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Celts

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: adj Celtic; Gaels; Goidels; Galatians; Gauls
CATEGORY: culture; language
DEFINITION: An important people of central and western Europe. Greek and Roman writers recorded them as having lived in the final centuries BC and their existence is first attested c 500 BC, but they were around long before that. They were a fierce, warrior race distinguished by three factors: their language, their beliefs, and their material culture. They are known to have invaded Italy and sacked Rome itself in the early 4th century bc, while in the following century groups of Celts invaded Greece, sacking Delphi, and others invaded Anatolia. Their language belonged to the Indo-European family and divided into two branches at an early date (2nd-3rd millennium BC), respectively represented by the Welsh and Irish Gaelic languages. Original homelands appear to have been on the western and central mainland of Europe: France, Germany, Bohemia, Austria, and Switzerland. By mid-1st millennium BC, they also lived in Iberia (Spain and Portugal), Britain, Ireland, Low Countries south of the Rhine delta, and Italy north of River Po. In Britain, they were defeated by the Romans in AD 43. Archaeologically, in central Europe there were aristocratic burials of the Hallstatt culture, often containing wagons or horses. Archaeological cultures do not necessarily coincide with ethnic or linguistic groups and it is preferable to use the cultural terms Hallstatt and La Tene when describing archaeological remains.

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Baden

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Baden-Pécel; Ossarn or Pecel culture; Channeled Ware or Radial-decorated pottery culture
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A third millennium Copper Age culture over much of central Europe (the Carpathian basin: northern Yugoslavia, all of Hungary, most of Czechoslovakia, southern Poland, and parts of Austria and Germany). Ancient Baden was occupied by Celts and then by Germanic peoples and was conquered by Rome in the 1st century AD. It was a successor to the Lengyel culture. They produced metal tools including ax-hammers and torcs of twisted copper wire. The pottery was plain and dark, but some have channeled decoration and handles of Ansa Lunata type. The horse was domesticated and carts mounted on four solid disk-wheels were used. Baden had contacts with the Early Bronze Age cultures of the Aegean. It was named for the town of Baden, near Vienna. A radiocarbon chronology has divided the Baden culture into three phases: Early (2750-2450 BC), Classic (2600-2250 BC), and Late (2400-2200 BC). The most complete sequences are in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Baden was remarkable at the time because it had a highly dispersed settlement pattern and a central cemetery pattern.

Brno

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The traditional capital of Moravia in the southeastern Czech Republic, which was inhabited in prehistoric times according to archaeological evidence. Important sites surround and are in the town, including a burial covered in red ochre, mammoth tusks, and ornaments, which has proven to be one of the earliest Upper Palaeolithic burials known. Traces of Neanderthal man were found in a cave called Svéduv stul (Swedish Table") and a camping ground of the Cro-Magnon mammoth hunters (30 000 BC) was discovered at Dolní Vestonice 20 miles (30 km) south. There are also traces of Celts and other tribes and many Slav settlements from the 5th and 6th centuries."

Brythons

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Britons
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A combination of Nordic and Alpine peoples who arrived in southeast England about 550 BC. They introduced iron and gave their name to Britain. During the Roman occupation, England was inhabited by Celtic Brythons, but the Celts withdrew before the Teutonic Angles, Saxons, and Jutes into the mountainous areas of western and northern Britain and to Ireland.

celt

CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A New Stone Age tool, usually a polished, ungrooved ax or adz head or blade that would be attached to a wooden shaft. The tool, often shaped like a chisel and made of stone or bronze, was probably used for felling trees or shaping wood. Great numbers of celts have been discovered in the British Isles and Denmark and they were traded widely. Bronze Age tools of similar general design are also called celts.

chariot

CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A light vehicle of war, usually carrying two people, a warrior, and a driver. Examples have been found from the Uruk period in Mesopotamia and the chariot was on the standard of Ur. It first appeared in the Near East in the 17 century BC, associated with the immigrant peoples who became the Hyksos, Kassites, and Hurri. Its arrival in Egypt can be fairly reliably dated to the Second Intermediate Period (1650-1550 BC). The Aryans carried it to India, and in China it formed the core of the Shang army. The Mycenaeans introduced it to Europe, where it spread widely and rapidly. It revolutionized warfare by allowing warriors to be transferred rapidly from one part of a battlefield to another. It was mainly for aristocrats, which explains its popularity as a funeral offering. Burials of complete chariots with horses and charioteers have been excavated in Shang China (1200 BC), in Cyprus from the 7th century BC, and among the La Tène Celts. The earliest Celt chariot burials are in the Rhineland and eastern France with dates around 500 BC, and later burials are in east Yorkshire and Europe as far east as Hungary, Bulgaria, and southern Russia. The chariot was replaced by the mounted warrior or knight when horses of sufficient strength had been bred in the late and post-Roman periods.

