G15. The Nation which Never Was revised

Transcription

1 WC 4713 G15. The Nation which Never Was revised Celts and the Making of a Modern Myth Some time around 1, BC what we call "Celtic" culture reached Scotland which thus became the northern-most extremity of what one of my favourite historians, Peter Berresford Ellis chose to call The Celtic Empire 1. In choosing this title, Ellis admitted he was behaving "perhaps somewhat mischievously" 2 because, as he explained, Any resemblance to empires as we know them, such as the Roman empire or more recent examples, is in fact spurious. There emerges no known sustained series of Celtic emperors having supreme and extensive political dominion over numerous subject peoples. However, I believe there is some justification for my contentious title. in that during the period of the Celtic expansion, Celtic tribes and confederations of tribes spread through the ancient world challenging all who opposed them and settling as the dominant people in the areas they conquered. 3 In the couple of decades since Ellis wrote that, the idea of vigorous and mass migrations sweeping all before them has been somewhat watered down. However, it is true that there were some tribes which migrated en masse into other people's territories, often with a huge army of fearsome warriors. 1 Ellis, PB: The Celtic Empire The First Millenium of Celtic History c BC 51 AD, Constable, 1990/ ibid, Preface p ibid, pp

2 Perhaps the best-known of the massive migrations was one led by a chieftain called Ambicatus 4 when, in 279 BC an army of 150,000 foot soldiers, 20,000 cavalry and a horde of camp followers marched through Macedonia into Greece where they threatened Delphi, Greece's most sacred sanctuary where many of the city-states stored their treasure. However, and partly with the help of an unexpected snow storm, the Greeks defeated Ambicatus' army and drove the Celts back to the north where many settled on the shores of the Bosphorus. From there the warriors of the Trocmi, Tolistobogii and Tectosages tribes hired themselves out as mercenaries for King Nicomedes I of Bithynia. They were eventually defeated by the Seleucid king Antiochus I who threw the Celtic ranks into confusion with his war elephants! However, even though defeated, they chose to remain and settled in Asia Minor in what became known as Galatia, the eastern-most territory ever occupied by Celts. Cimbri migrations. Another of the rather dramatic and well-known of the Celtic expansions which fits some of Ellis' description was that of the tribal group known to history as the Cimbri. According to ancient sources, between 113 and 101 BC, more than 300,000 warriors, their women and children left their flooded homeland in the Jutland Peninsular in modern Denmark and travelled around Europe in search of lands in which to settle. On several occasions they defeated Roman armies, only to be finally defeated on July 3rd 101 at Vercelli in Northern Italy. Modern town of Halstatt The Discovery of the Celts When you read older history books, you get the impression that Halstatt, which now a small town in northern Austria, between the Alps and the 4 Many historians record the name of the leader as Brennos or Brennus but he was actually their god to whom the Celts attributed their victory over the Romans at the Battle of the Allia in 387 BC and the capture of Rome. Their leader was actually Ambicatus. 2

3 lake known as Halstattersee, was the Celtic epicentre, the place of origin if not the birthplace of a culture which spread eventually to include most of pre-roman Europe. This impression sits comfortably with the invasion theory current in the 19 th and 20 th Centuries, that Celtic culture came from Asia, carried by a tidal wave of ferocious warriors galloping into Europe, slaughtering all before them and replacing the old indigenous culture. This view of history was launched by the discovery of Iron Age remains at Halstatt 5 which was occupied from ~1200 BC to ~500 BC by people who mined salt, an important commodity in those days as a means of preserving food. Salt also preserves bodies, and so in 1846 the then director of the salt mine at Halstatt, Georg Ramsauer, discovered a pre-historic cemetery which contained the remarkably preserved remains of ancient miners and their families. He continued to excavate for the next 18 years and in that time found a total of 980 bodies. The kind of grave goods found in the cemetery included swords, daggers, pottery and brooches which were so distinctive that Halstatt became the type site for Celtic settlements of the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age over much of Central Europe. Phases of Celtic influence: Halstatt (green), La Tène (yellow) and Celtic culture at its widest pre- Roman spread (brown). A simplified map of the cultures of the late Bronze Age (c BC): Wikipedia: "GNU Free Documentation License". These days, rather than thinking of Halstatt as the point of origin of Celtic culture, it is seen more as a powerful and wealthy settlement in a wide-spread network of regional centres which had its origins in the late Bronze-Age Urnfield culture and which extended at that time from Central France to Western Hungary (Transdanubia) and from 5 The name comes from hal, the Celtic word for salt. 3

