Naši Keltové

The role of Celtic archæology in Czech identity

by C Ryan Moniz

original research· spring 2016
updated & published· spring 2022

philology

Archæological finds have played a major role in the construction of modern European national identities. Traditional interpretations of early European history are largely informed by essentialist — and even ethnocentric — assumptions about the spread of material and linguistic culture. The case of “Celtic” cultural spread and its potential links to the Hallstatt and La Tène periods identified by European archeologists has been one of much contention and revision in recent decades. This article attempts to examine the history and historiography of “Celtic” archæology and early history in the modern Czech context, and how such historiography has played a role in the formation of Czech national identity.

The modern notion of “Celtic”-ness is a relatively recent development. Writers of the 18ᵗʰ and 19ᵗʰ centuries are often credited with the development of Celticism, especially Romantic poets such as WB Yeats. It was Romantics such as he who “created a mythopoetic Celt as the archetypal radical, an antithesis to everything that romantically inclined intellectuals might find despicable about what Yeats referred to as the ‘filthy modern tide.’”❦1 Kockel p 86-87 This reaction against Enlightenment rationalism and the industrialization of Europe situated Celticity in opposition to such hegemonic tides as Modernity and the mainstream of Western culture. However, the role which Celticity has had to play in European culture and politics varies by the country and history that is being examined. This article will continue by presenting cases of attested “Celtic” peoples in Czech archæology and examining the relationship between these findings and the national identity of Czechs, questioning traditional essentialist interpretations.

Who were the Celts?

The earliest evidence of Celtic culture in Central and Western Europe must be dated to some time after the postulated arrival of the Indo-Europeans (or at least their language) into the area between 3500 BC and 1500 BC. The late Indo-Europeans were distinguished from others in the area in that their “farmers preferred solitary farms to enclosed villages and laid great emphasis on raising animals rather than cultivating the land. Their masters led a courtly life, with war, hunting and elaborite festivities. Their priests sacrificed to sun-gods. Their warriors knew the battle-axe and the two or four-wheeled chariot.”❦2 Herm p 82 Contemporary European historians traditionally divide the “Celtic” cultural trends in the archæological record into 3 periods:

Attempts to synchronize these periods with historical linguistic reconstruction correlate these cultures with Western Indo-European languages (post-centum/satəm-split), the development of Proto-Celtic, and various Continental Celtic languages, respectively.❦4 Chadwick & Corcoran, p 28-33 The degree of the validity or the usefulness of these correlations are still a matter of debate.

Problematizing historical narratives in “Celtic” archæology

The schema within which Bronze & Iron Age archæological findings in Europe are traditionally examined is one that is incredibly concerned with migrations — it was concerned primarily with which ethnic groups had migrated where by what time, and what linguistic and genetic evidence can be found to corroborate such analyses. All too often❦5 Bond 2013, archæologists have confused evidence and examples of a widespread meme as evidence for the diaspora of a group from an original homeland (typically one postulated for the hypothetical speakers of a proto-language). This essentialist approach has been criticized by some, such as Lisa Bond (2013), as a strong bias, as it assigns material culture “to a tribe or ethnic group based on the premise that their religious or cultural norms are prescriptive... assigning material culture to past ethnicities and the distribution of material culture to migration and invasion theories.”❦5 Bond This not only has the effect of undermining the academic merit of archæological analysis — as has been seen historically, such an ethnocentric diffusionist approach in which cultural innovations are correlated with the spread of one (culturally “superior”) race has been taken to its political extreme in the form of Gustaf Kossinna’s work and Nazi archæology, which attempted to use such a model to justify German expansion and genocide.❦5 Bond·❦6 Dietler p 599

After the political upheaval of the mid-20ᵗʰ century, many groups in Europe (and even the United States) have turned again to the Celticism that had been constructed by Romanticism in order to bolster their own political ideals for the future of Europe. A great number of sub-culture groups in the 1960s, particularly occultists, anti-modernists, youth counterculture, and radical feminist groups appropriated a “Celtic” identity, which comprised of pop-cultural images of Druids, fairies, the powerful “Celtic heroine,” and idyllic pre-industrial landscapes; eventually a resurgence of neo-pagan groups joined such ranks, many with the goal of reconstructing the lost religion of the Celtic peoples.❦7 Kockel p 88 For many of these groups who found themselves outside the cultural mainstream, Celtic revival came to represent a resistance to modern European cultural hegemony that was seen as oppressive on religious, gendered, economic, ethnic, and national axes. The ultimate poster-child of the oppressed Celtic nation during this time became Ireland:

