Origins of the Celts
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KELTS. A well-known word today that has been used to describe many different groups of people in history, from Iron Age Britons in, well, Britain, to the ferocious Galatians in Central Turkey.

But who were the original Celts? It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's episode we are exploring the origins of the Celts.

It's a story that takes us back almost 3,000 years to early Iron Age France, where archaeology is suggesting that the Celts originated. But it's also a story that will take us much further afield. The story of the early Celts is one of travel, of these people settling in places like southern France and northern Italy, interacting with other ancient civilizations such as the Etruscans and Greeks, and coexisting with them.

They also had strong ties with Germany, impressive sites like the massive burial mound called the Magdalenenberg and the huge hillfort settlement that was the Heunenberg, both of which play an important role in the story of the Celts and in our episode today. Simply put, the story of the Celts and their origins covers several centuries and a huge geographic area.

We're going to explore this early Celtic world, their society, the prominence of women in surviving burials, how they spread from their ancestral lands in central France across the Alps into northern Italy, and how their culture changed over the centuries to become more militaristic, culminating in a group of warlike Celts sacking Rome in the early 4th century BC. Celts who would have been very different to those who'd existed some 200 years earlier.

To talk through the latest research surrounding the original Celts, well I was delighted to interview Dr Rachel Le Pope from the University of Liverpool. Now this is quite an in-depth scholarly topic but it is fascinating and well worth diving into. This is what the ancients is all about. To help out I'll be popping up at times throughout the interview to recap key points of this amazing research. I really do hope you enjoy.

Rachel, it is wonderful to have you on the podcast today. I'm absolutely delighted to be here, Tristan. I'm really looking forward to chatting with you. I'm looking forward to chatting with you too, especially on this topic, the Celts. And I must admit, it might be a bit of myth-busting coming here too, because admittedly, when someone mentions the word Celts, I think of Maiden Castle or Boudicca or the Battersea Shield, stuff like that, Iron Age Britain. But the actual story of the Celts, we need to look beyond Britain to the continent. Absolutely, yes.

We've inherited quite what I like to refer to as a bit of a Celtic knot. We've used the term Celtic very, very widely in linguistics, in archaeology, in medieval studies, in Iron Age studies.

And we've got to sort of unpick all those different strands to work out where the term originates and how it then becomes used by different groups of people all the time. Well, that kind of throws a spanner in the works straight away because I was going to say, let's kick this off with a simple question of who are the Celts? But actually, that feels like a more complicated question than it initially sounds. Who were the Celts?

Yeah, it's a very difficult question. And I think most recently what I've begun to sort of say is that, well, there are several types of Celts and we can break it down into modern Celts, which, you know, are a valid group. And then we've got our ancient Celts.

So it starts off way back at the start of the early Iron Age. And honestly, I think, you know, the reason that it survives to us through the classical texts is because they were quite a fun bunch. And that's why this term is so prevalent in the Greek sources, in the Roman sources. And then obviously it survives through into modern scholarship.

And it's used because they're such an influential group of people right at the start. And why do we get this term, Celts? I mean, you mentioned Greek and Roman writers there. Are they responsible for kind of the labelling of these people as Celts? It's all the fault of the Greeks, really. So we get the first kind of contemporary references to the Celts from Greek sources.

And as we go through time, we sort of start to get some of the backstory. So we get initially people like Herodotus, very well known, but also Pindar Herodotus.

who are talking about these people called the Celts and where they've been found, where they've been located, and trying to get a grip on who they are. And also with Herodotus, who they aren't. They're not those people, they're these people. And then we kind of get early traveller accounts that take us about a century back in time. And then ultimately we end up with origin tales in much later texts

that are telling us way, way back, right back into the 7th century BC, that this is where these, you know, this is the origin of these peoples. It's an unpicking of who these people are, but quite a few different textual references are,

quite some time and it's teasing it all out. Because that is really interesting, Rachel, how you mentioned that kind of those different types of literature that you have surviving from these Greco-Roman sources. As you mentioned, those kind of more contemporary accounts, Herodotus writing about Celts at his own time and so on, which you could perhaps maybe on an issue you think would be more accurate. And then kind of confusingly, almost by contrast, the stories of the

