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This is a popular Scottish ballad in form of questions between mother and son. Lord Randal died because of his true love. He will leave to his family material things instead to his true love he will leave hell and fire.

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Domesday Book is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William the Conqueror.

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Magna Carta, or "The Great Charter" is one of the most important documents of all time. It was born in 1215 under King John's reign after a ribellion by the barons who were forced by the king (who was considered one of the worst kings ever) to pay hight taxes balancing kingdom's economy. This document stipulated that the king could no longer claim taxes without the approval of a council of advisors, and no freeman could be arrested, imprisoned or dispossessed of his property without fair trial. But the number of freemen was low and peasants' conditions remained the same. Anyway king's power decreased and so the middle classes could start to rise. In short, Magna Carta has become a powerful symbol of liberty around the world.

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British Library

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What is Magna Carta. Why was it created? What does it say, and why has it become one of the most celebrated documents in history?

Narrated by Monty Python's Terry Jones, this animation takes you back in time to medieval England in 1215 under the reign of Bad King John. Why was the charter originally created? And what does it actually say?

What is Magna Carta?

Magna Carta, meaning 'The Great Charter', is one of the most famous documents in the world. Originally issued by King John of England (r.1199-1216) as a practical solution to the political crisis he faced in 1215, Magna Carta established for the first time the principle that everybody, including the king, was subject to the law. Although nearly a third of the text was deleted or substantially rewritten within ten years, and almost all the clauses have been repealed in modern times, Magna Carta remains a cornerstone of the British constitution.

Most of the 63 clauses granted by King John dealt with specific grievances relating to his rule. However, buried within them were a number of fundamental values that both challenged the autocracy of the king and proved highly adaptable in future centuries. Most famously, the 39th clause gave all 'free men' the right to justice and a fair trial. Some of Magna Carta's core principles are echoed in the United States Bill of Rights (1791) and in many other constitutional documents around the world, as well as in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the European Convention on Human Rights (1950).

Usage terms: Public Domain in most countries other than the UK

Why does Magna Carta matter today?

In 1215 Magna Carta was a peace treaty between the King and the rebel barons. In that respect it was a failure, but it provided a new framework for the relationship between the King and his subjects. The 1225 version of Magna Carta, freely issued by Henry III (r.1216-72) in return for a tax granted to him by the whole kingdom, took this idea further and became the definitive version of the text. Three clauses of the 1225 Magna Carta remain on the statute book today. Although most of the clauses of Magna Carta have now been repealed, the many divergent uses that have been made of it since the Middle Ages have shaped its meaning in the modern era, and it has become a potent, international rallying cry against the arbitrary use of power.

Usage terms: Public Domain in most countries other than the UK

What does Magna Carta say?

Although Magna Carta contained 63 clauses when it was first granted, only three of those clauses remain part of English law. One defends the liberties and rights of the English Church, another confirms the liberties and customs of London and other towns, but the third is the most famous:

No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.

This clause gave all free men the right to justice and a fair trial. However, 'free men' comprised only a small proportion of the population in medieval England. The majority of the people were unfree peasants known as 'villeins', who could seek justice only through the courts of their own lords.

Buried deep in Magna Carta, this clause was given no particular prominence in 1215, but its intrinsic adaptability has allowed succeeding generations to reinterpret it for their own purposes. In the 14th century Parliament saw it as guaranteeing trial by jury; in the 17th century Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634) interpreted it as a declaration of individual liberty in his conflict with the early Stuart kings; and it has echoes in the American Bill of Rights (1791) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).

Much of the remainder of Magna Carta dealt with specific grievances regarding the ownership of land, the regulation of the justice system, and medieval taxes with no modern equivalent (such as 'scutage' and 'socage'). It demanded the removal of fish weirs from the Thames, the Medway and throughout England; the dismissal of several royal servants; the standardisation of various weights and measures; and so on.

Magna Carta stated that no taxes could be demanded without the 'general consent of the realm', meaning the leading barons and churchmen. It re-established privileges which had been lost, and it linked fines to the severity of the offence so as not to threaten an individual's livelihood. It also confirmed that a widow could not be forced to remarry against her wishes.

Why was Magna Carta created?

In 1214, a mercenary army raised by King John was defeated by the French at the Battle of Bouvines in northern France. This army had been paid largely by the tax known as 'scutage', a payment made to the Crown in place of providing knights for military service, and the focus of much baronial discontent.

King John's reign was also marked by his strained relationship with the Church. John had rejected the election of Stephen Langton (1150-1228) as Archbishop of Canterbury, and in 1208 the Pope issued a decree (known as an 'Interdict'), prohibiting people in England from receiving the sacraments or being buried in consecrated ground. King John was excommunicated by Pope Innocent III (1161-1216) in 1209, and the Interdict remained in place until John surrendered his kingdom to the overlordship of the Pope in 1213.

In 1213, a party of rebel barons met with Archbishop Stephen Langton and the papal legate (a representative of the Pope) to air their grievances against the King. They also urged that John should agree to confirm the coronation charter issued by his ancestor, King Henry I, in 1100, which had promised 'to abolish all the evil customs by which the kingdom of England has been unjustly oppressed'. In early 1215, the dispute escalated when King John refused to meet the barons' demands. In May many barons renounced their oaths of allegiance to him, choosing Robert fitz Walter (1162-1235) as their leader. Their capture of the city of London that same month was a turning point in their campaign.

Once London was in the barons' hands, John had no option but to negotiate with them. The two sides met at Runnymede, on the River Thames near Windsor in the south of England, in June 1215. The demands of the barons were recorded in the document known as the Articles of the Barons. Following further discussions with the barons and clerics led by Archbishop Langton, King John granted the Charter of Liberties, subsequently known as Magna Carta, at Runnymede on 15 June 1215. On 19 June the rebel barons made their formal peace with King John and renewed their oaths of allegiance to him.

The King's clerks set about drawing up copies of the agreement for distribution throughout the kingdom. It is not certain how many copies of the 1215 Magna Carta were originally issued, but four copies still survive: one in Lincoln Cathedral; one in Salisbury Cathedral; and two at the British Library. Like other medieval royal charters, Magna Carta was authenticated with the Great Seal, not by the signature of the king.

Usage terms: Public Domain in most countries other than the UK

Was Magna Carta effective in the short term?

Although King John agreed the terms of Magna Carta and the barons renewed their oaths of allegiance, the settlement did not last long. Aggrieved by the manner in which Magna Carta was to be enforced, John sent messengers to the Pope (the overlord of the kingdoms of England and Ireland) in the summer of 1215, requesting that the charter be annulled. In turn, the barons refused to surrender the city of London to the King until Magna Carta had been implemented. Pope Innocent III was alarmed by the charter's terms, and on 24 August 1215 he issued a document known as a papal bull, describing Magna Carta as 'illegal, unjust, harmful to royal rights and shameful to the English people', and declaring the charter 'null and void of all validity for ever'.

In September 1215, civil war broke out between King John and his barons. The King raised an army of mercenaries to fight his cause, while the barons renounced their allegiance to him, and invited Prince Louis (1187-1226), son of the King of France, to accept the English crown. Louis invaded England in 1216, and England was still at war when John died of dysentery on the night of 18 October 1216.

Magna Carta was effectively dead, but it gained new life in the early years of the reign of the next king, Henry III. Henry was just nine years old when he succeeded to the throne, and in November 1216 a revised version of Magna Carta was issued in his name, in order to regain the support of the barons. Another version of Magna Carta was granted in the following year, after the French army had been expelled from England. In 1225, on reaching the age of 18, Henry reissued a much revised version of Magna Carta which was later enrolled on the statute book by King Edward I (r.1272-1307) in 1297.

Usage terms: Public Domain in most countries other than the UK

What was the long-term impact of Magna Carta?

Magna Carta is sometimes regarded as the foundation of democracy in England. In fact, most of its terms applied only to a small proportion of the population in 1215, and the implementation of the charter in subsequent centuries remained open to the interpretation of the courts.

Revised versions of Magna Carta were issued by King Henry III (in 1216, 1217 and 1225), and the text of the 1225 version was entered onto the statute roll in 1297. Magna Carta had limited the circumstances under which the King could raise money without the consent of the people. The 1225 version of Magna Carta had been granted explicitly in return for a payment of tax by the whole kingdom, and this paved the way for the first summons of Parliament in 1265, to approve the granting of taxation.

In the 17th century, opponents of King Charles I (1625-49) used Magna Carta to regulate the arbitrary use of royal authority. Sir Edward Coke, declared that 'Magna Carta is such a fellow, that he will have no sovereign', and in 1628 he helped to draft the Petition of Right, which limited royal power and made explicit reference to Magna Carta. When King Charles was himself put on trial in 1649, it was argued that his attempts to halt the proceedings contravened the clause of Magna Carta which prohibited the delay of justice.

Magna Carta has consequently acquired a special status as the cornerstone of English liberties. This is despite the fact that the vast majority of its clauses have now been repealed, or in some cases superseded by other legislation such as the Human Rights Act (1998). Magna Carta nonetheless retains enormous symbolic power as an ancient defence against arbitrary and tyrannical rulers, and as a guarantor of individual liberties.

Claire Breay is Head of Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts at the British Library. She is co-curator of the Library's major exhibition Magna Carta: Law Liberty, Legacy (13 March-1 September 2015) and editor of the exhibition catalogue.

Julian Harrison is Lead Curator of Medieval Historical Manuscripts at the British Library, and lead curator of the Harry Potter exhibition. He also co-curated the Library's major exhibition Magna Carta: Law Liberty, Legacy (2015) and the Our Shakespeare exhibition at the Library of Birmingham (2016).

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What is Magna Carta. Why was it created? What does it say, and why has it become one of the most celebrated documents in history? Narrated by Monty Python's Terry Jones, this animation takes you back in time to medieval England in 1215 under the reign of Bad King John.

