Celtic Archeology

This paper summarizes the recent researches carried out at the archaeological complex of Susa, Italy (Roman forum, triumphal arch, celtic altar, praefectum palace). Provided that mathematical and geometrical relationships between the different parts of a specific building and the neighbouring landscape are well-documented in the Hellenistic and Roman tradition, our research demonstrated that the Arch of August was designed using a ternary proportion (1/3, 2/3).
Moreover, the peak of the mount Rocciamelone is framed by the roman fornix at its centre, optically matching its keystone. We discovered that the point from where the effect became more evident and scenographic coincides with the axis of the nearby Roman palace gate. The aim of the monument was to celebrate the recent triumph of Rome over the Alps (after the Alpines War, 27-13 BC). Indeed, we know from the Roman authors and from the ancient epigraphy that the Celtic king was appointed as Roman praefectus Augustus himself.

During the late Bronze and Early Iron Age, significant social changes seem to be affecting the communities inhabiting Wales. While in the millennia before, the archaeological record seems to be showing a mostly egalitarian social organisation, things seem to change dramatically in the first half of the first millennium BC. Before this change, social difference seems to have hardly been expressed and conspicuous consumption of human labour mostly been focussed on communal, inclusive projects. During the first half of the first millennium BC, expression of social difference becomes the norm, especially in the
context of the conspicuous consumption of human labour: particularly some, but by no means all, settlements and their boundaries are monumentalised. This creates ‘private’ spaces which apparently were accessible only to some members of the community to the exclusion of a majority of ‘others’; at the same time creating and expressing social
difference.
It is argued in this paper that these changes allow to date the beginning of a ‘Celtic’ Wales in a sociological sense: it is at this point in time that the kinds of societies emerge that characterise Wales for the next two millennia; that is, the kinds of ‘Celtic’ societies described in later historical sources, both classical and indigenous. It is such archaeologically traceable, local changes, which provide a considerably better starting points for our discipline and its historical narratives than idle speculations about the introduction of particular languages from abroad in prehistory; that is, in periods characterised by definition by the absence of any linguistic sources.

Kapitola představuje nový pohled na problematiku tzv. keltských svátků. Argumentuje, že keltské svátky jsou moderní invencí, která vzniká v prostředí rané britské antropologie a folkloristiky 19. a počátku 20. století a její dovršení najdeme v raném wicce. Kapitola předkládá analýzu jednotlivých svátků a vyvrací hypotézu, že tzv. keltské svátky zanikly díky jejich převrstvení křesťanstvím. Zpochybňuje i zavedené archeologické teorie o tom, jak Keltové slavili oněch osm svátků. Předkládá hypotézu, že na území kontinentální Evropy mohli Keltové slavit snad jen svátky obou slunovratů.

Spanish, French, German and British academics and researchers will participate in the First International conference: “Iron Age Peoples of the Cantabric Iron Age”, to be held in Santander to deepen the historical knowledge of the north of the Iberian Peninsula, its inhabitants and their ties with the Celtic cultures of the European Atlantic façade, between late Prehistory and the High Middle Ages.

The conference will take place in Santander (Cantabria, Spain) on May 24 and 25, and will end in Aguilar de Campoo (Palencia, Spain) on May 26 with a visit to the archaeological site of Monte Bernorio and a recital by the renowned Scottish musician John Kenny, who will play musical instruments which are replicas of ancient Celtic instruments discovered in archaeological sites from the Celtic world of the Iron Age.

This International conference has been organized by the Monte Bernorio Institute of Studies of the Antiquity of the Cantabrian (IMBEAC) and it is directed by Dr. Jesús F. Torres-Martínez, PhD in archaeology and a specialist in the Iron Age of the north of the Iberian Peninsula.

The importance of what we might call as Celtic mare nostrum will be studied throughout the congress. The Celtic sea was a crucial factor that facilitated the contacts between the peoples of the Cantabrian and the rest of the European Celtic world. The elements of the Celtic past that have survived in our time will also be analyzed.

The presentations will deal with many aspects of everyday life in the Cantabrian area in the Iron Age: culture, language, war, music, travels, the contacts with Celtic European peoples, and the struggle against Rome. We will also analyse how the Celtic sea became a bridge in the “bright” season allowing Celtic peoples living around it to meet. The speakers will also study the survival of many Celtic elements of the Iron Age in our current life, such as toponymy, land planning, elements of folklore, and several popular rites as well as some features of Christian religiosity.

