‘CELTIC BRITAIN’ IN PRE‐ROMAN ARCHAEOLOGY, RECONSIDERED

Summary For forty years archaeologists have avoided referring to pre‐Roman Britain and its inhabitants as ‘Celtic’ on the grounds that contemporaries never described them as such. This is incorrect. The second‐century BC astronomer Hipparchus quotes Pytheas ( c. 320 BC ) as having referred to Britons as ‘Keltoi’. This is significant because Pytheas is the only writer before Julius Caesar known to have travelled in Britain. It does not prove that the Britons were wholly similar to Caesar’s Gauls, who were called ‘“Celtae” in their own language’. Nevertheless, it removes a long‐standing terminological obstacle to a balanced evaluation of cross‐Channel similarities and differences. Since Pytheas came from Marseille, he is likely to have been well informed about Celts and their language even before he started his voyage.