\'The myth of Celtic and Roman Britain\'

[authun]

It states that there apparently was no such thing as a 'Celtic' Britain. This appears to be a very controvertial argument, as it has always been believed Britain was Celtic.

"The first myth is that of 'Celts' in Britain.There were NONE! Wilson and Blackett'sresearch is supported by brave academicsProfessor John Collis and Dr Simon Jameswho, together, prove that not until 1707did the terms Celtic and British becomefatally joined in a marriage of ideological expedience...

Hi Lorenzo,

What people like James mean is that there was no self identity as Celts and 'fellow Celts'. When we think of Celts in Britain today we think of Wales, the South West, Scotland, Ireland etc. That identity is linked to the Act of Union and is quite artificial, made worse by the Victorians and Scottish tartan shortbread etc. He doesn't mean that no one spoke a celtic language.

The problem with the Celtic label and the reason why many are trying to get rid of it is that it creates the impression that they were one single people, simply grouped together under different tribal names with regional leaders. In fact there was no universal celtic culture where what was true or typical for one group was also true or typical for every group that spoke a Celtic language. The Brigantes in the Pennines for example show a good deal of continuity with the bronze age whereas their neighbours in East Yorkshire show a sudden change in the 5th cent. BC with the emergence of the Arras culture. People like James use terms like Arras culture and avoid using terms like Celts to avoid giving the impression that they were the same, even if they did speak the same or a similar language. We don't think of the germanic speaking nations, England, the Netherlands, Germany and the Scandinavian countries etc as all having the same lifestyle and culture, so why do we do it with the celtic speaking nations?

The way in which the concept is presented however is of dubious merit. It does smack of the 'man bites dog' type headline because it goes too far and gives the impression that no one even spoke a celtic language and had nothing in common with any celtic speakers on the continent. It is designed to make you read it, not for its informative content, but for its controversy.

best
authun

[Nathan Ross]

When we think of Celts in Britain today we think of Wales, the South West, Scotland, Ireland etc. That identity is linked to the Act of Union and is quite artificial, made worse by the Victorians and Scottish tartan shortbread etc.

The poor old Victorians do get the blame for this often, but as far as I know ideas of a common 'celtic' British heritage were thriving back in the 17th century and before. Victorian images of shortbread and tartan in the misty glens were more connected with developing theories of subject peoples and martial races, noble savagery and the virtues of austerity - all part of the ongoing discourse of imperial sovereignty and colonial rule, in other words. But Victorian popular culture did not sentimentalise the Irish, and largely ignored the Welsh - 19th century celtomania was an almost entirely Scots-English dialogue.

We don't think of the germanic speaking nations, England, the Netherlands, Germany and the Scandinavian countries etc as all having the same lifestyle and culture, so why do we do it with the celtic speaking nations?

But England, Germany and the Netherlands are modern nation states, products of modern history and speaking modern languages. The 'celtic speaking nations' are an interpretation of the ancient past. We do, in fact, commonly assume (correctly or otherwise) that the 'germanic speaking nations' (or tribal groups, or whatever) of antiquity had certain cultural and political connections - evidence is scarce, but the migration, combination and miscegenation of these groups may suggest a commonality of culture and a shared ethnic identity over quite a wide region. Although that could be a whole other can of worms! :?

The notion that the British isles as a whole possessed a shared linguistic, cultural and ethnic connection - call it celtic for want of better - and that this connection was similarly shared by many of the peoples of the Atlantic seaboard and western continental Europe, may be disputed now. Differing cultural standards between Brigantes and Yorkshiremen may indeed suggest a wider discontinuity. But it's also clear that many people still find the paradigm workable, and not all of them are Victorian throwbacks. The flight of the Gallic Commius to Britain was mentioned above; there's also Caratacus, a southern British king turning up in (modern) Wales as leader of the Silures before heading north into Brigantia. No reason why this should mean that the Catuvellauni, Silures and Brigantes were all the same, of course - but a suggestion that they may have been rather more than just close neighbours. Why does Tacitus have Calgacus claiming community with the conquered tribes of southern Britain? Why does Ptolemy give the tribes of northern Scotland 'celtic' names? How does a Caledonian chieftain called Argentocoxus turn up in the third century? All these points could easily be demolished as evidence in isolation, but taken together these sort of things tend to count against the picture of ancient Britain as a collection of entirely discrete ethnic and political units, disconnected from continental Europe.