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This may look like a plain, unassuming piece of parchment, but it's actually one of the most famous documents in the world. Magna Carta, meaning 'the Great Charter', has inspired people across the centuries, from Thomas Jefferson to Mahatma Gandhi. But why was the charter originally created? And what does it actually say?

Let us take you back to medieval England. It's the year 1215, and the ruler is King John. Many people believe that King John was one of the worst kings in history. He imprisoned his former wife; he starved his opponents to death; he allegedly murdered his own nephew, and pulled the beards of the Irish Chiefs.

King John had imposed heavy taxes on his barons in order to pay for his expensive foreign wars. If they refused to pay, he punished them severely or seized their property. The barons demanded that King John obey the law; when he refused, they captured London and John was forced to negotiate.

The two sides met at Runnymede in June 1215. The result of the negotiations was written down by the king's clerks in the document we know as Magna Carta. Although most of the charter's clauses dealt with medieval rights and customs, Magna Carta has become a powerful symbol of liberty around the world.

The most famous clause, which is still part of the law today, for the first time gave all 'free men' the right to justice and a fair trial.

'No man shall be arrested or imprisoned except by the judgment of their equals and by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.'

However, this clause was not as liberal at it sounds. The Charter only applied to 'free men', the vast majority of people in 1215 were unfree peasants who were ruled over by their landowners.

And although, Magna Carta was intended to create peace between King John and his rebellious barons, England was plunged into civil war after the Pope declared the Charter invalid.

When King John died of dysentery in 1216, nine year old Henry III took to the throne. To keep the peace, Magna Carta was reissued several times during the 13th century, until it was finally made part of English law.

Magna Carta has lived on for 800 years, and is echoed in the United States Declaration of Independence and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.Perhaps Magna Carta's most important legacy is that everyone - including our leaders - must obey the law.

What started out as a document of specific complaints from a group of barons has turned into an international symbol of liberty, without which we might not have the rights we value so much today.

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Why is this old piece of parchment considered to be such a powerful symbol of our rights and freedoms? Narrated by Monty Python's Terry Jones, this animation takes you back to medieval times, when England under the reign of Bad King John.

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Henry III

Edward I

Edward II

Edward III

Richard II

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Henry II 1154-89

Richard I 1189-99

John Lackland 1199-1296

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William I 1066-87

William II 1087 - 1100

Henry I 1100-35

Stephen 1135-54

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The Angevins

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lesson 2

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university school of nashville (organization)

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Chaucer, Lesson 2: Middle English/Introduction to the Canterbury Tales

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Enrichment/Instructional video for 10th Grade British Literature students at the University School of Nashville, Nashville, Tennessee.

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lesson 1

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university school of nashville (organization)

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Chaucer, Lesson 1: Historical Context for the Canterbury Tales

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Enrichment/Instructional video for 10th Grade British Literature students at the University School of Nashville, Nashville, Tennessee.

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Nick Cave -  Kylie Minogue  Where the Wild Roses Grow (lyrics)

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A song written by Nick Cave for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' ninth album "Murder Ballads" (1996), with guest vocals by Kylie Minogue.

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Bob Dylan "A Hard Rains A Gonna-Fall" (lyric Video)

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House of Anjou

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Timeline

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William the Duke of Normandy, in 1066, led the Normans through the England to fight the Anglo-Saxons at the Battle of Hastings. The Anglo-Saxons were defeated with their king Harold.

At the beginning of the Norman conquest, the Normans had to live like an army of occupation; the Normans suffered the uprisings of the populations subjected. to keep the populations under control, the Normans built a lot of castles in different parts of the country. People were forced to accept a new royal family, a new culture and a new language.

In 1086 William sent his men across the England to find out the value of each piece of land, the number of families living there, the total production of that land. The intention was to know how much money he could earn from the taxes. The results were written down in a list called the Domesday book.

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Much of what was oral Anglo-Saxon literature has been lost to us.

The earliest Anglo-Saxon literary works were poems, these poems were written down by monks so, even though they mostly had pagan themes in them, they lost some pagan elements under the Christian morality's influence.

Early pagan poetry is divided into two genres: epic and elegy,

The most known epic composition is Beowulf; as for the elegy, we have six pagan elegies preserved in a volume from the 10th century known as The Exeter Book.

Religious poetry was another important genre. The first Anglo-Saxon Christian poet was Caedmon who composed poems based on the Bible.

Later, Cynewulf wrote poems inspired by saints and apostles. lives.

Typical Anglo-Saxon's literature's characteristics were: the use of alliterations and caesura.

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Claudia Formisano, Anglo-Saxon literature: an oral tradition

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Claudia Formisano, Anglo-Saxon literature: an oral tradition

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Anglo Saxon's literature wasn't written, instead it was communicated orally. The stories passed along from person to person, and from generation to generation, so it could happened that it could be different from original form, undergoing a number of variations, additions or omissions. Nevertheless oral poetry was an important way of preserving the history and culture of the tribe for the benefit of future generations.

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Domesday Book and chest at National Archives

Latest: all entries pages updated; site search fixed

The Domesday Book was commissioned in December 1085 by William the Conqueror, who invaded England in 1066. The first draft was completed in August 1086 and contained records for 13,418 settlements in the English counties south of the rivers Ribble and Tees (the border with Scotland at the time).

The original Domesday Book has survived over 900 years of English history and is currently housed in a specially made chest at The National Archives in Kew, London. This site has been set up to enable visitors to discover the history of the Domesday Book, to give an insight into life at the time of its compilation, and provide information and links on related topics.

Start exploring the site by using the search box on the left, the Quick Links or the main links at the top.

If you're after quick information the FAQs page provides answers to some of the most common questions about the Domesday Book.

© 1999-2019 domesdaybook.co.uk. All rights reserved

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Domesday Book and chest at National Archives Latest: all entries pages updated; site search fixed The Domesday Book was commissioned in December 1085 by William the Conqueror, who invaded England in 1066. The first draft was completed in August 1086 and contained records for 13,418 settlements in the English counties south of the rivers Ribble and Tees (the border with Scotland at the time).

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Boudicca was the queen of Iceni, a tribe staying in the odiern Norfolk. Her name comes from the celtic "bouda" that means "victory". Boudicca is famous because she drove the resistence against Romans when they invaded Britain. She led the rebellion of Iceni and of other people who joined them in the 60-61 CE and she came very close to expell the invaders, but then she was defeated by the army of Paulinus. Some says that she poisoned herself to not be capture by her enemies. Unfortunatly we don't know nothing about the place of the final battle and of the death of Boudicca.

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For Anglo-Saxons the scop (poet)figure played an important role. He was a keeper of a poetic vocabulary and formulae called word-hoard with which he compoded a lay (poetic composition). The scop had to think quickly about what he has to perform since he had to improvise and respect, at the same time, poem's metrical rules.

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William, byname William the Conqueror or William the Bastard or William of Normandy,duke of Normandy and king of England from 1066,one of greatest soldiers and rulers of Middle Age Wlliam soon learned to control his youthful recklessness. He was always ready to take calculated risks on campaign and to fight a battle, but he was not a flamboyant commander. His plans were simple, his methods direct, and he ruthlessly exploited any opportunity. If he found himself at a disadvantage, he withdrew immediately. He showed the same qualities in his government. He never lost sight of his aim to recover lost ducal rights and revenues, and, although he developed no theory of government or great interest in administrative techniques, he was always prepared to improvise and experiment.

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The Bayeux Tapestry - chronicles the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England. It is actually and embroidered cloth and is nearly 230 feet long. The fact that it survived in such amazing shape since it's creation (no one knows exactly when but it is mentioned in the 1400's) is incredible.

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Bruna Accardo- My favorite Celtic Symbols

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Bruna Accardo- My favorite Celtic Symbols

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Here are 5 symbols that I have selected from Celtic Culture. They were found on etchings, statues and in ancient books. In this post I've also written their deeper meaning. I hope you'll enjoy it!

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Roman civilisation

The Romans were sklled builders, indeed they built: roads, fortfications, amphitheatres and so on. The Romans had a drainage system and water supply.

They introduced a literate culture into Britan and the use of Latin language.

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The English language began in 410 AD  when the Romans left Britan and 3 Germanics tribes arrived : the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes (No one knows what happend to them).

The Romans left straight roads behind them but not much of their Latin language also because the Anglo-saxon vocab was more useful with simple everyday things; for example 4 days of the week have got Anglo-saxon god names.

In 591 Christian missionaries came to England and brought with them other Latin words.

Also the Vikings came there and they may have raped and pillaged but they also gave English about two thousand words, like "give" and "take".

From this point of view, English is a sort of stratification.

The mix of peoples' languages and culture.

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After the Celts there were the Romans. They appeared in Britain in the year 55 BCE with
the invasion of Julius Caesar. They divided Britain in two parts: at first there were the Romans who built roads, fortifications, baths, amphitheatres and town where they governed the people; then there were people who didn't want their control. These parts were marked by the Hadrian's Wall, which was called this way because the Emperor Adrian decided to built this wall.

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The story of how Duke William of Normandy invaded England in 1066 and effectively ended Anglo-Saxon rule in Britain.

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Bitsizes

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A summary of the Norman Conquest - The Norman Conquest - KS3 History Revision - BBC Bitesize

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Harold Godwinson Harald Hardrada William of Normandy When Edward the Confessor died, Harold Godwinson, Earl of Wessex , was immediately crowned king and became Harold II. The royal council, known as the Witan , supported him. He gathered an army to defend the kingdom.

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The Sutton Hoo burial mound concealed this ship with space for forty oarsmen and a steersman and mostly lots of treasures well preserved: for example a purse, weapons, silver and so on. Obviously it's not so plain to say whose was the ship, even if some research suggests it was Redwald, a Saxon king. Nowadays you can see some of these objects at the British Museum in London on a display.

But do you know what exactly is a burial mound? I suggest you to go and watch the second video of Beawulf right up here. It's so interesting!

