an increase in trade and a shift in the trade routes to the west, most likely because of the presence of the Greek colony Massilia. Due to increased commercial and cultural relations between the Celts and the Greeks and Etruscans, Hallstatt culture began to evolve into what is now called the La Tene culture, characterized by curvilinear art, especially in pottery and metalwork. La Tene Celtic society developed a more cohesive form of government, proto-towns and proto-states arose, and agricultural methods improved.11 Once again, the trade routes shifted, this time closer to the Etruscans and the Alps, and soon thereafter, Celts began migrating over the Alps to settle in the Mediterranean world.

The spread of Celtic culture to the extremities of Europe, especially into Spain and the British Isles, is usually attributed to a migration of the La Tene Celts. Colin Renfrew, however, argues that this does not necessarily have to be the case.12 The archaeological record provides evidence of the wide-reaching trade routes across western Europe, and it is certainly plausible that the more sophisticated Celtic culture was spread in waves by commercial means rather than by invasion. Because Celtic artefacts can be found all across Europe from a very early period, it is hard to prove archaeologically whether the so-called proto-Celtic Urnfield culture migrated to the far reaches of western Europe and spread Celtic culture via their trade routes, or if La Tene Celts were the culture-spreading invasion force.

The answer most likely lies somewhere in between. Because there is a lack of evidence to suggest a La Tene period invasion, the Celts may very well have been established across most of western Europe in the Hallstatt period. Archaeologists know that they had far-reaching trade connections; for example, Egyptian faience beads have been found in Ireland.13 La Tene culture, then, may have spread easily along these commercial routes to the far corners of the Celtic world. The Celts would have had no reason to invade parts of Spain or Britain if they were already established there. This explanation seems to be in keeping with the archaeological remains of La Tene age Britain in that the artefacts appear to be local renditions of La Tene works, rather than actual La Tene artefacts, indicating that the La Tene style was an import, and not the result of an invasion.

The origin of the Celts as related above is largely a theoretical recreation by archaeologists, anthropologists, and linguists from the physical and linguistic remains of the Celts. The only ancient written sources that mention the origin of the Celts are steeped in mythology. One such story, related by Diodorus Siculus, claims that the king of Celtica had a beautiful and haughty daughter who refused all of her suitors because she felt that they were unworthy of her. However, Herakles paid her a visit, and she was so awed by "his prowess and bodily superiority" that she finally agreed to marry him. She bore Herakles a son named Galates "who far surpassed all the youths of the tribe in quality of spirit and strength of body."15 When he became a man, Galates conquered the neighboring tribes and called his people Galatians or Gauls after himself.

Diodorus does not mention where Celtica was, if such a place ever existed, but Dio Cassius does in relation to the Aquitani tribe, stating that they "dwell next to Celtica, and their territory extends right along the Pyrenees to the ocean."16 Given his description, Celtica would have presumably been that part of Gaul said by Caesar to be inhabited by the Galli, or Keltoi or Galatai to the Greeks.

Diodorus' story is, however, told from the Greek perspective, and the Greeks were known to create Greek origins for the non-Greek peoples they encountered. But because the ancient Celts did not commit their history and traditions to paper, so to speak, there is no record of their own ideas of their origins until well after the end of the Classical world. The myth cycles of Ireland, first written down in about the eighth century AD, relate the tale of the supposed origins of the Irish people. They are really the only known stories of the origins of any Celtic people as told by Celts themselves. Similar mythologies undoubtedly existed on the continent and in Britain, but they were lost in the centuries of Romanization in those areas. Because Ireland remained relatively untouched by the outside world until the coming of the Christian missionaries in the fifth century AD,17 many scholars believe that the stories that make up the Irish myth cycles are windows into the past. Even though the stories were Christianized to some extent by the monks who recorded and copied them,18 they still represent ancient renditions of the traditional history of the Irish people.

The Book of Invasions tells how Ireland was populated, first by mythical people from the Mediterranean, then by the Fir Bolg, a race of barbaric creatures, and then by the Tuatha De Danann, who later became the gods and goddesses of Ireland.19 The last invaders were the sons of Mil, the Milesians, a race of mortals thought to have originated in Spain.20 The Tuatha were forced to retreat underground where they were transformed over time into deities and finally into the fairies of the sidhe found in Irish folklore.21 These stories are obviously deeply entrenched in myth, but the grain of truth at their root may be the series of invasions, one or more of which brought the Celts into Ireland in a period so shrouded by the mists of time that it had become little more than legend.

