208 Book Reviews / Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia 14 (2008) 193-220

An Atlas for Celtic Studies: Archaeology and Names in Ancient Europe and Early Medieval Ireland, Britain and Brittany. By John T. Koch, in collaboration with Raimund Karl, Antone Minard and Simon Ó’Faoláin. Celtic Studies Publications XII, Oxbow Books, Oxford and Celtic Studies Publications 2007. 224 p., ISBN-13: 978-1-84217-309-1; ISBN-10: 1-84217-309-X.

Th e beginning of the 21st century was rich in the publication of Atlases dedicated to the (pre)history of the Celts in Europe and Asia Minor. Th ey are all diff erent in approaches, presented data and printing quality, and target diff erent audiences, both expert and lay. Th e Atlas for Celtic Studies compiled most recently by the team lead by Professor John T. Koch at the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies of the University of Wales in Aberys- twyth is very diff erent from the available publications with similar titles and is an event in Celtic Studies. Th e date range which this new Atlas covers is “from the Late Bronze Age (LBA) to the Central Middle Ages, c. 1200 BC – c. AD 1200, with most intense focus on the Iron Age to the pre-Viking Middle Ages, c. 800 BC – c. AD 800” (p. 4). Quite reasonably Koch subdivides the data presented here into the Ancient Celtic and Neo-Celtic horizons. Th e latter corresponds to the Early Middle Ages and is relevant only for Britain, Ireland and Brittany. Th is twofold division is refl ected in the structure of this book. Th e volume con- sists of Introduction (p. 1-17), Commentary on the main map series (p. 18-39), Main map series (the Ancient Horizon / the Early Medieval Horizon) with colour maps, and two base maps for those horizons are off ered at the end of this publication. Next comes the section “Categories of Evidence” (p. 105-184), also subdivided accordingly; the book contains bibliography (p. 185-194) and an index (195-211). Th e readers of this journal will be most interested in the ancient horizon discussed in the Atlas, therefore I will concentrate below on this particular stratum. Th e editor states in the introduction (p. 1) that “the most abundant evidence for the early Celtic-speaking peoples is archaeological and linguistic” and “accordingly these are the chief types of evidence compressed” on the maps presented in the Atlas, as “juxtaposing early Celtic language evidence with archaeological distributions on maps illuminates what we may call Celticity, meaning the quality of being Celtic” (p. 2). It is noteworthy that the Atlas – as is claimed on p. 1 – “deliberately avoids the framework of narrative history and assumptions about the identity and internal coherence of our ‘protagonists’ the Celts”, thus excluding from the discussion certain problems of the so-called “Celtosceptic debate” (on which see Sims-Williams 1998). Koch sees in it “a novel approach to Celtic studies”, which is of course justifi ed as far as the compilation of Atlases are concerned, but does seem to have been adhered to elsewhere, particularly in the domain of early Celtic toponymic stud- ies which do normally consider archaeological data and sometimes – the narrative history alongside the linguistic data.1 According to Koch (p. 3) the defi nition of “the ancient Celtic world is precisely the same as the distribution of evidence for the ancient Celtic languages”;

1 I can refer here for example to a number of papers (some of which were subsequently pub- lished) read at the conference Linguistic Frontiers of the Ancient Celts (Munich, 30-31 July 2004) by delegates from various countries and dedicated to the analysis of Celtic place-names on the fringes of the “Celtic world”; the aspects of “identity” are of course irrelevant for early Celtic linguistics.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2008 DOI: 10.1163/092907708X339625 Book Reviews / Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia 14 (2008) 193-220 209 the latter is illustrated by a black-and-white map I. 1 on pp. 2-3. Th ere is no legend pro- vided immediately for the map, and it may raise certain questions. For example, the central part of the Iberian peninsula is aptly marked as the domain of Celtiberian, the western half of it is the area of Hispano-Celtic names, but its eastern part is apparently excluded from the discussion of Celtic linguistic evidence and it is connected with the similarly non-Celtic areas of the Pyrenees. However, the map § 16. 1 of the Atlas does show some Celtic topo- nyms in this region2 – a restricted amount of course, but quite comparable to that found e. g., in northern Dacia, which is considered as a territory with Celtic linguistic evidence. It is also surprising to learn from the map that Corsica has no Celtic place-names at all although Sims-Williams (2006, 251-253)3 has convincingly argued in favour of their pres- ence on this island. Unfortunately, “it was decided that it would be indefensibly repetitious (. . .) also to publish detailed discussions of the textual sources and etymologies of ancient place-names” (p. 5) in view of the aims of the project carried out at the Department of Welsh of Aberystwyth University, therefore the criteria of selection of linguistic data (which are treated in the Atlas as certainly / probably or possibly Celtic), are not very clear. Th ose interested in the early history of Europe will appreciate the sections of the Intro- duction (p. 9-17) which deal in a very condensed manner with various hypotheses on the Celticization of the continent. Koch presents a black-and-white map, which illustrates “Celticization by Invasion” (Map I. 2, p. 10-11), supplied with a brief historiography of the problem. “In the 20th century iconic form of the theory”, summarizes Koch (p. 9), “the expansion of the Celtic languages is viewed as coinciding with that of the La Tène culture, beginning around 480-460 BC”; and in the looser model the earlier epoch – that of Hallstatt D and C (the latter is dated to c. 720-600 BC) is taken into consideration. Th en the author observes the “anti-invasionist” publications by British archaeologists of the 60’s-70’s; and off ers a section entitled “Evidence against invasive Celticization” (p. 11-13, which also contains a map I. 3. “Pre-La Tène Celticization”). Professor Koch is absolutely correct in saying (p. 11) that “there is clear-cut evidence that Celtic languages were already spoken far outside the ‘core’ area well back in the Early La Tène period, or even before its inception”. He refers inter alia to Lepontic – a Continental Celtic language used in Northern Italy and roughly coinciding with the area of the so-called Golasecca archaeo- logical culture, which is known from several inscriptions in Etruscan alphabet, some of which are dated to the 6th century BC. Th is seems to be already enough to refute the iden- tifi cation of the Celts with the La Tène epoch, both archaeologically and linguistically,

2 To the south of the tribe Bergistani, which Koch considers a possibly Celtic name (note that the name of its capital, omitted in the map, is probably Celtic), some scholars locate another Celtic tribe – Volciani, which is also not on the map. For a detailed study of the ancient topon- ymy of the area see J. L. García Alonso (2005). In the territory of the Ilergetes Mendiculeia is a possibly Celtic name for Koch, but undoubtedly Latin for García Alonso. Bergusia, Gallica Flavia and Bergidon located in the same territory and refl ecting various degrees of Celticity are not found on the map. 3 Koch refers (p. 8) to this publication of Sims-Williams for the “diff erent densities of Conti- nental Celtic place-name evidence”. It should be borne in mind that the latter analysis is based on the data of the Barrington Atlas (Talbert 2000), with all its omissions, and only in certain defi ned circumstances considers place-names which are unlocated in the Atlas. For some areas of Europe the evidence of unlocated toponyms of Celtic origin may be crucial. Note that Macedo- nia, not considered in the Atlas, yields two possible Celtic place-names – Klitai and Gallicum.