Archaeologist Claims that King Arthur Was Not a Real Person But a Fictional “Celtic Superhero”

Ancient Origins

A British archaeologist has controversially claimed that King Arthur was not a real historical figure. Rather, the legendary warrior king was created as a “Celtic superhero” and in reality, was nothing more than an amalgamation of the lives of five real-life warlords.

 King Arthur a Creation of Several Real-life Kings?
Most people have heard tales of the legendary British monarch who rose to the throne by pulling his sword Excalibur out of a stone and ruled Britain with the help of the Knights of the Round Table and the wizard Merlin. As The Times report, however, archaeologist Miles Russell claims that he has solid evidence which proves that King Arthur never existed and was only created as a "Celtic Superhero.”

The taking of Excalibur by John Duncan ( Public Domain )

Traditionally, Arthur is believed to have led the British when they defeated an invading Saxon army at the legendary Battle of Badon sometime between 490 and 520AD. However, archaeologist and senior lecturer at Bournemouth University, Miles Russell, strongly believes that the greatest warrior king in British history, is basically a fictional creation of five real-life warlords. “When you start to look at King Arthur in detail you realize that he is an amalgam of at least five separate characters — he never existed as an independent person at all,” Dr. Russell tells The Times.

 Glastonbury Monks Create Legends?
This is not the first time a respected scholar has claimed that Arthur was a fictional character. As previously reported by Liz Leafloor for Ancient Origins, the epic legends of King Arthur and his Round Table, among other ancient myths, may have been nothing more than fictional stories made up and peddled by enterprising monks at Glastonbury Abbey to make some money. What’s more, these legends muddied modern research into the site by “clouding the judgement” of past experts.

These, at least, were the claims made by a team of archaeologists from the University of Reading in 2015, after a conducting a four-year study. The physical history of the site was reexamined during the study and the conclusions were the following:

“Those feet, immortalized in William Blake’s poem Jerusalem, never walked on the green and pleasant land of Glastonbury; the oldest church in England was not built there by Christ’s disciples; Joseph of Arimathea’s walking stick does not miraculously flower every Christmas after 2,000 years. And it turns out that the supposed link with King Arthur and his beautiful queen, Guinevere, is false too – invented by 12th-century monks faced with a financial crisis in the wake of a disastrous fire.”

Archaeologists went on claiming that the Glastonbury monks clouded the history of the site by deliberately designing renovations after a fire in 1184. The redesign was said to have employed a purposeful archaic architectural style to generate a mythical feel, supporting popular legends and thereby raising more money from eager pilgrims. In addition, Arthur’s supposed grave has been revealed as a cemetery pit containing material dating from between the 11th and 15th centuries, offering no evidential links to the era of the legendary 5th and 6th century leader.

Glastonbury Abbey where King Arthur’s body was said to have been interred (Neil Howard / flickr)

The Role of Monmouth’s Book “A History of the Kings of Britain” to Arthur’s Legend
Dr. Russell explains that he came to his conclusion after studying “A History of the Kings of Britain,” written by Geoffrey of Monmouth in 1136, and other medieval texts. “Geoffrey’s book itself derives from a series of myths, stories and bardic praise poems that go back to the first century BC, at a time just before Britain became part of the Roman Empire,” Russell stated in a press release.

Initially, Dr. Russell noticed the obvious similarities between Arthur and Ambrosius Aurelianus, a leader of the Roman-British population in the fifth century. In the most contemporary account of the period, when Arthur was thought to exist, a British monk Gildas writing around 540AD in a scathing attack on the native Britons, names Ambrosius as the leader who leads the fight against the Saxon. What’s even more suspicious is that Gildas does not mention Arthur at all.

Other than Ambrosius Aurelianus, Dr. Russell cites Roman general Magnus Maximus, Byzantine Emperor Constantine the Great, and prehistoric warlords Arvirargus and Cassivellaunus as clear sources of inspiration for the creation of Arthur’s fictional character, “Once you take all these elements of his story away, there’s actually nothing left for Arthur,” Russell said as Bournemouth University’s official website reports. And added, “He’s an echo of all these other individuals – what Geoffrey of Monmouth did was create a Celtic superhero for his times, a character for the Britons to celebrate, taken from all the best bits of those individuals who lived before."

Magnus Maximus, one of the historical figures that Miles Russell believes was used to shape the character of King Arthur (Wikimedia Commons)

Dr. Russell presented his findings at the BBC History Magazine Conference at the Great Hall in Winchester on Saturday 7 October, while his book Arthur and the Kings of Britain: the historical truth behind the myths is out now, published by Amberley.

Top image: King Arthur. Detail. Charles Ernest Butler, 1903. (Public Domain)

By Theodoros Karasavvas

Metal Detectorist’s Roman Hoard Linked to a Temple that Likely Inspired The Lord of the Rings

Ancient Origins

Metal Detectorist’s Roman Hoard Linked to a Temple that Likely Inspired The Lord of the Rings

Two metal detecting enthusiasts made a “once in a lifetime” discovery when they unearthed a hoard of Roman bronze artifacts at an undisclosed location. The most exciting of the finds is an intact healing statue that has been linked to the Roman Lydney Temple. This is the same temple that inspired JRR Tolkien to add a key element to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

The Licking Dog Hoard
The Guardian reports that the 4th century bronze hoard was discovered by Pete Cresswell and Andrew Boughton in Gloucestershire. Archaeologist Kurt Adams, the Gloucestershire and Avon finds liaison officer, calls the finely detailed healing statue of a standing dog “a unique find for British archaeology.” It is the only known sculpture of a licking dog dating to Roman times to be found in Britain.

The Roman ‘licking dog’ healing statue. (Eve Andreski/Portable Antiquities Scheme/CC BY 2.0)

Speaking on the find, Mr. Cresswell said:
 “It’s not every day you come across a hoard of Roman bronze. We have been metal detecting for a combined 40 years, but this is a once in a lifetime discovery. As soon as I realized the items were of historical significance I contacted the local archaeology team, who were equally excited by the find. It’s a great privilege to be able to contribute to local and British history.”

Apart from the dog figurine with its tongue out, the other bronze pieces appear to have been deliberately broken and hidden. Archaeologists believe that the hoard was tucked away by a metal worker who probably wanted to melt and recast the bronze.

Romans in Gloucestershire
 The licking dog statue has been found in a region that was a strong and important part of Roman Britain. Gloucester (Roman Nervia Glevensium or, less formally, Glevum) was probably founded by the Romans around AD 90-98 and was of the highest order of Roman towns, denoted coloniae. These were either completely new settlements or based on a previously established fort. The latter is the case for Gloucester, which was built on the site of a fort which was used as a post for the expansion of the Empire into Wales. The area was then allotted to the veterans of Legio II Augusta, according to the Association for Roman Archaeology (ARA). The town would then have been predominantly, if not exclusively, populated by Romans. After the removal of the military in AD 407, the town began to decline and would eventually be lost to the Anglo-Saxons in the sub-Roman period around the 5th and 6th centuries AD.

Visualization of 2nd century Gloucester by Philip Moss (Gloucestershire Archaeology)

 The Romans were in this area (and Britain generally) for over half a millennium. The area surrounding Glevum became heavily Romanized, with Roman towns (eg. Glevum, Corinium), many villas (some of which have been excavated such as Chedworth and Woodchester), forts and temples. One such temple found in the area is at Lydney Park Roman Camp, 20 miles (32 km) along the River Severn estuary. It is here we reconnect with the bronze dog statue.