The earlier history and the origins of Celts actually comes from people writing many, many, many more centuries later. And then we think that more likely those stories perhaps are enshrouded with a bit of mythology and fiction. So those later sources, they become a bit more troublesome. Yeah, I mean, we have to really turn to ancient historians around this because what I found as an archaeologist going through the textual references is that there are almost sort of

generational trends in how reliable these sources are. At one point in time, you get the poets talking and the poets get it absolutely wrong and they have to be corrected.

At one point, it's sort of comedic references to the Celts. And I think we've, as archaeologists, certainly we've kind of clumped all of the classical texts together as a sort of thing that we turn to to tell us how things were. Well, actually, it's like any other form of archaeological evidence. There are bits of it that are probably relatively reliable. And there are bits of it that are obviously very steeped in contemporary biases and

or are second-hand accounts.

And what we have to be able to do as archaeologists is to be able to determine which of those it is. It's kind of saying, isn't it, it's that fascinating part of archaeology to see if the archaeology that you've been discovering in these places corroborates with the accounts. And then also embracing new scientific methods like DNA and all that. Is that also really helpful in trying to kind of piece together the enigma of the Celts, particularly their earlier history? Oh God, hugely, yes. So the new techniques

that we're using. Magdalenenburg, they've done isotopes on all of the bodies, 140-something bodies, and they're able to say, this is the diet. There aren't any social differences, but some of the older men are getting more protein in their diet.

And they're able to see that the people buried there in Germany, some of them grew up in the Alps, some of them grew up in North Italy. So we're actually, for the first time from human remains, beginning to be able to see those journeys of people growing.

that kind of tie us with the movement of objects. And I just find it terribly exciting. And, you know, the AD&A is even more exciting because we're now able to kind of plot lineages, plot generations. Blows me away. It's really great. ♪

So we have this interesting range of material surviving when trying to learn more about the original ancient Celts. DNA studies of surviving bodies from the great burial mounds like the Magdalenenberg and the amazing artefacts that they were buried with. These are revealing a lot and don't you worry, we're going to talk about some particular artefacts as this talk goes on.

But the surviving literature for early Celts is also very interesting, which include tales about how they travelled and settled in places varying from the source of the Danube River in central Europe to the Po Valley across the Alps in northern Italy. And before we go on, I wanted to quickly highlight one of my favourite stories about the Celts, a story of how they came into contact with the Greeks in southern France and helped establish France's oldest city, Marseille.

In around 600 BC, Greeks from the city-state of Phakia in western Turkey, they migrated to southern France and decided to set up a trading post called Massalia, present-day Marseille, near the mouth of the river Rhône.

The core of the myth is a local Celtic chieftain called Nanus, whose daughter, either called Guptus or Peta, her name varies depending on the source, she was getting married at the time that these Greeks arrived and was to choose her husband from a number of suitors. Rather than a Celt, Guptus chose the leader of the Greeks, a man called Protus, to be her husband. And because of this union, the Celts and the Greeks set up Marseilles together.

It's a really interesting story, one of many that Greek writers wrote about these distant Celts who clearly fascinated them. And with that in mind, I wanted to ask Rachel, what are the origins of these Celts? Where and how far back in time can we go?

Well, there's two answers to that question, really, as you expect. You'll get to realise this with this topic. So in the text, we're able to piece together an oral tradition about the origins of the Celts. And we can get them as far back as kind of the 7th century BC. But most of the stories, the tales, sort of coalesce around about 600 BC.

So we start to hear about how they're connected with the phocane Greeks and they both set up Massalia Grigmarse. So we hear about not just them being sort of reported on as this group of people, but we're hearing about who they're connected with.

and who they're talking to and who they're getting together with, you know. And we hear about, you know, oh, that group up there. Well, they're very old. They're the first group who came to North Italy. And then there are all these other groups, you know. So from the texts, we're able to see that the Celts of the kind of 6th century BC do have these kind of earlier origins, you know.