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Britain was occupied under the reign of Emperor Claudius. Another important Emperor was Hadrian, who decided to build a wall to keep away the Caledonians. At the end of fourth century the Roman Empire fell apart and the Emperor Honorius had to stop his legions to defend Rome from the Visigoths.

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It was an Anglo-Saxon helmet found in one of the burial mounds at Sutton Hoo.

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Towards the end of the Stone Age around 3,000 BC, in Britain the Neolithic people started creating a ring of big stones. The stones were placed facing the sun.

Historians think that it was an ancient temple for pagan ceremonies and probably an astonomical observatory too. Nevertheless the real purpose remains a mystery!

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When the first Romans landed in Britain in 55 BC led by Julius Caesar, Britain was inhabited by the Britons, a group speaking a Celtic language. However, Britain was really conquered by the Romans in 43 AD. They built roads, forts and several towns like London, York and Manchester.
In fact the suffix-chester- derives from the Latin word - castrum-, which means " a military camp site". In 410 AD they left Britain to defend Rome from the assaults of barbarian tribes.

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The Vikings Raid England Video - Vikings - HISTORY.com

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Viking warrior Ivar the Boneless unleashes his Great Heathen Army upon England, opening nearly a century of raids and plunder during the Dark Ages.

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Behowulf - lesson 2

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Beowulf, Lesson 2: The history of the Beowulf poem

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Beowulf, Lesson 1: Introducing the Anglo Saxons

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Roman Sites and Roman Remains in Britain

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Browse our interactive map of Roman sites and remains in England, Scotland and Wales.

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Romans : Invasion

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How did the Celts fight back?

When the Romans invaded, the Celtic tribes had to decide whether or not to fight back. If they made peace, they agreed to obey Roman laws and pay taxes. In return, they could keep their kingdoms. However, some Celtic leaders chose to fight.

After years of heavy taxes and the Romans taking their land, some Celtic tribes were desperate for revenge. In AD60, one leader who chose to fight was Queen Boudica of the Iceni tribe. She raised a huge army and went on a rampage, burning the Roman towns of Colchester and London, before heading north to St Albans.

When the Roman army heard about this, they turned back from their campaign in Wales to face Boudica. Even though the Romans were outnumbered by Boudica's 200,000 warriors, they were better trained and had better armour. Both sides clashed in a fierce battle, but the Romans won.

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When the Romans invaded, the Celtic tribes had to decide whether or not to fight back. If they made peace, they agreed to obey Roman laws and pay taxes. In return, they could keep their kingdoms. However, some Celtic leaders chose to fight.

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Invasion and conquest

A century before, in both 55 and 54 BC, Julius Caesar had invaded Britain with the aim of conquest. But revolt in Gaul (modern-day France) had drawn him away before he had beaten down determined British guerrilla resistance.

Britain had remained free - and mysterious, dangerous, exotic. In the popular Roman imagination, it was a place of marsh and forest, mist and drizzle, inhabited by ferocious blue-painted warriors. Here was a fine testing-ground of an emperor's fitness to rule.

For the Claudian invasion, an army of 40,000 professional soldiers - half citizen-legionaries, half auxiliaries recruited on the wilder fringes of the empire - were landed in Britain under the command of Aulus Plautius.

Archaeologists debate where they landed - Richborough in Kent, Chichester in Sussex, or perhaps both. Somewhere, perhaps on the River Medway, they fought a great battle and crushed the Catuvellauni, the tribe that dominated the south east.

Then, in the presence of Claudius himself, they stormed the enemy capital at Camulodunum (Colchester).

But resistance continued elsewhere. Pushing into the south west of Britain, the Romans fought a war of sieges to reduce the great Iron Age hill forts of the western tribes. Driving through and beyond the Midlands, they encountered stiffening opposition as they approached Wales, where the fugitive Catuvellaunian prince, Caratacus, rallied the Welsh tribes on a new anti-Roman front.

Wales took decades to subjugate. Before it was done, the east of Britain exploded in 60-61 AD. Bitterness against Roman oppression had driven Boudicca, queen of the Iceni tribe, into a revolt that came close to expelling the invaders.

Later, under the provincial governor Gnaeus Julius Agricola, the Romans occupied northern Britain, reaching what is now called the Moray Firth in 84 AD. This, though short of total victory, was to be the high water mark of the Roman empire in Britain.

Occupation

Elsewhere, the empire's frontiers were under attack. Reinforcements were needed. Troop numbers in Britain had to be reduced.

A phased withdrawal was carried out from the far north, eventually bringing the army to a line that stretched across modern Northumberland from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Carlisle on the Solway. This was the line along which Hadrian's Wall was constructed in 120s and 130s AD.

Here, and across the empire, the Romans were drawing symbolic lines across the map. On one side 'civilisation', on the other 'barbarians'. On the ground, the lines were made real in stone, earth and timber.

The line stretched for 73 miles across northern Britain - a ditch, a thicket of spikes, a stone wall, a sequence of forts, milecastles and observation turrets, and a permanent garrison of perhaps 8,000 men.

The rest of the Roman army was also stationed in the west and the north - in lonely auxiliary forts in the Welsh mountains, the Pennines, or the Southern Uplands of modern Scotland; or in one of the big three legionary fortresses at Isca Silurium (Caerleon), Deva (Chester) and Eboracum (York).

Here, through some 350 years of Roman occupation, the army remained dominant. Settlements of craftsmen and traders grew up around the forts, sustained by army contracts and soldiers' pay. Local farms supplied grain, meat, leather, wool, beer, and other essentials.

But change was limited. The land was impoverished and sparsely populated, and the army took what little surplus there was, so there were few of the trappings of Romanised life.

Romanisation

It was only in the lowland zone - south and east of a rough line from Lincoln to Exeter - where parts of Britain began to look distinctly Mediterranean.

When the army moved forward, the politicians took over. Iron Age tribal centres were redesigned as Roman towns, with regular street-grids, forums (market squares), basilicas (assembly rooms), temples, theatres, bathhouses, amphitheatres, shopping malls and hotels.

The models of town planning and public architecture were Roman, but the people in charge were not. The towns were built by local gentry, who, in the space of a generation or two, converted themselves from Celtic warriors and druids into Romanised gentlemen.

Britain's upper classes had found a new style. Blue paint and chariots were out. Gaulish wine and the Greek myths were in. To be successful, to look sophisticated, you now had to project rank and status in the 'empire' fashion.

For the rulers of the empire, changing the culture of conquered elites was good politics. The empire was ruled from the towns, where councils formed of local gentry were responsible for tax-collection and keeping order in the surrounding countryside. It was government on the cheap, but it was still highly successful.

Instead of an influx of foreign overlords stirring up resentment, the native elite ran things on Rome's behalf. And in gratitude for having their power and property preserved, they proved loyal servants. The evidence is in the enthusiasm with which they Romanised.

Most of the twenty or so Roman towns had a full set of public buildings by the mid-second century AD. Already many of the gentry had started building town houses and country villas. From this time onwards there was a full-scale housing boom at the top end of the market.

Big towns like Verulamium (St Albans) and Corinium (Cirencester) soon had fifty or more grand houses and dozens of villas within a day's ride of the centre. Companies of mosaic layers, fresco painters and potters sprang up to feed the boom in luxury living, and the shipping lanes, rivers and roads were busy bringing in such specialities as fish sauce from Spain, Rhineland glassware, and Pompeian bronzes.

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A century before, in both 55 and 54 BC, Julius Caesar had invaded Britain with the aim of conquest. But revolt in Gaul (modern-day France) had drawn him away before he had beaten down determined British guerrilla resistance. Britain had remained free - and mysterious, dangerous, exotic.

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The Celts (, see pronunciation of Celt for different usages) are a collection of Indo-European peoples in parts of Europe and Anatolia identified by their use of the Celtic languages and other cultural similarities. The history of pre-Celtic Europe and the exact relationship between ethnic, linguistic and cultural factors in the Celtic world remains uncertain and controversial. The exact geographic spread of the ancient Celts is disputed; in particular, the ways in which the Iron Age inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland should be regarded as Celts have become a subject of controversy. According to one theory, the common root of the Celtic languages, the Proto-Celtic language, arose in the Late Bronze Age Urnfield culture of Central Europe, which flourished from around 1200 BC.

According to another theory proposed in the 19th century, the first people to adopt cultural characteristics regarded as Celtic were the people of the Iron Age Hallstatt culture in central Europe (c. 800-450 BC), named for the rich grave finds in Hallstatt, Austria. It is thus that this area is sometimes called the "Celtic homeland". By or during the later La Tène period (c. 450 BC to the Roman conquest), named after the La Tène site in Switzerland, this Celtic culture was supposed to have expanded by trans-cultural diffusion or migration to the British Isles ( Insular Celts), France and the Low Countries ( Gauls), Bohemia, Poland and much of Central Europe, the Iberian Peninsula ( Celtiberians, Celtici, Lusitanians and Gallaeci) and northern Italy ( Golasecca culture and Cisalpine Gauls) and, following the Celtic settlement of Southeast Europe beginning in 279 BC, as far east as central Anatolia ( Galatians) in modern-day Turkey.

The earliest undisputed direct examples of a Celtic language are the Lepontic inscriptions beginning in the 6th century BC. Continental Celtic languages are attested almost exclusively through inscriptions and place-names. Insular Celtic languages are attested beginning around the 4th century in Ogham inscriptions, although they were clearly being spoken much earlier. Celtic literary tradition begins with Old Irish texts around the 8th century AD. Coherent texts of Early Irish literature, such as the Táin Bó Cúailnge (" Cattle Raid of Cooley"), survive in 12th-century recensions.

By the mid-1st millennium, with the expansion of the Roman Empire and migrating Germanic tribes, Celtic culture and Insular Celtic languages had become restricted to Ireland, the western and northern parts of Great Britain ( Wales, Scotland, and Cornwall), the Isle of Man, and Brittany. Between the 5th and 8th centuries, the Celtic-speaking communities in these Atlantic regions emerged as a reasonably cohesive cultural entity. They had a common linguistic, religious and artistic heritage that distinguished them from the culture of the surrounding polities. By the 6th century, however, the Continental Celtic languages were no longer in wide use.

