Question for Volky....

[Gen. Volkov]

Ok, before I get into it, I would really like to point out that you need to learn the power of concision. When you delete the obvious nonsense, you took 4 paragraphs to say the same thing I managed to convey in one sentence. Its like you are just adding words to try and make your post seem more impressive. I know I post some pretty epic posts at times, but they are always on topic and only as long as they need to be to make a point. You are adding a bunch of stuff here that doesn't seem to be actually in reference to anything I said.

No, they weren't. A common linguistic root =/= a shared language by a homogeneous group of people. St. Columba needed an interpreter to translate different languages across Britain (I think it was Scotland specifically he travelled but can't remember and cba to check), iirc, ie. even within a single "Celtic" country, these languages were not mutually intelligible.

Yes, the Celts totally were a thing. As I said, its debatable how much of unified culture there was across all the area that spoke Celtic, particularly on the British Isles, but the fact that there was a broad region that spoke Celtic is significant. Why? Because people tend to speak the language they were born into unless they are forced to do otherwise. As a result, you can trace much of world history via the distribution and migration of languages. Languages move with people, they don't spread like ideas or technologies do. For example, the reason French is a Romance language and German is not, is because the Romans never managed to conquer Germany. There's some limited language diffusion, but generally speaking people only replace their old language with a new one if they have to.

As for the 6th century Celtic abbot, that is not surprising. Languages tend to diverge, in Germany for example you can learn German from a group in one valley, and go to the next valley over and the German they are speaking is pretty much unintelligible. But its still German. Just as Irish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic are both branches of the Celtic language group. English doesn't have that problem so much, because it's a fairly young language. We haven't had time to develop true dialects, we just have accents. Though I bet you'd have a pretty hard time understanding some of the people who live deep in the Louisiana bayous.

Plus, an ethnic group has to self-identify. The word Celt originates with Roman sources applying it to the "Celtic" other; there is no evidence of Celtic self-identification. At a push, there is an account by Caesar that refers to a group of people in Gaul who referred to themselves as Celts. Nevertheless, there is absolutely no evidence of a unified Celtic culture of peoples - be it in art, language or a Celtic church.

This is nonsense. We don't have to find a bunch of Celtic runes that say "We are Celts" to know a set of related cultures with a common language existed. There are a bunch of peoples that we only know about from second-hand accounts and archaeological findings. There are archaeological findings associated with Celtic peoples. The Halstatt and the later La Tene cultures are both Celtic.

Regardless, as I think you alluded to when you said the Scottish weren't Celts, the same Caesar account I mentioned makes explicitly clear that the inhabitants of the British Isles were not Celtic, as they were people who had "always been there" (he says something to that effect). If that is not concrete enough for you, analysis of a bunch of remains excavated across Britain from the "Celtic" period using the Globetrotter tool (recent research from 2014) found distinct genetic clusters, ie. these were not a homogeneous ethnic group.

No, what I was alluding to the was that Scots we heavily Anglicized Gaels by the time of the First Scottish War for Independence. Gaels are probably descended from Celts that migrated to the British Isles at some point in the Iron Age, but its hard to know for sure. Mostly because there aren't a whole lot of accurate records on Gaels until well after the Romans got done wiping out the mainland Celts. As for Caesar's account... yeah, because an invader from Rome is totally going to know who had "always been there". There is actually genetic evidence of a migration of Celts from Europe to Britain, BTW. Just because a new culture moves in and takes over, doesn't mean all the people from the old culture are murdered. They get absorbed into the new culture, so I would expect to see distinct genetic clusters.

Across all the "Celtic" regions in Europe, this heterogeneity manifests itself in other ways. Burial practices, for one, differ significantly within local communities. Most the research I've seen for this was concerned with parts of England, but you see this in mainland Europe, too. Basically, these people had short-range social lives and largely stayed within their communities, but you did paradoxically have a small but significant amount of contact between coastal communities in the Celtic fringe. From the main distribution centres here, local elites and petty kings would trade goods inwards, and this accounts for the distribution of the La Tene goods across Europe that had previously been seen as evidence of a unified "Celtic" culture across Europe.

Lack of a unified Celtic culture across Europe does not equal "the Celts were not a thing". It just means the Celts possibly weren't as widespread as we thought they were. There were still a group of people that we call the Celts. You are making a really broad statement based on an extremely narrow set of criteria. Its almost like you just wanted to start an argument with me.