Lydney Camp and Lydney Temple
The site of Lydney Camp was originally an Iron Age hillfort which was for a time mined by the Romans for iron ore around the 3rd century. In the 4th century, they built a Romano-Celtic temple dedicated to the Celtic deity Nodens, which is known due to inscriptions of the name found at the site.

The Celtic god, Nodens, is associated with healing, the sea, hunting and dogs – mainly due to representations of all of these aspects being found at the temple complex. The temple is thought to have been primarily dedicated to healing and includes a bath house. Nine dog statues or effigies have been found there, the most famous being the “Lydney Dog” Bronze. This dog iconography is representative of healing, as dogs were once kept in order to lick wounds and aid healing.

The Lydney dog was one among many dog themed artifacts found at the Lydney Temple or Temple of Nodens (Credit: ARA)

The reason the new licking dog bronze has been tentatively linked with this temple, is that it is the only healing temple known in the area. However, the statue could be indicative that there is a hitherto unknown healing temple or shrine to be found in the vicinity.

 Tolkien at Lydney Temple
 A point of interest worth mentioning whilst on the subject of Lydney Temple is the believed influence it had on that world-renowned fantasy-fiction about a ring quest by JRR Tolkien. In 1928-9, the author was invited to Lydney Park by the eminent archaeologists Sir Mortimer Wheeler and his wife Tessa, who had been commissioned to investigate the site. At the time, Tolkien was invited in his capacity as Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford in order to explore the origins of the name ‘Nodens’, as there was little record of this god other than at the Temple complex. According to historian and author Matthew Lyons, Tolkien’s article “is an extraordinary testament to his skill and erudition.”

Ruins of the Temple of Nodens at Lydney Park (Jeff Collins CC BY-SA 2.0)

Tolkien visited this place several times, staying in the rather splendid house and one imagines enjoying the grounds of the country manor. Besides the old local name for the location of the temple at what is now Camp Hill being ‘Dwarfs Hill’, it being riddled with tunnels from the mining and whispers of small people and goblins and the like in the area, Lyons sites two specific items related to the Temple that are thought to have brought about the ring element to the story.

The first item is a curse tablet that is from the temple. It reads as follows:

“To the God Nodens. Silvanus has lost a ring. He has [vowed] half its value to Nodens. Amongst all who bear the name of Senicianus, refuse thou to grant health to exist, until he bring back the ring to the Temple of Nodens.”

The curse invokes the support of Nodens to help Silvanus regain a ring that has somehow been lost to Senicianus. And so the second item comes in the form of the actual ring referred to, which is believed found in a church/farmers field in Silchester half way across the country! It is denoted as most likely the ring of the curse, as Senicianus had a fresh inscription of, ‘‘Seniciane vivas in deo” (Senicianus, may you live in God).

The Roman ring with Senicianus inscription (Credit: The Vyne © National Trust / Helen Sanderson)

It is interesting that the curse demands the ring should be returned to the place from whence it came (the Temple of Nodens). Although there is a leap from a ring with a curse attached to a ring of power such as appears in Tolkien’s epic, and there are other rings found in legends, such as those found in the Arthurian legends, Lyons argues that the ring story at Lydney, “may have simply caught his imagination and been buried away somewhere in his unconscious.” If so, it wasn’t buried for long, as in 1932, just a few years after his visits to Lydney Temple, The Hobbit, with its mysterious ring theme was finished.

Some of the broken artifacts found in the Roman bronze hoard. (Eve Andreski/Portable Antiquities Scheme/CC BY 2.0)

The location of the recent Roman hoard find has not yet been publicized so the connection to Lydney Temple is currently sheer speculation. The hoard is currently being kept under controlled conditions at Bristol Museum whilst being photographed and recorded. Once analysis is completed, the findings will be presented at the British Museum. Experts expect to have a report ready by the end of this year.

Top Image: The recently unearthed ‘licking dog’ statue. (Gloucestershire County Council)

By Gary Manners

The Viking Serpent: Serpent Worship, Sacred Geometry, and Secrets of the Celtic Church in Norway

Ancient Origins

Dan Brown wrote The Da Vinci Code, inspired by Henry Lincoln and his two co-authors’ The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. The Norwegian researcher Harald Boehlke was inspired by the same book. Lincoln’s tantalizing bait was religion and sacred geometry—specially the sacred pentagram.

In the opening scene of The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown featured a dying man who had inscribed a pentagram onto his stomach with his own blood. Religion, Sacred geometry, and suspense were the ingredients that kept audiences spellbound. But, it was mainly fiction

A pentagram image was found on the body. (Public Domain)

What Harald found, however, is not fiction. In researching Norway’s Viking history, and Norway’s conversion to Christianity, he was led to profound discoveries. These surpassed by far even the astonishing geometry discovered on the blood-soaked soil of the Languedoc area of southern France, where the gnostic Cathars had been killed by the thousands by The Catholic Church and The Templars had many of their strongholds.

A completely different story regarding Norway’s conversion was revealed, rather than the hitherto accepted one. Harald discovered what is now called The Norwegian Pentagram, and other enormous geometric patterns with symbolic measurements, constructed with the help of cities built during the conversion years (ca.900-1130) to act as markers. And lo and behold, it was seen that Norway had not been converted by the Roman Catholics as had always been the accepted story.

Astonishing Discovery of Sacred Geometry and Ancient Symbols
The pentagram is for many a mysterious, foreboding, fateful and intimidating symbol. The Catholic Church must take credit for turning the pentagram from a symbol of the sacred feminine to a symbol of the devil. But the pentacle's demonic interpretation is historically inaccurate.

It has had many meanings in many cultures, tracing back in time many thousand years. The use of 1.618, called the Golden Section, or Golden Mean in sacred architecture is prevalent throughout Europe.

Pythagoreans considered the pentagram an emblem of perfection or the symbol of the human being. In a way, you might say it is the fingerprint of God. The pentagram incorporates the Golden Section 1.168. It is constructed using this number, and this number only. It can be said the pentagram is the visualization of the Golden Section 1.618.

The REAL Da Vinci Code: Vitruvian Man. The proportional relationship of the parts reflects universal design. (Public Domain)

This number is a large part of Holy Geometry. It permeates creation; It defines the spirals of a Nautilus shell, snowflakes, the galaxies, honeycombs. It is in many ways the number of creation as it is also mirrored in the proportions of the human body.

After Harald’s discovery of the ‘Norwegian Pentagram’ – enormous geometric patterns with symbolic measurements, and ancient spiritual sites in Norway creating a pentagram across the landscape— a larger mystery now confronted him: who had placed this sacred geometry across the whole of southern Norway?

Norwegian Pentagram (From The Viking Serpent by Harald S Boehlke)

Who may have created a symbolic pentagram in Norway? (From The Viking Serpent by Harald S Boehlke)

The sacred geometry was not limited to the pentagram. Studying the Sagas and other historical works led him to discover more geometry. Strange myths and fables that he had dismissed earlier suddenly seemed to make sense, leading to one exciting discovery after the other. The books The Norwegian Pentagram and its English translation The Viking Serpent came into being.

Startling History: Celts brought Christianity to Norway?
The research showed that the Celts brought Christianity to Norway, a fact that at best has been played down in our time of ‘enlightenment’. The important part the Celts played in the unification and christening of Norway has been hidden behind a veil pulled down by the Roman Catholic Church as they maneuvered into position within Norway, as in the rest of Europe.