Insular Celtic culture diversified into that of the Gaels ( Irish, Scottish and Manx) and the Celtic Britons ( Welsh, Cornish, and Bretons) of the medieval and modern periods. A modern Celtic identity was constructed as part of the Romanticist Celtic Revival in Great Britain, Ireland, and other European territories, such as Portugal and Spanish Galicia. Today, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton are still spoken in parts of their historical territories, and Cornish and Manx are undergoing a revival.

Names and terminology

The first recorded use of the name of Celts - as Κελτοί ( Keltoi) in Greek - to refer to an ethnic group was by Hecataeus of Miletus, the Greek geographer, in 517 BC, when writing about a people living near Massilia (modern Marseille). In the fifth century BC, Herodotus referred to Keltoi living around the head of the Danube and also in the far west of Europe. The etymology of the term Keltoi is unclear. Possible roots include Indo-European * kʲel 'to hide' (present also in Old Irish ceilid), IE * kʲel 'to heat' or * kel 'to impel'. Several authors have supposed it to be Celtic in origin, while others view it as a name coined by Greeks. Linguist Patrizia De Bernardo Stempel falls in the latter group, and suggests the meaning "the tall ones".

In the 1st century BC, Julius Caesar reported that the people known to the Romans as Gauls ( Latin: Galli) called themselves Celts, which suggests that even if the name Keltoi was bestowed by the Greeks, it had been adopted to some extent as a collective name by the tribes of Gaul. The geographer Strabo, writing about Gaul towards the end of the first century BC, refers to the "race which is now called both Gallic and Galatic," though he also uses the term Celtica as a synonym for Gaul, which is separated from Iberia by the Pyrenees. Yet he reports Celtic peoples in Iberia, and also uses the ethnic names Celtiberi and Celtici for peoples there, as distinct from Lusitani and Iberi. Pliny the Elder cited the use of Celtici in Lusitania as a tribal surname, which epigraphic findings have confirmed.

Latin Gallus (pl. Galli) might stem from a Celtic ethnic or tribal name originally, perhaps one borrowed into Latin during the Celtic expansions into Italy during the early fifth century BC. Its root may be the Proto-Celtic *galno, meaning "power, strength", hence Old Irish gal "boldness, ferocity" and Welsh gallu "to be able, power". The tribal names of and the Greek ( Galatai, Latinized Galatae; see the region Galatia in Anatolia) most probably have the same origin. The suffix -atai might be an Ancient Greek inflection. Classical writers did not apply the terms Κελτοί ( Keltoi) or Celtae to the inhabitants of Britain or Ireland, which has led to some scholars preferring not to use the term for the Iron Age inhabitants of those islands.

Celt is a modern English word, first attested in 1707, in the writing of Edward Lhuyd, whose work, along with that of other late 17th-century scholars, brought academic attention to the languages and history of the early Celtic inhabitants of Great Britain. The English form Gaul (first recorded in the 17th century) and Gaulish come from the French Gaule and Gaulois, a borrowing from Frankish *Walholant, "Roman land" (see Gaul: Name), the root of which is Proto-Germanic , "foreigner, Roman, Celt", whence the English word Welsh ( Old English wælisċ < * walhiska-), South German , meaning "Celtic speaker", "French speaker" or "Italian speaker" in different contexts, and Old Norse valskr, pl. valir, "Gaulish, French"). Proto-Germanic *walha is derived ultimately from the name of the Volcae, a Celtic tribe who lived first in the south of Germany and in central Europe and then migrated to Gaul. This means that English Gaul, despite its superficial similarity, is not actually derived from Latin Gallia (which should have produced **Jaille in French), though it does refer to the same ancient region.

Celtic refers to a family of languages and, more generally, means "of the Celts" or "in the style of the Celts". Several archaeological cultures are considered Celtic in nature, based on unique sets of artefacts. The link between language and artefact is aided by the presence of inscriptions. The relatively modern idea of an identifiable Celtic cultural identity or "Celticity" generally focuses on similarities among languages, works of art, and classical texts, and sometimes also among material artefacts, social organisation, homeland and mythology. Earlier theories held that these similarities suggest a common racial origin for the various Celtic peoples, but more recent theories hold that they reflect a common cultural and language heritage more than a genetic one. Celtic cultures seem to have been widely diverse, with the use of a Celtic language being the main thing they had in common.

Today, the term Celtic generally refers to the languages and respective cultures of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man, and Brittany, also known as the Celtic nations. These are the regions where four Celtic languages are still spoken to some extent as mother tongues. The four are Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton; plus two recent revivals, Cornish (one of the Brittonic languages) and Manx (one of the Goidelic languages). There are also attempts to reconstruct Cumbric, a Brittonic language from North West England and South West Scotland. Celtic regions of Continental Europe are those whose residents claim a Celtic heritage, but where no Celtic language has survived; these areas include the western Iberian Peninsula, i.e. Portugal and north-central Spain ( Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, Castile and León, Extremadura).

Continental Celts are the Celtic-speaking people of mainland Europe and Insular Celts are the Celtic-speaking peoples of the British and Irish islands and their descendants. The Celts of Brittany derive their language from migrating insular Celts, mainly from Wales and Cornwall, and so are grouped accordingly.

The Celtic languages form a branch of the larger Indo-European family. By the time speakers of Celtic languages entered history around 400 BC, they were already split into several language groups, and spread over much of Western continental Europe, the Iberian Peninsula, Ireland and Britain. The Greek historian Ephorus of Cyme in Asia Minor, writing in the 4th century BC, believed that the Celts came from the islands off the mouth of the Rhine and were "driven from their homes by the frequency of wars and the violent rising of the sea".

Hallstatt culture

Some scholars think that the Urnfield culture of western Middle Europe represents an origin for the Celts as a distinct cultural branch of the Indo-European family. This culture was preeminent in central Europe during the late Bronze Age, from circa 1200 BC until 700 BC, itself following the Unetice and Tumulus cultures. The Urnfield period saw a dramatic increase in population in the region, probably due to innovations in technology and agriculture.

The Hallstatt culture was succeeded by the La Tène culture of central Europe, which was overrun by the Roman Empire, though traces of La Tène style are still to be seen in Gallo-Roman artefacts. In Britain and Ireland La Tène style in art survived precariously to re-emerge in Insular art. Early Irish literature casts light on the flavour and tradition of the heroic warrior elites who dominated Celtic societies. Celtic river-names are found in great numbers around the upper reaches of the Danube and Rhine, which led many Celtic scholars to place the ethnogenesis of the Celts in this area.

Diodorus Siculus and Strabo both suggest that the heartland of the people they called Celts was in southern France. The former says that the Gauls were to the north of the Celts, but that the Romans referred to both as Gauls (in linguistic terms the Gauls were certainly Celts). Before the discoveries at Hallstatt and La Tène, it was generally considered that the Celtic heartland was southern France, see Encyclopædia Britannica for 1813.

Atlantic seaboard theory

Myles Dillon and Nora Kershaw Chadwick accepted that "the Celtic settlement of the British Isles" might have to be dated to the Bell Beaker culture concluding that "There is no reason why so early a date for the coming of the Celts should be impossible". Martín Almagro Gorbea proposed the origins of the Celts could be traced back to the 3rd millennium BC, also seeking the initial roots in the Beaker period, thus offering the wide dispersion of the Celts throughout western Europe, as well as the variability of the different Celtic peoples, and the existence of ancestral traditions and ancient perspective. Using a multidisciplinary approach, Alberto J. Lorrio and Gonzalo Ruiz Zapatero reviewed and built on Almagro Gorbea's work to present a model for the origin of the Celtic archaeological groups in the Iberian Peninsula (Celtiberian, Vetton, Vaccean, the Castro culture of the northwest, Asturian- Cantabrian and Celtic of the southwest) and proposing a rethinking of the meaning of "Celtic" from a European perspective. More recently, John Koch and Barry Cunliffe have suggested that Celtic origins lie with the Atlantic Bronze Age, roughly contemporaneous with the Hallstatt culture but positioned considerably to the West, extending along the Atlantic coast of Europe.

Stephen Oppenheimer points out that the only written evidence that locates the Keltoi near the source of the Danube (i.e. in the Hallstatt region) is in the of Herodotus. However, Oppenheimer shows that Herodotus seemed to believe the Danube rose near the Pyrenees, which would place the Ancient Celts in a region which is more in agreement with later classical writers and historians (i.e. in Gaul and the Iberian peninsula).

Linguistic evidence

The Proto-Celtic language is usually dated to the Late Bronze Age. The earliest records of a Celtic language are the Lepontic inscriptions of Cisalpine Gaul (Northern Italy), the oldest of which predate the La Tène period. Other early inscriptions, appearing from the early La Tène period in the area of Massilia, are in Gaulish, which was written in the Greek alphabet until the Roman conquest. Celtiberian inscriptions, using their own Iberian script, appear later, after about 200 BC. Evidence of Insular Celtic is available only from about 400 AD, in the form of Primitive Irish Ogham inscriptions.

Besides epigraphical evidence, an important source of information on early Celtic is toponymy.

Genetic evidence

Historically many scholars postulated that there was genetic evidence of a common origin of the European Atlantic populations i.e.: Orkney Islands, Scottish, Irish, British, Bretons, and Iberians (Basques, Galicians).