“In Ireland and the Irish people, the movement found a role model sharing the experience of oppression and – perhaps more importantly – excelling in the defiance of the oppressor and the conditions created by him... The power to sustain defiance was seen as originating in the Celtic spirit.” (Kockel p 92-93)

However, as time went on, the use of Celtic identity in Europe eventually reached a mainstream international caliber. By the late 1980s, many new Celtic archæological exhibitions sponsored by more than one European nation-state had been mounted (e.g. “On the Trail of the Celts”), filled with “Celtic” artifacts from various countires, all with the political implication of the Celts as the “first Europeans” who did no less than prefigure the European Union! One such exhibition in Steyr, Austria was even subtitled “An Early Form of European Unity.”❦8 Dietler p 597 It is indeed ironic that there be an effort by the European Community to unify itself via Celtic identity, given that the same strategy of Celtic identity is used by fervent European regionalists:

“As the historical Celts are commonly thought to have settled most parts of Central and Western and many areas of Southern Europe at some stage, but without ever building a great Celtic empire, they make convenient common ancestors for European regionalists, even though some of these pedigrees – for example in the North Italian ‘Padania’ – are certainly more than a little precarious.” (Kockel p 88)

In spite of this seeming contradiction, Celtic identity in Europe is used in relationship to national and regional identities in third-person processes of contrasting one’s own group from a Celtic “Other,” and first-person processes of self-identification with Celticity. This part is not quite as surprising, especially “given that the state is the major owner of the means of production for archaeological research... the pattern of support for archaeological excavation and museum displays has been conditioned by national mythologies of identity.”❦8 Dietler p 597 The case of the Czech Republic is an example of first-person processing, in which changes in the state were mirrored in kind with developments in the Celticity of Czech history and identity.

The Boii & Celtic Bohemia

The earliest findings in the area corresponding to modern Bohemia which most archæologists would consider “Celtic” are artifacts and structures representing the culture of the late Hallstatt period. “Evidence of characteristic burial practices such as wagon graves are found in Bohemia, for example, Hradenín with nine wagon burials... as well as other typical finds such as boat fibulae and other jewellery.”❦9 Koch p 222-225 The validity of claiming that these earliest archæological discoveries indicate the presence of a “Celtic” ethnic group in the area is questionable, as the findings “allow only very approximative collocation of the tribe in a very widely defined zone of the Danubian Central Europe.”❦10 Kysela p 140-142 The similarity between the wagon burials found in Bohemia to those in Hallstatt does indicate a “considerable amount of cultural exchange as early as the 7th-6th centuries BC with those areas to the west that are often considered by archaeologists to be Celtic.”❦9 Koch p 222-225 However, “[S]ince these societies were preliterate, it is impossible to state beyond doubt whether the inhabitants of Late Hallstatt Bohemia actually spoke a Celtic language.” The only valid claim that can be made for the Celticity of Bohemia at this point is that “it reasonable to see them as parts of a wider cultural continuum, in which ideas and concepts were exchanged quite freely, and where Celtic speech was documented in succeeding centuries.”

One of the most important sites in this region from this period is a 6th century BC hill-fort at Závist, just outside and to the south of modern Prague. This site is variously speculated to be a temple complex or an élite settlement. However, “whether Závist originally function primarily as a sanctuary or as an élite settlement in late Hallstatt and early La Tène Bohemia, it was probably the central focus around which a Celtic group that later became known as the Boii developed.”❦9 Koch p 222-225 The Boii are typically deemed a Celtic group, with their name originating from the Proto-Celtic *boujī, the plural form of *boujos meaning ‘a man who possesses cows’❦11 Old Irish cognate in the negative variant ambue ‘outsider, not legally competent’ ← Proto-Celtic *amboujos ‘not a cow owner’ — the term probably originally indicated someone of the freeman class, but was generalized to the whole group. However, “[f]inds of valuable objects within these structures [at Závist] ... indicate increasing long-distance contacts with west-central Europe and beyond”❦9 Koch p 222-225; this suggests that the art and architecture found there is not necessarily evidence of Celtic presence, as the Celtic ethnonym could have been attributed to them by Celtic groups elsewhere and then transmitted to Greek and Roman historians.

