Hallstatt D archeological complex and the Celtic homeland question.

[Guest guest]

Hallstatt D archeological complex and the Celtic homeland question.

 

The chaotic situation about the IE homeland search is well known, but

even the various sub IE homelands like the Celtic are under scrutiny.

Some quotes from "The Celts," John Davies, 2000, Cassell and

Company, London, United Kingdom. The jacket says Dr. John Davies is

an Honorary Professor at the University of Wales and a specialist in

Celtic history.

 

"Thus the core area of the Hallstat D sites has been seen as the area

in which a Celtic koine or lingua franca developed. Such ideas are

highly speculative. They owe much to early twentieth century thinking,

which assumed that an archeological complex is equivalent of a culture

and that a culture is a product of a specific people-indeed, in the

opinion of some writers, a specific race. The concept of a people

carried with it the presumption that they had a specific language and

thus the territory of the Hallstatt archeological complex became the

territory of the speakers of Celtic; in turn the territory of the

speakers of Celtic became the territory of the Hallstat archeological

complex. There was more than a tacit assumption that all "Celtic'

artifacts were produced by Celtic-speakers, and that all Celtic

speakers produced "Celtic" artifacts. It therefore followed that the

Celtic language must have evolved in the Hallstatt zone-the "Celtic

Heartland." Later evidence of its presence in regions beyond the

boundaries of that zone was interpreted as the result of the invasion

of those regions by people from the "heartland."

 

Such theories are now viewed with suspicion. There is a realization

that they involve a considerable degree of circular argument.;

archeologist have taken on trust notions from linguists, as have

linguists from archeologist, causing each to build on the other's

myths (p. 26)."

 

"Invasionism lost favor from the 1950's onwards-the era, significantly

perhaps of rapid desalinization. Instead, emphasis was placed upon the

capacity of indigenous societies to innovate and develop (p. 26, 28).

 

Attempts have been made to identify the BMAC complex as the

"heartland" for the Indo-Iranian speakers. Linguists debate endlessly

about what is Indo-Iranian and what is Indo-Aryan and who left in

which direction and when on their routs of invasion/migration. An

area so large as the Sindhu-Sarasvati civilization is unlikely to have

been inhabited by people speaking a uniform language or even languages

from a "family."