An Atlas for Celtic Studies: Archaeology and Names in Ancient Europe and Early Medieval Britain and Brittany (Celtic Studies Publications)
by John T. Koch
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Book Summary Information
Author: John T. KochEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2007-12-31
ISBN: 184217309X
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Oxbow Books Limited
Book Reviews of An Atlas for Celtic Studies: Archaeology and Names in Ancient Europe and Early Medieval Britain and Brittany (Celtic Studies Publications)
Book Review: The most valuable aid for researching the Ancient Celts
Summary: 5 Stars
The Atlas for Celtic Studies is one of several publications resulting from the Celticity Project funded by the Arts and Humanities Council in 2002-2004 at the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies. Professor John Koch is a Senior Research Fellow and leads this interdisciplinary project. His rationale for the Atlas was an urgent need, in the face of growing Celtoscepticism, to provide evidence in the form of detailed maps that would reveal to what extent users of La T?ne material, speakers of early Celtic languages and people called Keltoi were, or were not, the same peoples, or might be found coinciding in time and space. A 'bottom up' approach to the assessment of interactions of these three fundamental strands of Celticity would be facilitated, in contradistinction to the 'top down' a priori assumptions hitherto much in evidence. The Atlas seeks to provide archaelogical and linguistic evidence for early Celtic-speaking peoples and most importantly, avoids the framework of narrative history. The linguistic evidence in the maps is based on the definition of Celtic as a language belonging to the sub-family of Indo-European languages that is represented by the four continuously-surviving languages - Breton, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Welsh. It is on this linguistic foundation that Koch defines his ancient Celtic world. The geographical range of the maps is from Iberia in the west to the Black Sea littoral in the East and from Rome and Delphi in the south to Shetland in the north. The date range covered is from the Late Bronze Age to the Central Middle Ages, c. 1200 BC - c.AD 1200, divided into only two chronological horizons, the Ancient Celtic and the Neo-Celtic. Professor Koch justifies this two-tier chronological division by referring to significant language changes. In adopting only two divisions he has sought to avoid difficult decisions on what evidence could be validly displayed together, a problem were he to have used more finely-drawn time-scales. The two-tier restriction has, he claims, enabled the provision of maps on a larger scale that show fuller collections of evidence in a greater number of categories.
The meticulous care that has gone into the presentation of the Atlas material is impressive. Clarity has been a watchword. The 40 detailed colour maps are superb and the range of archaeological and linguistic categories, 368 in all, is quite staggering. Smaller black-and-white maps are used to illustrate the succession of different hypotheses that have appeared in attempts to identify the Celts, their movements, or their static continuation, and the diffusion of influences, both given and received. These include the geographical extent of ancient Celtic, Celticisation by Invasion, Pre-La Tene Celticisation, Late Bronze Exchange Networks and Druidic influences emanating from the British Isles. Each map in the Atlas is accompanied by a detailed and extensive commentary on associated linguistic, archaeological and textual evidence. Artifacts, weapons and ornaments are commented on, illustrated, and represented by icons on the colour maps. There is also a section of Early Medieval Linguistic Evidence that includes, verbatim, inscriptions that have been found in over 600 locations in the British Isles. A very extensive bibliography has been provided and the Index is comprehensive.
Does this Atlas confound the Celtosceptics? If it does not, it is not for lack of many rich seams of data that may be mined by researchers. For example, valuable supporting evidence for the idea of Late Bronze Age Exchange Networks can be gleaned from an examination of the geographical range of Chelsea-Ballintober swords, a 12th century BC type that was produced both in the north of Ireland and in northern France and with a concentration along the Thames valley. The late Bronze Age carp's tongue sword distribution spreads outward from a heavy concentration in Amorica to thin out northwards in Britain, southwards to Iberia and inland to central Gaul. The wealth of high class data enables the interaction of exchange networks and cultural groupings to be illuminated. A distinct cultural grouping can be discerned from the appearance of Early La T?ne chariot burials (5th and early 4th century BC) in the Marne region of north-west France, southern Belgium, Luxembourg, along the Rhine and in central Bohemia, and in Yorkshire. The burials in Yorkshire are generally equated with the Parisii tribe, a group also found in France, further evidence of cultural influence and exchange. Gold torcs, a well-known example of Celtic personal adornment, are shown as having a concentration in Galicia, in north-west Iberia. Their concept is found in other regions including the British Isles. The Atlas provides the opportunity for researchers to weave many more such skeins of artifacts and culture into a tapestry of Celticity. Nevertheless, the main bone of contention between the Celticists and the Celtosceptics is the matter of language. Professor Koch has previously nailed his colours to the linguistic mast by declaring that 'Celts are those who spoke Celtic Languages'. Others deny that the language spoken by the inhabitants of the British Isles was the same as that spoken by those identified by Caesar as Celts, and the adoption of the term 'Celtic' to describe the language and culture of the British Isles in pre-history as nonsense. Professor Koch has now provided extensive evidence of the spread of culture and place-names that may be used to underpin his identification of the languages of the British Isles in 500 BC as Celtic. Finally, is it not noticeable that both sides in the argument seem to be ignoring the 'new kid on the block'? The arrival of the geneticist with his/her mouth swab and statistical software brings a new dimension to the determination of ethnicity and language. It will be interesting to see what new revelations about the Celts, or indeed non-Celts, will be discovered by DNA research and how well any conclusions drawn from the data in this Atlas are supported.
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