Who is a Celt? (user search)
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  Who is a Celt? (search mode)
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Author Topic: Who is a Celt?  (Read 666 times)
Filuwaúrdjan
Realpolitik
Atlas Institution
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Posts: 67,609
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« on: January 13, 2021, 06:38:10 PM »
« edited: January 13, 2021, 09:20:03 PM by Filuwaúrdjan »

It's all a little bit messy. Essentially the 19th century thesis about a broadly homogeneous set of Celtic Peoples that had a common material culture and language and which were related by blood and easily distinguishable from (say) Germanic or Iberian peoples has been discredited, but (and this is important) so has the revisionist view that argued that the concept was a pure creation of 19th century Romantic Nationalists and that the term should be withdrawn from use. There does appear to have been a broad cultural and linguistic zone in the North West of Europe where languages that we would classify as 'Celtic' were spoken*, it is clearly the case that there was if not a common material culture then at least a continuum, and there is plenty of evidence of sociological and political commonalities: to simplify things rather grossly, we're talking of highly organised societies with strong social stratification, significant towns and even cities, a large nobility and an authoritarian political culture revolving around kinship. We also have to reckon with the fact that Classical writers were quite certain that such a thing existed. We might as well use the word 'Celtic' to describe all this, as its a perfectly fine term and no other will really do.

Where it does become all rather messy again, though, is that not all of these features were necessarily shared by all of the peoples in the zone in question. In particular, the exact boundary between 'Celtic'/'Gaulish' and 'Germanic' peoples was extremely unclear: the famous example is that of the Cimbri and the Teutones, but you also have the case of the Marcomanni (residents of what later became part of Bohemia) who were variously described first as one and then the other. Greatly complicating the matter is the fact that Roman writers tended to make the distinction based on politics and wealth rather than on the cultural factors that have mattered more in modern times: if the people in question were organised in an authoritarian manner and were wealthy, then they were 'Gauls', if they were more 'democratic' and materially poor, then they were 'Germans'. But it is probably better to come to terms with the ambiguity than to wrestle with it. Writing about a later period (his beloved Early Middle Ages), J.R.R. Tolkien argued that 'Celtic', 'Germanic' and 'Romance' culture, ancestry, polities and influences were (and are) so thoroughly mixed across the North West of Europe that to even try to make firm connections between 'race' and culture, to draw fixed and sure lines on a map, is to engage in what amounts to scholarly malpractice.

*Though it needs to be noted that the differences between 'P' and 'Q' 'Celtic' are beyond vast and that shoehorning the latter into this cultural zone - except as an example of quite how far into unlikely territories its influence spread - probably is an example of questionable 19th century Romantic enthusiasm. So when talking of 'Celtic' in this sense, we're talking near-exclusively of 'P' Celtic, even if a lot of this does appear to have applied also to societies that spoke 'Q' Celtic languages...
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Filuwaúrdjan
Realpolitik
Atlas Institution
*****
Posts: 67,609
United Kingdom


« Reply #1 on: January 13, 2021, 06:41:43 PM »

The relationship between genetics, language and material culture in prehistorical societies is waaaaaaay too complicated and obscure for anyone to have figured out a model of how they interfaced.

Exactly so, yes.
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