'Celtic from the West' theory
A map of Europe in the Bronze Age, showing the
Atlantic network in red
In the late 20th century, the Urnfield-Hallstatt theory began to fall out of favour with some scholars,
which was influenced by new archaeological finds. 'Celtic' began to refer primarily to 'speakers of Celtic
languages' rather than to a single culture or ethnic group.[11] A new theory suggested that Celtic
languages arose earlier, along the Atlantic coast (including Britain, Ireland, Armorica and Iberia), long
before evidence of 'Celtic' culture is found in archaeology. Myles Dillon and Nora Kershaw
Chadwick argued that "Celtic settlement of the British Isles" might date to the Bell Beaker culture of
the Copper and Bronze Age (from c. 2750 BC).[53][54] Martín Almagro Gorbea (2001) also proposed that
Celtic arose in the 3rd millennium BC, suggesting that the spread of the Bell Beaker culture explained
the wide dispersion of the Celts throughout western Europe, as well as the variability of the Celtic
peoples.[55] Using a multidisciplinary approach, Alberto J. Lorrio and Gonzalo Ruiz Zapatero reviewed and
built on Almagro Gorbea's work to present a model for the origin of Celtic archaeological groups in
Iberia and proposing a rethinking of the meaning of "Celtic".[56]
John T. Koch[57] and Barry Cunliffe[58] have developed this 'Celtic from the West' theory. It proposes that
the proto-Celtic language arose along the Atlantic coast and was the lingua franca of the Atlantic Bronze
Age cultural network, later spreading inland and eastward.[11] More recently, Cunliffe proposes that
proto-Celtic had arisen in the Atlantic zone even earlier, by 3000 BC, and spread eastwards with the Bell
Beaker culture over the following millennium. His theory is partly based on glottochronology, the spread
of ancient Celtic-looking placenames, and thesis that the Tartessian language was Celtic.[11] However,
the proposal that Tartessian was Celtic is widely rejected by linguists, many of whom regard it as
unclassified.[59][60]
'Celtic from the Centre' theory
Celticist Patrick Sims-Williams (2020) notes that in current scholarship, 'Celt' is primarily a linguistic
label. In his 'Celtic from the Centre' theory, he argues that the proto-Celtic language did not originate in
central Europe nor the Atlantic, but in-between these two regions. He suggests that it "emerged as a
distinct Indo-European dialect around the second millennium BC, probably somewhere
in Gaul [centered in modern France] [...] whence it spread in various directions and at various speeds in
the first millennium BC". Sims-Williams says this avoids the problematic idea "that Celtic was spoken