 In the year 1000 CE, Norway was still a ‘heathen’ country, and contrary to popular belief, it was not the Roman Catholic Church that had struggled to convert the feared Vikings to Christianity. Abundant evidence was found that suggested certain groupings within the Celtic Church had converted the Vikings to Christendom instead. These were Gnostics from the Celtic Church, influenced by the serpent worshipping Ophites from Egypt and Syria who used the serpent as a symbol of Christ.

After Emperor Constantine in 325CE sanctioned the Christian faith which believed Jesus being the son of god, the Gnostics, Arians, Ophites and other sects were persecuted and dispersed. The persecution of the Gnostics was mainly the work of the influential group that later evolved into what we today call the Roman Catholic Church.

The Serpent on the Cross - The Crucified Serpent, after an illustration in the notebook of Nicolas Flamel (CC BY-SA 4.0)

From the Middle East, the ideas and beliefs of the Gnostic Arians and Ophites disseminated towards the ‘outskirts’ of Europe. The Arians went as far north as the Iberian Peninsula, while the Ophites apparently found their way to the British Isles where, according to legend, St. Patrick was sent to Ireland to ‘guide’ the Celts back to the ‘true faith’. While there, he took time to banish all “serpents” from Ireland some time during the fifth century, apparently without too much success. It is interesting to note that there have never been serpents in Ireland. Patrick’s feat is therefore all the more interesting. The ‘serpents’ he attempted to banish were probably bipedal – those of the Celtic Church who revered the ‘serpent’ Jesus.

Stained glass window featuring St Patrick (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The ‘snakes’ that St Patrick drove out of Ireland were the Druidic priests who had serpents tattooed on their forearms. Serpent altars from Cornwall England and from Senhouse Museum, Maryport, Cumbria, England. (Source: Harald Boehlke)

Secret Arrangements, Religion and Kingmaking
From the ninth century, Norwegian Vikings had settled in the Celtic fringe of the British Isles. From the Orkneys in the north down through Northumberland, Cumbria and Wales as well as areas in Ireland, they made new lives for themselves, mainly as farmers and artisans (a fact that did not exclude the occasional ‘Viking raid’).

The heathen Norwegians came into contact with the Gnostic Celtic Church, who from 935-1015 CE, made secret arrangements and engaged in a joint venture with no fewer than three Vikings of royal descent intent upon ascending the Norwegian throne. The Viking kings-to-be made plans to unite Norway as one kingdom, with themselves on the throne. In return for Celtic monetary and administrative aid the Viking kings gave them ‘permission’ to pursue their own ambitions: to convert the Asatru pagans (ancient Norse religion) to Celtic Christianity. The Celtic Church was intent on using Christian magic to consecrate and conquer the land and its people, inaugurating one king and one religion. They traded their knowledge of how to pacify a rebellious population by introducing religion, piousness, and ecclesiastical laws enabling their Viking mentors to ascend the throne, and keep it.

The Celts first made contact with the son of the Norwegian Viking-king Harald ‘Fairhair’, the young Haakon. During the first half of the 10th Century, Haakon was brought up at the court of the Wessex king Athelstan.

Haakon ‘The Good’, son of Harald Fairhair (Public Domain)

Monks from the monastery at Glastonbury had given Haakon his education, and upon the death of his father, Haakon returned to Norway with his Celtic helpers, conquered the throne, and began an enormous secret undertaking which was not to be revealed for a thousand years.

After the death of Haakon (ca. 961 CE), the Celtic clergy cooperated with the famed Viking king-to-be, Olav Tryggvason and later with Olav the Holy. These three constitute the most renowned of the Norwegian Viking rulers.

Sacred Symbols, 666, and the Golden Ratio
When the Celts arrived in Norway, they founded cities and monasteries as sacred markers. They and their Viking collaborators removed old cities that did not fit into the sacred pattern—a pattern that resulted in a gigantic pentagram stretching across southern Norway.

The drawing of a man's body in a pentagram suggests relationships to the golden ratio. By Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, circa 1510. (Public Domain)

It was invisible unless one knew how to utilize the holy mathematical formulae of ‘The Golden Ratio’. Only the initiated knew it was there, and only the initiated could trace it using the monasteries and the five medieval cities of Norway: Nidaros, Tunsberg, Bergen, Stavanger and Hamar.

In The Viking Serpent, Harald demonstrates how they were all laid down according to the ‘Golden Ratio’.

Norway’s two round churches mark the two extremities of the main geometric marker line. The resulting pentagram is inscribed in a circle measuring 666 miles in circumference - the number of the Beast symbolizing Christ as the serpent, as shown in the Gnostic Nag Hammadi texts found in the Egyptian desert in 1945.

The Apocalypse of Peter: Gnostic Nag Hammadi text, circa 100 and circa 200 AD (Public Domain)

These texts describe Jesus as the one “called the Beast” (From the Nag Hammadi Library: The interpretation of “the beast” is “the instructor.” For it was found to be the “wisest of all beings.”) Thus, the Celts introduced their Christianity to Norway, leaving behind a trail of serpent imagery. The Celtic clergy’s use of the ‘Number of the Beast’ reflects their occult use of ‘magic’ and their reverence of the serpent.

 Serpents Abound
The saga writer Snorre Sturluson noted that king Olav (the third ally of the Celtic Church), on his return to Norway from the British Isles in 1015 CE, used the serpent as a symbol on his helmet and banner. In an old saga of which only fragments remain, the burial of St. Olav also reflects the number 666. The stave churches, unique to Norway, were built during these times.

Borgund Stave Church, Laerdal, Sogn og Fjordane County, Western Norway (CC BY-SA 3.0)

These churches were decorated with serpent imagery in abundance: woodcarvings of writhing coiling snakes climbing the portals, and from all gables one can witness – even today – serpents raising their heads with playing tongues.

Borgund Stave Church with wooden serpent architecture (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Additionally, the roofs and walls of these churches are covered with wooden ‘scales’ that seem to mimic serpent-skin.

Serpent carvings adorning the church portal (Kind permission from Norwegian Directorate of Cultural Heritage)

Folklore Reveals Ancient Connections
 Interesting too is the story of a Celtic princess, Sunniva, escaping barbaric ‘suitors’ by setting to sea in a frail Celtic wicker-and-hide craft. According to lore, she landed with her entourage on a small island on the fiercest part of the Norwegian coast and became Norway’s very first saint.

Medieval statue (dated c. 1200) Found in Urnes stave church, Luster, Western Norway, which may be St Sunniva. (CC BY-SA 2.0)

 On this same tiny inhospitable island on the fiercest stretch of the Norwegian coast, Norway’s first bishopric was erected in 1068 CE. In 997CE, the Celtic clergy and their second ally the Viking King Olav Tryggvason, founded the city of Nidaros, which was the capital of Norway for hundreds of years. It is interesting to note that Nidaros can be translated into the Gaelic language as meaning “old serpent wisdom”, ‘Neidr’ being serpent, and ‘ros’ being old knowledge.

The sacred geometry of Norway does not limit itself to the enormous pentagram: According to old legends, a certain Norwegian island called Sandøy, or ‘Sandy Island’ is connected to Scotland under the sea. It just so happens that the northwestern upper point of the enormous pentagram falls upon a small island called Sandsøy, or ‘Sandy Island’. On this island, facing the sea, we find the Dollstein cave, which has an intriguing history. Myths tell of treasures hidden in the cave, sought by the Orkney earl Ragnvald in 1127. Even myths about King Arthur are weaved into the island’s lore!