Now, archaeologically, what we see and where we currently stand as a discipline is that these groups do not seem to be intrusive. So we can trace them back through the archaeology and the literature to central Gaul, to central France.

And we do not really see evidence for this as a terribly new culture. We can see continuity from the end of the Bronze Age. So we start to hear about them from the sort of 6th, 5th century BC, but they don't arrive at that point. They're already an established group of people in France, much further back.

So we think therefore that the Celts, like I said, they're not new people coming in. The Amna, the big people have thousands of years before indigenous population. And from the archaeology, I really want to explore that archaeology. Is it stuff like burial traditions from the Bronze Age that you see continuing? So then you can say, ah, okay, yes, this kind of stems back hundreds of years. But this is kind of when we see the proto-Celts and then the people that we associate with the name Celts coming from.

Yeah, actually it's more from the material culture, I would say, that we're seeing the continuity. But we are beginning to see new ideas coming into these groups. So I think the reason we get interested in them as archaeologists, the reason the first things were excavated was because we're beginning to see these absolutely enormous burial mounds.

So the Magdalene bird that I just mentioned, it's 100 metres in diameter. I mean, how do you even conceive of that? How many people that must have taken? How long that must have taken to construct? So we've got these very large circular burial mounds that are appearing. But we also start to see the first hill forts in England.

these areas. So we're starting to see groups coming together at this time. Now, one of the most interesting bits of evidence that we get in Germany at this time is the establishment of the Kühneberg. Now, what's interesting is... Yes. Yeah. So it starts at around 630 BC. It's your average hillfort. But then a generation on, they rebuild in Mediterranean style.

which is wild. So this isn't Germany. It's got Bastion architecture. We don't know if it's, I think there's debate still really about whether it's Greek or Punic, but it's certainly of Mediterranean origin, this architecture, which is, you know, it's a huge state beach, isn't it?

But then what's fascinating about this group who are displaying Mediterranean connections in their architecture is that the very large burial mounds, so they're about 80 meters in diameter here, which is still vast, they're high-status women. So we've got this really interesting signature of high-status women

and Mediterranean-style architecture and connections down to the Mediterranean in the material culture. So it's a really interesting time where we're getting these origin tales about how people crossed the Alps to the Po Valley and travelled east to the mouth of the Danube. And then at the mouth of Danube, we have these incredible stories

kind of archaeological remains. And it's only really been possible quite recently, I suppose, that the archaeology is sufficiently well dated now

that we can kind of put the textual references side by side with the archaeology of that period and see what's going on. I'd like to delve a bit more into that. I know I got very excited when you said the word Heunenberg, and apologies if I say it wrong. But for anyone, just look it up. It's a very, very impressive Iron Age site. The source of the Danube River is extraordinary, and it's always associated with

The Hausstadt culture, isn't it, Rachel? That's what is associated with it. It's the late Hausstadt culture, yes. So there's a distinction to be made here, really. So I think we're quite confident now that the Celts are this group of people who are in central France. And we find them referred to sort of on the coasts, often near to other interesting people. They seem to like to settle next to interesting people with nice things, is what the Celts are interested in.

So the Celts are in France, but then we have this contemporary culture burgeoning in Germany. And they're very similar. They've got similar interests. They both kind of like drinking. They're very obsessed with alcohol.

They like being in touch with the Mediterranean. They're displaying the goods of their travels or connections. They're being buried with wagons, so they love traveling. But we also see quite distinctive differences between the people in northeast France and in southern Germany. So we see that they're connected and they're sharing ideas and they're doing things relatively similarly.

but there are regional variations within that.

