The Celtic World

by Barry W. Cunliffe and Barry Cunliffe

Book Overview

Celtic World will quickly establish itself as the general survey of the ancient Celtic peoples and their successors. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0070149186
• ISBN13: 9780070149182
• Release Date: January 1979
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 3.50 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A Review on 'The Celtic World'

Barry Cunliffe's "The Celtic World" is a good introductory level book on the history and archaeology of the Celtic people. As someone who is not well versed in Celtic history, I found it provided me with a good source of notes to look back on. It is loaded with maps, graphs and pictures of artifacts, and they all blend well with the text. Also the pictures are not just presented with a small caption but have a very detailed description about them. "The Celtic World" is divided into seven chapters. The first is untitled but the remaining six are; Two) Celtic Society, Three) Religion and Mystery, Four) The Genius of the Celts, Five) The Destiny of the Celts, Six) The Island Celts, and Seven) The Celts Today. Each Chapter is divided into smaller sections on specific material about the main topic. These subsections are brief, usually two pages including pictures, but no longer than four pages. For the sake of brevity I will break down the first three chapters, and summarize the last four. The first chapter serves as an introduction, and does (I believe) a good job of telling us who the Celts were, and how we use written history, and archaeology to look at their culture. The first chapter is broken down into sections on; "The Portrait of a Civilization" a less than one page look at the entire Celtic history, "A People Whose Roots Lie Buried in the Past" on Europe from the time of hunting and gathering to the point where Europe is absorbed in Roman colonial expansion, "Hallstatt and La Téne Cultures" on the two earliest Celtic cultures from late bronze age into the iron age, "The Emergence of the Celts" about the Urnfield culture, and the development of an aristocracy, "Discovery of the Celts" on how their settlements can be found across temperate Europe, and how their language still survives today, "Graves" on the vast quantities of graves excavated, and the difference of them based on social standings, "The Language of Objects" provides technical information like materials, and variation of design, and cultural information like style and decoration, "Sculpture and Coins" on the emergence of Celtic expression of themselves thru sculpture and coinage, "Written Evidence" about the many ancient historians views of the Celts, "Ancient Stories Retold" about the survival and documentation of the Celtic oral narratives. The second chapter deals mostly with the late Bronze and the Iron Age period, using archaeology with the integration of texts by Celtic, Greek, and Latin authors in this chapter. "The Celtic Society" chapter is divided into sections on; "The Early Chieftains" on the aristocratic culture of the Hallstatt chieftains, "Wealth and Power" on the aristocratic burials of Celtic men and Women at the Mont Lassois and Heuneburg sites, "The Meeting of Two Worlds" on trading between Celtic and Mediterranean Cultures, "Revolution and Migration" about the early migration of the Celts that brought them into conflict with Greeks and Romans, "Profile of