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t the dawn of history the Celts occupied a vast swathe of Europe from Ireland in the west to lands south of the Black Sea in Asia Minor. The study of this Celtic past has often been a disputed and debated territory
and for centuries the true story of these Celtic-speakers of old was obscured by fanciful origin myths. Their origins and subsequent history were slowly revealed when linguistic studies and archaeological discoveries in the nineteenth century began to expose a rich and complex narrative that is still being clarified today. A series of dramatic finds in France and Germany in particular have brought these ancient peoples to scholarly and popular attention. This was a prehistoric world that offered an intricate picture of connectivity and diversity across much of Europe. These were people who have bequeathed us a remarkable archaeological heritage, an astonishing art style, several living languages, and, in Irish and Welsh, the most substantial body of early written texts in a non-Latin tongue in western Europe. This book is a historical exploration of how our understanding of the ancient Celts and the concept of a European-wide world inhabited by Celtic-speaking peoples developed over time.
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John Waddell is a former Professor of Archaeology in the University of Galway. His books include Archaeology and Celtic myth (Dublin, 2014) and Pagan Ireland: ritual and belief in another world (Dublin, 2023).
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