The ‘Atlantic Fringe’ hypothesis for the Celtic homeland and the Tartessian inscriptions (original) (raw)

Tartessian as Celtic and Phoenician as a possible substrate

The interpretation of “Tartessian”, the SW Iberian inscriptions, by John Koch as the earliest form of Celtic raises the possibility that nearby Phoenician, spoken in Phoenician trading posts in Iberia, such as Gadir (modern Cádiz), might have been the oft-mooted Hamito-Semitic substrate said to account for a number of non-Indo-European traits found in Insular Celtic. However, Tartessian-as-Celtic has not gained traction among Celticists. Furthermore, apart from the difficulty of explaining how a Semiticized Celtic Tartessian might have been transmitted from SW Iberia to Ireland and/or Britain, bypassing the rest of Iberia and Gaul, where none such substratal effects have ever been noted, it is unlikely that economically dominant Phoenician would ever have acted as a substrate to “Tartessian”, which would be better named Cunetian, as it may not be connected with the flourishing culture of Tartessos (cf. the Biblical “ships of Tarshish”). Finally, there are a number of problems and questions concerning the adaptation of the Phoenician script to the language of the SW inscriptions.

Tartessian as Celtic and Celtic from the West: both, only the first, only the second, neither

Le tartessien : une langue celtique et/ou une langue celtique occidentale ? Les deux à la fois, uniquement la première proposition, uniquement la seconde ou aucune des deux Parmi les documents épigraphiques dits du Sud-ouest (inscriptions So), relevés dans le sud du Portugal et le sud-ouest de l'Espagne, les occurrences graphiques les plus fréquentes ont été déchiffrées il y a environ vingt ans. L'hypothèse que la langue ainsi représentée était probablement celtique fut rapidement appuyée par J. A. correa (1989 ; 1992). Plusieurs chercheurs comme Untermann, Villar, Jordán, Ballester et moimême ont exprimé à différents degrés d'appréciation leur accord avec cette hypothèse. cette conclusion a des répercussions sur l'archéologie en Europe. L'interprétation du tartessien comme langue celtique bénéficie d'un certain crédit grâce à de précédentes théories archéologiques également en faveur de l'émergence précoce de parlers celtiques à l'ouest (cunliffe 2009 ; Renfrew à paraître). En septembre 2008, la plus longue inscription So (elle comprend 82 signes lisibles) est découverte à Mesas do castelinho, dans le sud du Portugal. cette découverte permet non seulement de réaliser d'importantes avancées, en augmentant la masse critique du corpus, mais surtout de confirmer la coupure des mots dans la *scriptio continua en recombinant les thèmes précédemment attestés, les désinences et les préfixes. On peut désormais envisager de nouvelles conclusions à propos de l'affiliation du tartessien, de sa typologie, sa phonologie, sa morphologie, et sa syntaxe de même que son lexique et son héritage onomastique. Enfin, cette communication examinera dans quelle mesure les explications archéologiques sont compatibles ou non avec ces nouvelles attestations épigraphiques. *scriptio continua : écriture en continu sans séparation entre les mots.

THE TARTESSIAN EPIGRAPHIC FORMULA IN THE LIGHT OF THE MEDELLÍN NECROPOLIS

have recognized Indo-European names in the South-western (SW) inscriptions. Most of these names have Celtic comparanda, often specifically Hispano-Celtic: for example, ]anb a at i ia (J.16.2), t i irt o os (J.1.2), b o ot i ieana (J.18.1), t u uŕek u ui (J.14.1), and lok o ob o o niirab o o (J.1.1).

A case for Tartessian as Celtic Language

Palaeohispánica, 2009

For Celtic studies in Britain and Ireland, and the wider 'Englishspeaking world', ancient Portugal and Spain do not often figure as part of the field's primary subject matter. There is a long-established idea that the Celts and the Celtic languages originated in central Europe and that they spread from there with the Hallstatt and La Tène archaeological cultures during the Iron Age (VIIIth-Ist centuries BC), movements that have usually been envisioned as progressing overland until they reached the English Channel (Collis 2003, 93-132). Therefore, the Celts of the Iberian Peninsula would belong to a separate line of development from those of Britain and Ireland. Whether one believes in a Celtic family tree with an Insular Celtic or a Gallo-Brittonic, Hispano-Celtic would thus not be a particularly close relative of Brittonic and Goidelic (Koch 1992a; De Bernardo 2006). However, more recently, archaeologists have taken an interest in the Atlantic Late Bronze Age of the XIIIth to VIIIth centuries BC (e.g. Ruiz-Gálvez 1998). At this earlier horizon, Britain, Ireland, and Armorica were in direct and intense contact by sea with the western Iberian Peninsula, as can be seen in shared types of feasting equipment and weapons, reflected, for example, in the contents of the mid Xth-century Huelva deposition (Ruiz-Gálvez 1995; Needham & Bowman 2005; Burgess & O'Connor 2008) and the iconography of the 'warrior stelae' (Celestino 2001; Harrison 2004). Against this background, Barry Cunliffe, 2001, 261-310, has proposed the origins of the Celtic languages should be sought in the maritime networks of the Atlantic Zone, which reached their peak of intensity in the Late Bronze Age and then fell off sharply at the Bronze-Iron Transition (IXth-VIIth centuries BC). After reviewing some of the earliest linguistic evidence from the Iberian Peninsula-viewing this from my accustomed perspective based in the early Insular Celtic languages and, to a lesser extent, Gaulish-I have concluded that there is also case to be made from the philological side in favour of an origin of the Celtic languages in the Atlantic west (2009). It should be explained at the outset that an Atlantic hypothesis of Celtic origins does not require a rejection or minimizing of the Indo-European character of