A European Iron age cultural group known to the Romans and Greeks, archaeology has helped reveal the origins of the Celts. It has also shown how they developed and spread their culture across Western Europe before the Roman conquest.

Who Were the Celts?

The name ‘Celt’ comes from the term “Keltoi”, which the Greeks, Romans and Etruscans employed to relate to a group of central European tribes they came into contact with through trade and war.

Classical descriptions of the Celts were limited and coloured by the perspective that anything culturally different from the classical norm was barbarous. This view was largely unchallenged until the archaeological discoveries at Hallstatt and La Tene revealed that Celts had a much more complex society. It was essentially hierarchical, with chieftains and warriors at the top and a priestly caste known as the druids. In addition, Celtic culture had its own innovative art forms and social customs. Far from being barbarous, the Celts had a civilisation to rival their classical counterparts.

The Beginnings of the Celts

The Celts were an ethnically Indo-European group that migrated across Eurasia. The material beginnings of their culture is traceable through archaeology to central Austria. Celtic culture can be distinctly identified in the archaeological at around 750 BC when its first phase, Halstatt culture, appeared. It reached its pinnacle with La Tene culture in the centuries preceding Roman domination.

The Growth of Celtic Culture

Farming was the basis of Celtic society, but its growth was based on trade. Salt and iron were major commodities of the Celts and they traded them with a diverse group of peoples from the Eastern and Hellenistic worlds. In exchange, the Celts acquired wine, luxury goods and ideas. These ideas included the artwork of the Greeks and military innovations such as the use of chariots from the east. The Celts did not just adopt these ideas and continue to trade to acquire more of the same. Rather, they made them a basis for their own innovations, developing new styles of art and weaponry that was uniquely Celtic.

Trade also facilitated the spread of Celtic culture across Europe, with the transmission of ideas and/or people, leading to the arrival of Celtic culture in Britain and Ireland in 400 BC. Celtic culture became the dominant Iron Age culture in north-western Europe.

Resources

Frank Delaney The Celts (1993) Harper Collins: London

Lloyd Laing Celtic Britain (1984) Paladin: Granada Publishing