But who really were the Celts? When one speaks of Celtic peoples, they are usually referring to those who spoke some dialect of 'Celtic,' an Indo-European language. A handful of fragmentary inscriptions exist from across Europe indicating that most people in northern Europe did indeed speak a form of a Celtic language.22 But just as culture does not necessarily spread only through migrations, neither then does language. The existence of a Celtic language from northern Spain to the British Isles to the Italian Alps and even into Asia Minor is usually explained as the result of an invasion force of La Tene Celts. Granted, the presence of the Celts in Asia Minor was indeed the result of an invasion, but it occurred late in the history of the Celts when Celtic speakers had already been established across Europe for centuries. The fact that a Celtic language was so widespread is very probably the result of an early migration of people across Europe, but it is virtually impossible to prove how or when it happened.

There is a small problem if one views the spread of Celtic languages as one mass movement, whether through invasion or trade. A handful of Celtic languages survive today, primarily from the British Isles, and they fall into two distinct groups, Brittonic and Goidelic. The Brittonic languages, also know as p-Celtic, are Welsh, Breton, and Cornish, and the Goidelic languages, also known as q-Celtic, are Irish, Manx, and Scots-Gaelic.23 The difference between p- and q-Celtic arises from an early sound substitution. For example, "the q-Celtic word for 'head' or 'top' is ceann; the p-Celtic is penn."24 There is no way of knowing when this split occurred, though it seems likely to be strictly an insular phenomenon. From what little survives of the written Gaulish language,25 it appears to have been Brittonic.26

Traditional scholarship holds that a q-Celtic language was the earlier form of the language, with a p-Celtic language being introduced by later Celtic invaders.27 It seems more logical, however, that a form of p-Celtic was spoken on the continent and originally in Britain and Ireland. At some unknown point in time, though, the Irish language evolved into a q-Celtic language. Its presence on the Isle of Mann and in Scotland is probably due to the Irish invasions into those parts in late first millennium AD. Tradition has it that Scotland was inhabited by Picts, who may or may not have been Celtic or even Indo-European, and that some of the Dal Riata, an Irish clan, crossed over the North Channel from northern Ireland, invaded eastern Scotland, and eventually swallowed up the Picts, thus introducing a q-Celtic language to the area.28 At any rate, while language may not necessarily be transferred by means of invasion, in this instance, it certainly may have been.

Based on the few inscriptions of Celtic writing29 that survive, scholars are relatively certain that some form of a Celtic language was indeed spoken across most of Celtic Europe. Language, however, is not necessarily indicative of a cohesive or even similar culture or ethnicity. Arabic, for example, is a modern language that crosses a number of cultural and ethnic boundaries; there is no reason "Celtic" could not have done the same.30

If language, however, does not define the Celts, then perhaps a unifying factor can be found in their name. The earliest reference to the Celts comes from Hecataeus of Miletos who called them Keltoi. He mentioned them only in passing as a people who lived in the vicinity of the Greek colony Massilia.31 Herodotos was the next to mention them as the second most westerly people in Europe, and he also called them Keltoi.32 Several centuries later, in recording his exploits in Gaul in the first century BC, Caesar wrote that "Gaul is a whole divided into three parts, one of which is inhabited by the Belgae, another by the Aquitani, and a third by a people called in their own tongue Celtae, in the Latin Galli."33 He goes on to describe the territory held by these three peoples, which places the Belgae along the northeastern coast of France and in the Low Countries, the Aquatani in the Aquitaine, roughly the southwestern corner of France, and the Galli everywhere else between. Interestingly enough, he states that "all...are different in language, institutions, and laws"34 whereas they are generally all seen as Gauls by modern scholars.

