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1. Pan-Celtic Art
Is there such a thing as pan-Celtic Art. I don't think so. This part of my investigation began with a curiosity about Celtic Knotting. We all have seen the pictures of Celtic High Crosses, standing stones with engraved intricate knotting and circular crosses at the top. Oral history states that they date back to St. Patrick (c. 432 CE) who declared that they were proof that God had fore-ordained that Ireland would convert to Catholicism. What we call Celtic Knotting did not appear in Britain or Ireland before the 5th-century CE. In fact, Celtic Knotting was brought to Britain during the Pagan Saxon Period (c. 450 - 600 CE) and post-dates Patrick. Evidently, Celtic Knotting is actually Saxon Knotting. (There is an interesting discussion about Pagan art originating in the Christian Levant and Africa, being conveyed across Christian Europe and shared with the Pagan Saxons.) Current research indicates that Celtic High Crosses date from the 9th-century concurrent to the Abbey on Iona and St. Columba.
Was there a Celtic style of art from antiquity? The triskelion on the image at the top of this page is found throughout ancient Asia, the Mid East, the Mediterranean, and the British Isles. This motif is found on the entrance stones at New Grange, Boyne Valley, Ireland, which dates back to 3,200 BCE. As our Celtic cousins were not in Ireland for at least another 1,100 years, it appears that this motif is more than merely ancient and dates back to modern human's advance into Europe at the end of the last Ice Age.
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16c. R1b1a1a2a1a2c [L21/S145/M529]: |
2. The Hallstatt Culture
Researchers point to the Hallstatt Culture of the Late Bronze Age (12th to 8th-century BCE) and early Iron Age (8th to 6th C BCE) of Austria as a pan-Celtic culture or period or style. Hallstatt artifacts have been found even in Britain and Iberia.
By the 6th century BC, [Hallstatt Culture] had expanded to include wide territories, falling into two zones, east and west, between them covering much of western and central Europe down to the Alps, and extending into northern Italy. Parts of Great Britain and Iberia are included in the ultimate expansion of the culture."Hallstatt Culture" < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallstatt_culture> 2 January 2021.
Hallstatt art is known for expert metal working in bronze and iron. The designs were geometric and linear. And, Hallstatt art eventually spread to Britain. But, our Celtic forefathers had passed through Austria some 1,300 years previously. Hallstatt art and culture was a new creation by a Celtic people who shared their innovations with the wider world.
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14. In about 2,500 BCE, R1b1a1a2a1a [R-L11] migrated north and settled in the Black Forest from the headwaters of the Danube River (vic Regensburg) west toward Freiberg in what is now southern Germany. At this point there was a major split in not only the subclades of R-L11 but also in culture and language. Whether or not R-L11 was part of the the Hallstatt Culture of Bronze Age Austria, we the descendants of R-L11 possessed some Hallstatt influence and Bronze Age technology. From southern Germany and France, we took these skills and new branches of the Indo-European language to dispersed locations in western Europe. |
3. The La Tène Culture
Chronologically, the La Tene Culture was the successor of the Hallstatt Culture (450 to 1st-century BCE).
The La Tène style of Celtic art, [was] characterized by curving "swirly" decoration, especially of metalwork. . .La Tène culture's territorial extent corresponded to what is now France, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, England, Southern Germany, the Czech Republic, parts of Northern Italy, Slovenia and Hungary, as well as adjacent parts of the Netherlands, Slovakia, Croatia, Transylvania (western Romania), and Transcarpathia (western Ukraine). The Celtiberians of western Iberia shared many aspects of the culture, though not generally the artistic style.
La Tène Culture < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Tene_culture> 3 January 2021.
My argument remains the same. Our Celtic forefathers had passed through Switzerland millennia prior. La Tène art and culture was a new creation by a Celtic people who shared their innovations with the wider world. And, the Celt-Iberians were a new Iron Age people, some may have descended from the original Gallaecian/ Gaelic Celts and some may have descended from north Europeans who intermingled with the Iberians of the Mediterranean coast.
The paternal haplogroup I2a1a1a has been detected among Celtiberians. There appears to have been significant gene flow between among Celts of Western Europe during the Iron Age. Modern populations of Western Europe, particularly those who still speak Celtic languages, display substantial genetic continuity with the Iron Age populations of the same areas."Celts" <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts#Genetics> 3 January 2021.
4. Conclusions
Celtic Art in Iberia and Britain and Ireland was whatever art the local Celts developed and whatever art they acquired from their many contacts throughout Europe through trade and commerce.
Celtic Music, however, is a pan-Celtic art form. Geographically, there is a continuum of playing the bagpipes from Anatolia and the Caucasus across Europe to Iberia, Ireland and Britain.
The Scottish Great Highland bagpipes are the best known examples in the Anglophone world. But people have played bagpipes for centuries throughout large parts of Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia, including Anatolia, the Caucasus, and around the Persian Gulf.
"Bagpipes" <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagpipes> 3 January 2021.
The only question is "Where and when were the bagpipes invented?" Back when, historians postulated that the bagpipes were brought from Iberia to Britain. And, I agree. I postulate that the bagpipes originated in the Celtic homeland in Gaul/ Central Europe and were disseminated throughout the disparate Celtic nations, heading east as far as Anatolia and the Caucasus, south to the Italian Peninsula where the Caesars were cited playing the pipes, and heading southwest to Iberia where our forefathers took them to Ireland and then Britain. And from these far-flung locals, the bagpipes were shared out to even further locals.
In the early part of the second millennium, definite clear attestations of bagpipes began to appear with frequency in Western European art and iconography. The Cantigas de Santa Maria, written in Galician-Portuguese and compiled in Castile in the mid-13th century, depicts several types of bagpipes. (Ibid)
I find it interesting that a researcher who cares not for genetic genealogy can trace the migration of the Celtic People through the history of the bagpipes out of central Europe to the distant lands of the Celtic World.
Having examined Celtic genetics, Celtic languages, and Celtic art, it is apparent that anyone who possesses a downstream marker from male Haplogroup R-P312 or the female Haplogroup H with a history from a Celtic land should be considered a Celt. [NEXT]