More recent genetic evidence does not support the notion of a significant genetic link between these populations, beyond the fact that they are all West Eurasians. Sardinian-like Neolithic farmers did populate Britain (and all of Northern Europe) during the Neolithic period, however, recent genetics research has claimed that, between 2400BC and 2000BC, over 90% of British DNA was overturned by a North European population of ultimate Russian Steppe origin as part of an ongoing migration process that brought large amounts of Steppe DNA (including the R1b haplogroup) to North and West Europe. Modern autosomal genetic clustering is testament to this fact, as both modern and Iron Age British and Irish samples cluster genetically very closely with other North European populations, and somewhat limited with Galicians, Basques or those from the south of France. Such findings have largely put to rest the theory that there is a significant ancestral genetic link (beyond being Europeans) between the various 'Celtic' peoples in the Atlantic area, instead, they are related in that male lines are brother R1b L151 subclades with the local native maternal line admixture explaining the genetic distance noted.

Archaeological evidence

Before the 19th century, scholars assumed that the original land of the Celts was west of the Rhine, more precisely in Gaul, because it was where Greek and Roman ancient sources, namely Caesar, located the Celts. This view was challenged by the 19th-century historian Marie Henri d'Arbois de Jubainville who placed the land of origin of the Celts east of the Rhine. Jubainville based his arguments on a phrase of Herodotus' that placed the Celts at the source of the Danube, and argued that Herodotus had meant to place the Celtic homeland in southern Germany. The finding of the prehistoric cemetery of Hallstat in 1846 by Johan Ramsauer and the finding of the archaeological site of La Tène by Hansli Kopp in 1857 drew attention to this area.

The concept that the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures could be seen not just as chronological periods but as "Culture Groups", entities composed of people of the same ethnicity and language, had started to grow by the end of the 19th century. At the beginning of the 20th century the belief that these "Culture Groups" could be thought of in racial or ethnic terms was strongly held by Gordon Childe whose theory was influenced by the writings of Gustaf Kossinna. As the 20th century progressed, the racial ethnic interpretation of La Tène culture became much more strongly rooted, and any findings of La Tène culture and flat inhumation cemeteries were directly associated with the Celts and the Celtic language. The Iron Age Hallstatt (c. 800-475 BC) and La Tène (c. 500-50 BC) cultures are typically associated with Proto-Celtic and Celtic culture.

In various academic disciplines the Celts were considered a Central European Iron Age phenomenon, through the cultures of Hallstatt and La Tène. However, archaeological finds from the Halstatt and La Tène culture were rare in the Iberian Peninsula, in southwestern France, northern and western Britain, southern Ireland and Galatia and did not provide enough evidence for a cultural scenario comparable to that of Central Europe. It is considered equally difficult to maintain that the origin of the Peninsular Celts can be linked to the preceding Urnfield culture. This has resulted in a more recent approach that introduces a 'proto-Celtic' substratum and a process of Celticisation, having its initial roots in the Bronze Age Bell Beaker culture.

The La Tène culture developed and flourished during the late Iron Age (from 450 BC to the Roman conquest in the 1st century BC) in eastern France, Switzerland, Austria, southwest Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. It developed out of the Hallstatt culture without any definite cultural break, under the impetus of considerable Mediterranean influence from Greek, and later Etruscan civilisations. A shift of settlement centres took place in the 4th century.

The western La Tène culture corresponds to historical Celtic Gaul. Whether this means that the whole of La Tène culture can be attributed to a unified Celtic people is difficult to assess; archaeologists have repeatedly concluded that language, material culture, and political affiliation do not necessarily run parallel. Frey notes that in the 5th century, "burial customs in the Celtic world were not uniform; rather, localised groups had their own beliefs, which, in consequence, also gave rise to distinct artistic expressions". Thus, while the La Tène culture is certainly associated with the Gauls, the presence of La Tène artefacts may be due to cultural contact and does not imply the permanent presence of Celtic speakers.

Historical evidence

Polybius published a history of Rome about 150 BC in which he describes the Gauls of Italy and their conflict with Rome. Pausanias in the 2nd century AD says that the Gauls "originally called Celts", "live on the remotest region of Europe on the coast of an enormous tidal sea". Posidonius described the southern Gauls about 100 BC. Though his original work is lost it was used by later writers such as Strabo. The latter, writing in the early 1st century AD, deals with Britain and Gaul as well as Hispania, Italy and Galatia. Caesar wrote extensively about his Gallic Wars in 58-51 BC. Diodorus Siculus wrote about the Celts of Gaul and Britain in his 1st-century history.

Distribution

Continental Celts

The Romans knew the Celts then living in present-day France as Gauls. The territory of these peoples probably included the Low Countries, the Alps and present-day northern Italy. Julius Caesar in his Gallic Wars described the 1st-century BC descendants of those Gauls.

Eastern Gaul became the centre of the western La Tène culture. In later Iron Age Gaul, the social organisation resembled that of the Romans, with large towns. From the 3rd century BC the Gauls adopted coinage. Texts with Greek characters from southern Gaul have survived from the 2nd century BC.

Greek traders founded Massalia about 600 BC, with some objects (mostly drinking ceramics) being traded up the Rhone valley. But trade became disrupted soon after 500 BC and re-oriented over the Alps to the Po valley in the Italian peninsula. The Romans arrived in the Rhone valley in the 2nd century BC and encountered a mostly Celtic-speaking Gaul. Rome wanted land communications with its Iberian provinces and fought a major battle with the Saluvii at Entremont in 124-123 BC. Gradually Roman control extended, and the Roman Province of Gallia Transalpina developed along the Mediterranean coast. The Romans knew the remainder of Gaul as Gallia Comata - "Hairy Gaul".

In 58 BC the Helvetii planned to migrate westward but Julius Caesar forced them back. He then became involved in fighting the various tribes in Gaul, and by 55 BC had overrun most of Gaul. In 52 BC Vercingetorix led a revolt against the Roman occupation but was defeated at the Siege of Alesia and surrendered.

Following the Gallic Wars of 58-51 BC, Caesar's formed the main part of Roman Gaul, becoming the province of Gallia Lugdunensis. This territory of the Celtic tribes was bounded on the south by the Garonne and on the north by the Seine and the Marne. The Romans attached large swathes of this region to neighboring provinces Belgica and Aquitania, particularly under Augustus.

Place- and personal-name analysis and inscriptions suggest that the Gaulish Celtic language was spoken over most of what is now France.

Until the end of the 19th century, traditional scholarship dealing with the Celts did acknowledge their presence in the Iberian Peninsula as a material culture relatable to the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures. However, since according to the definition of the Iron Age in the 19th century Celtic populations were supposedly rare in Iberia and did not provide a cultural scenario that could easily be linked to that of Central Europe, the presence of Celtic culture in that region was generally not fully recognised. Modern scholarship, however, has clearly proven that Celtic presence and influences were most substantial in what is today Spain and Portugal (with perhaps the highest settlement saturation in Western Europe), particularly in the central, western and northern regions.

In addition to Gauls infiltrating from the north of the Pyrenees, the Roman and Greek sources mention Celtic populations in three parts of the Iberian Peninsula: the eastern part of the Meseta (inhabited by the Celtiberians), the southwest ( Celtici, in modern-day Alentejo) and the northwest ( Gallaecia and Asturias). A modern scholarly review found several archaeological groups of Celts in Spain:

The Celtiberian group in the Upper-Douro Upper-Tagus Upper-Jalón area. Archaeological data suggest a continuity at least from the 6th century BC. In this early period, the Celtiberians inhabited in hill-forts (Castros). Around the end of the 3rd century BC, Celtiberians adopted more urban ways of life. From the 2nd century BC, they minted coins and wrote inscriptions using the Celtiberian script. These inscriptions make the Celtiberian Language the only Hispano-Celtic language classified as Celtic with unanimous agreement. In the late period, before the Roman Conquest, both archaeological evidence and Roman sources suggest that the Celtiberians were expanding into different areas in the Peninsula (e.g. Celtic Baeturia).

The Vetton group in the western Meseta, between the Tormes, Douro and Tagus Rivers. They were characterised by the production of Verracos, sculptures of bulls and pigs carved in granite.

The Vaccean group in the central Douro valley. They were mentioned by Roman sources already in the 220 BC. Some of their funerary rituals suggest strong influences from their Celtiberian neighbours.

The Castro Culture in northwestern Iberia, modern day Galicia and Northern Portugal. Its high degree of continuity, from the Late Bronze Age, makes it difficult to support that the introduction of Celtic elements was due to the same process of Celticization of the western Iberia, from the nucleus area of Celtiberia. Two typical elements are the sauna baths with monumental entrances, and the "Gallaecian Warriors", stone sculptures built in the 1st century AD. A large group of Latin inscriptions contain linguistic features that are clearly Celtic, while others are similar to those found in the non-Celtic Lusitanian language.

The Astures and the Cantabri. This area was romanised late, as it was not conquered by Rome until the Cantabrian Wars of 29-19 BC.

Celts in the southwest, in the area Strabo called Celtica

The origins of the Celtiberians might provide a key to understanding the Celticisation process in the rest of the Peninsula. The process of Celticisation of the southwestern area of the peninsula by the Keltoi and of the northwestern area is, however, not a simple Celtiberian question. Recent investigations about the Callaici and Bracari in northwestern Portugal are providing new approaches to understanding Celtic culture (language, art and religion) in western Iberia.

John T. Koch of Aberystwyth University suggested that Tartessian inscriptions of the 8th century BC might be classified as Celtic. This would mean that Tartessian is the earliest attested trace of Celtic by a margin of more than a century.

Alps and Italy

The Canegrate culture represented the first migratory wave of the proto-Celtic population from the northwest part of the Alps that, through the Alpine passes, had already penetrated and settled in the western Po valley between Lake Maggiore and Lake Como ( Scamozzina culture). It has also been proposed that a more ancient proto-Celtic presence can be traced back to the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age, when North Westwern Italy appears closely linked regarding the production of bronze artefacts, including ornaments, to the western groups of the Tumulus culture. La Tène cultural material appeared over a large area of mainland Italy, the southernmost example being the Celtic helmet from Canosa di Puglia.

