Celtic from the West 2: Rethinking the Bronze Age and the Arrival of Indo-European in Atlantic Europe(16 Celtic Studies Publications)

Europe’s Atlantic façade has long been treated as marginal to the formation of the European Bronze Age and the puzzle of the origin and early spread of the Indo-European languages. Until recently the idea that Atlantic Europe was a wholly pre-Indo-European world throughout the Bronze Age remained plausible. Rapidly expanding evidence for the later prehistory and the pre-Roman languages of the West increasingly exclude that possibility. It is therefore time to refocus on a narrowing list of ‘suspects’ as possible archaeological proxies for the arrival of this great language family and emergence of its Celtic branch. This reconsideration inevitably throws penetrating new light on the formation of later prehistoric Atlantic Europe and the implications of new evidence for inter-regional connections.

Table of Contents:
Prologue: Ha C1a ≠ PC (‘The Earliest Hallstatt Iron Age cannot equal Proto-Celtic’) (John T. Koch) 1. The Indo-Europeanization of Atlantic Europe (J. P. Mallory) 2. The Arrival of the Beaker Set in Britain and Ireland (A. P. Fitzpatrick) 3. Beakers into Bronze: Tracing connections between Western Iberia and the British Isles 2800–800 BC (Catriona Gibson) 4. Out of the Flow and Ebb of the European Bronze Age: Heroes, Tartessos, and Celtic (John T. Koch) 5. Westward Ho? Sword-Bearers and All the Rest of it . . . (Dirk Brandherm) 6. Dead-Sea Connections: A Bronze Age and Iron Age Ritual Site on the Isle of Thanet (Jacqueline I. McKinley, Jörn Schuster, & Andrew Millard) 7. Models of Language Spread and Language Development in Prehistoric Europe (Dagmar S. Wodtko) 8. Early Celtic in the West: The Indo-European Context (Colin Renfrew) Epilogue: The Celts—Where Next (Barry Cunliffe)

About the Author :
Professor John Koch is a senior research fellow at the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, University of Wales. His interests include the languages, literatures, and civilizations of the early Celtic peoples from prehistory through the early Middle Ages. His works have developed original ideas in such fields as the earliest Welsh poetry, the Mabinogi, Continental Celtic, Irish saga literature, St Patrick, the classical authors’ descriptions of the ancient Celts, and Bronze Age and Iron Age archaeology. He is the author of groundbreaking volumes, such as The Gododdin of Aneirin and The Celtic Heroic Age , has co-authored major innovative works, such as The Inscriptions of Early Medieval Brittany , and has contributed widely to international volumes and journals. He is the co-editor of all three Celtic from the West volumes. Barry Cunliffe was Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford from 1972 to 2007. He has worked on many of the iconic British excavations including Fishbourne Roman Palace, Danebury Hillfort and Hengistbury Head. He is an authority on the Iron Age and the Celts, and the author of many scholarly and popular publications including The Oxford Illustrated History of Prehistoric Europe, Britain Begins, and The Celts, A Very Short Introduction.

Review :
Al met al is ook het tweede deel een interessante verzameling van werken; het bevat de meest recente essays die op elkaar aansluiten en een breed scala aan onderwerpen behandelen. Dit alles wordt onderbouwd door duidelijk foto's, tekeningen en kaarten om een zo goed mogelijk beeld van de beschreven situaties te geven. -- Kelten Kelten