At the transition from the Hallstatt and La Tène in this region (roughly 400 to 350 BC), many changes occurred in the archæological record, such as the discontinuation of cemeteries such as Královice and Manětin-Hradek, or the abandonment of the Závist hill fort. Some have postulated that this may be evidence of a “Celtic invasion” into Bohemia, but other explanations are just as likely if not more so, as many of the traditions from the Hallstatt period continued with minimal changes, and “a more detailed examination of the evidence suggests a complex pattern of cultural change and continuity.”❦9 Koch p 222-225 Through and into the middle La Tène period, the archeological evidence for the Boii becomes more visible, and “similar forms of material culture stretch from Bohemia over north-eastern Austria, Moravia and south-west Slovakia into the Hungarian plains south-west and north of the Danube,” all of which are now commonly thought to have been inhabited by the Boii by this time. There is also evidence of links in the material cultural with those Boii who are historically attested in northern Italy. By the end of the middle La Tène period, Závist was also reinhabited, and, now considered an oppidum (a large fortified Iron Age settlement), continued to be so until the end of the 1st century BC. The Late La Tène period sees the earliest historical mentions of Boii in Bohemia, for example in Strabo’s Geography.

At this time, however, internal class struggles (possibly indicated by tool hoards found in Kolín and elsewhere) as well as external pressures – conflict with Dacians (under king Burebista) in the south-east, encroaching Germanic tribes (particularly the Suebi) from the north, and the ever-expanding Romans to the southwest.❦9 Koch p 222-225·❦12 HÓgáin p 141 Evidence indicates that, at this time, the Boii’s cultural center of gravity moved from Bohemia to Bavaria, but this does not necessitate that the Boii migrated away from Bohemia – there may have been a more passive process of adopting northern cultural fashions; however, by the time the region came under the control of the Romans, the people who lived therein were called Suebi, not Boii.❦9 Koch p 222-225 In stark contrast to a cultural exchange model is that postulated by Teich (1998), who claims that “[u]pon their arrival, Germanic warriors did away with Celtic political power and subverted the economic base of Celtic society... The Germanic newcomers took over not only some of the technological know-how of the Celtic groups but also the name of the land❦13 Teich here refers to the name Bohemia, via Latin Boihæmum and Greek Βουίαιμον, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *Boioīhaimaz “home of the Boii” (Koch p 225) which they occupied.”❦14 Teich p 27 Whether this analysis of the Suebi’s relationship to the Boii during this period is correct, what is made clear, at least by the historical record, is that by the end of the first decade AD, the Boii as a culturally visible entity had been absorbed by the Germanic tribe known as the Marcomanni, who would eventually be incorporated by Slavic immigrants (or invaders) several centuries later.❦15 HÓgáin p 175·❦16 Teich p 30

Celtic Bohemia in Czech History

In his Geography, Strabo writes:

ἐνταῦθα δ ̓ ἐστὶν ὁ Ἑρκύνιος δρυμὸς καὶ τὰ τῶν Σοήβων ἔθνη, τὰ μὲν οἰκοῦντα ἐντὸς τοῦ δρυμοῦ, καθάπερ τὰ τῶν κοαδούων, ἐν οἷς ἐστι καὶ τὸ Βουίαιμον τὸ τοῦ Μαροβόδου βασίλειον, εἰς ὃν ἐκεῖνος τόπον ἄλλους τε μετανέστησε πλείους καὶ δὴ καὶ τοὺς ὁμοεθνεῖς ἑαυτῷ Μαρκομμάνους.❦17 Strabo 7.1.3

“But here is the Hercynian forest, and the Suebi peoples, of which some indeed dwell in that forest, such as those of the Quadi, and therein is Boihæmum, the realm of Maroboduus, into which place he caused to migrate especially, in addition to many other peoples, his fellow Marcomanni.”

There are several interesting things to observe about this excerpt. Firstly, it shows the continued invocation of the Boii in describing the region thought to have been occupied by them into the period of its inhabitation by the Germanic Marcomanni. Most interesting perhaps is the character of Maroboduus; he is the first recorded political leader of the region, and the ruler credited with Romanizing the area, but moreover this Germanic leader’s name is what remarkably Celtic – clearly derived from Proto-Celtic *Māro-bodwos ‘great-fight[er]’ (Celtic Lexicon, 2002). This could provide some evidence for a model of cultural intermingling between the Marcomanni and the Boii (rather than one of migration or invasion and subsequent replacement).