Diodorus Siculus, also writing in the first century BC, said that Gaul was inhabited by many different tribes of which the Keltoi, living near Massilia, were one. Diodorus mentioned that all the other tribes were known as Galatai, or Galli to the Romans. Strabo, writing in the first century AD, repeated Caesar's division of Gaul, but also said that the Greeks mistakenly called all of the people there Keltoi. Pausanius, a second century AD author, wrote that "it was only late before the name 'Gauls'35 came into vogue; for anciently, they were called Celts both amongst themselves and by others."36 An even later writer, Dio Cassius, routinely refers to the Germans as Celts.37

Obviously, there was some confusion even in the ancient world as to how to refer to the tribes of western Europe. It seems likely that Keltoi was the self-applied name of a tribe or a group of tribes in the vicinity of Massilia with whom the Greeks initially had contact. The name was probably then ascribed to other tribes in the area who spoke a similar language and had similar cultural traditions, and then to the Celtic tribes as a whole, whether in Spain, Gaul, or Galatia.

However, there is no evidence that the people we now call the Celts ever had a name to refer to themselves collectively, or, for that matter, that they even thought of themselves collectively. Ancient authors recorded a large number of tribal names used by the people in Gaul, Britain, and even Germany. It is far more likely that these people identified themselves on a strictly tribal basis, and not as a cohesive people.

This may be most clearly illustrated by the interactions between the Celts and the Romans. When Caesar invaded Gaul, the southern portion had been a province for well over a century.38 The Celts who lived there were, at times, rebellious and restful, but not all of them were opposed to living under Roman law. They at least had a taste for Roman and Greek luxuries because thir burials often contain such goods.

The tribes in Britain were much the same. For example, Cartimandua, queen of the Brigantes of northern Britain, turned over the Celtic rebel Caratacus to the Romans rather than harbor him as a fugitive.39 She had been made a client-queen by the Romans, and even during the Boudican rebellion of AD 60 when her aid might have succeeded in driving the Romans from Britain, she remained loyal to Rome.40 Had the Celts, or even the British, had some sense of unity, one would think that they might have joined forces to fight the Roman invaders, but they did not. It seems that the Celts had very strong ties to their tribes, but not necessarily to there neighbors. Many ancient authors wrote that the Celts were given to fighting among themselves, and this divisiveness made them easier to conquer.

Despite their political differences and tribal squabbles, the Celts did have a unique material culture. Greek authors described Celtic shields as being oblong and roughly half as tall as a man. This fact is supported by a number of archaeological finds all across Europe41; the shields were generally of wood construction with bronze or iron fittings, and almost all of them had a wooden mid-rib reinforced with iron designed to absorb the force of a blow.42 A boss on the outer face of the shield above the mid-rib further strengthened it, and Diodorus wrote that the bosses were usually surrounded by painted or embossed animal motifs which had been "skillfully worked with an eye not only to beauty but also to protection."43

Celtic swords seem to have undergone a great deal of change in size and shape in the course of their history, but most Classical authors commented on their uncommon length. Diodorus wrote that "they carry long broadswords which are hung on chains of iron or bronze" in place of a short sword such as the Greeks carried, 44 and Polybius added that these swords were "only good for a cut and not a thrust."45 Archaeological finds back up these statements, revealing that the short, broad bronze swords of the Hallstatt period were replaced by longer, sharper iron swords whose blows, as Polybius stated, were intended to dismember, not just to cut. The Celts also fought with a variety of spears or javelins, the weapon of choice when fighting from a chariot.

The early Celts often utilized chariots in warfare; they held two men, a driver and a warrior. The driver would bring the chariot into the fray while the warrior kept the enemy at bay with spears. Once in the middle of the battle, the warrior would step out of the chariot to fight with his sword while the charioteer retreated to the sidelines, ready to rescue the warrior if need be.46 Chariot warfare seems to have fallen by the wayside on the continent by the time of Caesar's invasions into Gaul. The Gauls had taken to fighting from horseback, and they were so effective that even Caesar made use of them in his campaigns in Gaul.47 In Britain, however, the chariot was still very much in use when Caesar landed there in 55 BC.48 Because of Britain's insularity, it was often slower to follow the trends on the mainland. In Ireland, scholars believe that the use of chariots, along with La Tene culture in general, existed until the arrival of Christianity in the fifth century AD.