The sacred geometry in the landscape of Norway is so ingeniously contrived, it is difficult for us to understand how it was done. Certainly, the builders’ skills of surveying far surpassed anything historians have been willing to give them credit for. The Norwegian Pentagram and the Viking Serpent will undoubtedly prove to be important additions to our understanding of our forefathers’ skills and beliefs, as well as lifting the veil that the Christian church, historians and archaeologists have lowered over our eyes.

Harald S. Boehlke was born into a Norwegian diplomat family in Oslo, Norway in 1946, and has lived in five different countries. His main interests lie in archaeology, history and art—and shining a bright light on hidden mysteries. Harald is author of The Viking Serpent. | Visit TheVikingSerpent.com --

Top Image: Borgund Stave Church (Eduardo/CC BY-SA 2.0), pentagram, Vitruvian man, and serpent (Public Domain); Deriv.

By Harald Boehlke

Boudicca, the Celtic Queen that unleashed fury on the Romans

Ancient Origins

We British are used to women commanders in war; I am descended from mighty men! But I am not fighting for my kingdom and wealth now. I am fighting as an ordinary person for my lost freedom, my bruised body, and my outraged daughters.... Consider how many of you are fighting — and why! Then you will win this battle, or perish. That is what I, a woman, plan to do!— let the men live in slavery if they will.

These are the words of Queen Boudicca, according to ancient historian Tacitus, as she summoned her people to unleash war upon the invading Romans in Britain. Boudicca, sometimes written Boadicea, was queen of the Iceni tribe, a Celtic clan which united a number of British tribes in revolt against the occupying forces of the Roman Empire in 60-61 AD. While she famously succeeded in defeating the Romans in three great battles, their victories would not last. The Romans rallied and eventually crushed the revolts, executing thousands of Iceni and taking the rest as slaves. Boudicca’s name has been remembered through history as the courageous warrior queen who fought for freedom from oppression, for herself, and all the Celtic tribes of Britain.

Early years
 Little is known about Boudicca's upbringing because the only information about her comes from Roman sources, in particular from Tacitus (56 – 117 AD), a senator and historian of the Roman Empire, and Cassius Dio (155 – 235 AD), a Roman consul and noted historian. However, it is believed that she was born into an elite family in the ancient town of Camulodunum (now Colchester) in around 30 AD, and may have been named after the Celtic goddess of victory, Boudiga.

 As an adolescent, Boudicca would have been sent away to another aristocratic family to be trained in the history and customs of the tribe, as well as learning how to fight in battle. Ancient Celtic women served as both warriors and rulers, and girls could be trained to fight with swords and other weapons, just as the boys were. Celtic women were distinct in the ancient world for the liberty and rights they enjoyed and the position they held in society. Compared to their counterparts in Greek, Roman, and other ancient societies, they were allowed much freedom of activity and protection under the law.

Celtic woman were trained to use swords and other weapons. Image source.

 In 43 AD, before the time that Boudicca reached adulthood, the Romans invaded Britain, and most of the Celtic tribes were forced to submit. However, the Romans allowed two Celtic kings to retain some of their traditional power as it was normal Roman practice to allow kingdoms their independence for the lifetime of their client king, who would then agree to leave his kingdom to Rome in his will. One of these kings was Prasutagus, whom Boudicca went on to marry at the age of 18. Their wedding was celebrated for a day and a night and during this time they also gave offerings to the Celtic gods. Together they had two daughters, called Isolda and Siora.

However, it was not a time of harmony for Boudicca and Prasutagus. The Roman occupation brought increased settlement, military presence, and attempts to suppress Celtic religious culture. There were major economic changes, including heavy taxes and money lending.

 In 60 AD life changed dramatically for Boudicca, with the death of her husband. As Prasutagus had ruled as a nominally independent, but forced ‘ally’ of Rome, he left his kingdom jointly to his wife and daughters, and the Roman emperor. However, Roman law only allowed inheritance through the male line, so when Prasutagus died, his attempts to preserve his line were ignored and his kingdom was annexed as if it had been conquered.

“Kingdom and household alike were plundered like prizes of war.... The Chieftains of the Iceni were deprived of their family estates as if the whole country had been handed over to the Romans. The king's own relatives were treated like slaves.” — Tacitus

To humiliate the former rulers, the Romans confiscated Prasutagus’s land and property, took the nobles as slaves, publicly flogged Boudicca, and raped their two daughters. This would prove to be the catalyst, which would see Boudicca demanding revenge against the brutal invaders of her lands. Tacitus records the words spoken by Boudicca as she vowed to avenge the actions of the Roman invaders:

“Nothing is safe from Roman pride and arrogance. They will deface the sacred and will deflower our virgins. Win the battle or perish, that is what I, a woman, will do.”

And so Boudicca began her campaign to summon the Britons to fight against the Romans, proving that ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’.

‘Boadicea Haranguing the Britons’ by John Opie. Image source: Wikipedia

Featured image: Artist’s impression of Queen Boudicca. The Celts used to use a plant called Isatis Tinctoria to produce an indigo dye used as war paint. Image credit: beucephalus / deviantart

 By April Holloway

Celtic Prince or Princess? Researchers Have Finally Ascertained Who Owned an Opulent 2500-Year-Old Tomb in France

Ancient Origins

First unearthed in 2015, research on the stunning artifacts found in a rich tomb in Lavau, France are finally coming to light. Scholars have managed to solve the mystery of the tomb’s owner and have provided some other exciting pieces of information on the rich grave goods.

The 2,500-year-old human remains were first discovered in 2015 when archaeologists were exploring a site in preparation for construction of a new commercial center. The tumulus (burial mound) was surrounded by a ditch and palisade. The tomb was said to be larger than the cathedral of nearby Troyes.

 The body found in this huge burial mound was accompanied by a chariot, a vase depicting Dionysus, and a beautiful Mediterranean bronze cauldron adorned with castings of the Greek god Achelous and lions’ heads. These elaborate artifacts, along with a stunning gold necklace, bracelets, and finely worked amber beads adorning the skeleton, asserted the person's elite status.

Artifacts in the Celtic elite’s tomb in 2015. ( Denis Gliksman, Inrap )

The French archaeological agency INRAP said the treasures of the tomb are “fitting for one of the highest elite of the end of the first Iron Age,” and told the media it is one of the most remarkable finds of the Celtic Hallstatt period of 800 to 450 BC.

 Initially, the archaeologists were uncertain to whom the tomb pertained, first stating that a large knife found alongside the remains suggested it was made for a man, however, the rich golden jewelry opened the possibility that a Celtic princess may have been buried instead.

Now, IB Times reports the recent analysis of the shape of the pelvic bones has solved that mystery – it is today known as the ‘Lavau prince’s’ tomb.

The recent analysis of the shape of the pelvic bones has solved the mystery of the tomb’s owner – it was a Celtic ‘prince.’ (Denis Gliksman, Inrap )

 Furthermore, the recent INRAP analysis of the bronze cauldron has shown researchers that its creator(s) had mastered smelting and engraving techniques. By using X-ray radiography, the researchers have found that the prince’s belt is unique and has Celtic motifs formed with silver threads. An examination of a knife sheath showed fine bronze threads. The researchers also saw that a gold torc and several gold bangles have marks where they rubbed against the prince’s skin.

