Celtic from the West

by Cunliffe, Barry; Koch, John T.

• ISBN13: 9781842174753
• ISBN10: 1842174754
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-05-12
• Publisher: Oxbow Books Ltd

Summary

This book is an exploration of the new idea that the Celtic languages originated in the Atlantic Zone during the Bronze Age, approached from various perspectives pro and con, archaeology, genetics, and philology. This Celtic Atlantic Bronze Age theory represents a major departure from the long-established, but increasingly problematical scenario in which the story of the Ancient Celtic languages and that of peoples called Keltoi Celts are closely bound up with the archaeology of the Hallstatt and La Tene cultures of Iron Age west-central Europe. The Celtic from the West proposal was first presented in Barry Cunliffes Facing the Ocean (2001) and has subsequently found resonance amongst geneticists. It provoked controversy on the part of some linguists, though is significantly in accord with John Kochs findings in Tartessian (2009). The present collection is intended to pursue the question further in order to determine whether this earlier and more westerly starting point might now be developed as a more robust foundation for Celtic studies. As well as having this specific aim, a more general purpose of Celtic from the West is to bring to an English-language readership some of the rapidly unfolding and too often neglected evidence of the pre-Roman peoples and languages of the western Iberian Peninsula. Celtic from the West is an outgrowth of a multidisciplinary conference held at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth in December 2008. As well as the 11 chapters, the book includes 45 distribution maps and a further 80 illustrations. The conference and collaborative volume mark the launch of a multi-year research initiative undertaken by the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies [CAWCS]: Ancient Britain and the Atlantic Zone [ABrAZo]. Contributors: (Archaeology) Barry Cunliffe; Raimund Karl; Amilcar Guerra; (Genetics) Brian McEvoy & Daniel Bradley; Stephen Oppenheimer; Ellen Rrvik; (Language & Literature) Graham Isaac; David Parsons; John T. Koch; Philip Freeman; Dagmar S. Wodtko.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
Archaeology
Celticization from the West: The Contribution of Archaeology	p. 13
The Celts from Everywhere and Nowhere: A Re-evaluation of the Origins of the Celts and the Emergence of Celtic Cultures	p. 39
Ancillary Study: Newly Discovered Inscriptions from the South-west of the Iberian Peninsula	p. 65
Genetics
Western Celts? A Genetic Impression of Britain in Atlantic Europe	p. 83
Irish Genetics and Celts	p. 107
A Reanalysis of Multiple Prehistoric Immigrations to Britain and Ireland Aimed at Identifying the Celtic Contributions	p. 121
Language and Literature
The Origins of the Celtic Languages: Language Spread from East to West	p. 153
Tracking the Course of the Savage Tongue: Place-names and Linguistic Diffusion in Early Britain	p. 169
Paradigm Shift? Interpreting Tartessian as Celtic	p. 185
Ancillary Study: Ancient References to Tartessos	p. 303
Ancillary Study: The Problem of Lusitanian	p. 335
Index	p. 369
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