Theory that \'Celts\' are a myth

[Ingvar Sigurdson]

Conrtributing within 'Signals of Belief in Early England' 2010, Ronald Hutton remarks
'When the historical evidence for the Roman and Norman and the Viking settlements of England is compared with the archaeolgical, it makes a pretty good fit, in religious as in military, social, economic and political context. To be sure, argument and doubt can arise over particular events and figures, and the extent of of particular developments, but in general the data is compatible. In their record, the Anglo-Saxons now present a striking and troubling, anomaly. All of the historical evidence, whether that left by contempararies or near-contemporaries such as Gildas and the fith-century Gallic authors, or retrospective sources such as Bede, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Historia Brittonum portrays an intensly traumatic experiance of invasion, conflict, slaughter and dispossesion. This is also in apparent harmony with the lingistic and place-name evidence, and the creation of Brittany itself presupposes mass migration prevoked by danger at home. The material evidence of settlement, however, has been powerfully and commonly argued of late to refute all this, and so the two bodies of data are at apparent odds to an unusual extent'

Ingvar