Recreation of a Celtic thatched hut, Anglesey

Recreation of a Celtic
thatched hut, Anglesey

Who were they?
The Atomic number 26 Age is the age of the "Celt" in United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland. Over the 500 or so years leading up to the first Roman invasion, a Celtic culture established itself throughout the British Isles. Who were these Celts?

For a start, the concept of a "Celtic" people is a modern and somewhat romantic reinterpretation of history. The "Celts" were warring tribes who certainly wouldn't have seen themselves as ane people at the time.

The "Celts" as we traditionally regard them be largely in the magnificence of their art and the words of the Romans who fought them. The trouble with the reports of the Romans is that they were a mix of reportage and political propaganda. It was politically expedient for the Celtic peoples to exist coloured as barbarians and the Romans as a great civilizing strength. And history written by the winners is ever suspect.

Where did they come from?
What nosotros do know is that the people we phone call Celts gradually infiltrated Britain over the course of the centuries between almost 500 and 100 B.C. There was probably never an organized Celtic invasion; for i thing, the Celts were so fragmented and given to fighting among themselves that the idea of a concerted invasion would accept been ludicrous.

The Celts were a group of peoples loosely tied by like language, religion, and cultural expression. They were non centrally governed, and quite as happy to fight each other every bit any not-Celt. They were warriors, living for the glories of boxing and plunder. They were also the people who brought iron working to the British Isles.

The advent of fe
The use of iron had astonishing repercussions. First, information technology changed merchandise and fostered local independence. Trade was essential during the Bronze Age, for non every area was naturally endowed with the necessary ores to make statuary. Iron, on the other hand, was relatively cheap and bachelor nigh everywhere.

Loma Forts
The fourth dimension of the "Celtic conversion" of United kingdom saw a huge growth in the number of hill forts throughout the region. These were often pocket-sized ditch and bank combinations encircling defensible hilltops. Some are small enough that they were of no practical employ for more than an individual family, though over time many larger forts were congenital. The curious affair is that we don't know if the hill forts were congenital by the native Britons to defend themselves from the encroaching Celts, or by the Celts as they moved their fashion into hostile territory.

These forts usually independent no source of water, so their use as long term settlements is doubtful, though they may have been useful indeed for withstanding a short term siege. Many of the loma forts were built on top of earlier causewayed camps.

Celtic family life
The basic unit of measurement of Celtic life was the clan, a sort of extended family. The term "family unit" is a scrap misleading, for by all accounts the Celts practised a peculiar form of kid-rearing; they didn't rear them, they farmed them out. Children were actually raised by foster parents. The foster begetter was frequently the brother of the birth-mother. Got it?

Clans were bound together very loosely with other clans into tribes, each of which had its own social construction and customs, and possibly its own local gods.

Housing
The Celts lived in huts of biconvex timber with walls of wicker and roofs of thatch. The huts were generally gathered in loose hamlets. In several places, each tribe had its ain coinage system.

Farming
The Celts were farmers when they weren't fighting. One of the interesting innovations that they brought to Uk was the fe plough. Earlier ploughs had been bad-mannered affairs, basically a stick with a pointed end harnessed behind two oxen. They were suitable only for ploughing the low-cal upland soils. The heavier iron ploughs constituted an agricultural revolution all by themselves, for they fabricated information technology possible for the first time to cultivate the rich valley and lowland soils.

They came with a toll, though. It by and large required a squad of eight oxen to pull the plow, so to avoid the difficulty of turning that large a team, Celtic fields tended to be long and narrow, a design that can still be seen in some parts of the country today.

The lot of women
Celtic lands were owned communally, and wealth seems to have been based largely on the size of cattle herd owned. The lot of women was a good deal better than in most societies of that time. They were technically equal to men, owned property, and could cull their ain husbands. They could also exist war leaders, as Boudicca (Boadicea) later proved.

Language
At that place was a written Celtic linguistic communication, but it adult well into Christian times, so for much of Celtic history they relied on oral transmission of culture, primarily through the efforts of bards and poets. These arts were tremendously of import to the Celts, and much of what nosotros know of their traditions comes to the states today through the old tales and poems that were handed down for generations earlier somewhen being written down.

Druids
Another area where oral traditions were important was in the training of Druids. There has been a lot of nonsense written about Druids, but they were a curious lot; a sort of super-course of priests, political advisors, teachers, healers, and arbitrators. They had their ain universities, where traditional cognition was passed on by rote. They had the correct to speak ahead of the rex in council, and may take held more authority than the king. They acted as ambassadors in fourth dimension of state of war, they composed poesy and upheld the law. They were a sort of glue holding together Celtic culture.

Faith
From what we know of the Celts from Roman commentators, who are, remember, witnesses with an axe to grind, they held many of their religious ceremonies in woodland groves and near sacred h2o, such as wells and springs. The Romans speak of human sacrifice as being a part of Celtic religion. One thing we do know, the Celts revered human being heads.

Celtic warriors would cut off the heads of their enemies in battle and display them equally trophies. They mounted heads in doorposts and hung them from their belts. This might seem barbaric to us, just to the Celt the seat of spiritual power was the head, so past taking the head of a vanquished foe they were appropriating that power for themselves. It was a kind of encarmine religious observance.

The Atomic number 26 Age is when we get-go observe cemeteries of ordinary people'due south burials (in pigsty-in-the-ground graves) equally opposed to the elaborate barrows of the aristocracy few that provide our main records of burials in earlier periods.

The Celts at War
The Celts loved state of war. If one wasn't happening they'd be sure to offset one. They were scrappers from the word go. They arrayed themselves as fiercely equally possible, sometimes charging into battle fully naked, dyed blue from head to toe, and screaming similar banshees to terrify their enemies.

They took tremendous pride in their appearance in boxing, if nosotros can approximate by the elaborately embellished weapons and paraphernalia they used. Golden shields and breastplates shared pride of identify with ornamented helmets and trumpets.

The Celts were great users of light chariots in warfare. From this chariot, drawn past two horses, they would throw spears at an enemy before dismounting to have a become with heavy slashing swords. They likewise had a habit of dragging families and baggage along to their battles, forming a great milling mass of encumbrances, which sometimes cost them a victory, every bit Queen Boudicca would after discover to her dismay.

Every bit mentioned, they beheaded their opponents in battle and information technology was considered a sign of prowess and social standing to take a goodly number of heads to display.

The main trouble with the Celts was that they couldn't terminate fighting amidst themselves long enough to put upwards a unified front end. Each tribe was out for itself, and in the long run, this cost them control of United kingdom.

Related:
Boudicca
Druids