Barry Cunliffe

Celts, Gauls, Galatians - different names, used in different places and at different times, but they all mean the same - a population of peoples who rose somewhere in Central Europe during the Neolithic and then dispersed in all directions, mixing with local populations, creating separate groups and ending up as a mystery for most of the world. Some of these names indicate a single group, some of them are more generic but a lot of ancient authors used them interchangeably at one time or show more another and there are archeological and other evidence to support the connection so we know that group existed. But who they were? And why Central Europe when everyone knows that these are Western European (and British Islands) people? Well... about that... popular culture and actual history have a different opinion on these.

There probably was no better author for this book than Cunliffe - while not everyone agrees with him on every topic, he is an archaeologist who spent spent his life excavating the English countryside (apparently there is more to it than murders and mayhem as the crime authors will make you believe) and writing extensively on Iron Age Britain and Europe. Which is where the Celts come into the picture - they match his period.

The story he tells has multiple distinctive parts - from the first remains of the peoples, to the development of what will be known as Proto-Celtic language (that's one of the topics where a lot of the current scientists disagree with him - where did the language arise actually: the book explains his theory on the topic although it does mention that there are other theories - but then what can you do in a book of 145 pages), the dispersal of the tribes which made up the initial centers and their mixing with the locals they found elsewhere (all of that seen mainly through pottery - pre-history and early history deals with a lot of pots). But then as time progresses, the authors of the classic period start mentioning them (well, not always in a very nice light) and more and more artifacts start pointing to the history and how it goes (they even made it into the Bible as the Galatians, following one of the known dispersal waves to the East).

And they kept moving and mixing; somehow managing to keep their legends and a language group alive (and somewhat well with four continuously living languages (Breton, Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh)) - and the linguists can say a lot about these movements because of how the languages developed and are used today. And that's where it gets a bit convoluted because the Celts of these ancient times had mixed so thoroughly with everyone that these days the Celts are defined as the speakers of the Celtic languages -- which makes the question of where these languages developed and how they dispersed a very hot topic indeed.

Once Cunliffe is done with the pre-history and the Roman empire, things get even more complicated in his narrative because more and more people are moving across Europe (and the British islands), displacing populations, mixing with whoever they find and pushing the old inhabitants (some of which were once the new ones) to the corners. Probably one of the most ironic fact around the whole situation in the middle ages is that it was Julius Caesar's "The Gallic Wars", republished in 1469 and made public in Venice in 1511, that reminded everyone of the whole Celts/Gauls situation, which led to histories that were not rooted into the Bible and the emerging states of Western Europe started using that history to write their own histories - and the ancient Celts and Gauls showed up back on the map - reinvented and adding the stamp if secular antiquity into the story of the new nations. Cunliffe gives an overview of how that developed in the 16th century and beyond, leading to the current Celtic mania - from books in Latin early on through the universal histories which followed them to the first festivals and congresses of and for Celtic culture to the early 21st century where "Celtic" art and culture is everywhere - not always meaning the same for everyone and not always connected to the historical roots of the peoples.

So who were the Celts? That really depends on why you want to know that - the answer may surprise you anyway you look at it.

The one thing I really disliked about the book is that Cunliffe forgot that he was writing a short book. So every few (short) chapters, he will have an "interlude/review" chapter which added almost nothing new (it did some synthesis but... as dense as the text is, there is just not enough material to require that). But that is a minor gripe.

As usual, there is a "Further Reading" section, which is heavily curated to include mainly works in English with lengthy bibliographies (and skipping the "lunatic fringe"). show less

