An Alternative to ‘Celtic from the East’ and ‘Celtic from the West

Dados Bibliográficos

ID6044374
AutoresPatrick Sims-Williams (0000-0002-3306-7012, Aberystwyth University, autor correspondente)
Ano2020
Volume30
Fascículo3
Páginas511-529
Data de publicação2020-08-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoCambridge Archaeological Journal (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0959-7743 • E-ISSN: 1474-0540
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0959774320000098
OpenAlexW3015169571
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas7
Referências citadas48

This article discusses a problem in integrating archaeology and philology. For most of the twentieth century, archaeologists associated the spread of the Celtic languages with the supposed westward spread of the ‘eastern Hallstatt culture’ in the first millenniumbc. More recently, some have discarded ‘Celtic from the East’ in favour of ‘Celtic from the West’, according to which Celtic was a much olderlingua francawhich evolved from a hypothetical Neolithic Proto-Indo-European language in the Atlantic zone and then spread eastwards in the third millenniumbc. This article (1) criticizes the assumptions and misinterpretations of classical texts and onomastics that led to ‘Celtic from the East’ in the first place; (2) notes the unreliability of the linguistic evidence for ‘Celtic from the West’, namely (i) ‘glottochronology’ (which assumes that languages change at a steady rate), (ii) misunderstood place-name distribution maps and (iii) the undeciphered inscriptions in southwest Iberia; and (3) proposes that Celtic radiating from France during the first millenniumbcwould be a more economical explanation of the known facts

Ancient history · Celtic languages · Geography · Linguistics · Philology · Political science · Ancient and Medieval Archaeology Studies · Classics · History · Law · Linguistics and language evolution · Philosophy