The only real people you could tenuously argue were Celts would be the Gauls, but you'd get short shrift in a serious archaeological circle if you tried to do that with earnest.

Perhaps if I was using the same narrow criteria you are, but if I were to ask an archaeologist about the Celts, I'm pretty sure they would agree that they were a thing that existed in broad terms.

/did a module on this (no I'm not an archaeologist but I decided to do some late antique history for a change)

Your module sounds like it was written by a Brexiter.

[Firetooth]

Ok, I keep saying to Volk that I'll post a reply. So to keep my word, here is my unfinished reply that I wrote a few days ago but never finished and polished:
--

Ok, before I get into it, I would really like to point out that you need to learn the power of concision. When you delete the obvious nonsense, you took 4 paragraphs to say the same thing I managed to convey in one sentence. Its like you are just adding words to try and make your post seem more impressive. I know I post some pretty epic posts at times, but they are always on topic and only as long as they need to be to make a point. You are adding a bunch of stuff here that doesn't seem to be actually in reference to anything I said.

It's in reference to you saying originally that the Celts were a real thing. Just because it isn't directly in reference to anything you said doesn't mean it's irrelevant to the broader disagreement that we're debating over. I did think of cutting some stuff before posting, but I couldn't really be bothered.

Yes, the Celts totally were a thing. As I said, its debatable how much of unified culture there was across all the area that spoke Celtic, particularly on the British Isles, but the fact that there was a broad region that spoke Celtic is significant. Why? Because people tend to speak the language they were born into unless they are forced to do otherwise. As a result, you can trace much of world history via the distribution and migration of languages. Languages move with people, they don't spread like ideas or technologies do. For example, the reason French is a Romance language and German is not, is because the Romans never managed to conquer Germany. There's some limited language diffusion, but generally speaking people only replace their old language with a new one if they have to.

As for the 6th century Celtic abbot, that is not surprising. Languages tend to diverge, in Germany for example you can learn German from a group in one valley, and go to the next valley over and the German they are speaking is pretty much unintelligible. But its still German. Just as Irish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic are both branches of the Celtic language group. English doesn't have that problem so much, because it's a fairly young language. We haven't had time to develop true dialects, we just have accents. Though I bet you'd have a pretty hard time understanding some of the people who live deep in the Louisiana bayous.

What you're arguing here does not dispute my argument that there was no ethnically homogeneous Celt, as it supports the idea that there was an ethnically homogeneous culture before the Celts, which was dispersed across Europe via migration. Yes, there are shared characteristics between the Celtic languages, eg. consonant mutation, but a shared linguistic root does not make an entire ethnic group; does the post-Roman Latin root to most European languages mean there is a homogeneous Pan-European ethnicity? Of course not.

It is worth noting here that language is the only characteristic shared by all the "Celtic" peoples, and the only characteristic which is unique to them. Again, however, the distinction between P and Q Celtic, and heavy variation between the Celtic languages, is indicative of heterogeneity, with a common root that suggests there was an ethnically homogeneous culture that the speakers of these languages descended from.

This is nonsense. We don't have to find a bunch of Celtic runes that say "We are Celts" to know a set of related cultures with a common language existed.

Ok, I think there's a misunderstanding here of what actually constitutes an ethnicity.

ethnicity
ɛθˈnɪsɪti/
noun
noun: ethnicity; plural noun: ethnicities

    the fact or state of belonging to a social group that has a common national or cultural tradition.
    "the interrelationship between gender, ethnicity, and class"

So ethnicity is all about belonging and identity. How, then, can you belong to an ethnicity if you don't self-identify as such? If you told somebody living in Dinas Powys that he was a Celt, it would probably be news to him. Note that the original usage of the word comes from Ancient Greek, as Keltoi – an umbrella term for uncivilized, savage foreigners. You've dismissed that Caesar knew that the inhabitants of the British Isles were not Celtic, yet the one, single piece of contemporary evidence suggesting Celt was anything other than a derogatory slur used to other the "Celt," whilst distinguishing him from the Germans, comes from Caesar. So which is it to be?  (note that Caesar is one of the very few authors of these second-hand accounts to have actually visited the Celtic Fringe)

I must confess, I'm finding it a bit difficult to grasp some aspects of what your argument is, because a) you've not engaged that much with the ethnically homogeneous aspect of the Celtic debate and b) I'm hungover. Your argument seems to be that there were a set of interrelated cultures with a common linguistic root, but that doesn't really account for whether the Celts can be considered a genuine ethnic group. Like I said earlier, I honestly think what you're expressing could just as easily be an argument in favour of the idea of a common ancestor the "Celtic" peoples, rather than an argument for the Celts themselves.  .