Este

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient town on the edge of the Po plain near Padua, Italy. It has given its name to a rich Iron Age culture, the Atestine, of the 9th century BC. Profiting from its position, it flourished down to the invasion of the Celts in 4th century BC, and is particularly famous for its fine red and black cordoned vases, its magnificent situla art, and much fine sheet bronze work. The area was annexed by Rome in 184 BC.

Etruscan

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The people who occupied north central Italy (ancient Etruria, modern Tuscany) in the 1st millennium BC. They can first be recognized in the 8th century BC, distinguished from their predecessors the Villanovans by the wealth and oriental appearance of their tombs. They developed a high level of civilization very quickly, with extensive trade contacts with Greece and Carthage, and across the Alpine passes to central Europe. Their cities were large and rich: Populonia, Vetulonia, Tarquinia, and Caere (Cerveteri) near the coast, and Veii, Clusium (Chiusi) and Perusia (Perugia) inland. Etruscan influence spread widely, through Rome itself down to Campania in the south, and north to the Po valley and the civilization reached its height in the 6th century BC. Conflict with the Celts in the north and Rome in the south led to conquest by the latter, beginning with Veii in 396 BC and completed early in the 2nd century BC. The Etruscans' own writings, in an alphabet borrowed from the Greeks, can be transliterated, but little of their non-Indo-European language can be translated. Etruscan tombs show their genius; the finest are mounds covering a burial vault, as in the cemeteries of Tarquinia and Cerveteri. The vaults may be elaborately frescoed with scenes from life, mythology, or the rites associated with death. Also remarkable is a tomb at Cerveteri, the walls of which are covered with stucco reliefs of everyday objects. There is a high preponderance of imports, especially metalwork and Athenian pottery. Typical products of the Etruscans are decorated bronze mirrors, bucchero pottery, and sophisticated filigree jewelry. The influence of the Etruscans on Roman civilization was enormous. Rome is indebted to the Etruscans not only for its early kings, such as the notorious Tarquin, but virtually for the total infrastructure of its civilization. Roman culture is essentially the continuation of Etruscan under another name and language. Among areas of continuity are religion (e.g. Etruscan haruspex and Roman augury), political and social organization, strategic arts, architecture, art, drama, theater and civil engineering (notably hydraulics, such as aqueducts and drainage systems). The origin of the Etruscans has been a subject of debate since antiquity. Herodotus, for example, argued that the Etruscans descended from a people who invaded Etruria from Anatolia before 800 BC and established themselves over the native Iron Age inhabitants of the region, whereas Dionysius of Halicarnassus believed that the Etruscans were of local Italian origin.

Getae or Getian

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Geto-Dacians, Thraco-Getians
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A tribal name for peoples in the territories of modern Romania and Bulgaria during the later Iron Age. They are often referred to as Thraco-Getians or Geto-Dacians, and were strongly influenced by both Celts and Scythians. Their culture developed from the 4th century BC until their conquest by Rome in 106 AD. It is a local version of La Tène.

Iberians

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A prehistoric people of southern and eastern Spanish coastal regions of the 1st millennium BC who later gave their name to the whole peninsula. In the 8th-6th centuries BC, waves of Celtic peoples migrated to the region. By the time of the Greek historian Herodotus (mid-5th century BC), 'Iberian' applied to all the peoples between the Ebro and Huelva rivers, who were probably linguistically connected and whose material culture was distinct from that of the north and west. There was a common script of 28 syllabic and alphabetic characters somewhat derived from Greek and Phoenician, and a non Indo-European language which cannot yet be translated. Notable among their products are their jewelry and statues, of which the Lady of Elche is the most famous. The Iberians' origins are obscure, perhaps North African. They disappeared as a separate group under the Roman occupation, partly by fusion with the Celts of the interior, partly through displacement of their language by Latin. The Iberian economy had a rich agriculture and mining and metallurgy.

