CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
THE EARLY CELTS IN
SCOTLAND
--.•. --
Euan W MacKie
INTRODUCTION
B
efore embarking on this short description of the early Celts in northern Britain
it is necessary to review again briefly what we mean by 'Celts' or 'Celtic'
(MacKie 1970: 12: Baker 1974: ch. 15). This is particularly important in this chapter
because people speaking a Celtic language and following a prehistoric-looking and
allegedly Celtic tribal way of life - albeit one which was gradually changing under
the impact of an urban society in the lowlands - were living in the highland and
island regions of Scotland at least until the middle of the eighteenth century. What is
more, this tribal life style was observed and described by many educated travellers
before its final demise. Thus of all the parts of Europe once inhabited by prehistoric
Celts, however defined, highland Scotland is unique in that this ancient world existed
there in an evolved form until-like the stone age societies of the Pacific which were
also discovered and described in the later eighteenth century - it could be recorded
and studied by the precursors of modern anthropologists. It is intriguing that
this remarkable fact seems so little regarded by many iron age archaeologists who
- seeking parallels and analogies for their excavated material among tribal cultures
in other parts of the world -tend to ignore the late survival of the real thing in their
own backyard. One long-noted sign of this is that the study of recent Scottish
highland society still tends to be regarded as 'folk life' and quite distinct from
ethnography and is rarely taught in departments of archaeology (that in Glasgow
University being an exception).
Broadly 'Celtic' is used to describe first a language; second objects (artefacts
or human remains) which have a connection with the historically documented iron
age peoples of central and north-western Europe and their characteristic material
culture; third any distinctive racial or ethnic group of people which can be isolated
as speaking a Celtic language or who created the iron age society mentioned; and
fourth by custom a person of modern highland Scottish or Irish descent. Since there
are very few iron age burials from Scotland, and none from the highland-island zone,
nothing can be said about the ethnic question for which the evidence from southern
Britain and the Continent has been discussed in some detail (Baker 1974: ch. 15)' This
chapter will therefore review briefly the linguistic and material cultural evidence for