Barry Cunliffe

An extremely readable overview of the history of Britain for the general reader who wants a rigorous introduction, without getting bogged down in footnotes and citations. It has relevant illustrations and useful maps setting out sites of particular interest mentioned in the text.
To use Barry Cunliffe's words:
This book attempts to do two things: first, to give an account of how past writers have tried to understand the peoples of these islands and where they have come from, and then to offer show more a narrative of the first 12,000 years or so of the British and Irish based on current understandings. Any such narrative must, of course, be highly selective. This is not an archaeology of early Britain and Ireland.
Around 12,000 years ago, as the ice-sheets receded and temperatures began to rise, bands of hunter-gatherers started to populate the lands later to become the British Isles. The narrative outlined in the book has stressed the innate mobility of humankind, a mobility that is inherent in our genetic make-up.
Mobility may be motivated largely by instinct, but it is controlled within a social structure designed to encourage and reward it. Mobility may also be forced by demographic pressure. A community that has reached the holding capacity of its territory will encourage migration, usually by a section of its young. In more extreme cases populations may be driven from their lands by marauding neighbours or by environmental factors.

Cunliffe has an excellent prose style, so this is an easy read. He also has knowledge and experience, lightly worn, to know when to provide detailed examples and when to "pull back" and provide an interpretation of the longue duree.
I found the brief process of noting past generations interpretation of the archaeological records before setting out the details and basis of current understanding to be very useful. Occasionally Cunliffe will take a larger European view, but this is always relevant to subsequent developments in Britain. There are also three"interlude" chapters where Cunliffe examines issues outside of the chronological framework the chapters otherwise follow.
Cunliffe also peppers his narrative with interesting and humorous facts, retaining your interest by varying his delivery.
There is also an excellent guide to further reading at the end, as good books lead to others.

I read this book in two sessions, reading the first four chapters, which made me read more widely, in particular The Making of the Middle Sea about the populating of the Mediterranean and books about the Celts to tie in with an exhibition at the British Museum, before completing the book. show less

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

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