Article on Celtic Society

[Elmetiacos]

Raimund Karl from the University of Wales Thoughts on the Evolution of Celtic Society (which I missed, having joined the Continental Celtic board too late) is now on the web:
http://downloads.euro-celts.org/pdf/..._evolution.pdf

The concept of the ‘Celts’ has been heavily criticised in the past two decades. In this paper, it is
argued that, although the criticism has to a large extent been justified, there is still a need for ‘Celtic’ metanarratives, even though quite different from the ones we may have told before. By examining the Welsh settlement evidence from the late Bronze and Iron Age, and comparing it with linguistic evidence, a model of the evolution of Welsh Iron Age societies is presented. This model, in turn, can be compared to a wider ‘Celtic’ social metanarrative, which both is informed by and informs the more local Welsh narrative, and allows broader comparisons with other Iron Age societies in Europe and human social evolutionary models in general.

The part that might be of use in EBII is from page 13 onwards, because it describes a possible structure of Celtic society and the names by which the various social positions were likely to have been called, extrapolated from early Welsh. They could serve as some unit names: Ambaxtoi would be ordinary levied troops, Uossoi younger warriors functioning as skirmishers, Tegeslougos elite guards.

[oudysseos]

Very interesting.

[cmacq]

Raimund Karl from the University of Wales Thoughts on the Evolution of Celtic Society (which I missed, having joined the Continental Celtic board too late) is now on the web:
http://downloads.euro-celts.org/pdf/..._evolution.pdf

The part that might be of use in EBII is from page 13 onwards, because it describes a possible structure of Celtic society and the names by which the various social positions were likely to have been called, extrapolated from early Welsh. They could serve as some unit names: Ambaxtoi would be ordinary levied troops, Uossoi younger warriors functioning as skirmishers, Tegeslougos elite guards.

Right, I've long viewed the Gaulish system as basically feudalistic. This Ambaxtoi levy would also be feudal and include only ethnic Celts that were landowners. With Ambaxtoi, Uossoi, and Tegeslougos; I wonder why he didn't include the forth warrior class?


CmacQ

[Elmetiacos]

What do you mean by the fourth warrior class?

[Power2the1]

The 4th class, I would guess, are the groups similar to the Fianna, that tend to hang out on the periphery of the Celtic tribal society (but technically still in it)...or maybe its the screeching women the Celts brought to battle alongside their champions and nobles!

Just from a quick skim of that article, not some in depth critical review, it seems quite well written. I'm glad to see certain points and features of his ideas and theories matching my own.

Without giving too much away, EB2 has the overall 'flavor' of this article in place with much more too add (when I can find the time to do so).

[cmacq]

The 4th class, I would guess, are the groups similar to the Fianna, that tend to hang out on the periphery of the Celtic tribal society (but technically still in it)...or maybe its the screeching women the Celts brought to battle alongside their champions and nobles!

Just from a quick skim of that article, not some in depth critical review, it seems quite well written. I'm glad to see certain points and features of his ideas and theories matching my own.

Without giving too much away, EB2 has the overall 'flavor' of this article in place with much more too add (when I can find the time to do so).

Right Power, thats the forth class; the Veinos types better known as the later Feinna/Fianna/Fingalians or even Paladin.



CmacQ

[Cyclops]

Right Power, thats the forth class; the Veinos types better known as the later Feinna/Fianna/Fingalians or even Paladin.



CmacQ

Fascinating and useful. Its only a short piece but breaks down the picture to show a bit of texture and complexity.

So there seems to be military classes that reflect "stage of life" (lightly armed young blokes yet to earn/inherit status and wealth vs rich senior blokes who can afford stuff) as well as "level of society" (ruler's kin group vs ruled kin groups).

Can we build game functions to reflect things like seperate recruitment pools for classes of warriors? Recruitment limits on numbers will help. What about increased politcal importance through military participation? There was an ingenious idea about using the Guild system in this way. The nomad system in EB1 takes a shot at it in a different way too.