In fact, Ireland is a wealth of information about general Celtic society because the island was undisturbed by outside invasions when the rest of the Celtic world was falling under Roman rule. The literature preserved in Ireland reveals a great deal about Celtic society, from clothing styles, to marriage laws, to religious beliefs. This information has been extrapolated onto Celtic society as a whole, and it seems to be mostly in accord with the observations of ancient authors on the subject. The main sticking point, however, seems to be religion. Like the reciprocal religions of the Greeks and Romans, Celtic religion also involved making sacrifices to propitiate or bribe the gods. While the names and exploits of many Irish deities are preserved in literature, names of deities elsewhere in the Celtic world are found only occasionally in inscriptions. According to Ramon Jimenez, "the names of over four hundred deities have been identified, although only a quarter of them occur more than once, suggesting that the majority were local or tribal."49 Because of this, only the Irish appear to have a distinct pantheon. Presumably, the Celts in Britain and on the continent had similar pantheons, but there is simply not enough extant information to know for sure.

Returning to Renfrew's eight characteristics of an ethnicity, the Celts do not seem to exemplify any more than two of them at best. The first of the characteristics, shared territory, would have to include a tremendous amount of land if one were to consider the people commonly referred to as Celts as one ethnic group. 'Their' territory stretched from northern Spain to the eastern Alps, from the British Isles to Italy, and included a bit of land in central Asia Minor. This vast territory was held by Celtic speakers who possessed a Celtic material culture, but this land was almost certainly not 'shared' by these people. Classical sources and mythology record numerous squabbles between local tribes, usually over land or cattle. If any land was considered shared, it was probably only the land held by individual tribes or tribal confederations. Even in isolated Ireland, the island was split up into what were essentially provinces which were further subdivided by the tribes living there.

Renfrew's second point, the idea of common descent, only seems to be applicable to the Irish, namely because theirs is the only surviving account. Their story of common descent, The Book of Invasions, is strictly a tale of Irish origins, after all, not Celtic origins. Similar stories may have existed elsewhere in the Celtic world, but they have not survived to the present day either because the Celts would not commit them to writing and because no classical author saw fit to do so, or if they were indeed recorded, because the text has simply been lost. Whatever the case, it seems likely that such myths of descent, if they ever existed, would have detailed the origins of certain tribes or perhaps groups of tribes rather than the Celtic people as a whole, as Diodorus described.

In regard to shared language, the third characteristic, one could argue that the Celts did indeed have that point in their favor in regard to being labeled an ethnic group. It seems highly unlikely, however, that they spoke the same language or even recognizable dialects of the same language. The Celts in Spain would probably have been hard pressed to understand the Galatians of Asia Minor, and vice versa, because of the native Iberian and Greek influences on their languages. Even the Welsh and Irish may have found it hard to communicate; the modern forms of their languages are obviously different, and presumably in the ancient world, they were clearly distinct as well. The Celts were simply too widespread a people to not have developed regional dialects and other differences in their language. In other words, certain groups of Celts probably had a shared a language, but the Celts as a whole did not. 'Celtic' may have been as broad a group of languages as romance languages are today.

Shared culture is Renfrew's fourth guideline, and of all the other characteristics of ethnicity, this one makes the strongest case for the Celts. Across the Celtic world, the people did seem to share a similar material culture. If we are to believe the ancient authors, the Celts dressed similarly and had unique hairstyles.50 The archaeological record reveals that they had a distinctive style of jewelry, artwork, and weapons. The artefacts vary from site to site, but do they have unifying features, for example, the spiral patterns known as triskeles and the stylization of human and animal forms.51

The structure of Celtic society seems to have been generally uniform as well. At the top of the social ladder were the tribal kings. Initially, kingship was be a hereditary title, but later in history, kings were elected by the aristocrats of the tribe for merit rather than for their bloodlines.52 The majority of people in Celtic society probably fell into a free class.53 They filled the typical occupational roles; many were farmers or herders, and others were specialized laborers, such a s blacksmiths, artisans, and so on. A special class of free people in Celtic society were the Druids who could be found from the British Isles to Asia Minor. While they are often thought of as serving strictly a religious function, they were actually also historians, philosophers, astronomers, physicians, and lawyers.54 Another widespread special class in Celtic society were the bards. Similar to the Greek and Roman counterparts, they sang and recited poems, accompanying themselves on small harps, and composed material of their own to preserve the lore of their tribes.55