So yeah, so Celts we reserve for the French element of this bit of culture. The groups in Germany were less comfortable using the term Celt for them, even though it's a contemporary culture that is sharing ideas. Before I get on a bit more into the movements of these early Celts and more into those interactions with contemporary cultures like those at the Heunenberg and the

There was also something really interesting that you mentioned there, Rachel, is that we're not talking about the Celts in all of France. We're talking about a particular part of Gaul. So when we get a sense in our mind of who the Celts were and their societies, their early settlements, should we not be perceiving them controlling huge amounts of land, but actually very, well, quite small areas? Yeah, I think this is something that's developed over time as our scholarship has become more

more kind of fine grained, more forensic. So we began by thinking, obviously, at the start of our discipline, we're very immersed in kind of ideas of empire, ideas of states, these large kind of, you know, geographical spans of

But over time, as we've actually become more versed in the archaeological evidence, as we've been able to build chronologies that show a snapshot of a society at any one point in time,

What we're recognising is that although there might be similarities in, for example, you know, an art style might be shared over some distance in the same way that a language might be shared across some distance.

that there are other categories of archaeological evidence, like the way that society is formed, for example, or specific kind of burial traditions. So some people might be interested in displaying weaponry. Other groups of people might be interested in thinking about Bavaria, who the older men there really like their toilet sets. So they're really interested in kind of well-manicured objects.

There are very different cultural signatures coming through in the archaeology now that show us that probably we're looking at social organisation at the level of the region. And even then, I'm not sure that's still a category of our analysis. I'm not sure that we are seeing kind of defined regional groups. It's more that we're able to distinguish them at that level archaeologically.

So yeah, it's a bit of a battle. Older archaeologists are quite keen to see these as state-like societies. And certainly some of these individuals in these cultures are incredibly powerful, incredibly well-connected. By the time we get to about 500 BC, we're seeing very powerful people in Western Europe,

But I don't think we're necessarily seeing the mechanics of a state yet. Still being worked out, but yeah, somewhere between. With their connections, did they also found their own colonies? Did they found trading posts in other areas of Europe to kind of emphasise those connections and to look for lovely, shiny things that they could get their hands on?

Yeah, I think that seems to me to be quite central to who the Celts are. We're seeing these burials. They've got amber from the Baltic and the early Iron Age. We're seeing bits of ivory cropping up from North Africa. We've got the wine from Greece. We've got Etruscan bronze vessels. So it's not as obvious what's going on.

down to the Mediterranean, what's going up to the Baltic in return. But I think really we can talk about the tin trade. I think we can potentially see that these groups of controlling travel groups

to the Northwest and to Cornwall. And potentially this is why these groups become so important to the Mediterranean because they do control the routes to this important metal, you know, that is central to creating these beautiful bronze vessels that everybody loves so much at the time. I think that's really important.

So the Celts appear to have had their origins in what is today central France. But soon groups of these people spread and settled much further afield.

They interacted with Greeks in southern France at Marseille and the Etruscans in northern Italy. The richest in their societies built great burial mounds, showing off their power and great connections with the Mediterranean world and beyond. They had beautiful jewellery, such as the iconic torc, this Celtic symbol of authority. By the beginning of the 6th century BC, in the early Iron Age, things seemed to be looking good for the Celts, but turmoil...

was just around the corner. Movement is really central to the character of the early Iron Age person. So they start off in the early Iron Age period and they're these high status burials. These individuals are buried with their wagons. You know, they're buried in the box of their wagon. So this idea of movement, of travel, you know, finding these nice things, being buried with gold, with amber,

with wine from the Mediterranean, you know, Greek furniture for heaven's sake.

It's really central, that whole idea of connection, of exchange of items, of getting to know different people. The Celts, for example, are absolutely obsessed with North Italy. They love it. It's on the Mediterranean, warm water, lovely Etruscan people next door. They're really interested in getting to know other people. And that all seems to be going quite well,

until about 540, 530 BC. And then we're getting the signature now in the archaeology of something fairly dramatic, politically quite worrying.

The Heunenberg, that begins as this kind of flourishing, connected community and gathers, you know, an enormous settlement around it. So it's on a hill and it gathers this settlement at the base of the hill around it. You know, lots of people coming and moving to this new central site.