- Nathan

[authun]

The poor old Victorians do get the blame for this often, but as far as I know ideas of a common 'celtic' British heritage were thriving back in the 17th century and before.

I didn't blame the Victorians. I wrote that it was linked to the Act of Union (1707).

But England, Germany and the Netherlands are modern nation states, products of modern history and speaking modern languages. The 'celtic speaking nations' are an interpretation of the ancient past.

I thought I had qualified this by referring to Scotland, Wales, Ireland all of which have celtic speaking minorities and too are modern constructs. The fact that they can still be associated with celtic languages does not imply a homogeneous celtic culture in the past.

... there's also Caratacus, a southern British king turning up in (modern) Wales as leader of the Silures before heading north into Brigantia. No reason why this should mean that the Catuvellauni, Silures and Brigantes were all the same, of course ....

Certainly not the same politically since he was subsequently handed over to the romans by the Brigantes. The danger of stressing commonality is that we ignore the rivalries between groups that should show, given the number of hill forts, signs of antagonisitc behaviour towards each other.

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authun

[Nathan Ross]

I didn't blame the Victorians. I wrote that it was linked to the Act of Union (1707).

Quite right, you did. I meant that 'Victorian' is often used as a handy smear to imply that some idea is outdated and in need of debunkery. Clearly the Victorians were wrong about everything, etc.... But your point about the Act of Union is fair - I would suggest, though, that the idea of a celtic unity in ancient Britain pre-existed it, being the product of earlier antiquarianism. That this idea was then used as a political lever is indisputable.

I thought I had qualified this by referring to Scotland, Wales, Ireland all of which have celtic speaking minorities and too are modern constructs. The fact that they can still be associated with celtic languages does not imply a homogeneous celtic culture in the past.

I'm sorry, I misunderstood you! I took "...the germanic speaking nations, England, the Netherlands, Germany and the Scandinavian countries etc as all having the same lifestyle and culture" to mean today rather than in the past. Maybe 'as all having had the same lifestyle and culture' then? But if you're talking about antiquity, then 'Germanic' would apply to Germania, surely, and not places (like Britain) of later Germanic migration - so my point still stands?

Certainly not the same politically since he was subsequently handed over to the romans by the Brigantes. The danger of stressing commonality is that we ignore the rivalries between groups that should show, given the number of hill forts, signs of antagonisitc behaviour towards each other.

Sure - but do we know why Caratacus went to Brigantia? It could well be that it was merely the nearest and most powerful state, that might be able to resist Rome. But could it not also be that he saw Brigantia as his natural ally, within the same family, as it were? I'm sure there's a Roman explanation of what was going on here, and we can give that as much credence as we like, but I'm supposed to be doing something else at the moment so don't have time to look! :wink:

Regards - Nathan

[Arminius75]

The Celtic culture are a very trouble not only at Britain, many of the traditional "celtic" archaelogical findings were not so, were Illyrian, Venetic or even Thracian, many celtic places are denied by many scholars as Spain where the ancient "celtic" cultures are older than those from central Europe, do you really think about Hallstatt as celtic?? think twice, Lá Tène are a celtic manifestation, Yes, but on central Europe, i mean Eastern Europe, the "celtic" influence were not with "celtic" people prescence, when a style become pretigious, the idea travel faster and longer than their creator, commerce and war with many intermediates made possible the "rise" of Celtic style around Europe rather than Celtic people itself, genetics shows a Briatin more relative to northern Spain than with those remains from Central Europe, but Galicians are not celtic for the traditional point of view, so Celtic culture are a very heterogeneus cultural manifetation, so what have on common? the religion perhaps, is the only homogeneous issue, do you say Brigantia? wich one? Britain, Gallæcia, or Helvetia?? the remains of celtic languages on britain are not the "pure" celtic language manifestation, what about gaulish, what about those so bad called "celtiberians" ...were celtic peoples a Atlantic cultural manifestation?, a western one? were the mixture of the mediterranean influences trough rhone river with the Hallstatt influences from Austria and finally with the old stock from the Bronze Atlantic cultural circle? ...exist a celtic culture as the traditional historic view try to show us? think twice.