A short but very illuminating book about the "Celts".
The author does an excellent job of presenting the various aspects of evidence that points towards there being a broadly defined Celtic culture, from written sources, archaeological evidence and surviving languages. He present the case for the concept of a "Celtic" people being the construct of outsiders until recently, whether ancient Greeks or Romans in the sixth to first century BC or the revival of the term in the seventeenth century show more by antiquarians.
He notes that no one in Britain or Ireland is recorded to have called themselves a “Celt” or “Celtic” before 1700’ and that the Welsh, Scots, Irish and other peoples have only come to describe themselves and their ancestors as Celts since the eighteenth century.
He then persuasively argues that the concept of a "Celtic" people was used by nationalists (Breton, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, Manx) to assert their history as separate from that of their larger neighbours (France or England).
The author is also conscious of the romantic notion of the Celt, quoting J R R Tolkien as writing that ‘anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight, which is not so much a twilight of the gods as of the reason’, whilst going on to say that the scholar David Ellis Evans pointed out that Tolkien’s aside was meant specifically to make fun of certain extreme linguistic entomologies and not to be all embracing.
The author wears his learning lightly and although this is a short book that cannot provide rigorous detail, it does achieve its objective of a very readable introduction.

When summarising in his conclusion, he notes that "If we were to take a tough purist line we might be prepared to admit that present-day Bretons could claim to be descendants of Celts, in that Caesar said that the inhabitants of central and western Gaul called themselves Celts, that their language and culture probably survived the Roman interlude, and that there has been comparatively little population change since then."
However, he goes on to say:
"But many would find this definition unnecessarily restrictive, arguing instead that all those regions where Celtic languages are regularly spoken today may claim some relationship to Celtic roots in the prehistoric period. This does not mean that they were descended from Hallstatt aristocracies or La Tène elites but that they are the inheritors of an Atlantic culture and language that is far more ancient."

I have read this prior to going to the British Museum exhibition on the Celts and feel that I now have a far better understanding of the historical background, both in the period to about 600AD, when one can perhaps most clearly talk about a Celtic culture, and the Celtic revival from the seventeenth century for more nationalist purposes. show less

Apparently, the British have an unlimited supply of prominent archaeologists, and Barry Cunliffe (° 1939) undoubtedly is one of them. Cunliffe was a professor at Oxford and has since published on the Celts and Scythians, two peoples on the fringes of what used to be colloquially known as the ‘civilized world’. This focus is also illustrated in this book, as Cunliffe mainly zooms in on ‘barbaric’ Europe. He does this on purpose, because he wants to demonstrate that cultures developed show more in these so-called non-civilized areas must not be underestimated and formed an entangled network with more prominent areas as Greece and Rome.

Cunliffe has put an unlikely amount of information in this book, resulting in a very dense yet readable text. Especially for the period from 1500 to 100 BCE, there is a lot of information in it that I did not know yet. The strength of this book are not only the numerous illustrations, but especially the exceptional map material, apparently specially developed for this book (although not all maps are equally relevant). Still, I don't think this work is a complete success: in his encyclopedic zeal, Cunliffe regularly gets caught on errors of detail, and especially at the end he loses overview and the book gets bogged down in a succession of names and dates. I also have an issue with the strange chronological delineation of the book (especially that he lets it run until the year AD 1000), with a certain teleological slant (the later 'greatness' of Europe was already apparent before the 11th-12th century), and with a distinctly Eurocentric look. For those comments, see my review in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1425917406 show less

An excellent book on the Celts, with a clear focus on the archaeological data that underly and support the interpretations of how societies evolved and interacted 2,500 years ago. Everything in this book is scrupulously researched but the details never get in the way of lucid writing. Part of that is due to the organisation of the text, which alternates between chronological, thematic and geographical perspectives, but Cunliffe manages to establish and maintain so many connections between show more the separate sections that the book as a whole never becomes compartmentalized. Scholarly though this work may be, it is very readable and Cunliffe's outstanding selection of supporting illustrations, maps and photographs contributes to that.

What this book is not is an exploration of daily life or on cultural history in the narrow sense. The perspective is decidedly macroscopic, focusing on the interplay between cultures and societies and on the gradual transformation of social institutions and community organization rather than taking a more personal point of view. I feel this is not a bad thing, since it would have diluted an otherwise strict adherence to factual data and the book would have lost a great deal of its focus.

I particularly enjoyed the chapters on Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Europe, told from an archeologist's and, which was much more refreshing to me, from a non-Classical perspective. The chapter on Religious systems is another good example of the solidity of this book.

In short, Cunliffe has produced a very informative, high-quality and insightful description of pre-Roman Europe. Highly recommended. show less