And then at 540, 530 BC, it's all set on fire, catastrophic fire. And that outer settlement is never rebuilt again.

So there's something not too great happening towards the end of the 6th century BC. And this is at the point where we have the wealthiest early Iron Age burial in Germany, Sir Hochdorf, very well known. He's laid out on a Greek Kleiner or couch. He has golden shoes.

He has a weapon, but it's gold-plated. It's a very, very opulent burial. And it's at the point of this gentleman, whoever he was, that we're seeing this drama, political drama unfold at the Hoineburn. So what starts off as an embracing of the Mediterranean, of Greece, suddenly starts to go off.

And it's at this time as well that we begin to see the burials of a very different kind of burial expression. So in southern Germany, across the way in France, obviously these kind of drinking, travelling, connected, opulent burials. And then from about 550 BC, we start to see people being buried in a very austere manner.

They're not demonstrating links to the Mediterranean. They're not displaying wealth. In Germany, these people, it's usually men in Germany, are buried with spears, active martial item. Over the way in France, it's women with iron daggers.

So suddenly out of this culture in the kind of watershed area of Europe, hugely connected, you know, the whole emphasis is travel and contact and connections. We get these individuals moving north who want to display combat as their identity.

And it's all at around about the time of that fire at the Heunerberg, of that very high wealth of Hochdorf. We literally see that European community kind of split in two. And they leave that traditional Mediterranean influence culture in the south. And these more austere martial groups move into the territory to the north. It's quite exciting. ♪

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It's really exciting how you've already got evidence of Celts moving into Northern Italy and certainly now you mention those contacts with that amazing civilization, the Etruscans. So, Celts in Northern Italy, Celts in Southern France and in Central France.

Are these people who moved north at the time of that dreadful fire at the Hoineberg, can we also label them Celts at that time too? Well, this is a matter of some debate. And I think we have to turn to Aristotle for this. So Plato, his tutor, talks about the Celts. I think he's talking about the Celts of Gaul. And he's referring to them as a kind of traditional society that likes drinking. The women of the Celts like drinking, according to Plato. And Aristotle, a generation on,

is starting to talk about two different groups who are very similar but linked. And he talks about the Celts, which I think is Gaul, and he talks about the Galatine.

Now, we think Galatae means brave fighters. And I think this is who ultimately those people in the north, in places like Champagne, with their slightly martial origins, that's who Aristotle is referring to. So we've got these textual references to the Celts' start of the 4th century,

becoming these kind of brave fighters who come down ultimately to Rome and cause quite a bit of trouble, originating from the south of Champagne. Now, archaeologically, at 400 BC, those communities who'd established themselves in areas like Champagne are deserted.

those new settlements are deserted. And I think we're on the cusp now of being able to really see a real marrying of the archaeological evidence with the textual sources, which is just fabulous. ♪

The mid-6th century BC looks to have been a time of political upheaval for the Celts, with once great centres like the Heunerberg being burned down and abandoned, and the warlike Galatae Celts establishing themselves up in Champagne. For the Celts in central Gaul and northern Italy, the connected world they knew had transformed.

Their strong ties with the Etruscans endured this turmoil and became even more binding. But at the same time, they appear to start distancing themselves from the Greeks and cities like Marseilles. It's all very intriguing, almost as if they're picking a side. More on that in a bit. Continuing our chat, I asked Rachel what she thinks Celtic society looks like at this time, following this period of upheaval.

We're starting to work that through now. So if we look at the French material evidence at that time,

One of the first things that we're beginning to recognise, I mean, French archaeologists have been saying this since the 1970s, is that we're actually looking at a matriarchal or a matrilineal society in France at that time, which I think is probably why Rome gets so upset, really, by the 4th century BC. So, yeah, so all of the high-status burials...

in France until the very end of the tradition are women. And remember back to when I was talking about those high-status burials around the Heunenberg at the start, they were women. But then after the fire, there's an enormous fire. And then in Germany, we start to see a better mix of

In high-status burials. In France, that doesn't happen. In France, it's just women all the way through until the very end. And we've not long excavated the kind of latest high-status burial. And that is a man. That's Laval.