[LvpvsRomanvs]

Well nowadays most of the English are from Germannic cultures, the Saxons, the Normans (even though they were French-speaking descended from Scandinavia - and as far as I'm aware, French has Germannic roots as it came form the Franks? - I'm not sure though, so I could be wrong), the Angles and the Norse (especially in the north, even on the north coast of Scotland), so you'll probably only find 'celtic' DNA in Wales, Ireland and Scotland etc. But before the Roman and Saxon invasions, Southern England was inhabited by Belgic tribes. Tribes such as that of Caratacus, the Catuvellauni had origins in Gaul I believe, and the Welsh tribes such as the Silures (as far as I know) had Spanish descent.

What my point is, is that it would be very hard to find Celtic DNA outside of Wales, Ireland and Scotland because England now has Germanic DNA as a result of the Saxon (and other) invasions, so the Belgic and Gallic DNA that was in England has effectively been wiped out.

- Lorenzo.

[authun]

What my point is, is that it would be very hard to find Celtic DNA outside of Wales, Ireland and Scotland because England now has Germanic DNA as a result of the Saxon (and other) invasions, so the Belgic and Gallic DNA that was in England has effectively been wiped out.

The problem, as you might imagine, is that of identifying indigenous 'celtic' yDNA and germanic yDNA. Both share a mix of several haplogroups quite common in north west europe, R1b for example is shared by over 110 million people. Early studies were more or less limited to comparing the relative mix of these haplogroups, eg. comparing the 'welsh mix' with the 'north germanic mix'. Although a major group such as R1b has since been separated into many smaller sub groups, eg. R1b1b2a1a2, with the exception of a small number, it has not been possible to identify most of these groups with specific peoples at particular points in time.

Whilst Mike Weale did find that genetically, the yDNA Wales basket of haplogroup frequencies did look very different from the basket of haplogroup frequencies found in the part of england that he studied, ie central england, he could be no more specific than claiming that the english mix contained between 50% - 100% of immigrant yDNA. Whilst that is a lot, there is still a huge difference between 50% and 100%.

Cristian Capelli later studied the British Isles and found that the haplogoup mix for England was more variable. He found that Weale's study was broadly correct for central England, around 50%, but that other areas varied between 25% and 70%. By one set of analyses, Markov Chain Monte Carlo, the mean for England, was 54% immigrant paternal lineages. Both studies however stress the importance of identifying the source and host populations correctly and it remains a matter of considerable debate amongst geneticists as to whether it is possible or not to use a modern population as a proxy to represent an ancient population in anything other than the most basic terms. Hence the very wide bracketing - between 50% and 100%.

But 'celtic' yDNA did survive in England. Placenames such as Eccles suggest british enclaves and the Laws of Ine make frequent references to 'walhs' living amongst the english. Bede too, writing on the present state of the english nation (Book V), states of the Britons:

"... though in part they are their own masters yet elsewhere they are also brought under subjection to the English."

which is taken to mean that they live under their own kings in Wales but also under english kings in England.

If identifying 'germanic yDNA' is proving difficult, identifying welsh 'celtic' yDNA lineages is also not a straightforward matter. The two studies mentioned above sampled four centres, Haverfordwest, Llanidloes, Llangefni and Abergele. Two of these four, Llanidloes and Abergele are not typically 'welsh' and Abergele is not typical of any other 'celtic' population ever studied. Llanidloes showed a higher proportion of the germanic mix than it did of the 'welsh' mix, around 57%. This was later attributed to miners being located there, from Derbyshire as far as I recall. Abergele on the other hand shows a very high frequency of the haplogroup Eb3, between 10 and 20 times higher than any other study centre in Britain and Ireland which all show similar low frequencies typical of western europe. The high frequency of this haplogroup in this part of north Wales may possibly be associated with the copper mining and thus have its origins back to the bronze age. It is not typical of any continental celtic group but is found in high frequencies in the Balkans.