The three-day conference will be held in Santander and in Aguilar de Campoo; the first two days, May 24 and 25, will take place at the CASYC (Social and Cultural Action Centre of Caja Cantabria) headquarters in Santander. The third day will take place in Aguilar de Campoo, and it will consist of a visit to the emblematic archaeological site of Monte Bernorio, one of the most important Iron Age sites in Europe. Later Miss Raquel Jiménez Pasalodos will make a presentation on archaeomusic, and finally the famous Scottish musician and composer John Kenny, who is a specialist in ancient musical instruments, will give a recital at the Theatre Amor Auditorium.

In the five year repeating cycle of the Coligny Calendar, the year 2008 may be used again  from December to December in 2019 to 2020. This is the eighth year of the calendar which began in 2001 and would be the third year of the repeating five year cycle. On the original bronze tablet of the calendar, this year has an intercalary month at the summer solstice or half way through the year. The next intercalary month, which occurs every two and one half years is also at the end of the tenth year of the calendar. This intercalary at the end of the year near the winter solstice is also after Year 5: 2005-2006.  On the bronze tablet, there are two intercalary months in five years in order to balance lunar and solar time.

This is a translation of the Coligny Calendar of the Celts. It is from December 17,2007 to December 3, 2008. As the calendar repeats itself and is marked on the stone circles of Stonehenge and the stone circles of the Celts, it may be used in cycles of 5 years that repeat through time. It is parallels the Attic calendar of the ancient Greeks in that it is a lunar-solar calendar marking the primary stars of each month and the constellations associated with the myths of both cultures: Greek and Celtic. The cycles of Mercury and Venus are on the calendar.

This is Year 6 of The Coligny Calendar from December 27, 2006 to December 16, 2007. It may be used in the continuing cycle of the calendar for the year December 27, 2017. This is your calendar for the next year. Each year will follow as the pattern will repeat in five year cycles using the solar-lunar-stellar and planetary cycles of the celestial bodies marked by the Druids on Stonehenge and the stone circles in the Celtic lands.

In the Tassili mountains in Algeria, there is a stone structure that points to 85° East. This stone structure consists of a tumulus, about 4 meters (13 feet) in diameter, and a row of six stone markers, in a line pointing toward the east. Although the azimuth orientation of this structure could be as much as five degrees to the north of the equinox sunrise point, it still may serve as an equinox marker, considering that the heliacal risings (with the sunrise) of certain stars or constellations functioned as heralds of the equinoxes and solstices for the ancient astronomers.

In this paper, I report the azimuth orientations of three compass-shaped monuments at a fourth site in the Tassili mountains of Algeria. Some of the compass-shaped structures of Tassili are oriented to the summer or winter solstice. Mapping these monuments, and documenting their azimuth orientations, provides useful data for our study of the ancient culture that built the monuments.

This thesis explores the unknown location of Hinba, the satellite monastery of Iona, founded by the Irish Saint Columba in the sixth century AD in western Scotland. The monastery is mentioned in the hagiography, Vita Columbae, written approximately one hundred years after Columba’s death, by the abbot Adomnán. In this thesis, it is argued that Hinba’s location can be traced more comprehensively by establishing Adomnán’s mental location of it and by studying its reflection in the physical landscape. This hypothesis is explored by constructing two types of maps: the first is my interpretation of Adomnán’s cognitive map with the places and spaces in VC and the other type of map displays the “real” landscape with the archaeological evidence of potential monasteries and also the topography of the area. At a later stage, these maps are integrated which shows primarily that the landscape concept of insula, that Hinba is constantly called, might have a dual meaning in the text. One interpretation is thus a complex allegorical meaning instead of an island. This suggests that Hinba’s location might have been in the mainland which contradicts earlier attempts that have located the monastery upon Hebridean islands. The analysis proposes instead that insula was an experienced place for Adomnán, characterised by isolation, closeness to water, sacredness, for instance by supernatural events, and enclosed by some kind of boundary – an experiential insula. These characteristics are subsequently explored by a phenomenological analysis of the mainland monastic site Kilmaha, resulting in that the site could possibly have been Hinba. It can also be concluded that the landscape setting of monasteries is more complex than earlier presumed; the locus incorporated perceptions of the entire landscape. It involved the spaces surrounding the place, such as water, that was perceived as an ordeal of faith by Adomnán when travelling to and from Iona.