The significance of Maroboduus is a good jumping-off point for discussion of the Czech historiography of Celticity. For most of medieval and early modern history, Czech historians largely ignored the “Celtic chapter” of Bohemia’s history, crediting the Boii with giving them the regions name; considerably more credit was given to the first documented ruler, Maroboduus, for transporting Roman culture to the region. The negligence of Celtic presence in the region began to change when the mid-19th century historian František Palacký, likely influenced by Romantic developments in Germany, elevated the importance of the Celts in creating Bohemia, calling the Boii “our Celts” – he still had a high view of Maroboduus, but his Germanic identity is almost completely erased, and the Marcomanni are almost completely discarded in Palacký’s history. This was taken a step further at the turn of the 20th century, when historian J. L. Píč claimed that the La Tène site at Stradonice was Maroboduus’ capital:

“For Píč, Bohemia is invaded in the 4th century by Celts – Boii, who are around the middle of the 1st century BC expelled by the new-coming Slavs identical with the crematory Lusatian culture of NE Bohemia. Stradonice founded (by Marobudus) around the turn of the era is for him the only site of this kind in Bohemia: a ‘cultural island’ isolated in space and extremely short in time. After its decline, the Slavs continue their peaceful existence until the present.”❦10 Kysela p 140-142

Despite these extreme revisions of mainstream Czech history, the Celts continued to receive scorn from Czech historians until the Second World War. In 1941, while Bohemia was under Nazi occupation, J. Böhm published a seminal work in Czech archæology, the Kronika objeveného věku (“The Chronicle of a Discovered Age”). It is known for solidifying a link between the long history of the Czech land with the everyday Czech citizen, which was itself an important political statement to make during the time of occupation. It also focused a considerable amount of time on the La Tène culture as it was present in Bohemia (pre)history, which Böhm believed “described in the modest dimensions of our homeland.”❦10 Kysela p 140-142 He even referred to Bohemia and the other transrhenane parts of La Tène culture, in reference to Cæsar’s Gallia divisa in partes tres, as “the Fourth Gaul”. This not only elevated the importance of the Boii, but also asserted the important role that the Czech history had to play in a wider pan-European history of La Tène or “Celtic” culture.

The period during and after the fall of the Communist regime and Czech independence saw the largest and most recent period of enthusiasm for Celtic archæology in the region. After decades of Soviet control, the Czech people felt an aversion to all things Slavic, with their motto being “return to Europe”; so strong was this impulse that many Czechs even began filling in “Celtic” as their nationality in census-forms and polls. Závist was (once again) occupied, now by modern Czech Celtophiles holding “Celtic feasts” in what was left of the prehistoric hill-fort. Even in academic works, an emphasis of the Celticity of the Czech people became prominent. Even today, archæologists commonly appeal popularly to the idea of “a drop of Celtic blood in Czech veins” in books intended for the general public, and such political assertions are actually thought to be substantiated by genetic evidence (about 35.6% of Czech males have Y-Chromosome haplogroup R1b, extremely rare among Slavs but very common among modern Celtic peoples).❦18 Kysela p 143-144·❦19 Semino p 1155-1159

Although the extreme post-Communist Celtomania has quieted considerably, the “Celtic” roots of the Czech people and lands continue to be an important part of contemporary Czech identity. The history of Celtic archæology in the region has gone from one of negligence by Czech historians to one of national pride for the Czech people.

references

❦1· Kockel p 86-87
❦2· Herm p 82
❦3· Gimbutas p 274-298
❦4· Chadwick & Corcoran, p 28-33
❦5· Bond 2013
❦6· Dietler p 599
❦7· Kockel p 88
❦8· Dietler p 597
❦9· Koch p 222-225
❦10· Kysela p 140-142
❦11· Old Irish cognate in the negative variant ambue ‘outsider, not legally competent’ ← Proto-Celtic *amboujos ‘not a cow owner’
❦12· HÓgáin p 141
❦13· Teich here refers to the name Bohemia, via Latin Boihæmum and Greek Βουίαιμον, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *Boioīhaimaz “home of the Boii” (Koch p 225)
❦14· Teich p 27
❦15· HÓgáin p 175
❦16· Teich p 30
❦17· Strabo 7.1.3
❦18· Kysela p 143-144
❦19· Semino p 1155-1159

bibliography

philology