Italy is home to Lepontic, the oldest attested Celtic language (from the 6th century BC). Anciently spoken in Switzerland and in Northern-Central Italy, from the Alps to Umbria. According to the Recueil des Inscriptions Gauloises, more than 760 Gaulish inscriptions have been found throughout present-day France - with the notable exception of Aquitaine - and in Italy, which testifies the importance of Celtic heritage in the peninsula.

In 391 BC, Celts "who had their homes beyond the Alps streamed through the passes in great strength and seized the territory that lay between the Apennine mountains and the Alps" according to Diodorus Siculus. The Po Valley and the rest of northern Italy (known to the Romans as Cisalpine Gaul) was inhabited by Celtic-speakers who founded cities such as Milan. Later the Roman army was routed at the battle of Allia and Rome was sacked in 390 BC by the Senones.

At the battle of Telamon in 225 BC, a large Celtic army was trapped between two Roman forces and crushed.

The defeat of the combined Samnite, Celtic and Etruscan alliance by the Romans in the Third Samnite War sounded the beginning of the end of the Celtic domination in mainland Europe, but it was not until 192 BC that the Roman armies conquered the last remaining independent Celtic kingdoms in Italy.

Expansion east and south

The Celts also expanded down the Danube river and its tributaries. One of the most influential tribes, the Scordisci, had established their capital at Singidunum in the 3rd century BC, which is present-day Belgrade, Serbia. The concentration of hill-forts and cemeteries shows a density of population in the Tisza valley of modern-day Vojvodina, Serbia, Hungary and into Ukraine. Expansion into Romania was however blocked by the Dacians.

The Serdi were a Celtic tribe inhabiting Thrace. They were located around and founded Serdika ( Bulgarian: Сердика, Latin: Ulpia Serdica, Greek: Σαρδῶν πόλις), now Sofia in Bulgaria, which reflects their ethnonym. They would have established themselves in this area during the Celtic migrations at the end of the 4th century BC, though there is no evidence for their existence before the 1st century BC. Serdi are among traditional tribal names reported into the Roman era. They were gradually Thracianized over the centuries but retained their Celtic character in material culture up to a late date. According to other sources they may have been simply of Thracian origin, according to others they may have become of mixed Thraco-Celtic origin. Further south, Celts settled in Thrace ( Bulgaria), which they ruled for over a century, and Anatolia, where they settled as the Galatians (see also: Gallic Invasion of Greece). Despite their geographical isolation from the rest of the Celtic world, the Galatians maintained their Celtic language for at least 700 years. St Jerome, who visited Ancyra (modern-day Ankara) in 373 AD, likened their language to that of the Treveri of northern Gaul.

For Venceslas Kruta, Galatia in central Turkey was an area of dense Celtic settlement.

The Boii tribe gave their name to Bohemia, Bologna and possibly Bavaria, and Celtic artefacts and cemeteries have been discovered further east in what is now Poland and Slovakia. A Celtic coin ( Biatec) from Bratislava's mint was displayed on the old Slovak 5-crown coin.

As there is no archaeological evidence for large-scale invasions in some of the other areas, one current school of thought holds that Celtic language and culture spread to those areas by contact rather than invasion. However, the Celtic invasions of Italy and the expedition in Greece and western Anatolia, are well documented in Greek and Latin history.

There are records of Celtic mercenaries in Egypt serving the Ptolemies. Thousands were employed in 283-246 BC and they were also in service around 186 BC. They attempted to overthrow Ptolemy II.

Insular Celts

All Celtic languages extant today belong to the Insular Celtic languages, derived from the Celtic languages spoken in Iron Age Britain and Ireland. They were separated into a Goidelic and a Brythonic branch from an early period.

Linguists have been arguing for many years whether a Celtic language came to Britain and Ireland and then split or whether there were two separate "invasions". The older view of prehistorians was that the Celtic influence in the British Isles was the result of successive invasions from the European continent by diverse Celtic-speaking peoples over the course of several centuries, accounting for the P-Celtic vs. Q-Celtic isogloss. This view has been challenged by the hypothesis that the Celtic languages of the British Isles form a phylogenetic Insular Celtic dialect group.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, scholars commonly dated the "arrival" of Celtic culture in Britain (via an invasion model) to the 6th century BC, corresponding to archaeological evidence of Hallstatt influence and the appearance of chariot burials in what is now England. Some Iron Age migration does seem to have occurred but the nature of the interactions with the indigenous populations of the isles is unknown. According to this model, by about the 6th century ( Sub-Roman Britain), most of the inhabitants of the Isles were speaking Celtic languages of either the Goidelic or the Brythonic branch. Since the late 20th century, a new model has emerged (championed by archaeologists such as Barry Cunliffe and Celtic historians such as John T. Koch) which places the emergence of Celtic culture in Britain much earlier, in the Bronze Age, and credits its spread not to invasion, but due to a gradual emergence out of Proto-Indo-European culture (perhaps introduced to the region by the Bell Beaker People, and enabled by an extensive network of contacts that existed between the peoples of Britain and Ireland and those of the Atlantic seaboard.

Classical writers did not apply the terms Κελτοί ( Keltoi) or "Celtae" to the inhabitants of Britain or Ireland, leading a number of scholars to question the use of the term Celt to describe the Iron Age inhabitants of those islands. The first historical account of the islands of Britain and Ireland was by Pytheas, a Greek from the city of Massalia, who around 310-306 BC, sailed around what he called the "Pretannikai nesoi", which can be translated as the "Pretannic Isles". In general, classical writers referred to the inhabitants of Britain as Pretannoi or Britanni. Strabo, writing in the Roman era, clearly distinguished between the Celts and Britons.

Romanisation

Under Caesar the Romans conquered Celtic Gaul, and from Claudius onward the Roman empire absorbed parts of Britain. Roman local government of these regions closely mirrored pre-Roman tribal boundaries, and archaeological finds suggest native involvement in local government.

The native peoples under Roman rule became Romanised and keen to adopt Roman ways. Celtic art had already incorporated classical influences, and surviving Gallo-Roman pieces interpret classical subjects or keep faith with old traditions despite a Roman overlay.

There was also considerable cultural influence exerted by Gaul on Rome, particularly in military matters and horsemanship, as the Gauls often served in the Roman cavalry. The Romans adopted the Celtic cavalry sword, the spatha, and Epona, the Celtic horse goddess.

To the extent that sources are available, they depict a pre-Christian Iron Age Celtic social structure based formally on class and kingship, although this may only have been a particular late phase of organization in Celtic societies. Patron-client relationships similar to those of Roman society are also described by Caesar and others in the Gaul of the 1st century BC.

Little is known of family structure among the Celts. Patterns of settlement varied from decentralised to urban. The popular stereotype of non-urbanised societies settled in hillforts and duns, drawn from Britain and Ireland (there are about 3,000 hill forts known in Britain) contrasts with the urban settlements present in the core Hallstatt and La Tène areas, with the many significant of Gaul late in the first millennium BC, and with the towns of Gallia Cisalpina.

Slavery, as practised by the Celts, was very likely similar to the better documented practice in ancient Greece and Rome. Slaves were acquired from war, raids, and penal and debt servitude. Slavery was hereditary, though manumission was possible. The Old Irish and Welsh words for 'slave', cacht and caeth respectively, are cognate with Latin captus 'captive' suggesting that the slave trade was an early means of contact between Latin and Celtic societies. In the Middle Ages, slavery was especially prevalent in the Celtic countries. Manumissions were discouraged by law and the word for "female slave", cumal, was used as a general unit of value in Ireland.

Archaeological evidence suggests that the pre-Roman Celtic societies were linked to the network of overland trade routes that spanned Eurasia. Archaeologists have discovered large prehistoric trackways crossing bogs in Ireland and Germany. Due to their substantial nature, these are believed to have been created for wheeled transport as part of an extensive roadway system that facilitated trade. The territory held by the Celts contained tin, lead, iron, silver and gold. Celtic smiths and metalworkers created weapons and jewellery for international trade, particularly with the Romans.

The myth that the Celtic monetary system consisted of wholly barter is a common one, but is in part false. The monetary system was complex and is still not understood (much like the late Roman coinages), and due to the absence of large numbers of coin items, it is assumed that "proto-money" was used. This included bronze items made from the early La Tène period and onwards, which were often in the shape of axeheads, rings, or bells. Due to the large number of these present in some burials, it is thought they had a relatively high monetary value, and could be used for "day to day" purchases. Low-value coinages of potin, a bronze alloy with high tin content, were minted in most Celtic areas of the continent and in South-East Britain prior to the Roman conquest of these lands. Higher-value coinages, suitable for use in trade, were minted in gold, silver, and high-quality bronze. Gold coinage was much more common than silver coinage, despite being worth substantially more, as while there were around 100 mines in Southern Britain and Central France, silver was more rarely mined. This was due partly to the relative sparsity of mines and the amount of effort needed for extraction compared to the profit gained. As the Roman civilisation grew in importance and expanded its trade with the Celtic world, silver and bronze coinage became more common. This coincided with a major increase in gold production in Celtic areas to meet the Roman demand, due to the high value Romans put on the metal. The large number of gold mines in France is thought to be a major reason why Caesar invaded.

In some regards the Atlantic Celts were conservative: for example, they still used chariots in combat long after they had been reduced to ceremonial roles by the Greeks and Romans. However, despite being outdated, Celtic chariot tactics were able to repel the invasion of Britain attempted by Julius Caesar.

According to Diodorus Siculus:

The Gauls are tall of body with rippling muscles and white of skin and their hair is blond, and not only naturally so for they also make it their practice by artificial means to increase the distinguishing colour which nature has given it. For they are always washing their hair in limewater and they pull it back from the forehead to the nape of the neck, with the result that their appearance is like that of Satyrs and Pans since the treatment of their hair makes it so heavy and coarse that it differs in no respect from the mane of horses. Some of them shave the beard but others let it grow a little; and the nobles shave their cheeks but they let the moustache grow until it covers the mouth.

