CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Who were the Celts?
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Miranda J. Green
T
he decision to produce an international exploration of the Celtic world between
600 BC and AD 600 rests upon the premiss that the ancient Celts existed in some
manner, whether self-defined or as a group of peoples who were classified as such by
communities who belonged to a separate cultural - and literate - tradition. The area
of temperate Europe north of the Alps and beyond the Mediterranean littoral
generally referred to as Celtic was virtually non-literate until it came fully within
the orbit of the classical world at the end of the first millennium BC. It was observers
from the Mediterranean lands of Greece and Rome who called their northern neigh-
bours Celts. But are we, as modern investigators, justified in speaking of the ancient
inhabitants of 'barbarian' Europe as Celts? Who were the Celts? How should
we define this term? It is interesting that the same questions do not tend to be asked
of - say - the Roman world. We are secure with Romans because they identified
themselves as such: Civis Romanus sum ('I am a Roman citizen'). We cannot tell
whether a comparable Celtic consciousness ever existed.
It is pertinent to pose these questions in a survey such as this because the existence
of Celts in any meaningful sense in antiquity continues to be a focus of controversy
and debate. Many prehistorians (including some contributors to this volume) argue
that it is spurious to identify iron age Europeans as Celts. Other investigators are
more comfortable with this nomenclature, as long as its meaning is specifically
defined. On the opposite pole to the sceptics are the committed Celticists who
perceive a genuine continuity of tradition between the ancient peoples of northern
Europe and the modern inhabitants of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of
Man and Brittany. The debate is active and well-nourished, and present contributors
exhibit its diversity in both methodology and approach. No attempt has been made
on the part of the editor to 'iron out' controversy or to present a unidirectional
approach. It is important to reflect academic debate as it exists.
The problem of defining what is (or should be) meant by the terms 'Celt' and
'Celtic' centres around the relationship, if any, between material culture, ethnicity
and language. Any construction of later prehistoric Europe is based upon informa-
tion which is both fragmentary and ambiguous. The evidence is (like many Celtic
gods) triple-headed and consists of archaeology, documentary sources and linguistic
material. These three categories of evidence combine to present us with a Celtic