4 the Alps to central Poland. (left) Princely Grave/Barrow at Eberdingen-Hochdorf in Baden-Württemberg - diameter 60 m, heights 6 m; 7,000 m³ of earth, 280 metric tons of stones. (below),display at the Keltenmuseum, Hochdorf 6 showing the reconstructured Grave Chamber, swords from the Grave Chamber, and an artist s impression of the Celtic prince buried there. (centre) The Halstatt C Pommel sword found in the urn in which the ashes of the Chieftain of Oss were buried about 800 BC. 7 Note that it has been bent was this sacrificed? (lower left) Halstatt ceramics at Hohmichele 8 ; (lower centre) A large pot from the Hallstatt culture, Baden-Württemburg ca700 BC (height 26cm, exposed terracotta, impressed decoration with graphite colouration). 6 (Photo O. Braasch) 7 Photo from where more images and informed discussion can be found on this subject. 8 Photo by Andreas Praefcke; from Wikipedia Commons, Public Domain. 4

5 The broad similarities across this vast region, according to Barry Cunliffe 9, are not the result of conquests or folk movements but a tight network of routes through which exchanges were articulated this was, after all, the region where the majority of the river systems of peninsular Europe converged and through which the major transpeninsular routes were forced to thread their way. If you look at Cunliffe s map 10 you can see that Halstatt sits not only on the middle European corridor but at the junction with trade routes from the Baltic and North Sea and of another which connected the region across the Alps to the top of the Adriatic Sea. Halstatt would then have been an entrepôt where salt from the local mine, amber and furs from the north, flint and probably bronze (or the essential tin) from the west and exotic Mediterranean goods which lent status to the chieftains all combined to make a thriving market for central Europe. So, when archaeologists speak of Halstatt they refers to a much wider region, one which at its height, Cunliffe says included: three broad subzones: a western zone that extended from Burgundy to Bohemia; an eastern zone between the central Alps and the Danube bordering on to the Scythian cultures of the east; and a northern zone extending across the old Lusatian cultural area into central Poland. Each of these sub-zones derived its characteristic cultures from indigenous roots in the Bronze Age past. For the moment we need to note two points made in Cunliffe s description of the Halstatt sphere of influence. 1. He mentioned the Scythian cultures to the east and that the changes which emerged during this phase of Celtic culture may well have been influenced by events then being played out in eastern Europe, the Pontic steppes, and beyond. We know that in this period the nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes whose traditional 9 Barry Cunliffe: Europe Between the Oceans: Theme and Variations: 9000 BC AD 1000, Yale University Press, 2008, p Ibid, 2008 p.38 5

6 homeland lay on the steppe lands fringing the north shores of the Black Sea peoples known to Greek writers as Cimmerians were coming under increasing pressures from their easterly neighbors, Scythians. Eventually they decided to yield and move off. One branch penetrated Anatolia and throughout the seventh century served as a mercenary army in the battles between the kingdom of Uratu and the Assyrians, their name appearing many times in Assyrian documents of the period. Another groups seems to have moved off westward into Europe, spreading along the Danube into Bulgaria and reaching as far west as the Great Hungarian Plain, where their burials, with echoes of their Pontic origins, have recently been recognized. It is possible that the appearance of these foreigners, bringing with them finely bred horses, may in some way have influenced the emerging aristocracy of the west. 11 Now this is an early publication (1979) of Sir Beresford Cunliffe as he is now known so his views on the possible influence or even ingress of the Cimmerians and any other contribution to Celtic culture by the Scythians might have changed, but I have not yet noted any other mention. However, it seems to me that the influence of Scythian and the older Cimmerian art on the art and decoration of the Celts, particularly in their wonderful abstraction of animals, is undeniable. But whether or not it involved occupation is another matter: the Celts were able and sensitive craftsmen and almost certainly copied what they admired in the work or others. 2. The second point we need to note is that whereas there were similarities throughout the Celtic world at the time of Halstatt which led archaeologists to ascribe the scattered finds as belonging to one culture, in other ways the many regions also showed considerable local variation derived from their Urnfield heritage. In other words, Celtic culture in the Halsatt period and for that matter, at all later stages of Celtic history was not a homogenous entity: local tribes continued to live pretty much as they had done in the past, borrowing from time to time from their neighbours and bowing under the influence of emerging élites. Nonetheless, key among the over-arching similarities was the practise of tumulus (or kurgan) burials of people of high rank. Whereas the common folk continued the Urnfield practises, chieftains and other aristocracy were often buried under a tumulus along with ceremonial chariots, horse bits or yokes, spectacular swords, jewellery and other supplies for their journey in the after-life. Such rich burials became more common as time progressed, indicating that whereas in the earlier stages, social structures were fairly egalitarian, but as some people became wealthier than others powerful aristocratic classes emerged. 11 Barry Cunliffe: The Celtic World, McGraw-Hill, 1979, p. 19 6