During the later Iron Age the Gauls generally wore long-sleeved shirts or tunics and long trousers (called by the Romans). Clothes were made of wool or linen, with some silk being used by the rich. Cloaks were worn in the winter. Brooches and armlets were used, but the most famous item of jewellery was the torc, a neck collar of metal, sometimes gold. The horned Waterloo Helmet in the British Museum, which long set the standard for modern images of Celtic warriors, is in fact a unique survival, and may have been a piece for ceremonial rather than military wear.

Gender and sexual norms

Very few reliable sources exist regarding Celtic views on gender divisions and societal status, though some archaeological evidence does suggest that their views of gender roles may differ from contemporary and less egalitarian classical counterparts of the Roman era. There are some general indications from Iron Age burial sites in the Champagne and Bourgogne regions of Northeastern France suggesting that women may have had roles in combat during the earlier La Tène period. However, the evidence is far from conclusive. Examples of individuals buried with both female jewellery and weaponry have been identified, such as the Vix Grave, and there are questions about the gender of some skeletons that were buried with warrior assemblages. However, it has been suggested that "the weapons may indicate rank instead of masculinity".

Among the insular Celts, there is a greater amount of historic documentation to suggest warrior roles for women. In addition to commentary by Tacitus about Boudica, there are indications from later period histories that also suggest a more substantial role for " women as warriors", in symbolic if not actual roles. Posidonius and Strabo described an island of women where men could not venture for fear of death, and where the women ripped each other apart. Other writers, such as Ammianus Marcellinus and Tacitus, mentioned Celtic women inciting, participating in, and leading battles. Posidonius' anthropological comments on the Celts had common themes, primarily primitivism, extreme ferocity, cruel sacrificial practices, and the strength and courage of their women.

Under Brehon Law, which was written down in early Medieval Ireland after conversion to Christianity, a woman had the right to divorce her husband and gain his property if he was unable to perform his marital duties due to impotence, obesity, homosexual inclination or preference for other women.

Classical literature records the views of the Celts' neighbours, though historians are not sure how much relation to reality these had. According to Aristotle, most "belligerent nations" were strongly influenced by their women, but the Celts were unusual because their men openly preferred male lovers ( II 1269b). H. D. Rankin in Celts and the Classical World notes that "Athenaeus echoes this comment (603a) and so does Ammianus (30.9). It seems to be the general opinion of antiquity." In book XIII of his Deipnosophists, the Roman Greek rhetorician and grammarian Athenaeus, repeating assertions made by Diodorus Siculus in the 1st century BC ( Bibliotheca historica 5:32), wrote that Celtic women were beautiful but that the men preferred to sleep together. Diodorus went further, stating that "the young men will offer themselves to strangers and are insulted if the offer is refused". Rankin argues that the ultimate source of these assertions is likely to be Posidonius and speculates that these authors may be recording male "bonding rituals".

The sexual freedom of women in Britain was noted by Cassius Dio:

... a very witty remark is reported to have been made by the wife of Argentocoxus, a Caledonian, to Julia Augusta. When the empress was jesting with her, after the treaty, about the free intercourse of her sex with men in Britain, she replied: "We fulfill the demands of nature in a much better way than do you Roman women; for we consort openly with the best men, whereas you let yourselves be debauched in secret by the vilest." Such was the retort of the British woman.

There are instances recorded where women participated both in warfare and in kingship, although they were in the minority in these areas. Plutarch reports that Celtic women acted as ambassadors to avoid a war among Celts chiefdoms in the Po valley during the 4th century BC.

Celtic art is generally used by art historians to refer to art of the La Tène period across Europe, while the Early Medieval art of Britain and Ireland, that is what "Celtic art" evokes for much of the general public, is called Insular art in art history. Both styles absorbed considerable influences from non-Celtic sources, but retained a preference for geometrical decoration over figurative subjects, which are often extremely stylised when they do appear; narrative scenes only appear under outside influence. Energetic circular forms, triskeles and spirals are characteristic. Much of the surviving material is in precious metal, which no doubt gives a very unrepresentative picture, but apart from Pictish stones and the Insular high crosses, large monumental sculpture, even with decorative carving, is very rare; possibly it was originally common in wood. Celts were also able to create developed musical instruments such as the carnyces, these famous war trumpets used before the battle to frighten the enemy, as the best preserved found in Tintignac ( Gaul) in 2004 and which were decorated with a boar head or a snake head.

The interlace patterns that are often regarded as typical of "Celtic art" were characteristic of the whole of the British Isles, a style referred to as Insular art, or Hiberno-Saxon art. This artistic style incorporated elements of La Tène, Late Roman, and, most importantly, animal Style II of Germanic Migration Period art. The style was taken up with great skill and enthusiasm by Celtic artists in metalwork and illuminated manuscripts. Equally, the forms used for the finest Insular art were all adopted from the Roman world: Gospel books like the Book of Kells and Book of Lindisfarne, chalices like the Ardagh Chalice and Derrynaflan Chalice, and penannular brooches like the Tara Brooch. These works are from the period of peak achievement of Insular art, which lasted from the 7th to the 9th centuries, before the Viking attacks sharply set back cultural life.

In contrast the less well known but often spectacular art of the richest earlier Continental Celts, before they were conquered by the Romans, often adopted elements of Roman, Greek and other "foreign" styles (and possibly used imported craftsmen) to decorate objects that were distinctively Celtic. After the Roman conquests, some Celtic elements remained in popular art, especially Ancient Roman pottery, of which Gaul was actually the largest producer, mostly in Italian styles, but also producing work in local taste, including figurines of deities and wares painted with animals and other subjects in highly formalised styles. Roman Britain also took more interest in enamel than most of the Empire, and its development of champlevé technique was probably important to the later Medieval art of the whole of Europe, of which the energy and freedom of Insular decoration was an important element. Rising nationalism brought Celtic revivals from the 19th century.

Warfare and weapons

Tribal warfare appears to have been a regular feature of Celtic societies. While epic literature depicts this as more of a sport focused on raids and hunting rather than organised territorial conquest, the historical record is more of tribes using warfare to exert political control and harass rivals, for economic advantage, and in some instances to conquer territory.

"manner of fighting, being in large measure that of wild beasts and frenzied, was an erratic procedure, quite lacking in military science. Thus, at one moment they would raise their swords aloft and smite after the manner of wild boars, throwing the whole weight of their bodies into the blow like hewers of wood or men digging with mattocks, and again they would deliver crosswise blows aimed at no target, as if they intended to cut to pieces the entire bodies of their adversaries, protective armour and all".

Such descriptions have been challenged by contemporary historians.

Polybius (2.33) indicates that the principal Celtic weapon was a long bladed sword which was used for hacking edgewise rather than stabbing. Celtic warriors are described by Polybius and Plutarch as frequently having to cease fighting in order to straighten their sword blades. This claim has been questioned by some archaeologists, who note that Noric steel, steel produced in Celtic Noricum, was famous in the Roman Empire period and was used to equip the Roman military. However, Radomir Pleiner, in The Celtic Sword (1993) argues that "the metallographic evidence shows that Polybius was right up to a point", as around one third of surviving swords from the period might well have behaved as he describes.

Polybius also asserts that certain of the Celts fought naked, "The appearance of these naked warriors was a terrifying spectacle, for they were all men of splendid physique and in the prime of life." According to Livy, this was also true of the Celts of Asia Minor.

Head hunting

Celts had a reputation as head hunters. According to Paul Jacobsthal, "Amongst the Celts the human head was venerated above all else, since the head was to the Celt the soul, centre of the emotions as well as of life itself, a symbol of divinity and of the powers of the other-world." Arguments for a Celtic cult of the severed head include the many sculptured representations of severed heads in La Tène carvings, and the surviving Celtic mythology, which is full of stories of the severed heads of heroes and the saints who carry their own severed heads, right down to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, where the Green Knight picks up his own severed head after Gawain has struck it off, just as St. Denis carried his head to the top of Montmartre. Physical evidence exists for the ritual importance of the severed head at the religious centre at Roquepertuse (southern France), destroyed by the Romans in 124 BC, where stone pillars with prominent niches for displaying severed heads were found.

A further example of this regeneration after beheading lies in the tales of Connemara's St. Feichin, who after being beheaded by Viking pirates carried his head to the Holy Well on Omey Island and on dipping the head into the well placed it back upon his neck and was restored to full health.

Diodorus Siculus, in his 1st-century History had this to say about Celtic head-hunting:

They cut off the heads of enemies slain in battle and attach them to the necks of their horses. The blood-stained spoils they hand over to their attendants and striking up a paean and singing a song of victory; and they nail up these first fruits upon their houses, just as do those who lay low wild animals in certain kinds of hunting. They embalm in cedar oil the heads of the most distinguished enemies, and preserve them carefully in a chest, and display them with pride to strangers, saying that for this head one of their ancestors, or his father, or the man himself, refused the offer of a large sum of money. They say that some of them boast that they refused the weight of the head in gold.

In Gods and Fighting Men, Lady Gregory's Celtic Revival translation of Irish mythology, heads of men killed in battle are described in the beginning of the story The Fight with the Fir Bolgs as pleasing to Macha, one aspect of the war goddess Morrigu.

Polytheism

Like other European Iron Age tribal societies, the Celts practised a polytheistic religion. Many Celtic gods are known from texts and inscriptions from the Roman period. Rites and sacrifices were carried out by priests known as druids. The Celts did not see their gods as having human shapes until late in the Iron Age. Celtic shrines were situated in remote areas such as hilltops, groves, and lakes.

Celtic religious patterns were regionally variable; however, some patterns of deity forms, and ways of worshipping these deities, appeared over a wide geographical and temporal range. The Celts worshipped both gods and goddesses. In general, Celtic gods were deities of particular skills, such as the many-skilled Lugh and Dagda, while goddesses were associated with natural features, particularly rivers (such as Boann, goddess of the River Boyne). This was not universal, however, as goddesses such as Brighid and The Morrígan were associated with both natural features ( holy wells and the River Unius) and skills such as blacksmithing and healing.

