Goidils

[Ludens]

Here's a vote for another British faction... whether they are called "Goidils" "Caledonians" or some more specific name doesn't matter to me especially, although i do applaud the historical accuracy attempted, but from a gameplay perspective, another faction would really spice up the isles, and the Goidilic unit roster (however inaccurate) was nearly complete in EB1.

EB is all about accuracy, so it does matter to them.

[Phalanx300]

Makes me wonder how they even got the units to look that way if they weren't historical in the first place, must have been some sources right?

[Ludens]

Makes me wonder how they even got the units to look that way if they weren't historical in the first place, must have been some sources right?

The problem is Ranika and Anthony haven't mentioned their sources, so they can't be found. For the record, though, that does not mean it doesn't exist. I get the impression that early-Celtic Irish archaeology is an obscure field even for historians. A lot of Celtic material hasn't even been translated yet, simply because there is no one to work on it.

[oudysseos]

I get the impression that early-Celtic Irish archaeology is an obscure field even for historians.

Sadly, this is all too true. While there is (a lot) more to it than this, a great deal of what Anthony and Ranika put together was extrapolated from much later textual sources or based on older scholarship that has now come under increasing scrutiny.

Of course, almost everything in EB is conjecture in some degree: even for the military units that everyone here thinks they know all about, like the Romans, there is in fact very very little concrete, unequivocal evidence. The new work being done on the Celtic units (just as an example) is still interpretation and guess-work: somewhat better documented guesswork we hope, but we will never truly know very much about the warriors of the ancient world. Most of what we have is third-hand opinions recycled as 'fact' by over-enthusiastic fanboys. We are doing our best to root our interpretations in referenced archaeology and texts, that's all.

[Elmetiacos]

The problem is Ranika and Anthony haven't mentioned their sources, so they can't be found. For the record, though, that does not mean it doesn't exist. I get the impression that early-Celtic Irish archaeology is an obscure field even for historians. A lot of Celtic material hasn't even been translated yet, simply because there is no one to work on it.

Yes it has. It is, however, of very marginal interest for EBII because it all dates from the 6th Century AD at the very earliest. Ireland is an interesting place up to the Middle Bronze Age and from the Dark Ages, but in the early 3rd Century BC it's a bit of a dismal backwater with poor material technology and a low population.

[oudysseos]

While you're not wrong, I just wanted to point out that I have been scouring the quarterly archaeological reports put out by the National Roads Authority Archaeology People (the main public library in Dublin has every government publication) and while it's true that there is a real dearth of late pRIA stuff, there is also a real lack of interest in the period and kinda always has been. To quote UCD,

Current knowledge of Iron Age Ireland is largely restricted to an artefact record which is biased towards the north of the country, a limited burial record and a small, but significant, group of specialised monuments – the so–called Royal sites. However, very little is known of the vernacular culture of the Irish Iron Age, particularly where and how people lived, the types of houses they built and their industrial activities. This problem, encapsulated in the phrase “The Invisible People”, (coined by Barry Raftery in his Pagan Celtic Ireland in 1994) has contributed to the enigmatic character of the period.

So, although we really know very little about this period at the moment, it is possible that important finds remain to be discovered. If you're interested, you can search all the registered sites in Ireland by county here.

[Ludens]

Yes it has. It is, however, of very marginal interest for EBII because it all dates from the 6th Century AD at the very earliest. Ireland is an interesting place up to the Middle Bronze Age and from the Dark Ages, but in the early 3rd Century BC it's a bit of a dismal backwater with poor material technology and a low population.

Out of curiosity: why is Ireland interesting up to the Middle Bronze Age, and what happened that it ceased to be of interest?

[oudysseos]

My 2 cents: first of all, Irish Archaeology has always been highly politicized and informed by the nationalist or colonialist agendas of them that pays. Since independence (only 86 years ago) there has been a great desire to establish Ireland as totally separate and unconnected to England in every way imaginable: even to the extent of positing totally separate settlement/invasion histories. Just read Seamus Mac Manus' History of the Irish People , which was still teaching Firbolgs and Tuatha de Danann when I was young. Any archaeology that didn't support the Tain/Finn MacCool version of Irish history was not popular.

Also, it seems to be the case (or is being asserted) that there was a serious population decline after the end of the Bronze Age prosperity in Ireland. If true, this would simply mean that there is not much to know until maybe the 600s AD.

Two interesting works of recent, high quality scholarship in this area are Communities and Connections: Essays inHonour of Barry Cunliffe, Oxford University Press, and A New History of Ireland, from the Royal Irish Academy. Here is a link to the googlebooks preview of the chapter Iron Age Ireland by Barry Raftery, which is pretty much the state of the art for pRIA scholarship. I can read the whole chapter online: I hope it works for everybody.

[Elmetiacos]

Also, it seems to be the case (or is being asserted) that there was a serious population decline after the end of the Bronze Age prosperity in Ireland. If true, this would simply mean that there is not much to know until maybe the 600s AD.

No, not at all: just that there wasn't the same increase in population that were was among the Continental Celts, or even the lowland Britons.

In the early Bronze Age, Ireland was building New Grange, inventing the Hibernian Axe (which I think was the first purely military weapon in Western Europe) and exporting gold lunulae. Roughly at the same time as the Beaker Culture spread, the easily accessible gold and copper deposits seem to have started to dry up and Ireland stopped being the land of milk and honey and was left on the edge of later developments.