The Celts: Search for a Civilization

It was clear that Iron Age burial rites varied considerably across Britain. That even seemed to fit quite well with the picture of the political landscape that the Romans give us, both before and after much of Britain becomes subsumed into that huge, literate empire. They tell us that Britain was divided up into territories, a different tribe occup

The Milesians, who were mortals, invaded the lands of the Celts around 1500 B.C. and drove the Tuatha De Dannan underground. At this point the Celtic God Dagda, a Titanic figure in Irish mythology, assigned each member of the Tuatha De Dannan one of the mounds, or sidhe, establishing Otherworld kingdoms beneath the hills of the countryside, within

It seems, then, that the elusive ‘big men’ of the fifth century might be found in a number of characteristic places: at Roman forts with evidence for continued life; in some, perhaps many of the smaller towns with coherent hinterlands; on some villa estates; in the hillfort country of the west and north and along Continent-facing navigable rivers.

Most often we begin with gods from Celtic pantheons, as our pre-Christian precursors in Britain and parts of Europe would have known. There are Irish, Welsh, Brythonic and Gallic deities that could all fall under the heading of “Celtic