welcome From the Issue Editor

he first written mention of the comes “princely” sites from the heartland of temperate . from Herodotus, who in the fifth century B.C. Mary Voigt’s paper presents Celts in an unexpected place, wrote that the River arose in the land in modern Turkey, where a group of Celts migrated of the Keltoi, Europe’s most westerly people. to and lived during the fourth to second centuries B.C.My Later, writers such as Posidonius, Strabo, and article discusses Celtic towns on the edge of the Roman JuliusT Caesar also gave us descriptions of people they called world, just before Julius Caesar’s invasion. Bernard Wailes Celts or , distinguishing them from both Romans and talks about the Celtic culture of the Early Medieval Period Germans. But what does such a designation actually mean? in the British Isles, and Beebe Bahrami’s article explores the The word Celt is frequently used to describe an ethnic recent revival of Celticism as young people in Galician group, a kind of material culture, and an art style. To seek to claim an ancient identity. archaeologists, however, the word describes a group of We hope you enjoy exploring the past 2,500 years of people who speak one of a group of languages called the Celts. Celtic. Only a few survive today, among them Gaelic and Breton, remnants of what was 2,000 years Elizabeth Hamilton, Ph.D. ago a group of related languages that stretched from one Issue Editor end of temperate Europe to the other. But since only scraps a of written Celtic have survived from that time, archaeo- CHRONOLOGY OF THE CELTS logists search for whatever material culture — artifacts, Date Events Article Author funerary ritual, house style — might be associated with A.D. speakers of Celtic languages. Working backward from the 20th–21st centuries Celtic “revitalization” Bahrami time of known Celtic language use, archaeologists have movements tentatively traced the use of “Celtic” artifacts as far back as 800 Book of Kells 1200 B.C., the Late Age, in eastern and 600 Insular-style art Wailes . The identification is firmer in the develops B C (ca. 800–50 . .), but archaeologists still prefer to use 400–500 Collapse of Western terms such as culture and La Tène culture rather Roman Empire than Celtic. So we trace the spread of characteristic La 431–2 Conversion of Tène artifacts from their origin in outward begins through temperate Europe and beyond to Asia Minor. B.C. Celtic languages in most of Europe vanished during the 43 Roman conquest of first millennium after Christ; the people who had formerly Britain begins spoken them now spoke languages either derived from 58–50 Roman conquest of Latin of the Roman conquerors or the Germanic of the 1st century Irish royal sites migrants from the north. Celtic as an ethnic label also van- 2rd–1st centuries Oppida Hamilton ished in those areas. The people themselves remained, some 3rd–2nd centuries Celts enter Anatolia Voigt customs and religious beliefs undoubtedly remained, but and establish “Celt” as a meaningful cultural and linguistic term survived themselves in Galatia only on the edge of Europe, in and the British Isles. 400–300 La Tène art in Ireland and Britain This issue of Expedition looks at Celts, both archaeologi- 450 La Tène art style begins cally defined and self-defined, from 600 B.C. to the present. in Central Europe Bettina Arnold’s article on the Early Iron Age Hallstatt site 600– 400 Late Hallstatt period Arnold of the Heuneberg in Germany discusses one of the early (Early Iron Age)

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