I have a vague notion that gangs (in the modern sense of bloods and crips) reflect older traditions of young blokes rallying to look after themselves across family/community lines. Somehow I think this is involved in state or other super-familial institutional formation but its a bit wooly now.

The red branch and the JomsVikings might be part of this. I like the wild mercs in Sweboz lands that can't be trained, just hired, I think of them as iron age bikies (or as our US cousins call them, bikers).

[Elmetiacos]

Power2the1: yes, a whole four unit types wouldn't be very entertaining for anyone playing Gauls or Britons. I thought the fourth class might well be the freelancers - the Fian(n)a or Polybius Gaesatae, which was probably (imho) Gaisatas in the original Gaulish.

[Power2the1]

At first I thought that the 4th class would have been 'Men of Art' like the craftsmen, druids, bards etc... but once you realize that they really aren't warriors then it's pretty obviously that the 4th class would have been the Fianna type groups.

Dont worry, there will be way more then 4 units to recruit across the Celtic world...I will make sure that Great article nonetheless!

[Lusitani]

I can't open the document. Did anyone had any problems opening it??

[Ibrahim]

I can't open the document. Did anyone had any problems opening it??

do you have adobe acrobat?

I'll PM you about it, if you have none. (or even if you do)

[cmacq]

The part that might be of use in EBII is from page 13 onwards, because it describes a possible structure of Celtic society and the names by which the various social positions were likely to have been called, extrapolated from early Welsh. They could serve as some unit names: Ambaxtoi would be ordinary levied troops, Uossoi younger warriors functioning as skirmishers, Tegeslougos elite guards.

By Tegeslougos does he refer to the historic Tectosages?


CmacQ

[Lusitani]

do you have adobe acrobat?

I'll PM you about it, if you have none. (or even if you do)

Thanks a lot Ibrahim.

V.

[Power2the1]

By Tegeslougos does he refer to the historic Tectosages?


CmacQ

Tegeslougos means 'house army'.

The break down of this is mentioned in the article on p.16 (took a while to find it) but I had an idea already it referred to something along the lines of a 'household army', as attegia or just tegia is Gallic for 'house' or 'hut' and slougo- is 'troop', 'army', 'group', etc...

There is another variant spelling of 'house army' and that is tegoslougos. It appears that in Gallic, the endings of -o and -e are perhaps interchangeable and that that might be the case here, but I'm definitely not 100% sure

[cmacq]

Hell, I should have known that; scotts gaelic sluagh (english pro slogan) means, 'the host.' But Gauish it's 'slogi, I think,' and tege-slougo, has been used to mean something like 'the familia,' like an extended family, no? Or then again, maybe I'm wrong?



CmacQ

[Elmetiacos]

Tegeslougos means 'house army'.

The break down of this is mentioned in the article on p.16 (took a while to find it) but I had an idea already it referred to something along the lines of a 'household army', as attegia or just tegia is Gallic for 'house' or 'hut' and slougo- is 'troop', 'army', 'group', etc...

There is another variant spelling of 'house army' and that is tegoslougos. It appears that in Gallic, the endings of -o and -e are perhaps interchangeable and that that might be the case here, but I'm definitely not 100% sure

That's possibly down to an obscure feature of Celtic grammar that's sufficiently strange that even a Gaul could get it wrong in normal conversation. *Tegos looks just like an o-stem noun, but in fact it's an s-stem noun; you'd expect tego- to be correct but there were probably pedantic old druids who insisted it should be tege- because strictly speaking the stem was tege-. Someone's put all the declensions up on Wikipedia for the curious: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-C...age#Morphology

[Elmetiacos]

I've changed my mind (again) about the original form of Gaesatae, because of Latin Gesatorum and Greek Gaizatorix. If I'd been right, wouldn't it be *Gesatarum and *Gaizatarix? This suggests the original was a neuter o-stem, singular Gaisaton, which would give a plural Gaisata for a Latin Gaesatae. Are we having fun yet...?

[cmacq]

And there we have yet another word for the 4th class of warrior.




CmacQ