At 2:00:17 PM on Saturday, August 22, 2009, tgpedersen wrote:
[...]
> Meditate on this:
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/64648
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urnfield
> Note that neither here
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UrnfieldCulture.jpg
> nor here
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hallstatt_culture.png
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hallstatt_LaTene.png
> (from
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallstatt_culture
> )
Which says:
Trade and population movements (very probably both) spread
the Hallstatt cultural complex into the western Iberian
peninsula, Britain, and Ireland. It is probable that some
if not all of this diffusion took place in a
Celtic-speaking context.
And from
<
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_T%C3%A8ne_culture>:
La Tène cultural material appeared over a large area,
including parts of Ireland and Great Britain (the lake
dwellings at Glastonbury, England, are a well known
example of La Tène culture), northern Spain, Burgundy, and
Austria.
> in the area of Insular Celtic languages included.
> This means (Stephen Oppenheimer pointed this out) that
> either
> 1) the Insular Celtic languages are not Celtic, or
Which is obviously false: the definition of 'Celtic
language' is pretty unambiguous.
> 2) Hallstatt and La Tène cultures are not Celtic cultures.
Also from the La Tène article:
Some of the societies that are archaeologically identified
with La Tène material culture were identified by Greek and
Roman authors from the 5th century onwards as keltoi
("Celts") and galli ("Gauls"). Herodotus placed keltoi at
the source of the Danube, in the heartland of La Tène
material culture. Whether this means that the whole of La
Tène culture can be attributed to a unified Celtic people
is difficult to assess; archaeologists have repeatedly
concluded that language, material culture, and political
affiliation do not necessarily run parallel.
Brian