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authun

[Ron Andrea]

Agree modern genetic distribution can be pretty far removed from ancient ones.

Has anyone done studies with DNA samples from burial sites? Even 17th or 18th century graves should be more true to ancient distribution than 20th and 21st century distributions.

That said, the Human Genome site ( http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/H ... on.shtml#7 ) posts the following answer to the question of determining race or ethnicity through genetic anthropology:

DNA studies do not indicate that separate classifiable subspecies (races) exist within modern humans. While different genes for physical traits such as skin and hair color can be identified between individuals, no consistent patterns of genes across the human genome exist to distinguish one race from another. There also is no genetic basis for divisions of human ethnicity. People who have lived in the same geographic region for many generations may have some alleles in common, but no allele will be found in all members of one population and in no members of any other. Indeed, it has been proven that there is more genetic variation within races than exists between them.

Certainly establishing race or ethnicity of an ancient population would be that much harder.

[authun]

Agree modern genetic distribution can be pretty far removed from ancient ones.
Has anyone done studies with DNA samples from burial sites? Even 17th or 18th century graves should be more true to ancient distribution than 20th and 21st century distributions.

Yes there are an increasing number of studies available. In particular, the danish researcher Linea Melchior is widely published on ancient mtDNA studies. YDNA degrades at a much faster rate than mtDNA so the state of research into paternal lineages is really only at the level where researchers are congratulated for having recovered enough yDNA to analyse at all. We have only therefore a small scatter of ancient yDNA results. The techniques of recovering mtDNA on the otherhand have developed to the point where undertaking proper population studies is feasible, with some surprising results.

For example, the frequency of the mtDNA haplogroup I amongst southern Scandinavians is approx. 13% between the iron age and the medieval age but only 2% amongst modern southern Scandinavians. Here we have a good example of a dichotemy between ancient and modern populations. Moreover, the high incidence of Hg I between the iron age and medieval age is not observed in ancient population samples from Italy, Spain, Great Britain, central European hunter-gatherers, early central European farmers and Neolithic samples where it is typically 1.6%. The inference is that high frequencies of Hg I existed in southern Scandinavia before the iron age in contrast to many other parts of europe where it was quite low. Why the frequency drops down to levels typical of more ancient times is not because modern southern scandinavians are representative of other ancient european populations but because of some other event or events.

Several population studies investigate the effect of dilution of Hg frequencies when one population joins another and the consequent effects of one part of the population being more successful than the other. Obviously if one population that has say, 50% of a particular haplogoup, is joined by another population of equal size but has no incidence of that haplogroup, the haplogroup frequency in the new larger group drops down to 25%.If the immigrant group is more successful in the new enlarged group, that particular Hg will drop in frequency even further.

Malmström's paper, 'Ancient DNA reveals lack of continuity between neolithic hunter-gatherers and contemporary Scandinavians.' concluded "Our findings support hypotheses arising from archaeological analyses that propose a Neolithic or post-Neolithic population replacement in Scandinavia". More recently, Melchior's paper 'Genetic Diversity among Ancient Nordic Populations' refines Malmström's finding to the post neolithic and concludes "Our study therefore would point to the Early Iron Age and not the Neolithic Funnel Beaker Culture as suggested by Malmström et al. (2009) [14], as the time period when the mtDNA haplogroup frequency pattern, which is characteristic to the presently living population of Southern Scandinavia, emerged and remained by and large unaltered by the subsequent effects of genetic drift."

In other words, the data is consistent with a group of people entering southern Scandinavia, specifically Denmark, at some time around the early iron age, diluting the genepool. being more successful than the host population and becoming representative of the modern southern scandinavian and north germanic genepools. It is also interesting to note that this is at the same time linguists start the emergence of the germanic language group. Note however, we don't know who these people were or where they came from, simply that they arrived and were successful.

The point is that the ancient southern scandinavian population look different from other parts of europe as far as mtDNA Hg I is concerned, whereas the modern population looks like other ancient european populations. This is not because the modern population is a refelection of other ancient european groups but because it has been influenced by later migrations, the effect of which, has been to make it appear similar to other ancient groups.

