ABSTRACT
At the end of the twentieth century the controversy over what can and cannot be legitimately labelled as ‘Celtic’ is raging. Patrick Sims-Williams has defined the debate as a ‘battleground’, where scholars from different academic traditions establish criteria for determining a ‘Celt’ or even in some cases trying to dismiss the notion altogether (Sims-Williams 1998: 1). Many Celtic scholars define ‘authentic Celticity’ (both ancient and modern) by the linguistic criterion; they argue that a person or group must speak (or have access to) a Celtic language in order to qualify (or have qualified) as a Celt. Others use material or geographical criteria: a Celt is defined either by particular characteristics of material remains, or by the boundaries of where the Classical Greek and Roman writers delineated named Celtic populations. Problematically, many of these criteria are not consistent with discrete and bounded Iron Age and medieval European groups (if indeed such discrete entities ever existed), and certainly not with postmodern populations. Contemporary Celtic phenomena are decidedly tricky to isolate and ‘authenticate’. Many of those who live in a territory widely considered to be ‘Celtic’ do not speak a Celtic language. Some people’s Celtic identity is a case of elective affinity, rather than their having been raised in a Celtic territory. Furthermore, Simon James has contested the notion that modern Celtic territories even have the historical precedent to be labelled as Celtic (James 1999b).
