Celts is the name given to a culture rather than a race. Celts varied from curly hair brown hair through red hair. They occupied central and Northern Europe including the British Isles in the Pre-roman period, gradually being pushed further north and westwards by the Roman peoples and the Nordic and Saxon peoples. They were a non-urban people. They lived on small holdings, and kept animals, grew crops and hunted. A typical Celtic house probably looked like a thatched log cabin surrounded by a stockade. They didn't trade much, but metals - especially bronze and iron - were rare and precious, and were probably traded. Women seemed to often be of high status in burial sites. There are a lot ...view middle of the document...
All the 'tribes of Britain' would be classed as Celts. You may know some Celtic legends such as Conan the barbarian, King Arthur.History of CeltsThe Celts evolved from the Urn Culture (given that name because of the burial system of cremation and placement of ashes in urns which in turn were buried in fields.2 much earlier than the Romanized Celtic world of the late 500-400 BC. Around 1500-lOOOBC, the Celts lived in an area which today is mostly in Eastern France. The area stretched from roughly where Luxembourg is today to a bit further south than Geneva and took in parts of West Germany and Switzerland. It was an area a little bigger than the island of Ireland. The original Celtic homeland was an area of Austria, near southern Germany. From here they expanded over much of continental Europe and Britain. The Celts then expanded to cover an area covering most of Western Europe and Central Europe. Around 400BC, the Celts lived in Britain, Ireland, France , Luxemburg, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, and the Czech and Slovak Republics. Celts also lived in parts of Spain , northern Italy, The Netherlands, the southern half of Germany, and parts of Poland and Russia3.After the height of their power, the Celts were pushed north and west by successive waves of Indo-European peoples, mostly Germanic and Latin based. The main migration was by the Gauls into France, northern Italy and the north of Europe.In this time the Celtic people here were an iron using people who traded salt to the south as far as Italy and as far north as Bohemia. 'The goods made of iron indicated a sophisticated and hierarchical society. These people, superb iron-workers, owned and buried beautifully-decorated vessels, ornamented weaponry and horse trappings, all of a standard much advanced upon that recorded from earlier Europe, reflecting a decisive and recognizable social structure.'4The Hallstatt Culture was the Celts between the beginning of the ninth century B.C. and the middle of the seventh century B.C. - an iron-using, farming, trading people. So, Hallstatt has more to do with the state of development of the whole society than the time at which this development was achieved. For example, artifacts found in Ireland dated four-hundred years later than those found at Hallstatt may still be described as Hallstatt because of the way in which they were made . This was the first of the iron age cultures. The western regions of this culture, between France and west Germany, already spoke a Celtic language. Around the year 600 BC the Greek geographer Herodotus writes of the Celts dwelling beyond Spain and the Upper Danube.5From the Halstat period they moved into La Tene period around 450 B.C. .La Tene meant more decorative burials, better decoration on swords, helmets, brooches, more people lived in the cities. 'La Tene time is when the Celts changed from a bunch of tribes to more of a civilization.. They had mobility, style, trade, power. In this time they were recognized by m...
