‘There and back again’: looking at the ‘Celtic Balkan migrations’ beyond the ethno-determinism

It has been almost 20 years since Danijel Džino questioned the ancient literary narrative of massive Celtic migration to the Southeastern Europe, calling for the abandonment of ‘Brennus model’ and reconsideration of the 4th–3rd c. BCE events in the Balkans. Since then the ‘Celtic migration’ has been also reviewed from archaeological perspective, with scholars from the whole region trying to reassess the issue. The proposed views range from piecemeal colonization; through fusing of autochthonous and immigrant groups; through spread of La Tène material culture within the essentially native population; to ideological, social and cultural dynamics that transformed local communities without the large-scale population shift. Whereas the formerly held explanation of the Celts sweeping through the Southeastern Europe is not as dogmatic as it was, the question remains if this scenario is contested beyond the cursory acknowledgement that the situation must have been ‘more complex than previously thought’. In other words, despite the attempts at new models, most of the regional archaeologists have not renounced the traditional ethnodeterminism, but still actively use it, albeit less explicitly. The categories of the ‘Celts’ as clearly distinguishable people, and the ‘Scordisci’ as Celtic tribe that settled the south Pannonia and the Central Balkans, still features prominently in interpretations of the Late Iron Age material culture. The critiques of reductive and biased nature of such position, as well as the addressed evidential difficulties in sustaining this standpoint are simply being ignored, without offering any counterarguments. For these reasons, building on the previous theoretical and methodological considerations, I will try to further elaborate the alternative interpretational framework by using new and recently published archaeological evidence. I will pay particular attention to transitional period from the Early to Late Iron Age (4th–3rd c.), and revisit data coming from settlements, funerary sphere and bioarchaeology.