7 For the last half of the millennium from the 6 th to the 1 st Centuries BC power shifted to the west of Halstatt, to the area shown in yellow in the accompanying map, a sphere of influence called after its site type, La Tène. La Tène - "The Shallows" Developed gradually and seamlessly from the Halstatt culture was the second of the great Celtic site type cultures, La Tène. It was discovered by Hansli Kopp in 1857, a decade after the discovery of the Halstatt cemetery in Austria and named after the archaeological site on the north shore of Lake Neuchâtel in Switzerland. This Iron Age culture flourished from ~450 BC to the first century BC when it was destroyed by the Romans. Scores of artefacts, including weapons, found in the mud, were first thought to have been sacrificed but more recent evidence suggests that a lake-side settlement was swamped by a sudden flood. The extent of Celtic culture typified by La Tène Trade with La Tène centres was obviously booming and contact with Mediterranean cultures, including both Greek and Etruscan, played an important role in the changes which led to the cultural shift from there in the 5 th Century BC. In all probability the rise in importance of La Tène was a result of the power shift in the Mediterranean which took place at around this time when the focus shifted from the eastern end of the Mediterranean and trade in the Adriatic Sea to the other side of the Italian peninsular, to the Tyrrhenian Sea and places west. This included the Eastern coast of Spain and, perhaps most important of all, the trading settlement Massalia (called Massilia by the Romans and now known as Marseilles), which was founded by Greeks from Phocaea in 600BC 12. Gold toque, Archaeological Museum, Bordeaux (BH). It is the La Tène culture which we recognise as "Celtic", those wonderfully intricate spirals and interlaced figures 12 According to Thrucides. 7

8 which were applied to everything from shields to brooches, horse trappings to the huge cauldrons used in the frequent drinking festivities. The Gundestrup cauldron Among the most familiar La Tène artefacts was the heavy gold or bronze torc or toque worn around the neck, probably the most valued possession a man had along with his sword and his brooch or fibula. A panel from the Gundestrup cauldron. The Celtic God/Hero named Esus/Cu Chulainn, guardian of cattle and beasts, is introduced. He offers a torc, symbolizing wealth and prosperity; the horned-serpent associates him also with water. Toy "Celtic" soldiers for use in war games reenactments. Another characteristic of Celtic life was the place feasting and carousing played in their warrior life-style. Their drinking was legendary even among the Romans. This expressed the tradition of the hero or super-hero which seems to have stayed with the folks of Europe since they came wandering into Europe from the Steppes all those millennia ago. And it also illustrates the value such warriors placed on the emotional and often sexual bonding between men after all, this was their best protection in battle even though the open homosexuality of the continental Celts, like their preference for going into battle naked except for their toque, often shocked the more prudish Romans. 8