Finally, chemical analysis and 3-D photography show that a large jar that was used to pour wine combines Greek-style ceramic with golden Etruscan and silver Celtic designs. This is an important discovery for the researchers as it provides more evidence of a mix of cultural influences and supports the presence of economic and social interaction present amongst Celtic and Mediterranean people in the 5th century BC. As INRAP previously explained :

"The tomb contains mortuary deposits of sumptuousness worth that of the top Hallstatt elites. The period between the late 6th Century and the beginning of the 5th Century BC was characterized by the economic development of Greek and Etruscan city-states in the West, in particularly Marseilles. Mediterranean traders come into contact with the continental Celtic communities as they searched for slaves, metals and precious goods (including amber)."

Artifacts from the Celtic Lavau Prince’s tomb. ( Denis Gliksman, Inrap )

 The prince’s grave is considered one of the most important archaeological discoveries in France in recent decades and it has been compared to the 1953 unearthing of a grave for the 'Lady of Vix'.

INRAP reports that research concerning the prince’s tomb will continue until 2019, with hopes that more information will come to light.

Top Image: This bronze cauldron is one of the stunning artifacts which have been analyzed from the tomb of a Celtic elite found in Lavau, France. Source: Denis Gliksman, Inrap

 By Alicia McDermott

Hobbyist Metal Detectorists Find Hoard of 3000-year-old Axes in Farmer's Field in Norway

Ancient Origins

Some 3,000 years ago, 24 axes were cached in Stjørdal municipality, about 44 km (27.3 miles) east of Trondheim. They're now seeing the light of day once again.

 In late April, a sensational discovery was made in a field in the village of Hegra, not far from the Trondheim International Airport in Værnes. Numerous axe heads, a knife blade and some fragments were lifted out of obscurity. The objects date back to the Late Bronze Age, approx. 1100-500 BC. 

Archaeologists from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's (NTNU) University Museum and Nord-Trøndelag County Council unearthed the findings with the help of with six private metal detector hobbyists from the area.

 Found with metal detectors
Brothers Joakim and Jørgen Korstad from Stjørdal municipality made the first discoveries on this field in January this year. They found nine socketed axes (also called Celts), a spearhead, a casting mould, and a fragment of a possible bronze lur. The metal detector hobbyists contacted county archaeologist Eirik Solheim, who says that the brothers did everything right in the process of informing him about the finds.

One of the axe-heads after it was dug up. Credit: Eirik Solheim Between the two searches, the Hegra find now consists of 30 Bronze Age artifacts.

 "The 24 axes are a particularly special part of this discovery. There have never been so many axes in a single deposit before in Norway, and they're rare in the Scandinavian context," says archaeologist and researcher Merete Moe Henriksen in NTNU's Department of Archaeology and Cultural History

Hidden or sacrificed?
Archaeologists call this kind of find a hoard, when they uncover objects that have been hidden away or buried in the ground. It is still too early to say why the axes and other objects were buried 3000 years ago.

"There may have been religious reasons linked to a sacrifice, or they might have been cached temporarily, with the intention of recasting the metal later. This was a known practice in the Late Iron Age," says Henriksen.

The whole hoard of 24 axe heads and 6 other Bronze Age articles (Credit: Thehistoryblog)

Stjørdal municipality is one of the areas in central Norway that has a concentration of ancient rock art and rock carvings. Solheim has wished for a museum to showcase the rock art of the area.

"We know that there's been a lot of activity in this area, but we've lacked artefacts. Now this shows up and it's infinitely more than we could have asked for. It's so spectacular and totally cool," he says.

Archaeologists hope to get in one more excavation of the Hegra field this fall. This would help them to better understand the context of the findings, which would hopefully reveal more about why the objects were cached.

Top Image: Some of the original 9 axe heads or “Celts’ plus the spearhead found by the Korstad brothers. Source: Jorgen Korstad

The article, originally titled ‘Three-thousand-year-old axes found in farmer’s field in mid-Norway’ was originally published on Science Daily.

Source: The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). "Three-thousand-year-old axes found in farmer's field in mid-Norway." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 2 May 2017.

The Celts: unpicking the mystery

History Extra

Boudicca was considered to be a personification of the goddess Andrasta, says Martin Wall. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

When Greek explorer Pytheas of Massalia made a voyage of exploration to Britain over 300 years before Christ, he called the native peoples Pretanike or ‘the people of the designs’ because of the crazy patterns that warriors painted on their skin. Pretanike or Pretani morphed into ‘Britannia’ or Britain.

 These early Britons and their neighbours in Ireland all spoke some form of Celtic language by the fifth century BC. Their religious beliefs, their gods and goddesses, laws and military methods, technology and art were common to all Celtic peoples, whose settlements extended from Galatia in modern Turkey, through central and Western Europe and the British Isles, all the way to Celt-Iberia constituting Spain and Portugal. But the Celts were intensely independent and tribal. Even within Britain, a host of separate and distinct tribes zealously guarded their ancestral territories, ruled by kings whose ultimate legitimacy was based on divine descent. The priest-magicians who guided these kings and their tribal peoples, the Druids, were described by Julius Caesar as having originated in Britain.

 Not all Britons lived in ‘Britain’, however. Britons occupied territories in an arc from central Scotland all the way to the Loire Valley in France. As a result of the Anglo-Saxon invasions in the fifth century AD, many Britons were forced to emigrate, some to Armorica (modern Brittany), which is still named after them; others went to Britonia in north-west Spain.

 What made a Celt?
The matter of how each wave of Celts was united and divided by both language and religion is one of lively debate.

 Celtic peoples throughout Europe and Asia Minor shared common cultural, technological, legal and spiritual characteristics, and their languages were broadly similar. But no ‘Briton’ thought of themselves as ‘Celtic’ or ‘British’. Their loyalty and kinship connections were to the clan, the tribe – so they were of the Iceni tribe, or the Cornovii or the Catuvellauni, first and foremost. In recent years, revisionist historians have sought to dismiss the traditional account of Celtic settlement, and indeed to ‘dis-invest’ the Celts as an authentic ethnicity with its own distinctive culture.

 Though I take note of current fashionable theories regarding each ‘wave’ of Celtic arrivals in Britain, I have not strayed very far from the traditional view, which was that three waves of Celtic immigrants from the continent arrived, commencing around 900 BC. The first wave, were called Goidels or Gaels. They pronounced the letter ‘Q’ as ‘qu’ or ‘cu’, whereas a secondary wave of Britons pronounced it as ‘p’ or ‘b’. This linguistic difference has long been cited by philologists as the best evidence for distinct waves of immigration, some centuries apart. Finally, about 50 years before the Roman invasions, a tribe called the Belgae or ‘boastful ones’ arrived, and established control over much of the south-east. They had been displaced in their turn by movements among Germanic tribes and by the onset of a much more dangerous threat: Rome.

A depiction of Julius Caesar’s invasion of Britain in 55 BC. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

 The Celts at war
The first, very formidable threat was Rome. The Roman seizure of the Carthaginian colonies in Celt-Iberia (modern day Spain and Portugal) and Caesar’s wars in Gaul, brought them to the threshold of Britain. Two brief but lively incursions by Caesar in 55 and 54 BC had forced the southern tribes to capitulate, but it was to be almost a century before a permanent Roman presence was established in 43 AD. The campaign to subdue and colonise Britain was savage and prolonged.