The role of women, children, and slaves is difficult to account for in Celtic society because very little information was recorded about them. Slaves were certainly accounted for by classical authors and in the Brehon laws of early Christian Ireland, but very little else is known about them. Children are also mentioned by the Brehon laws in reference to the break up of a marriage, but they are only marginally visible in the archaeological record elsewhere in the Celtic world.56 In Ireland, the status of women, and men for that matter, in society was based on wealth. In the British Isles, women are known to have held the 'kingship' in their own right. Medb, the fictional queen of Connacht, is attested to in the Tain Bo Cuailgne, and Macha Mong Ruadh is listed as the female high 'king' of Ireland in the fourth century BC.57 Britain was home to the most well-
known Celtic queens, Cartimandua and Boudica. Female leaders of Celtic tribes are mentioned elsewhere in classical literature, but the references are rare.

Likewise rare are clear references to Celtic religion. As mentioned above, the Celtic deities seem to have been localized with few, if any, universal gods. Of their actual religious practices, aside from accusations of human sacrifice, very little is known, and certainly not enough to make sweeping statements about the Celts as a whole. Very likely, their practices were as localized as their gods. Thus, Renfrew's fifth characteristic, a shared religion, does not entirely apply to the Celts.

Despite claims by ancient authors that the Celts referred to themselves as Keltoi, scholars have no definitive evidence to prove that this was case. In fact, they have no evidence whatsoever that the Celts even used a term to describe themselves as a people. They certainly identified themselves on a tribal level, but even a sense of regional unity breaks down if one examines the history of the Celts. So, essentially, the sixth and seventh guidelines for identifying an ethnicity, a group name and self awareness as a group, also do not hold up when studying the Celts.

The last of the guidelines, a shared history or a myth of origin for the Celts, simply can not be proved because too little information exists either to credit or discredit it. Only the Irish wrote down the tale of their origins, leaving scholars with nothing more than the speculation that such tales once existed for the rest of the Celtic world.

The evidence, or rather the lack thereof, of a single Celtic ethnic identity is specious at best. That is not to say, however, that several ethnicities did not exist in Celtic society. Because it lasted for nearly a millennium in Europe, and perhaps even longer on its fringes, especially in Ireland, group identities that one might label as ethnic undoubtedly did exist, and certainly changed over time. For example, the people in Britain in 150 BC led very different lives than those in 150 AD. The Celts and Iberians were most likely decidedly different peoples, and even after they merged to become the Celtiberi of classical history, they were no longer strictly Celts or Iberians. Whether or not these peoples actually were or became ethnic groups is still open to debate.

The Galatians, on the other hand, who invaded Asia Minor in the third century BC, probably could be named a Celtic ethnic group unto themselves, if for no other reason than the difference between themselves and their neighbors. Also, after a generation or two in Asia Minor, they could claim their exodus from Gaul as a myth of origin and common descent. They certainly had a language, culture, and religion that were distinct from other in Asia Minor at the time. The territory ceded to them by the Hellenistic kings serves as their shared territory. And they may even have had a collective name for themselves, even if it was borrowed from the Greeks. While they initially kept to themselves, the Galatians were eventually subsumed by Greek culture in Asia Minor. Their name, however, seems to have carried on as the Galatians to whom St. Paul addressed his letters. This in itself is an indication that the Galatian people at some time in their history recognized themselves as 'Galatians.'

Because of the lack of evidence, both written and archaeological, it is difficult to explore the ethnicity of other groups of people within the Celtic world. As K. Goudriaan states in Ethnicity in Ptolemaic Egypt, "ethnic groups only persist as long as there are significant differences in behavior" between peoples.58 And in the Celtic world, scholars simply do not have enough information to determine how great the differences were from tribe to tribe or from one area to another.

In the end, it is probably safe to say that the Celts did not have an ethnic identity as set out by Renfrew's logical and reasonable guidelines. Should information come to light regarding how they referred to themselves and to one another, or regarding their thoughts on their own origins, then this statement might need revision. In light of this idea that the Celts were not an ethnic group, however, a clearer definition for the term 'Celtic' as it refers to the ancient world should be established. Rather than calling the tribal peoples of northern Europe 'Celtic,' they should perhaps be referred to as speakers of a Celtic language or people who have a Celtic material and/or traditional culture. To call the people themselves 'Celtic' is to imply a unity, both ethnic and political, that simply did not exist.