A geographical entity I

Before Romans times, “Britain” was just a geographical entity with no political meaning and no single cultural identity. 

The gene pool of the island has changed slowly and the idea of large-scale migrations has been widely discredited. The island has always consisted of multiple cultural groups and identities, many of which looked across the seas for their closest connections - they did not necessarily connect naturally with their fellow islanders. Genetic studies are revealing much more of this island's past and it makes fascinating reading.

From the arrival of the first modern humans - who were hunter-gatherers, following the retreating ice northwards - to the beginning of recorded history is a period of about 100 centuries, or 400 generations; a vast time span we know very little about. 

Biologically these people were part of the Caucasoid population of Europe. The accepted regional physical stereotypes - red-headed people in Scotland, small, dark-haired folk in Wales and lanky blondes in southern England - existed in Roman times.

Different environments encouraged a great regional diversity of culture that consisted of small-scale societies, petty 'tribal' identities, typically lasting perhaps no more than a few generations before splitting, merging or disappearing. These groups were in contact and conflict with their neighbours, and sometimes with more distant groups - the appearance of exotic imported objects attest exchanges, alliance and kinship links, and wars.

At the end of the Iron Age (roughly the last 700 years BC), the first eye-witness accounts of Britain appear. Greco-Roman authors like Julius Caesar reveal a mosaic of named peoples (Trinovantes, Silures, Cornovii, Selgovae, and many more), but there is little sign such groups had a sense of collective identity.

Romans, modern archaeologists and the Iron Age islanders themselves all agree that they were not Celts. This was an 18th century invention; the name was not used earlier. Around 1700 the non-English island tongues were found to relate to that of the ancient continental Gauls, who really were called Celts. This ancient continental ethnic label was applied to the wider family of languages. But 'Celtic' was soon extended to describe insular monuments, art, culture and peoples, ancient and modern: island 'Celtic' identity was born, like Britishness, in the 18th century.

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Dr Simon James is Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Leicester. He specialises in Iron Age and Roman archaeology, Celtic ethnicity and the archaeology of violence and warfare. I found an very interesting article of his, quite long, and the above is my attempt to whittle out the main points so that I will remember them. You may wish to read the entire article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/british_prehistory/peoples_01.shtml#top

The Celts are not the Celts?

As I grew up I admired the Celts and aspired to be one. They coloured my reading up to the age of ten or so, but as I headed towards twelve and thirteen I began to suspect that all was not as it seemed. Instead of the brave, heroic characters I'd read about, I began to see the Celts described as war-mad and quick to battle, a race that inhabited most of Europe and described as barbarians. It was suggested that they were the barbarian hordes who poured into Europe from the Asiatic plains. They seemed to be essentially nomadic, and warlike, liked alcohol and imbibed rather too much, and fought naked - something I've always found hard to believe when Men are so precious about their bits they refer to them as "the crown jewels."

Then the picture of naked wild people rushing into battle began to change. Ceasar was impressed by tribal groups in Gaul with towns and stable government, Druids went to Rome and gained respect, but then there is a huge chunk of time when Celtic peoples and things sank into obscurity. Not until the linguist Edward Lhuyd published Archaeologia Britannica in 1707  were the languages of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and Brittany recognised as belonging to the same family and lumped together under the name Celtic. He too speculated the peoples had moved into Britain from central Europe.

From the mid-1960s, evidence began to refute such claims and  a new theory was formed: the "Celtic" languages were a common language family that fronted the Atlantic coast from the fifth century onward. Ceasar said that the land between the rivers Seine and Garonne in France (think of the city of Bodeaux, on the Garonne) was known as Celtica. There is no mention of any ancient writer referring to the Britons as Celts. The island was known as the isle of the Albiones and Ireland inhabited by the Hierni, though the more popular name was Prettanika or Pretannia. Prettanika may come from the term "painted peoples" but was not used by the people themselves; it was more likely the people of Gaul who used the term of the people who lived in Pretannia.

It would seem the inhabitants of the islands were not immigrants, but indigenous peoples who shared their culture along the seaways with their continental neighbours. This superficial description of ongoing research can easily be explored in much more depth by tacking papers written by people like Barry Cunliffe, emeritus professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford. He wrote Britain Begins (OUP, 2013)