Triplicity is a common theme in Celtic cosmology, and a number of deities were seen as threefold. This trait is exhibited by The Three Mothers, a group of goddesses worshipped by many Celtic tribes (with regional variations).

The Celts had hundreds of deities, some of which were unknown outside a single family or tribe, while others were popular enough to have a following that crossed lingual and cultural barriers. For instance, the Irish god Lugh, associated with storms, lightning, and culture, is seen in similar forms as Lugos in Gaul and Lleu in Wales. Similar patterns are also seen with the continental Celtic horse goddess Epona and what may well be her Irish and Welsh counterparts, Macha and Rhiannon, respectively.

Roman reports of the druids mention ceremonies being held in sacred groves. La Tène Celts built temples of varying size and shape, though they also maintained shrines at sacred trees and votive pools.

Druids fulfilled a variety of roles in Celtic religion, serving as priests and religious officiants, but also as judges, sacrificers, teachers, and lore-keepers. Druids organised and ran religious ceremonies, and they memorised and taught the calendar. Other classes of druids performed ceremonial sacrifices of crops and animals for the perceived benefit of the community.

Gallic calendar

The Coligny calendar, which was found in 1897 in Coligny, Ain, was engraved on a bronze tablet, preserved in 73 fragments, that originally was 1.48 metres (4 feet 10 inches) wide and 0.9 metres (2 feet 11 inches) high (Lambert p. 111). Based on the style of lettering and the accompanying objects, it probably dates to the end of the 2nd century. It is written in Latin inscriptional capitals, and is in the Gallic language. The restored tablet contains 16 vertical columns, with 62 months distributed over 5 years.

The French archaeologist J. Monard speculated that it was recorded by druids wishing to preserve their tradition of timekeeping in a time when the Julian calendar was imposed throughout the Roman Empire. However, the general form of the calendar suggests the public peg calendars (or parapegmata) found throughout the Greek and Roman world.

Roman influence

The Roman invasion of Gaul brought a great deal of Celtic peoples into the Roman Empire. Roman culture had a profound effect on the Celtic tribes which came under the empire's control. Roman influence led to many changes in Celtic religion, the most noticeable of which was the weakening of the druid class, especially religiously; the druids were to eventually disappear altogether. Romano-Celtic deities also began to appear: these deities often had both Roman and Celtic attributes, combined the names of Roman and Celtic deities, and/or included couples with one Roman and one Celtic deity. Other changes included the adaptation of the Jupiter Column, a sacred column set up in many Celtic regions of the empire, primarily in northern and eastern Gaul. Another major change in religious practice was the use of stone monuments to represent gods and goddesses. The Celts had only created wooden idols (including monuments carved into trees, which were known as sacred poles) previously to Roman conquest.

Celtic Christianity

While the regions under Roman rule adopted Christianity along with the rest of the Roman empire, unconquered areas of Ireland and Scotland began to move from Celtic polytheism to Christianity in the 5th century. Ireland was converted by missionaries from Britain, such as Saint Patrick. Later missionaries from Ireland were a major source of missionary work in Scotland, Anglo-Saxon parts of Britain, and central Europe (see Hiberno-Scottish mission). Celtic Christianity, the forms of Christianity that took hold in Britain and Ireland at this time, had for some centuries only limited and intermittent contact with Rome and continental Christianity, as well as some contacts with Coptic Christianity. Some elements of Celtic Christianity developed, or retained, features that made them distinct from the rest of Western Christianity, most famously their conservative method of calculating the date of Easter. In 664, the Synod of Whitby began to resolve these differences, mostly by adopting the current Roman practices, which the Gregorian Mission from Rome had introduced to Anglo-Saxon England.

Genetic studies on the limited amount of material available suggest continuity between Iron Age people from areas considered Celtic and the earlier Bell Beaker culture of Bronze Age Western Europe. Like the Bell Beakers, ancient Celts carried a substantial amount of steppe ancestry, which is derived from pastoralists who expanded westwards from the Pontic-Caspian steppe during late Neolithic and early Bronze Age. Examined individuals overwhelmingly carry types of the paternal haplogroup R-M269, while the maternal haplogroups H and U are frequent. These lineages are associated with steppe ancestry. The spread of Celts into Iberia and the emergence of the Celtiberians is associated with an increase in north- central European ancestry in Iberia, and may be connected to the expansion of the Urnfield culture. The paternal haplogroup haplogroup I2a1a1a has been detected among Celtiberians. There appears to have been significant gene flow between among Celts of Western Europe during the Iron Age. Modern populations of Western Europe, particularly those who still speak Celtic languages, display substantial genetic continuity with the Iron Age populations of the same areas.

References

Bibliography

Alberro, Manuel and Arnold, Bettina (eds.), e-Keltoi: Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies, Volume 6: The Celts in the Iberian Peninsula, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Center for Celtic Studies, 2005.

"Celt". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc..

Cunliffe, Barry. The Celts: A Very Short Introduction. 2003

Drinkwater, John Frederick (2012). "Celts". In Hornblower, Simon; Spawforth, Antony; Eidinow, Esther (eds.). The Oxford Classical Dictionary (4 ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 295. doi:10.1093/acref/9780199545568.001.0001. ISBN 9780191735257.

Fischer, Claire-Elise; et al. (October 2019). "Multi-scale archaeogenetic study of two French Iron Age communities: From internal social- to broad-scale population dynamics". Journal of Archaeological Science. Elsevier. 27 (101942): 101942. doi:10.1016/j.jasrep.2019.101942.

Freeman, Philip Mitchell The Earliest Classical Sources on the Celts: A Linguistic and Historical Study. Diss. Harvard University, 1994. (link)

Gamito, Teresa J. "The Celts in Portugal", E-Keltoi: Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies, 6 (2005).

Haywood, John. Historical Atlas of the Celtic World. 2001.

Herm, Gerhard. The Celts: The People who Came out of the Darkness. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1977.

James, Simon. The World of the Celts. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1993. 3rd edn. 2005.

James, Simon & Rigby, Valerie. Britain and the Celtic Iron Age. London: British Museum Press, 1997. ISBN 0-7141-2306-4.

Kruta, Venceslas, Otto Hermann Frey, Barry Raftery and M. Szabo. eds. The Celts. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1991. ISBN 0-8478-2193-5. A translation of Les Celtes : Histoire et dictionnaire 2000.

Maier, Bernhard: Celts: A History from Earliest Times to the Present. University of Notre Dame Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-268-02361-4

O'Rahilly, T. F. Early Irish History Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1946.

Olalde, Iñigo; et al. (15 March 2019). "The genomic history of the Iberian Peninsula over the past 8000 years". . American Association for the Advancement of Science. 363 (6432): 1230-1234. Bibcode:2019Sci...363.1230O. doi:10.1126/science.aav4040. PMC . PMID 30872528.

Powell, T. G. E. The Celts. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1980. 3rd edn. 1997. ISBN 0-500-27275-1.

Mac Cana, Proinsias; Dillon, Myles. "Celtic religion". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc..

Puhvel, Jaan; Fee, Christopher R.; Leeming, David Adams (2003). "Celtic mythology". In Leeming, David Adams (ed.). The Oxford Companion to World Mythology. Oxford University Press. pp. 65-67. doi:10.1093/acref/9780195156690.001.0001. ISBN 9780199916481.

Riché, Pierre (2005). "Barbarians". In Vauchez, André (ed.). Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages. James Clarke & Co. p. 150. doi:10.1093/acref/9780227679319.001.0001. ISBN 9780195188172.

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External links

Geography

Organisations

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The Celts (, see pronunciation of Celt for different usages) are a collection of Indo-European peoples in parts of Europe and Anatolia identified by their use of the Celtic languages and other cultural similarities. The history of pre-Celtic Europe and the exact relationship between ethnic, linguistic and cultural factors in the Celtic world remains uncertain and controversial.

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Woodland Junior school

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Who were the Celts?

From around 750 BC to 12 BC, the Celts were the most powerful people in central and northern Europe. There were many groups (tribes) of Celts, speaking a vaguely common language.

The word Celt comes from the Greek word, Keltoi, which means barbarians and is properly pronounced as "Kelt".
Interesting fact
No-one called the people living in Britain during the Iron Age, Celts until the eighteenth century. In fact the Romans called these people Britons, not Celts. The name Celts is a 'modern' name and is used to collectively describe all the many tribes of people living during the Iron Age.

When did the Celts live in Europe?
The Iron Age Celts lived here 750 years before Jesus was born. The Iron Age ended in AD43 (43 years after Jesus was born) when the Romans invaded Britain.
Why are the Celts called Iron Age Celts?
The period of time in Britain immediately before the Roman period is known as the Iron Age. The name 'Iron Age' comes from the discovery of a new metal called iron. The Celts found out how to make iron tools and weapons.

Before the Iron Age the only metal used in Britain to make tools was bronze, which is an alloy of copper and tin (hence the Bronze Age).

Where did the Celts come from?

The Celts lived across most of Europe during the Iron Age.

Several hundred years before Julius Caesar, they occupied many parts of central and western Europe, especially what are now Austria, Switzerland, southern France and Spain. Over several years, in wave after wave, they spread outwards, taking over France and Belgium, and crossing to Britain.
Northwest Europe was dominated by three main Celtic groups:

the Gauls

the Britons

the Gaels

Written accounts
People visiting Britain wrote of their impressions of the people and things they saw. Many of these reports are biased.

Much of what Caesar wrote about has since been proved wrong. First, we know that, early Britons did sow corn. Their ancestors had been farming for hundreds of years. Second, they weren't clad in skins. The Bronze Age introduced sewing implements that made it possible to tailor clothing. Third, not every Britain covered themselves in woad.

You can read more reports on our other Celt pages using the links on the left handside of this page.

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Celts in Britain - Celtic history for kids

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Facts and information about the Celts in Britain to help kids with their school homework