And he's right at the end of the tradition. I think this is probably why the classical texts are so obsessed with the Celts. This is why they talk about them so much, is because they're an interesting, very different type of society, way out west, doing things very differently. And they don't quite know what to make of them, I think.

And then, you know, some of the best evidence we have, it comes from a very famous burial in France called Avix. Now, this is an extraordinary burial. It's a burial of a woman. She has an enormous gold talk around her neck.

Celtic symbol of authority. Now what's interesting is it has a tiny little Pegasus on it. So there's the kind of importing of Greek culture into a uniquely kind of Celtic item. So she's got this enormous gold talk. She's also got the largest Greek crater in the world.

Just to clarify, a crater is a large Greek mixing vessel. Just search Vicks Crater, crater with a K. It is astonishing. It was 1.64 metres tall. When it was excavated, the evidence showed that it was at that point half full of wine. So the drinking thing continued and Vicks, you know, had this enormous vessel full of wine on burial.

Now what's really interesting around this burial is the symbols that he uses in it. So the crater, it's a symbol of the Greek symposium. So this is a masculine drinking culture in Greece. And what's happened to this object is that it's not quite right. There is Gorgon imagery on the crater. Now,

That's quite typical. But in the Greek examples, it's quite polite. The Gorgons are quite polite. They're kind of quite passive, quite static. On the Vyx crater, this Gorgon imagery is, how can I put this, not very polite. A bit like a Sheila Nickig?

Can I say that? It's a very active piece of art. And what's even more interesting is that there should be a sort of parade of warriors around the top of the crater. They've been removed and they weren't found in the burial. It's assumed they had been removed before deposition. Instead, in place of the parade of warriors, you've got a woman. Interestingly, it's a woman that we believe was made in an Italian workshop.

So you've got this enormous example, this impolite creator from a masculine arena in Greece with an Italian lady sitting on top of it. So that's interesting. There's quite a lot of imagery involved there. But also in the Greek cup, she's got two black attics and the imagery is of Amazons fighting hoplites. So it's women fighting grief.

And I think what we're seeing by 500 BC, so this is one generation on from all this drama around Greece, is that France, the Celts, are saying, if we have to choose, we do like your wine, we do have history with you, but when it comes down to it, we are allied to Italy. And

And that's a fascinating archaeological piece, isn't it, Rachel? Because it's emphasising once again something that seems to be really highlighting with these Celts is the connections that they had, the far-reaching connections, the fact that, you know, for generations by that point in 500 BC, there are Celtic communities in northern Italy and they're having strong interactions with the Etruscans.

And it's almost as if the Celts from the archaeology, they're having to pick a side almost. And they decide at the end of the day, it's the Etruscans who they want to be with. Absolutely. Absolutely. Politically aligned. And I think this is what's become really fascinating. As our evidence has become better dated, more refined, more forensic, we can perform a better analysis now that our archaeology is better dated.

And we've moved from a narrative a couple of generations ago where, you know, Europe was kind of peripheral to the Mediterranean. It was sort of, you know,

pearls moving north kind of thing to less civilized cultures. And I think the story that we can tell now is of a much more active group in Western Europe who were, you know, very much, they very much had a say in the politics of the Mediterranean. They were part of the politics. And by 500 BC, they're making very definite political statements about who they are.

and who they aren't. So if they've decided to side with the Etruscans, Rachel, it seems like there's a good relationship between the Celts and the Etruscans in Northern Italy. How does this all come together to create these more hostile conditions for the Celts in Northern Italy?

I think it's just events of that particular time. From textual evidence, we can see that there's this kind of long-term connection between North Eastly and communities in France.

There's maybe a tendency, when we talk about migration, we think of it historically as an event in Tong, as a kind of mass movement of people, but an archaeological reading of the texts, thinking by this point of Polybius and Nivi, what we can see is that these oral traditions that have ultimately been written down are showing us that this is a very long-term process.

