Archaeologists Find Celts in Unlikely Spot: Central Turkey

NYT ^ | 12/25/2001 | JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

[a_Turk]

In storybook histories, the ancient city of Gordion is remembered only as the seat of King Midas, he of the golden touch, and the place where Alexander the Great struck a famous blow in legend and metaphor. Challenged to separate the strands of an impossible knot, the Gordion knot, the conqueror cut through the problem, in the manner of conquerors, with one authoritative swing of his sword.

After Midas and Alexander, Gordion languished on the fringes of history, and until recently archaeologists had taken little notice of its Celtic past. Yes, European Celts — the Gauls of Roman times and the forerunners of Bretons, Welsh, Irish and highland Scots — once migrated as far east as what is now central Turkey and settled in and around post-Alexander Gordion, beginning in the early third century B.C.

Archaeologists say they have now excavated artifacts and architectural remains dispelling any lingering doubt that the Celts were indeed there, as a few classical texts had recorded in passing. These people called themselves Galatai, a Celtic name for tribal warriors, and became known to the Romans as Galatians. Their Christianized descendants were advised by the apostle Paul, in the New Testament, that "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

The remains of Galatian Gordion, archaeologists conclude, reveal that the Celts, although they came as mercenary soldiers, bringing along their wives and children, were looking beyond warfare and pillage. They put down deep roots, revived Gordion and created an ambitious, thriving society.

Above ruins of ordinary mud-brick houses, they erected a monumental public building of cut-stone blocks that was surrounded by a massive stone wall. Inside a workshop were clay loom weights used in weaving, a possible clue to Celtic influence. Not far away, excavators found a stone sculpture of a human with faces in two directions, which replicates double-faced or "Janus" figures from Celtic sites in central Europe.

But the most decisive discovery was a grisly one: clusters of broken- necked skeletons and decapitated heads of children and adults, some of them mixed with animal bones. Ancient Celts had a reputation for ritual human sacrifice, but not the contemporary Greeks and Romans or any of the indigenous people of Anatolia, the central plateau region of Turkey.

In the current issue of Archaeology, a magazine of the Archaeological Institute of America, Dr. Mary M. Voigt of the College of William and Mary, a leader of the excavations, and her colleagues wrote, "Such practices are well known from Celtic sites in Europe and are now documented for Anatolian Celts as well."

Dr. Ronald Hicks, an archaeologist and specialist in Celtic prehistory at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., agreed that this appeared to be the strongest evidence yet for a permanent Celtic presence in Gordion.

"That certainly has the Celtic look," said Dr. Hicks, who is not involved in the project. "One of the Roman complaints about the Celts was that they still practiced human sacrifice. They said the Gauls were known for lopping off heads of men in battle, tying them to their belts and bringing them back to display for all their friends at home."

Dr. Oscar White Muscarella, an archaeologist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, called the discoveries "an extraordinary accomplishment." For the first time, he said, "we are able to see and hold in our hands what the Galatians did and can now talk about Galatians in Anatolia."

The excavations of Galatian Gordion are part of research at the site, 60 miles southwest of Ankara, being led by the University of Pennsylvania Museum in conjunction with the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. Dr. Voigt's co-authors of the magazine report are Jeremiah R. Dandoy, a retired businessman who has become a zooarchaeologist, and Page Selinsky, a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Gordion's Galatian period had been neglected, Dr. Voigt explained in an interview, because archaeologists had their eyes on bigger prizes. They dug through the layers of Galatian ruins to get to the city as it was in Alexander's time, 332 B.C., and the even earlier city of Midas, ruler of Phrygia, probably in the eighth century B.C.

Dr. Voigt said archaeologists were also put off by the seeming impossibility of finding anything distinctive to confirm the Galatian presence in the city. How do you establish the ethnicity of an ancient population, especially if the people were warriors who traveled light, carrying with them little of their own material culture, and lived off the land?

"Historically, we knew they were at Gordion," Dr. Voigt said, "but we didn't know anything definitive about their way of life."