 The first great hero of the British Celts, Caratacus, fought an epic war for nine years between 43 and 52 AD against the full might of the empire. A few years later between 60 and 61 AD, Boudica, queen of the Iceni tribe, led a spectacular and brutal revolt which came within an ace of dislodging the Romans from Britain and wiping out the colony.

 The Romans gradually established control over what is now England and Wales, and pushed into the Scottish Highlands, but could never establish firm control even over the lowlands there. Even in northern Britain within the empire, there was a separate military administration based at York. Eventually, as the imperial system began to collapse, the unconquered Celtic tribes along with their Irish cousins, as well as Germanic pirates, burst in upon the undefended areas.

 The Anglo-Saxons established their own kingdoms in the eastern part of the island, and epic wars took place between the small Celtic kingdoms and Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex. As these kingdoms constellated into England, desperate wars and political manoeuvring took place for centuries and Wales and Scotland emerged as nation states. These contests provided the material for the legend of King Arthur, ‘Old King Cole’ and many pseudo-historical or actual Celtic heroes. Viking raiding and settlement affected Wales, Ireland, Scotland, Cornwall and Brittany in much the same way as in the rest of Europe. Finally, the most formidable threat of all, the nemesis of the British Celts, arrived in the shape of the Norman invasion of England. Once they had established firm control of England, their wars of expansion against the Celtic nations commenced.

Caratacus, the first great hero of the British Celts, depicted on an engraving c 1754. (Photo by Universal Images Group/Getty Images)

 ‘Barbarian’ peoples?
 Much of what we know about the Celts is derived from classical and especially Roman sources. While we should be naturally suspicious about accepting these portrayals, they were at least contemporary, or derived from eyewitness reports. The Romans had contempt for all ‘barbarian’ peoples, of which the Celts were one.

 People who lived in the great forests of central Europe and Britain were considered ‘savages’, from the Latin silva (‘a wood’). All that was dark, shadowy and sinister was projected onto these ‘primitive’ peoples, and prurient, lurid stories propagated about their inhuman practices. The classical world of ancient Greece and Rome had been shocked to their core when Celtic hordes had sacked Delphi and then Rome itself. Greek philosopher Strabo said that “the whole race is madly fond of war, high-spirited and quick for battle”, and there is no reason to discount this opinion, especially in light of the abundant evidence of subsequent history.

 In fact, the Celts were exuberant and extremist in all matters – their passion for war was no different from their passion for feasting, religious devotions, poetry and art. The Celts liked to show-off their wealth and status, and war gave the opportunity to display their fine horses, chariots, swords, golden torques and similar accoutrements. If they were not actually at war with external enemies or among themselves, then they would be composing bardic poetry about it, celebrating the ancestral heroes of the tribe. It may be true to say that there is a traditional martial eagerness in the Celtic temperament, but ultimately their military traditions were founded upon necessity. They had to either fight or be overwhelmed or exterminated.

 The ‘island of the mighty’
While it is true that few peoples have become so romanticised and mythologised as the British Celts, I believe that the attempt to denigrate and marginalise their history is in danger of doing great violence to a body of knowledge which consists of far more than mere history or archaeology: the mythical lore which has become known as ‘the matter of Britain’.

 The sovereignty of the British race within the ‘island of the mighty’ was exemplified by leaders whose chief attribute was their alleged descent from gods, or their personification of gods or goddesses. The Christianisation of this ancient mythical lore was the template for ‘the Quest for the Holy Grail’ and the Arthurian romances. These themes, reworked for the Anglo-Norman aristocracy, and encrusted around the Tudor dynasty which was of Welsh origins, became the legitimising propaganda for ‘the British Empire’.

 Caratacus ‘the beloved one’ is perhaps the first of these, but Boudicca too was considered to be a personification of the goddess Andrasta. Arthur, the supreme hero of the British Celts, distils much of this into complex myth, which may or may not be based on an actual historical personage. Whether he existed or not, the fact of his existence in the imagination cannot be denied, but there are plenty of real-life Celtic heroes to make up for that: Urien of Rheged and his son, Owain; ‘King’ Cole or Coel; Maelgwn of Gwynedd; Cadwallon who almost reconquered the ‘Lost Lands’; Gruffydd ap Llywelyn and many more. The extraordinary, sad and glorious stories of the last years of Celtic resistance are reserved for Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, Prince of Wales and also called ‘the last’; Scotland’s hero, William Wallace (who had other Celtic connections); and ‘the son of prophesy’ himself, Owain Glyndwr.

These contests between the Celtic kingdoms provided the material for the legend of King Arthur, says Martin Wall. (Photo by Leemage/Getty Images)

 A legacy of this long battle for Celtic Britain was that it preserved a tradition, a pseudo-history or reinterpretation of history, which alleged continuity with ancient Rome, and legendary connections to ‘Brutus the Trojan’, the supposed first king of the Britons. These traditions, bowdlerised from the Brythonic originals, became a corpus of literature called ‘Bruts’ which encapsulated not only history and legend, but also, crucially, prophesy.

 The so-called ‘matter of Britain’ was not conventional history, but magical. At first, the pure forms of these legends were confined to the Celts themselves, and inspired them to defend their lands, or rebel against foreign occupation. The ‘prophesies of Merlin’ promised that one day the Britons would be restored to the sovereignty of Britain. It was this desperate hope which kept alive a fanatical resistance for so many centuries. That struggle was ultimately doomed, but by an incredible twist of fate, the matter of Britain was taken up by the Tudor monarchs, to be reinvented as the British Empire.

 The consequences of that were to be world-changing, but for the British Celts themselves, the irony was that they were the first victims of this ‘empire’.

 Martin Wall is the author of Warriors and Kings: The 1,500-Year Battle for Celtic Britain (Amberley Publishing, 2017)

Romans, quaking in their Sandals After an Attack by Boudica, built a Massive Fort to Defend London

Ancient Origins

Around 60 AD Queen Boudica of the Iceni (a Celtic clan) attacked and razed London, a Roman city of ancient Britain. Now, researchers have just announced that in response to Boudica and her warriors’ wild revolution, the terrified and shamed Romans built a fort with ditches 10 feet (3.05 meters) deep, walls 10 feet high, palisades, and a platform from which to repel attacks.

Boudica (also spelt Boudicca and Boadicea) was an imposing, even terrifying sight, according to the Roman historian Cassius Dio, who described her and the destruction her forces wrought:

“...a terrible disaster occurred in Britain. Two cities were sacked, eighty thousand of the Romans and of their allies perished, and the island was lost to Rome. Moreover, all this ruin was brought upon the Romans by a woman, a fact which in itself caused them the greatest shame....But the person who was chiefly instrumental in rousing the natives and persuading them to fight the Romans, the person who was thought worthy to be their leader and who directed the conduct of the entire war, was Buduica, a Briton woman of the royal family and possessed of greater intelligence than often belongs to women....In stature she was very tall, in appearance most terrifying, in the glance of her eye most fierce, and her voice was harsh; a great mass of the tawniest hair fell to her hips; around her neck was a large golden necklace; and she wore a tunic of diverse colours over which a thick mantle was fastened with a brooch. This was her invariable attire.”

The Snettisham Torc (a golden necklace) like one Boudica might have worn. (U. of Chicago)

No wonder the terrified Romans built such a massive fort.
“Positioned over the main road into London, commanding the route into the town from London Bridge and overlooking the river, the fort would have dominated the town at this time, perhaps reflecting the absence of civilian life and the utter destruction wrought by the native Britons on Roman London,” says the Museum of London Archaeology in a short article.

