Celtic sophistication

[Caballo]

Mrs Caballo is writing her latest book set in 43AD, and asked me a question I didn't know the answer to.


Given the huge sophistication of the metalwork, how come Celts are always depicted as living in simple round huts with sitting on mud floors? Were there further parallel sophistications in the way they lived?


Cheers

Caballo

[Conal]

Try this one on these guys http://www.kelticos.org/forum/index.php ... 373157abc0 lots of good Celtic infor, it is the RAT for Gaulic types

[Medicus matt]

Given the huge sophisrtication of the metalwork, how come Celts are always depicted as living in simple round huts with sitting on mud floors?

Because the winners get to write the history.

And it helps if you know how to write in the first place.

[Arminius75]

The sophistication of a culture is not in the height of their houses or the beauty of their palaces, Celtic were a very mobile peoples and pay more atatntion to a object wich they can move around,. architecture on bronze and iron ages on Europe are very, sohpisticated, just see the ruins on Balkans or the Swedish ruins on Gotland or Öland, but hte houses and "great Halls" were on wood and another preishable materials, metal working on central Europe were better and technically superior to those of romans, but there is not a consensus...i grown up on the country field suronding of horses and sheep and well i'm not less shophisticated as an city guy...i'am not less for that, isnt?

[Bellerophon]

Why are romans almost always depicted wearing Lorica Segmentata?

Now there were many celts and other European Iron age men living in simple houses. Poor men and poor farmers on the country side usually live in poor small houses in most cultures. But houses weren't speciafically round. There were even larger settlements often with many varying types off walls (murus gallicus, murus dacicus,...) called oppida found over the whole of Iron age Europe, which could vary a lot in size though. The round houses thelselves did exist, put were far from the only types.

an typical example of a small oppida:


Look at the rectangular houses:

(detail from a manching oppidum model, see wikipedia for more info)

rectangular house:


Houses from Iron Age Denmark:


Link to a album on a Gallic house from modernday Belgium (Belgica):
http://home.scarlet.be/gallischehoeve/f ... e_041.html

And as you can see from this pictures from bibracte, you can see that not everything had to be made of wood:


Probably might be of interest as wel to show this inside of cuisine from a house of bibracte:



Some types of walls to illustrate they could build more than just huts:

a oppidum entrance:

(also from the manching oppidum model)

Over most of europe we find large and advanced settlements which are more than just some small round houses grouped together. Two examples:

Iberia:

dacia:


For information on the subject I've seen this book being recommended over at the Kelticos fora:
Towns, Villages and Countryside of Celtic Europe, 1989, by F.Audouze and O.Buchenschutz

[Alanus]

Back to the original question: the "sophistication" of a culture compared to their dwellings.
I rather doubt the presence of high metal-work (or art) has much to do with the size or shape of a house.

On par with the Celts, and actually very similar in custums, we only have to look at the Sarmatians and Alans.They lived in wagons, not houses, yet they are now being recognized as perhaps the ealiest swordmakers to produce a damascene steel sword, most sophisticated weapons. The same seems the case for the Gauls, who had Avaricum as a sword-making center-- including one signed by "Korisios." Then we have the early Celtic art of producing chain-mail.

The progenitors of the Alans and Celts created some important advances-- the horse bit, the spoked wheel, the recured composite bow, and magnificent swords. To me, houses of any style do not equate with metal technology and a culture's art. :roll:

PS: Surprisingly (shockingly!), the goofy movie Druids, about Vercingetorix and terribly played by a stumbling Christopher Lambert, shows some realistic and sophhisticated "Romano-Celtic" houses at Bibracte and Gergovia.