So it seems as if we have this movement of people to North Italy, you know, right across the 6th century, right across the 5th century BC.

So this is a couple of centuries and I don't think it's necessarily large groups of people. Glebeus talks about it as, you know, the surplus of a particular group. He documents something in the region of a dozen different groups. So these are the ones that are remembered as well. So

So again, it's largely a problem of our own understanding as modern scholars. We think about it as a very immediate, a very large process, a very one-moment historical event. But actually, I think it's much smaller scale. It's small groups of people over time. Think about how mobility works in today's society. Your cousins move out to Spain, say,

And you stay, you don't know why they've been so ridiculous. And then you see, you know, 10 years worth of wonderful photos of gorgeous sunshine and fabulous food. And you decide to retire, you join them. And this is how it actually works. It's not a sudden thing. It's groups of people being connected, being related, travelling back and forwards, ultimately settling. And I think that's what we see in the texts.

is that this connection between the Calzingor, the northern Italy communities, is very long, it's very deep. And by the time we get to kind of 387 BC, it's just reached a tipping point. ♪

This tipping point was when a group of Celts called the Sinones, who hailed from Champagne in northeast France and were more warlike in their outlook, arrived in northern Italy in the late 5th or early 4th century BC and started fighting their neighbours. They besieged the Etruscan city of Clusium in today's Tuscany. These Etruscans called their southern neighbour, the fledgling, the growing Roman Republic in central Italy, for help.

The Romans agreed and ultimately came to blows with the Sinones at the Battle of the Allia, where they, the Romans, were defeated. A couple of years later, in 387 BC, the Sinones, led by a warlord called Brennus, sacked Rome.

This was an absolute trouncing of Rome very early on by these groups that came from a traditionally female-authored society. These are the lads that Aristotle is calling, he says they have relations with other men. So this is quite psychologically damaging for Rome to be occupied by women.

by these groups from Gaul for seven months. And I think ultimately, you know, we could argue that this is why Rome becomes so obsessed with grabbing other people's land and demonstrating that they're not the same weak Romans who were occupied for seven months, right? I think it tells us a lot about...

the Roman psyche, really. And it's very interesting how all of that stems from this period of upheaval, which we mentioned earlier from the burning of the Heunenberg and this kind of embracing of a more warrior tradition by those who went north and then they ultimately go south to northern Italy, are welcomed and then ultimately go and sack Rome. A long time. I do wonder, is that partly why this happened, that the Celts of 400 BC...

who had moved north, who identify as brave warriors, who aren't as keen on demonstrating connections with the Mediterranean anymore. They're a very different type of Celts to the Celts of 600 BC who were establishing Massalia and who were talking to the Etruscans. They've changed. This is two centuries on, six generations.

totally different and they don't fit anymore. So we've had this period of upheaval where you've seen lots of Celtic movements, the so-called migrations. What happens to the Celts after this upheaval? Well, we continue to hear about them. So I see Aristotle as that sort of watershed, Plato and Aristotle. And then the references that we have to the Celts seem to actually, from then on, be referring to the Celts in all literally.

So we hear about who they're aligned with and who they went and fought and the numbers and all the rest of it. So we've lost that kind of original identity of the Celts by that point. And when we're hearing about Celts, we're hearing about the Celts of Northern Italy. And then we hear about further migrations eastward.

And again, you know, the archaeology does kind of corroborate this. So we have by about 300 BC, we've got Celtic art styles in Slovenia, in Romania, in Hungary. So it's a continuation of how we started talking about this, Tristan, that there are many different types of Celts.

And the Celts that we start off with, that the Greeks first meet, have changed. You know, they've changed geographical focus. They've changed social structure. They're very much more interested in fighting by this point. You know, it's all about that. So we've got to become comfortable with the idea that, you know, identities morph.

They shift. They shift over geography. They shift over time.