9 These tribes were governed by warrior chieftains who lived in hill forts surrounded by the houses of the rank and file. By the mid-la Téne period, towns or oppida had developed, built of wooden, not masonry houses. These people also dug pits, ritual shafts, into which votive offerings, including human sacrifices were thrown. To an extent they were also believed to have been headhunters in that severed heads were believed to possess strong powers so that if not the real thing, representations of heads were common in their carvings. Again, recent research has indicated that the heads most treasured by the Celts were those of their allies fallen in battle, the bodies of their enemies having been thrown into pit graves. Tollund man, the bog sacrifice 13 Their proclivity for human sacrifice is one of the features of Celtic culture we find most shocking today as did the Romans before us although some suggest the Roman reactions were more to justify their wars upon the Celts than from actual revulsion. In the Silkeborg Museum in Denmark is the body of Tollund Man. Discovered in the Bjældskovdal bog west of Silkeborg in 1950 he was so well-preserved by the acid peat that he was at first thought to have been a recent murder and the police were called in. However, he died, apparently willingly, some 2,200 years ago. Where did the Celts come from? For a long time, Halstatt and later, La Tène were considered to be the homelands of the Celts. But were they? The 19 th Century discoveries of both Hallstatt and La Tène led the pre-historians and "antiquarians" of the time, who were well versed in the Classics, to jump to the conclusion that these recent discoveries must mark the territories described in the ancient histories. Oppenheimer in his recent book, The Origins of the British 14, gives an excellent summary of the accounts by historians in Classical times of what was known about these people whom the Greeks had called Keltoi and the Romans, Celtae or Galli. Relying heavily on the work of the so-called "Celtic skeptic", Simon Op cit., p27ff. 9

10 James 15, he reports that Herodotus made a mistake which has misled everyone ever since. Herodotus was concerned with measuring the length of the Nile, but in a passing comment, made a serious error of geography: [The Nile] starts at a distance from its mouth equal to that of the Ister [Danube]: for the river Ister begins from the Keltoi and the city of Pyrene and so runs that it divides Europe in the midst (now the Keltoi are outside the Pillars of Hercules and border upon the Kynesians, who dwell furthest towards the sunset of all those who have their dwelling in Europe. 16 In short, Herodotus did not know that the Danube rose much further north in Germany. He seems to have been referring to headwaters somewhere in the Pyrenees between southern France and Iberia. Avenius who was pro-consul of Africa in 366, described the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts and mentioned the port of Pyrene, apparently then near the present site of Marseilles. Livy too mentions "Portus Pyrenaei" which many archaeologists equate with the Roman settlement known as Emporiai ("Markets") which is now the archaeological site at Ampurias. The references to the Pillars of Hercules, to the Kynesians (or Kynetes) who were "neighbours of the Tartessus", another tribe who are known to have lived on the Gulf of Cadiz, all point to a southern location. There are many other Classical commentators who refer to the Celts but one reference of particular interest came from a report by Strabo in his Geographica of an account (now lost) by Pytheas the Greek who, in 330 BC made the over-land journey from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic mostly using the waterways between the region around Marseilles and Nabonne, past Toulouse and then along the Dordogne Garonne Girond rivers to the Bay of Biscay. This took him through the lands of the Keltiké, who were friendly to the Greeks and allowed them safe passage. This route seems to have been a major conduit in a westerly direction for the exchange of Mediterranean goods and, on the return journey, of the precious 15 James, S: The Atlantic Celts Ancient People or Modern Invention?, University of Wisconsin Press, Oppenheimer, op. cit., quoted on p

11 Cassiterite or tin ore (SnO 2 ) mined in Cornwall and Brittany and an essential ingredient of bronze. At that time, the Phoenicians controlled the Pillars of Hercules and would not allow other traders to pass, including the Greeks, their biggest competitors in maritime trade. The Phoenicians found their way around the coast of Iberia and up the Atlantic coast to what is now Galicia. 17 Another Classical commentator was Diodorus Siculus who tells us that the people who lived in the interior north of Marseilles, on the slopes of the Alps and on the northern side of the Pyrenees were called Celts. This, as Oppenheimer 18 points out, not only confirms this was the lands of the Celts but narrows it down to a small region, near Norbonne, west of the Alps and east of Acquitaine. Finally, let's hear from the Master himself who started his description of the lands of Gaul with the phrase Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae inhabit, the Acquitani another, those who in their own language are called Celts, in our [Latin] Gauls, the third. All these differ from each other in language, customs and laws. The river Garonne separates the Gauls from the Acquitani; the Marne and the Seine separate them from the Belgae. While this description by Caesar confirms much of what has gone before, he does exclude from the territories of the Celts/Gauls most of those areas covered by the Halsatt and La Tène "hot-spots". 17 See Oppenheimer for more details. 18 Op cit, p38. 11

