Short description
For centuries, the Celts held sway in Europe. Even after their conquest by the Romans, their culture remained vigorous, ensuring that much of it endured to feed an endless fascination with Celtic history and myths, artwork and treasures. This book presents an overview of their world. It discusses the Celts' mysterious origins and early history.
Long description
For centuries, the Celts held sway in Europe. Even after their conquest by the Romans, their culture remained vigorous, ensuring that much of it endured to feed an endless fascination with Celtic history and myths, artwork and treasures. A foremost authority on the Celtic peoples and their culture, Peter Berresford Ellis presents an invigoration overview of their world. With his gift for making the scholarly accessible, he discusses the Celts' mysterious origins and early history and investigates their rich and complex society. His use of recently uncovered finds brings fascinating insights into Celtic kings and chieftains, architecture and arts, medicine and religions, myths and legends, making this essential reading for any search for Europe's ancient past.
Review
When this authoritative but accessible account of Celtic life first appeared in 1998, as The Ancient World of the Celts , it caused something of a storm. Some archaeologists, it seemed, were prepared to deny the existence of a distinct Celtic culture, preferring to call them Iron Age people. Berresford Ellis has no truck with such anti-Celtic revisionism, For centuries, he says, the Celts held sway in Europe. Even after their conquest by the Romans their culture remained vigorous, ensuring that much of it endured to feed an endless fascination with Celtic history and mythology, artwork and treasure. He reveals the mysterious origins of the Celts, and explores their myths and legends, religious beliefs and learning (not least in the fields of medicine and cosmology) the role of the druids and the military expertise of their leaders (including the legendary Boudicca).The new edition differs in one respect. It contains a timely preface, bringing the Celtic controversy up to date in a suitably calm but undeniably sardonic manner. After all, asks Berresford Ellis, who speaks Iron Age ? (Kirkus UK)