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authun

[LvpvsRomanvs]

Another thing I was meant to ask (sorry for going a bit off topic). Could Herodotus' reference to the 'Nêsoi Kassiterides' actually be referring to Britain? And, also, (I have no experience in Greek so I'll need help for this) I couldn't find 'Nêsoi Kassiterides' spelt in the Greek alphabet, and I need it for a project I'm doing as a reference. Is it spelt like '????? ??????????'?

- Lorenzo.

[authun]

Certainly establishing race or ethnicity of an ancient population would be that much harder.

Yes of course, and it all depends on what you are looking at.

For example, if an anglo saxon male married a british woman and had a son who then went on to marry another british woman and they too had a son, his yDNA would show him to be 100% anglo saxon. His mtDNA on the other hand would show him to be 100% british. His autosomal DNA on the other hand would probably, but not necessarily, show him to be a mixture of his parents and grand parents but also include autosomal DNA from any one of a number of their ancestors too. The genetic condition known as Factor V Leiden mutation, a blood clotting disorder, occured in one individual at some point in the past but at least one copy of it exists thoughout europe and the middle east in varying frequencies:

Lebanon 14.4
Syria 13.6
Greece-Cyprus 13.4
Jordan 12.3
Sweden 11.1
U.K. 8.9
Turkey 7.41
Germany 7.12
Spain 3.33

The above countries encompass a lot of different ethnic groups but all those people have at least one ancestor in common at some point in the past and via some ancestral route or other.

It's a popular misconception to equate ethnicity with a yDNA or mtDNA marker. Even governments are guilty and our own UK Border Agency is making this mistake with its Human Provenance Project prompting this article by leading geneticists:

"Can DNA analysis really be used to screen asylum seekers by identifying their country of origin? The immigration authority apparently believed so, and almost put such a scheme into immediate action – without, it seems, consulting academic scientists on the matter. David Balding, Michael Weale, Michael Richards and
Mark Thomas examine a worrying story."

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/mace-lab/macepdf/B ... Border.pdf

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authun

[authun]

Another thing I was meant to ask (sorry for going a bit off topic). Could Herodotus' reference to the 'Nêsoi Kassiterides' actually be referring to Britain? And, also, (I have no experience in Greek so I'll need help for this) I couldn't find 'Nêsoi Kassiterides' spelt in the Greek alphabet, and I need it for a project I'm doing as a reference. Is it spelt like '????? ??????????'?

Can't help with the Greek but Herodotus' mention of the tin islands may refer to Britain. This is largely based on later descriptions and use of the term by Diodorus, Strabo and Ptolemy so we can't be sure that it is the place Herodotus had in mind. In fact, Herodotus admits to ignorance of the geography of western europe and to where the tin (and amber) comes from:

"I cannot speak with certainty of however, about the marginal regions which lie towards the west of Europe. But I surely do not believe that there is a river that the Barbarians call Eridanos which flows into the sea toward the north wind and, as they say, is the source of our amber. Nor am I certain of the existence of the Cassiterides Islands from which we get out tin. For one thing, the very name Eridanos proves the story wrong since it is Greek, not a barbarian word, made up by some poet. Moreover, despite all my efforts to research the matter, I have been unable to find anyone who could say that he actually saw for himself that a sea exists on the far side of Europe. In any case, the far edges of the world are the sources of the tin and the amber that come to us."

The german researcher Hans Peter Duerr did find a 3 legged minoan pot in a bronze age context in his search for the lost trading port of Rungholt on the north Frisian coast. Runholt was lost to the sea in the 1300s. The area is noted for producing north sea amber, as opposed to Baltic amber. Herodotus is likely to be accurate therefore but he doesn't know where these places are. He knows of the tin islands, but doesn't know that they are Britain.

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authun

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Pytheus was the first to mention trade with the island of britain, in fact, unless this was total fabrication, he was the first recorded person to discuss theexistance of Britian......he never seems to get a mention though. :?