There are a bunch of peoples that we only know about from second-hand accounts and archaeological findings. There are archaeological findings associated with Celtic peoples. The Halstatt and the later La Tene cultures are both Celtic.

That's true, but the archaeological findings and second-hand accounts in the Celtic case are troublesome and have traditionally been forced into the Celtic narrative, rather than taken as they are.

I know you focus on the archaeological evidence here, but it's interesting that you use second-hand-hand accounts as a potential evidence source – even though you dismissed Caesar's account of the British people not being Celtic. So which is it? I know you're coming at this from the language angle, but the problem is that this intellectual dishonesty concerning second-hand accounts is rife among the Celticists. For the record, as I said earlier, Caesar's account is one of the better of the second-hand accounts of the Celts.

You say that there are archaeological findings "associated" with the Celts, and that is the key word. What has happened is material culture has been attached to the Celts due to simple proximity, because it fits into the narrative of a broader Celtic culture. As I explain in a section of my post which you quote and dismiss later on, the contact between different "Celtic" communities in this period accounts for the distribution of La Tene and Halstatt items across the "Celtic" Fringe - these items were not necessarily produced by the Celts themselves, and are not necessarily evidence of a broader Celtic culture. The fact that La Tene material culture is heavily concentrated in Western Europe, and far less concentrated in Britain, supports the suggestion that it was minimal but significant contact between different cultures that spread this material, rather than a unified culture producing these works. Granted, there is the risk here of the other extreme, where migration is completely ignored and any spread of material culture is due to trade. That said, I do think that trade and contact is generally a more valid explanation of this. What I would also say is don't underestimate the significance of this contact - it was small in scale, but there was direct trade between the British Isles and Byzantine during the Justinian period.

No, what I was alluding to the was that Scots we heavily Anglicized Gaels by the time of the First Scottish War for Independence. Gaels are probably descended from Celts that migrated to the British Isles at some point in the Iron Age, but its hard to know for sure. Mostly because there aren't a whole lot of accurate records on Gaels until well after the Romans got done wiping out the mainland Celts. As for Caesar's account... yeah, because an invader from Rome is totally going to know who had "always been there". There is actually genetic evidence of a migration of Celts from Europe to Britain, BTW. Just because a new culture moves in and takes over, doesn't mean all the people from the old culture are murdered. They get absorbed into the new culture, so I would expect to see distinct genetic clusters.

It's worth looking into the methodology of____________ . [I think I was going to talk about the dodgy methodology in lots of the Victorian era and Celticist studies]

Lack of a unified Celtic culture across Europe does not equal "the Celts were not a thing". It just means the Celts possibly weren't as widespread as we thought they were. There were still a group of people that we call the Celts.

But what meaning does the label "Celt" actually convey here? Is it just a set of people speaking "Celtic" languages? What actually even is the utility of the label any more? All it does is let you put a bunch of people speaking vaguely-similar (but not mutually intelligible) languages into a pigeon hole, thus ignoring the significant cultural, genetic and religious differences intranationally, let alone transnationally, between these people.

Perhaps if I was using the same narrow criteria you are, but if I were to ask an archaeologist about the Celts, I'm pretty sure they would agree that they were a thing that existed in broad terms.

They'd agree with you that there's a common linguistic root, derived from a shared ancestor culture. Not sure they'd go much further than that.

Your module sounds like it was written by a Brexiter.

The irony of invoking nationalism in this debate is not lost on me, considering Celticist archaeologists like the Megaws' claim that disputing the idea that the Celts existed is tantamount to ethnic cleansing. Indeed, the Megaws like to argue that the dismissal of the Celts by post-Celticist archaeologists is due to rampant British nationalism. I'll just quote this extract from Simon James:

'if they were right, one should expect that, in rejecting the pan-Celtic paradigm, 'post-Celticist' archaeologists would be strongly emphasizing the importance of Britain as a unified and distinctive cultural and perhaps ethnic entity in the Iron Age. This is simply not happening. Not only has the idea of a Celtic world fallen into disfavour, but Britain is also rejected as an especially significant unit of analysis.'

S. James, 1998. Celts, politics and motivation in archaeology. Antiquity 72: 204

So the Brexit swipe, besides being below-the-belt, is misjudged.