Iron Men, Natural History Magazine, and Simon James
Via the customary cursory glace at my referrals, I noticed that a new article on the Natural History magazine Web site links to me via the following:
At Lisa L. Spangenberg’s Digital Medievalist site you can find a good list of Celtic Web Resources (scroll down). At one of them, Simon James’s Ancient Celts Page, the author, who is an archaeologist at the University of Leicester in England, presents alternative views on this culture. After presenting the conventional wisdom, he gives an alternate history of “Celticness,” which examines the justification for unifying so many tribes under one banner—with particular attention to the British Isles.
I very much respect the work of Professor James. He’s an excellent archaeologist, and I do understand the problems of referring to a huge span of, what, three thousand years of history, and a geographical reach that covers most of Europe and a decent chunk of the Middle East as “Celtic.” The also fabulous Barry Cunliffe, another archaeologist, shares some of the same concerns.
But.
The Celtic languages are:
- Clearly related, with a single common ancestor.
- They share myths and laws and motifs not only with other Indo-European cultures, but with each others—right down to the names, never mind the stories.
- There are also shared myths, etymologies, laws, and practices, that are unique to Celtic languages, and shared among Celtic languages.
I note that Professor James largely ignores Celtic languages and linguistics; I really wish he wouldn’t. I realize the enormous cultural differences over time and geography—these are especially apparent in terms of archaeology and art—but given that the peoples who we associate with Celtic in terms of pre industrial history spoke a Celtic language, I assert that it is perfectly reasonable to refer to those peoples as Celts, however we decide to bento-box their artifacts.