12 Julius Caesar (left) and Vercingetorix on a coin. He also places a northern boundary at the Marne- Seine line, much further south than the modern French border with Belgium. It interests me too that he excludes the Acquitani who, occupying as they did some of the territory we would today call the Pays-Basque in France and maybe the Basque country in Spain. They, of course, did not speak Celtic! The Roman destruction of the Celts After the sack of Rome in 387 BC by a great Celtic army, the Romans hated and feared the Celts and many generals and future Emperors made their reputation fighting campaigns to eradicate them. The Celts were savage and courageous fighters who often fought naked dressed in nothing but a golden torc. This both embarrassed and frightened the Romans. They were often bigger men than the Romans and with their long hair and tattooed bodies, must have been a fearsome sight. However, the Celts suffered from a serious fault in that the tribes were unable to forge lasting alliances among themselves and combine forces to defend their territories against the Romans. Time and again the Celts were on the verge of victory but their armies broke up into separate, sometimes warring tribes and the day was lost. The most famous instance where defeat was snatched from the teeth of victory against the Romans was that of Vercingetorix, the chieftain of the Averni tribe who was finally defeated by Caesar at the Seige of Alesia in September 52 BC. Rome destroyed not only Celtic power in Europe but also weakened the Celtic culture because the people gradually adopted Roman ways, including the use of Latin and after 380 AD, the new official Roman religion, Christianity. 12

13 Who then were the Celts in Britain? These days we can say very confidently that there was no massive Celtic invasion of Britain but that its "Celticisation" was a gradual process of cultural diffusion from the Continent, probably by a mixture of what Professor Zvelebil 19 classified as elite dominance, infiltration, frontier mobility and regional contact, and most of that was almost certainly one way or another as a result of trade. Because Britain was wiped clean of all animal life during the LGM, the so-called "Celts" of Britain were the descendents of the earliest - some might say the indigenous - people of the Isles. Populations had increased only slowly 20 so, by the Iron Age, there was probably only 3 4 million people, mostly concentrated in the southern arable regions, to convert to the new culture and language. Genetically, most would have belonged to minor variations of the West Atlantic Modal Haplotype which their descendants have inherited ever since. The Iberian Celts As Alberto J. Lorrio and Gonzalo Ruiz Zapatero 21 have taken pains to point out, Traditionally, theories surrounding the Celts practically excluded the Iberian Peninsula from the equation, since archaeological finds from the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures were rare in this area, and did not provide enough evidence for a cultural scenario comparable to that of Central Europe. Until relatively recently, very little research has been published on the Celtic cultures of this part of Europe. Even now, much of what has been done has been aimed more at defining the so-called Celtiberians, a Celtic culture which appears to have amalgamated early on with the non-indo-european Iberians of the Mediterranean coast. This Celtic culture was brought to Iberia from across the Pyrenees by descendents of the Urnfield culture of southern France who settled first in the Erbo valley but then moved into the mountains to the west. Distinguishable from the Celtiberians were the Celts of western Iberia, from the Alentejo and north through modern Portugal and of Galicia in north-west Spain. Lorrio and Zapatero already mentioned above say the archaeology of the region indicates that: During the first millennium BC, at least one group of Hispanic Celts, through their contact with the Tartessiansor the Iberians, assimilated elements that came from the Mediterranean; these elements included weaponry, the potter s wheel, urbanism and the alphabet. The extent of this 19 Richards, op. cit., ref Zvelebil M. The social context of the agricultural transition in Europe. In Renfrew & Boyle 2000, pp Quoted in McKie, R: The Face of Britain, Simon & Schuster Ltd, 2007, page Alberto J. Lorrio and Gonzalo Ruiz Zapatero, The Celts in Iberia: An Overview, ekeltoi: 13