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The British government, in excavations at Plantation Palace on Fenchurch Street, uncovered the wooden and earthwork fort, which covered 3.7 acres. It measured 3 meters (9.84 ft.) high and was reinforced with growing turf and interlacing timbers. There was a fighting platform with palisade and towers at the gateway on the top of the bank.
For extra protection, the fort was enclosed by double ditches, 1.9 (6.2 feet) meters wide and 3 meters (9.84 ft.) deep. A press release from the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) called the ditches “an impressive obstacle for would be attackers.”

Reconstruction of a Roman defensive position. (MOLA)

Apparently, the fort was a temporary, emergency structure that was not meant to be occupied long-term and was used to re-establish and reconstruct the important trading post. MOLA says researchers found evidence of tent use in the fort as opposed to permanent barracks. It was in use for only 10 years.
Julian Hill, Roman London Expert at MOLA, said in a press release: “The discovery of this early Roman fort provides precious new information about how the Romans re-established control of Britain following Boudica’s damaging blow. It also demonstrates the strategic importance of London at this time.”

‘Boadicea Haranguing the Britons’ by John Opie. (Public Domain)

The museum’s website about the find states:

“The Roman army were experts in construction; proficiently sourcing local materials from nearby woods and even using debris from buildings burnt in the revolt. It is estimated that a fort of this size would have housed a cohort of approximately 500 men but could have been built by hand in a matter of weeks, perhaps with the help of captive Britons. Archaeologists uncovered a pick axe and a hammer, tools that would have been available to the army for building projects.”

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The fort had roads, storage and administrative facilities, a cookhouse, a granary, and a latrine. Very few artifacts were found, though archaeologists did turn up part of a helmet and some mounts from horse harnesses.

Militaria from Plantation Place Roman fort. (MOLA)

“A number of major infrastructure projects contemporary with the fort point to the army playing a crucial role in this rebuilding, providing labour and engineering expertise for roads, a new quay and a water lifting machine, all vital for trading and civilian life to thrive once again,” the article states.
About 60 years after Boudica’s attack, the Romans built Cripplegate fort, then in the 3rd century a big wall was built around London. Archaeologists are searching for forts or other defensive structures from the intervening periods.

Timber lacework from vallum of the fort. (MOLA)

Featured Image: Reconstruction of Plantation Place Fort. Source: MOLA
By Mark Miller

Who were the Celts?

History Extra

Silver coin produced by Danube Celts. © Bridgeman

“The whole race… is war-mad, high-spirited and quick to battle… And so when they are stirred up they assemble in their bands for battle quite openly and without forethought.” So wrote the Greek historian Strabo about the Celts at the beginning of the first century AD. It is a generalisation that has coloured our view of the northern neighbours of the Romans and Greeks ever since.
Celts first came into the consciousness of early modern historians in the 16th and 17th centuries when the works of classical writers like Strabo, Caesar and Livy were becoming widely available. These texts describe how the many barbarian tribes of western and central Europe came into conflict with the Roman and Greek worlds. The writers called these disparate peoples ‘Celts’ or ‘Gauls’ – a tradition that is at least as early as the sixth century BC, when the ethnographer Hecataeus of Miletus wrote of Celts living in the hinterland of the Greek colony of Massalia (Marseilles).
Later, in the fourth century BC, the Greek historian Ephorus of Cymae believed that barbarian Europe was occupied by only two peoples, the Scythians in the east and the Celts in the west, and Strabo adds the gloss that Ephorus considered Celtica to be so large that it included most of Iberia as far as Gades (Cadiz). These early generalisations were accepted by the later Roman authors when they came to write about their growing contacts with the peoples of central and western Europe.
In the fifth century BC, quite possibly as a result of an exponential increase in population, the tribes occupying a broad arc including the Loire valley, the Marne region, the Rhineland and Bohemia began to take on a new mobility, thousands of people moving en masse out of their homelands. These were the Celts. One of the migrating hordes thrust southwards through the Alpine passes to the Po Valley, where the disparate tribes settled down in reasonable harmony.
Another moved eastwards to the fertile country of Transdanubia (Hungary) and beyond that to the middle and lower Danube region (Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania). Once settled in their new homelands, the various Celtic tribes could indulge in raiding – a socially embedded system that enabled individuals to display and enhance their status. From the Po Valley, raiding parties swept across the Apennines deep into the Italian peninsula, confronting Roman armies and, in 390 BC, besieging Rome itself.
Later, from the middle Danube, other tribes penetrated Greece, ravaging the temple of Apollo at Delphi in 279 BC. Deflected from Greece, these migrating bands later crossed the Dardanelles and the Hellespont into Asia Minor and eventually settled in the vicinity of modern Ankara, from where they began to raid the Hellenistic cities of the Aegean coast. The raids lasted until the powerful state of Pergamon successfully defeated the marauders in a series of engagements. To commemorate these campaigns, a victory monument was erected at Pergamon depicting the defeated enemy. The famous statue of the Dying Gaul, now in Rome, is a copy of one of the figures.

_{A detail from the Pergamon altar, which was built in the second century BC to mark Pergamon’s victory over marauding Celtic tribes © Bridgeman}

 

Image problem

The classical world, then, came into conflict with Celts in Italy, Greece and Asia Minor. As victors, they wrote of these strange barbarians, carefully depicting them as ‘other’ by emphasising the characteristics that distinguished them from the civilised Mediterraneans: the Celts were brave fighters, but lost heart and ran away – unlike the steadfast Romans; the Celts drank wine undiluted and got drunk – unlike the Romans, who diluted theirs and remained sober; the Celts fought naked in battle – unlike the well-armed Romans, and so on. It was a biased picture – a caricature almost – but, like any good caricature, it had within it some elements of the truth.
Much of our popular picture of the Celts comes from these very biased sources. Later, in the middle of the first century BC, when Julius Caesar campaigned in Gaul, we get from his Commentaries a rather more balanced picture of many different tribal groups, often centred on well-established towns, in various forms of alliance, with stable systems of government, able to come together to act in unison against the external threat posed by Rome. Caesar was reluctantly impressed by the belief systems of the Gauls and the centralising power of the druids.
One tribe, the Aedui, sent their chief magistrate, Divitiacus, who was also a druid, to seek Roman aid against their enemies. Divitiacus addressed the Roman Senate and met Cicero, who wrote that Divitiacus “declared that he was acquainted with the system of nature that the Greeks call natural philosophy and he used to predict the future both by augury and inference”. The orator was impressed. The picture we can glean from these engagements is of a sophisticated people, quite different from the image of hairy, naked savages rushing blindly into battle.
The archaeological evidence too offers a far  more reliable and unbiased picture of tribal societies at the time and also enables us to understand the earlier formative centuries. By about 1000 BC, much of western and central Europe shared a broadly similar culture and set of belief systems, reflecting a society in which warrior prowess was important.
The foundation of Massalia around 600 BC saw Mediterranean luxury goods, such as wine vessels and wine itself, being traded northwards to the chiefdoms (called Hallstatt) occupying a wide zone north of the Alps. Much of this exotic material was eventually buried in the graves of the elite, so is well known to us from the famous burials of Vix in Burgundy and Hochdorf near Stuttgart.