And really, I think Celts is the best example of that, that it's such a strong identity. It's so powerful. It's so unique and worthy of comment from the Greeks, right? And definitely worthy of comment from the Romans that it's maintained and it continues and it shifts and people want to be Celts. They want to be connected to these original groups, right?

And that's why it survives. And that's why it's come down to us as this label that we then have put onto linguistics and art styles and culture.

You know, we've used that term because it came to represent essentially pre-Roman. Absolutely, Rachel, because it kind of comes down, I know there are names like the Celt-Iberians, the Celts in Spain, of course, the Galatians, the Galati in Asia Minor, and the talk of like Celts in Britain and so on. But trying to, as you say, that term comes to encompass so many people. And I love that they're kind of different kinds of Celts.

I think it's fair to say it just gets really confusing as time goes on. That whole legacy of the Celts, it becomes really confusing, especially when Roman writers get their hands on the term too. Oh yeah, it's awful. So the thing that was passed down to us, I think from Stu Piggott, who's a very famous

prehistory back in the 20th century, is that the Romans were terribly confused. They're quite confused about the Celts really. And I think that's what you find. Once you start to look at the texts in a slightly more kind of archaeological fashion, what you see is the Greeks are actually quite interested in kind of describing geographically, historically, groups of people and defining them.

Whereas by the time we get to the Roman authors, we're seeing this kind of mixing, slight confusion. But I don't think we should be too confused about that ourselves because we're talking about, in some cases, 600 years ago.

from the original source of that term. So we should be comfortable with a bit of confusion in the texts or a bit of error in the texts. It's not the end of the world, really. And I think that if we start to understand this kind of fluidity in identity, then we sort of stop being so worried about it, I think.

Well, in that case, in that fluidity of identity and how certain aspects of Celtic culture, I guess you can see in Britain, is it okay to call Iron Age Britons Celts if we take that approach? Okay, so I've just agreed with Greg Jenner of Horrible History's fame that we shouldn't really. Because at the time, in the Iron Age, Britain was not referred to as Celtic. In fact, it was pretty clear that they were not Celtic.

So I think we're more comfortable now. We've agreed to use the term Britons. It's slightly sort of more accurate. It kind of aligns better with the linguistic scholarship. So no, I don't think we can call the Iron Age people a Briton Celtic. I'm very comfortable with the Western Atlantic fringe of Britain retaining the term Celtic for their languages, their

for that kind of modern identity as something separate to English I think that's absolutely valid and we should be very happy about it well Rachel that's a lovely little note to finish it on and it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today thank you very much

Well, there you go. There was Dr. Rachel Pope talking all the things the origins of the Celts, explaining this latest research into their story and why it is so exciting looking at their origins in central France, but also their connections far and wide.

how they spread and interacted with peoples like the Greeks, the Etruscans, establishing themselves in Northern Italy, their great love of Northern Italy and the Mediterranean culture, and ultimately how the whole outlook of the Celts and their culture, it transformed over the centuries, leading to a group of them brutally sacking Rome in the early 4th century BC. I hope you enjoyed today's episode exploring all of that.

If you want more on this topic of the Iron Age, Central Europe and the Mediterranean world, peoples like the Etruscans, well I'd recommend you check the Ancients Archive and you listen to an interview I recorded more than a year ago now with the brilliant archaeologist Lucy Shipley, all about the rise of the Etruscans, looking at the Etruscan world in North Italy and how connected they in turn were with the wider Mediterranean world and of course with the

with the Celts. Another one related to today's interview could be a chat I had with Dr Joshua Hall right near the start of the ancient's journey some three years ago where he explained the origins of Massalia, of Marseille, which of course is closely linked with the story of the Celts and the Greeks. So do definitely check out those two podcasts too in the Ancient Archive. Go listen on Spotify.

Last thing from me, wherever you are listening to the podcast, whether it be Spotify or Apple Podcasts or elsewhere, make sure that you are following the ancients, that you are subscribed so that you don't miss out when we release new episodes twice every week. That's enough from me and I will see you in the next episode.