14 process of assimilation meant that this group of Celts developed a material culture what was clearly distinguishable from the Central European Celts of Halstatt and La Tène 22. Megalith near Évora, Portugal (Photo. BH 2001) There are also suggestions that these Celts of the Atlantic seaboard differed from the Celtiberians because they had connections to the Megalithic culture which flourished in this part of the world and for which extensive evidence still exists today. There were therefore Celtic cultures in Iberia from very early on, from Late Bronze Age although, as in Central Europe, they did not reach their full flowering until around the 6 th Century and the Iron Age. We don t have time here to explore these except perhaps to mention that there have been considerable advances recently in deciphering Celtic inscriptions found in Iberia, that there are many place names which indicate pre-roman occupation by Celtic-speaking people and that the excavations of oppida in the north-west have shed fascinating light on Bronze and Iron age metal working, religious practises, urban design and agriculture. Celts rule, OK? Barry Cunliffe 23 has put forward a rather surprising, revisionist view as to the origin of the Celtic languages: he has proposed that the Celtic languages spread not from east to west but in the reverse direction, from west to east, this expansion originally propelled by the enormous prestige of the navigators and astronomerpriests who helped spread the megalithic culture of the Atlantic seaboard. If this theory is correct, he argues, then the homeland of the Celts must have been in this region where Celtic languages are still spoken today. 24 Map prepared by Richard Stevens of known L Ibid, p Cunliffe, BW: The Ancient Celts, Oxford University Press, Actually, since knighted in 2006 his name is Sir Barrington Windsor Cunliffe. 24 The emphasis is mine - BH

15 Cunliffe s suggestion is certainly at logger-heads with those who would place it in south-western France, including Caesar, and with those more recent scholars who locate it in the Pontic steppe, Anatolia, Balkans and elsewhere. Until recently, genetic genealogists had found some support forcunliffe s hypothesis in that the modal STR haplotype of the Basques is almost identical with that of the Irish. Opposing this is the fact that Basque is not a Celtic language or for that matter, an Indo-European one. It had only one known relative, Ancient Acquitanian, but that is now long extinct. So, the region between modern Bordeaux and the Pyrenees might need to be exempted, as indeed, Caesar and other ancient historians also excluded it from the Celtic lands. Since 2008, however, the discovery of the SNP which is currently known as R- L21 has shown the long-held belief that Ireland was populated after the LGM by people from the Basque region or other parts of Iberia cannot be true: whereas the majority of the Irish are R-L21 positive, until now almost no one in Iberia has been found to be other than negative. This SNP, R-L21 is the brother to R-U152 and with it appears to share a homeland in the swathe of territory stretching through Western Germany and the Eastern and Northern parts of France. So, who were the Celts? There seems to be two schools of thought on this matter: some argue that the Celts were those people of Europe who spoke a Celtic language. Others contend that being Celtic depended on sharing some if not all of the cultural characteristics we generally ascribe to the Celts. Not all the people whom we would call Celts would have been R-L21, R-U152 or for that matter, belonged to the upstream clade R-M269 which includes what we believe now were the first people of Haplogroup R to enter Europe sometime in the Neolithic. Nonetheless, by far and large, the modern descendents of the Celts of pre-roman Europe do now belong to this Haplogroup and its sub-clades. Since we believe the original R-M269 immigrants and later Haplogroup R people came from the east, either through the Pontic Steppe or further south, it is hard to argue that the Celtic language(s) spread from west to east. However, another language documented historically by the Romans during their colonisation of the Iberian peninsula was the obscure Indo-European language called Lusitanian. The few inscriptions which still exist in Lusitanian show that it was distantly related to Celtic but not at all to the Celtiberian languages. Lusitanian could well be a survivor of proto-celtic which otherwise disappeared sometime after the end of the LGM. 15

16 The pre-roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula (about the time of the 2 nd Punic War) If this were so, then we have a remarkable situation in which the material culture of a people travelled in one direction while language, perhaps the most important of all cultural assets, travelled in the opposite one. The 21 st Century has seen the debate over the Celts reach new heights while modern research linguistic, archaeological and genetic has, if anything, fanned the flames of what has always been a heated scientific argument. Unfortunately, as we will see later, this new awareness of our Celtic past has been promoted to some degree by what Bryan Sykes called The Celtic Brand, the highly romanticised (and commercialised) myth of a Celtic identity which millions of us, the descendants of the European diaspora of the 19 th and 20 th centuries, have accepted uncritically and certainly, without the justification of history. 16