La Tène

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: La Tene period
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: The site of a great Iron Age votive deposit in the shallow water at the east end of Lake Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Excavations revealed wooden piles, two timber causeways, and a mass of tools and weapons of bronze, iron, and wood (swords, fibulae, spearheads, etc.). Some of these objects bore curvilinear patterns which are the hallmark of La Tène (Celtic) art everywhere from central Europe to Ireland and the Pyrenees. La Tène has given its name to the second major division of the European Iron Age, which followed the Hallstatt period over much of the continent and lasted from mid-5th century BC until the Celts were subdued by Roman conquest c 50 BC. Settlement was characteristically in hillforts and, from the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, massive oppida occur. As in the Hallstatt culture, there is a notable distinction between the markedly wealthy burials of chieftains and their associates, and burials of other members of society. The highest development, and the birth of the art style, took place in west central Europe from the Rhineland to the Marne. Contact with the Greek and Etruscan worlds brought wine, metal flagons, and Attic drinking cups into lands north of the Alps, and La Tène art shows links with that of the Scythians to the east. In Britain, contact with the continental La Tène cultures is shown by chariot burials and the presence of La Tène art motifs on metalwork and pottery. British cultures showing La Tène influence are sometimes grouped within an Iron Age B complex. In Ireland, which the Romans never invaded, a Celtic culture and an art style with La Tène elements persisted into the Early Christian period. It is subdivided into La Tène I c 480-220 BC, La Tène II c 220-120 BC, and La Tène III c 120-Roman conquest(at different times in different areas).

Laurentian

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Lake Forest Late Archaic
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Important Late Archaic tradition in northern New York and Vermont and the upper St. Lawrence valley, c 4000-1500 BC. Characteristic artifacts are broad-bladed, notched projectile points; bifaces, scrapers, and polished-stone tools (celts, gouges, plummets, slate knives or points). The tradition has phases such as Brewerton, Vergennes, and Vosburg.

Mont Lassois

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Iron Age hillfort in Cote-d'Or, France, on a route from the River Seine to the Mediterranean. Occupation is dated to the 6th century BC (Hallstatt D), the residence of a Celtic chieftain. The hillfort of Vix seems to have been the center of political authority and extensive trade relations. The rich Celtic and Greek artifacts found there, including Massiliote wine amphorae and Attic black figure ware, as well as those from the nearby tumulus burials near the villages of Vix and Sainte-Colombe-sur-Seine, indicate trade between the Celts and the Greeks.

Ostionoid, Ostiones

CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: One of three associated ceramic series in the Greater Antilles area. Seen as transitional to Chicoid and Meillacoid, the Ostionoid appears in c 650 AD in Puerto Rico, where it overlays Saladoid materials. Vessels are generally smooth, finished in red monochrome slip, often with plain tabular lugs. The introduction of items like petalloid celts, potter stamps, and zemis indicates external influence, possibly Mesoamerican. Agriculture activity is indicated by the presence of griddles used in the preparation of manioc.

Pannonia

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Province of the Roman Empire, corresponding to present western Hungary and parts of eastern Austria, Slovenia, and northern Yugoslavia (Vojvodina) incorporated into the Roman Empire in 10 AD. (Roman conquest began there about 35 BC under Octavian.) Pannonia was a prosperous Roman frontier province with numerous villas. The principal town was Aquincum (part of modern Budapest). The emperor Trajan divided the province about 106 AD. The western and northern districts constituted Pannonia Superior, which was the focal point of the Roman wars with the Marcomanni during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161-180). The southern and eastern districts were organized as Pannonia Inferior under Diocletian (284-305). Pannonia Superior was divided into Pannonia Prima and Pannonia Ripariensis (or Savia), and Pannonia Inferior was divided into Valeria and Pannonia Secunda. Pannonia was the birthplace of several Roman emperors of the 3rd century, and the province provided large numbers of troops for the Roman army. The grave barbarian threat in the 4th century AD forced the Romans to withdraw after 395. The Pannonians were mainly Illyrians, but there were some Celts in the western part of the province.

Teuton

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Germanic-speaking peoples who moved into north-central Europe after the Celts in the second and first centuries BC.

torc

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: torque
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A neckring, of gold or bronze, and penannular in shape (an almost-complete ring). Examples are made of spirally twisted metal and appeared in the Early Bronze Age of central Europe and continued to the Roman occupation, being particularly popular among the Celts. Very common in the La Tène Iron Age, examples of gold, silver and electrum occur in graves and hoards.