_{Men slay bulls in a detail from  the Gundestrup cauldron, which dates from between c100 BC and AD 1. Though discovered in Denmark, this vessel is believed to be the handiwork of Thracians in contact with Celts © AKG Images}
In return for the luxury goods, the Hallstatt chiefs in all probability offered raw materials such as gold, tin and amber, as well as slaves, which were becoming increasingly important to the Mediterranean economy.
Such a system depended on the co-operation of tribes living around the Hallstatt chiefdom zone, who acquired and supplied the raw materials and the slaves. The market for slaves encouraged raiding in these peripheral zones, creating instability that led to the breakdown of the system in the early fifth century BC. As a result, the old Hallstatt chiefdoms collapsed, while the peripheral groups occupying that arc from the Loire to Bohemia became increasingly dominant.
These societies shared cultural aspects –both in burial rites, now focusing on the warrior, and in a highly original elite art style expressed mainly in metalwork. In the archaeological terminology, this cultural manifestation is called La Tène (after a site in Switzerland) and the decorative style is often referred to as Celtic art. It was from these La Tène tribes that the migratory movements which impacted on the classical world came.
Given this archaeological background, it is reasonable to argue that the Celts, as defined by the Hellenistic and Roman writers, developed from a cultural tradition that can be traced back in west central Europe well into the second millennium BC.
When, in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, antiquarians began to take an interest in the Celts and Celtic origins, they had no archaeological evidence to inform them, but instead had to create hypotheses based partly on interpretations of the Bible and partly on the classical sources then available. The general view to emerge was that the Celts must have originated somewhere in the east and moved westwards across Europe, eventually crossing into Britain and Ireland.
The idea was taken up by a brilliant antiquarian and linguist, Edward Lhuyd, keeper of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, who in 1707 published his great work Archaeologia Britannica, in which he set out details of his study of the native languages of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and Brittany, recognising them as belonging to the same family, which he called Celtic. Later, in letters to friends, he speculated that the languages had been introduced into Britain, Ireland and Brittany by waves of Celtic migrants coming from western central Europe. In this he was simply following the theories then current. Lhuyd’s work was to form the cornerstone of Celtic studies for the next 250 years and provide the predominant model, which later scholars were content to follow.

_{The ancient Roman statue of the Dying Gaul, which reinforced the traditional idea of Celts as savage, naked warriors © Bridgeman}

Challenging the consensus

From the mid-19th century, archaeological evidence began to appear in increasing quantity and was at first interpreted in terms of the accepted hypothesis, but by the 1960s archaeologists were finding it difficult to force the increasingly sophisticated data set into Lhuyd’s old linguistic model: there were things that simply did not fit. Most notably, there was no convincing archaeological evidence of migrations from central Europe into Britain and Ireland, or into Iberia – regions where the Celtic languages were known to have been spoken. It was time to take a new objective look at the evidence.
Out of this has grown a new theory: that the languages we call Celtic originated in the Atlantic zone of Europe (Iberia, western France, Britain and Ireland) as a lingua franca among the maritime communities who can be shown to have been in active contact with each other along the Atlantic seaways from the fifth millennium BC. Belief systems, artistic styles and a sophisticated knowledge of cosmology were shared along this Atlantic facade, implying that people could communicate with one another in a common language.
But if the Celtic language developed in this zone (where, in some areas, it is still spoken), then how and when did it spread eastwards into central Europe? The simplest hypothesis consistent with the archaeological evidence is that the advance took place in the second millennium with the spread of the Maritime Bell Beaker phenomenon – a time of complex movements of people, beliefs and knowledge associated with the rapid development of copper and bronze metallurgy and the exploitation of a wide range of raw materials.
By the end of the second millennium, the Beaker phenomenon embraced the whole of western and central Europe and provided the basis from which subsequent Bronze Age cultures, including those of the early Hallstatt culture, emerged. The new hypothesis neatly explains how the Celtic language may have spread and why the earliest identified Celtic inscriptions, dating to the seventh century BC, are to be found in south-western Iberia. If we accept that speakers of the Celtic language can be called Celts then, by this hypothesis, the Celts originated in Atlantic Europe long before the Greeks and Romans first encountered them in the mid-first millennium BC.
Whether the new hypothesis will stand the tests of time remains to be seen, but powerful new techniques of scientific analysis are being developed to create entirely new data sets to put alongside the archaeological and linguistic evidence. The most promising of these, the study of ancient DNA derived from human bone, will enable us to chart the movements of populations and to see if the ancestors of the Celts really did come from the west.
In 1963, despairing at the fragmented nature of Celtic studies, JRR Tolkein wrote: “Celtic of any sort is… a magic bag into which anything may be put, and out of which anything may come… Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight, which is not so much a twilight of the gods as of the reason.” He would, I think, be reassured that Celtic studies are now in vigorous good health and are at last emerging from the dimly lit realms.

 

Were the Britons Celtic?

The inhabitants of the British Isles spoke the same language as their continental cousins. But did that make them Celts?


_{A 19th-century illustration shows early Britons, who were known as Prettanike, possibly meaning ‘painted ones’ © Bridgeman}
The word Celtic was loosely used by the classical writers and has continued to be loosely used in more recent times to such a degree that some commentators question whether it has any value at all. Julius Caesar, however, very specifically said that the region between the rivers Garonne and Seine was known to its inhabitants as Celtica and this is supported by a late fourth-century BC writer, Pytheas, who refers to the projecting mass of the Armorican peninsula as Keltike. But no ancient writer refers to the Britons as Celts.
The poem Ora Maritima, which makes use of sources going back to the sixth century, calls Britain “the island of the Albiones”, adding that Ireland was inhabited by the Hierni, but the more widely used name was Prettanike or Pretannia whence came the name Britannia, familiar to the Romans. Prettanike may come from the word ‘painted ones’, referring to body decorations of the natives. If so, it may not be an ethnonym (the name people called themselves), but a description of the islanders reported to Pytheas by the neighbouring inhabitants of Gaul.
So can we call the Britons and Irish Celtic? That they were indigenous people and not immigrants is now broadly agreed, but they were bound to continental Europe by networks of connectivity across the English Channel and southern North Sea and along the Atlantic seaways, and through these connections they shared aspects of their culture with their continental neighbours. The most dramatic is ‘Celtic art’, which developed in western central Europe and was being introduced into Britain and Ireland by the fourth century BC to be copied and developed by local craftsmen. The motifs of Celtic art were redolent with meaning and reflected belief systems that the Britons must now have held in common with their continental neighbours.

_{Part of the Celtic ‘Battersea shield’,  which was found in the Thames in 1857 © Bridgeman}
More telling is the fact that the Celtic language was used in Britain and Ireland as well as across much of the continent – and there is good reason to suggest that the language first developed in the Atlantic zone. If so, then the Irish and the Britons, as early Celtic speakers, have a strong claim to be classified as Celts.
That said, while the tribes in regular contact with the continent will have recognised their similarities with their continental neighbours, they will also have been conscious of their differences. They will have seen themselves as first and foremost a member of their tribe, but they will also have recognised an affinity with those across the Channel. Whether they regarded their common language and traditions as part of a broader Celtic heritage, we will never know.
Barry Cunliffe is emeritus professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Britain Begins (OUP, 2013).
Alice Roberts and Neil Oliver go in search of the Celts in the series The Celts: Blood, Iron, and Sacrifice, due to air on BBC Two tonight. Click here to find out more.
Meanwhile the British Museum’s Celts: Art and Identity exhibition runs until 31 January 2016. Find out more at britishmuseum.org
You can also listen to our Celts special podcast here.