[authun]

Pytheus was the first to mention trade with the island of britain, in fact, unless this was total fabrication, he was the first recorded person to discuss theexistance of Britian......he never seems to get a mention though. :?

It's probably because Pytheas' circumnavigation and naming of Britain is only available via later writers. Pliny wrote that Dicaearchus did not trust the stories of Pytheas whereas Strabo wrote that Timaeus believed Pytheas' story of the discovery of amber.

Pytheas' naming of Britain comes to us via Strabo, who uses the word Bretannike. Pliny uses the word Britannia. They're not using the same source and are drawing on two different sources. Some interpolation has crept in, so we can't be sure of what word Pytheas used exactly. If Herodotus knew of a place in the west where the tin came from, it does seem likely that Pytheas named it Britain, in one form or another, irrespective of whether or not he actually cirumnavigated it.

What does seem certain however is that even long before Herodotus, mariners sailed to Britain and along the continental north sea coast. One wonders what they called these places. That is of course if one accepts that people from the mediterranean sailed to collect the tin rather than the tin traders sailing from Britain to the mediterranean to sell the tin. That would have some interesting implications for state of boat design in the Bronze Age. The Ferriby boats are early bronze age and some estimates state that the method of construction would allow boats of upto 30m with a cargo carrying capacity of 30 - 50 tons to be constructed. Britain did export tin. The tin in the Nebra disc, as claimed by Pernicka, is supposed to have come from Cornwall, along with the gold, and not from central europe as had previously been thought.

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authun

[LvpvsRomanvs]

Pytheus was the first to mention trade with the island of britain, in fact, unless this was total fabrication, he was the first recorded person to discuss theexistance of Britian......he never seems to get a mention though. :?

Well, he is now I've just spent the last few hours re-searching him and have included him in the first chapter (which will be on Britain before the Romans) of an assignment I'm doing on the Roman conquest of Britain. I've found a good section on him in 'Caesar's Invasion of Britain' (1978) By P.B.Ellis.

I've had a look through the ancient sources about him also. Most of Pytheus' writings on Britain have not survived, but he is mentioned by other writers. Strabo and Polybius give him a hard time though:

" It is remarkable, that a private individual- and a poor one at that- could have travelled such distances by land and by sea.’ (Strabo - Geographica.II.4)

Mind you, Pytheus' theory that there is a place in the world that is made of neither land, air or sea and has the consistence of a jelly-fish sounds a bit mad. However, I think that a lot of what he said seems genuine.

He seems to have landed in the territory of the Dumnonii, and gave quite a good description of their lifestyle too. Firstly, he mentions that the British were agricultural and pastoral farmers, whose main produce consisted of wheat. This wheat was threshed in barns as there was little sunshine but so much rain. Further inland, the natives kept large herds of cattle and sheep, from which they could collect
their wool to spin. The British were skilful workers of Iron and Bronze, were able to craft fine pottery, and were also weavers of cloth.

Pytheus then moved on to describe the island’s geography. He says that ‘a stormy straight divides the shores of Britain, which the Dumnonii hold, from the island of the Silures’. This shows that Pytheus, if he did land in Britain, would have first arrived in the territory of the Dumnonii tribe, and also had mistaken the Bristol Channel for a sea that separated the lands of the Silures.
‘This people (the Dumnonii)’ says Pytheus, ‘still preserve their ancient traditions. They refuse to accept coin and insist on bartering, preferring to exchange necessities rather than fix prices.’

Diodorus Siculus also gives a good description about the people of Britain too:

" The inhabitants of that part of Britain [i think he's talking about Cornwall too] which is called Belerion [Land's End] are very fond of strangers, and form their intercourse with foreign merchants, are civilised in their manner of life.
They prepare Ttin, working very carefully the earth in which it is produced. The ground is rocky, but it contains earthy veins, the produce of which is ground down, smelted and purified. They beat the metal into masses like astragali and carry it to a certain island of Britain called Ictis...here, then, the merchants buy the tin from the natives and carry it over to Gaul, and after travelling over land for about 30 days, they finally bring their loads on horse to the mouth of the Rhone.'

Quite a different picture to what Iulius Caesar paints.

- Lorenzo.