- The Early Celts in Scotland -
The Coming of Gaelic Speakers
The study of modern Scottish place-names confirms that ancient Britons inhabited
Scotland before the Irish Gaels who penetrated the country from the south-west in
the fifth century; the very early Gaelic name sliabh 'a hill' (anglicized to 'Slieve' or
'Slew') shows this clearly, being dense in the islands of Islay and Jura in Argyllshire
and very dense in the extreme south-west of Scotland (Nicolaisen 1976: 41-4 and map
I); it appears to mark the areas of the primary settlements from Ireland. Cill meaning
'church' is another early Gaelic name (probably before AD 800) concentrated in the
western part of the country while baile, a 'farm', is more easterly and evidently marks
a later stage in the settlement; others like achadh, 'field', are universal and must have
been coined throughout the colonization (ibid.: ch. 7). The density of this Irish Gaelic
settlement evidently obliterated all British place-names from the north-western areas,
which in any case were presumably fairly thinly populated; the p-Celtic speakers may
moreover have been ruling minorities among aboriginal populations CJee pp. 665-8).
IRON AGE ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROVINCES
How does the archaeological evidence fit with the picture presented by these
linguistic data? This suggests that the iron age peoples of Scotland -or at least their
leaders - at the beginning of the first millennium spoke p-Celtic dialects and that
some tribes among them could have had strong links with southern and western
England. In broad terms one can detect among the available iron age sites and
artefacts three distinct archaeological zones (Figure H. I); the geographical terms for
these 'provinces' used are those suggested by Piggott (1966).The Tyne/Forth and Solway/Clyde Provinces
This area comprises that part of Scotland south of the Forth/Clyde line (including
some of north-east England) and it is distinguished from the rest of Scotland in one
important way, by the presence of decorated bronze metalwork in the British La
Tene style (Thomas 1963; Stevenson 1966). Many of these objects -sword scabbards,
bridle bits and early penannular fibulae together with three unique craftsmen's
objects (the Deskford carnyx head (Piggott 1959: 24-32) the Torrs chamfrein
(Atkinson and Piggott 1955) and the Balmaclellan mirror (Fox 1949) (Figure H.2)) -
were strays or found in hoards; except in Roman forts systematic excavations have
given few signs of the existence of such objects and have revealed only a simple
material culture which probably goes back to the Late Bronze Age.
The distribution of Piggott's Group III and IV swords and scabbards is particularly
interesting, extending as they do from the La Tene vehicle graves in Yorkshire -
the only archaeologically attested example of the settlement of these continental Celts
in Britain (Stead 1979) - mainly west and north-west into Brigantia, southern Scotland
and Ulster (Piggott 1950: figs. 6 and 12; Thomas 1963: fig. 2) (Figure H.I). Presumably
only the most optimistic anti-diffusionist would maintain that these aristocratic
weapons had been traded from hand to hand, and a movement of chiefly members of
the Yorkshire La Tene lineages to dominate new areas seems indicated.657