In one of the few sketchy accounts, the Roman historian Livy noted that a king in Anatolia hired Celts as mercenaries to re-enforce his own army. They arrived in 278 B.C., 20,000 of them, including provisioners and merchants as well as their families, in a caravan of 2,000 baggage wagons. But by this time the Celts had become somewhat Hellenized.

For an unknown number of years since leaving their homeland, somewhere in central Europe near the headwaters of the Danube, the Celts had passed through the Balkans and paused in Greece to sack Delphi. In battle, they stood naked before the foe. Along the way, they learned Greek and inscribed some of their possessions in that language. Their ceramics and other household wares were in the Greek style.

"It used to be hard to detect the Galatians at Gordion," said Dr. Keith DeVries, a University of Pennsylvania archaeologist and former director of the Gordion excavations. "There was not a single artifact that was absolutely demonstrable as Celtic. Some began to think the literary sources must be misleading us."

Livy described Galatian Gordion as a trading center and a fortified settlement in the early second century B.C., a judgment now supported by archaeologists. Artifacts like a small bone lion, probably used as inlay, suggested the Galatians enjoyed some affluence. Traces of a few substantial buildings — with tile roofs, many rooms, paved floors, stone benches and generous courtyards — seemed to attest to a city with a social and political hierarchy. This was more than a simple crossroads farming settlement, as some scholars once suspected.

[DensaMensa]

>I'd have said, "We haven't seen this anywhere else except in Celtic sites."

Works for me, Mort, in attempting to prove they were Celts. It is the authors extension of that logic to assert these Celts were engaged in religious sacrifice that falls flat.

[Pharmboy]

Just an FYI for you and all your Celtic brethren and sistren, 30% of the American Revoltionary Army was Irish (many also fought on the Crown's side, but not this high a percentage).

Source: A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier, Signet Classic, 2001, by Joseph Plumb Martin. (Irish per cent from the Introduction by Thomas Fleming).

[DensaMensa]

>Just an FYI for you and all your Celtic brethren and sistren, 30% of the American Revoltionary Army was Irish (many also fought on the Crown's side, but not this high a percentage).

Almost the entire army on both sides were Celts. Just another of the many Celt vs Celt battles throughout history.

[Pharmboy]

You must be including the Scots and the Welsh; they certainly did make a high Celtic percentage in the Crown's Army.

[Rebelbase]

Modern Celts in America: Seven Nations

[skraeling]

>Just another of the many Celt vs Celt battles ...

That is true enough, but when you add Prof Barry Fells America BC to the mix it gets even MORE interesting. Then you have Celts fighting "indigenous" Celts???

[Citizen of the Savage Nation]

On a related note, the Vikings were thought of so highly as warriors by the Byzantines that they were hired as mercenaries at times. The Vikings were one of the few who had the balls to try and sack Constantinople and live to tell about it.

[DensaMensa]

>Then you have Celts fighting "indigenous" Celts???

That's a fascinating concept. And it may even be true. A great many of the ancient European battles between essentially "unidentified" parties were in reality battles between different Celtic tribes.

[Bob J]

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[tsomer]

According to Greek lore, Ephesus was founded by the Amazons. Probably no connection between Amazons and Celts, what would you say

A Greek Amphora shows a Greek warrior doing battle with a warrior clad in breeches. I spoke to an historian (a real art historian) and remarked that it must have been a Scythian. She corrected me and remarked that it was and Amazon depicted, a re-enactment of a familiar story. But the costume was intriquing. Both Celts and Scythians wore breeches, both were thought to be descendents of caucasian tribes, and both spoke Indo-european tongues.

Elsewhere the claim was made about the bad press the Celts supposedly received from the Greeks and Romans. There's archeological evidence supporting the head-hunting and human sacrifice claims. My take, as a Celt: we were barbarians of the worst imaginable sort, tamed by Greek thought, Roman law, and Hebraic spirituallity.

[Don Myers]

bttt

[a_Turk]

My take, as a Celt: we were barbarians of the worst imaginable sort, tamed by Greek thought, Roman law, and Hebraic spirituallity.

I know what you mean. We (almost) couldn't resist the taming influence of those rascals either :)

[Jacob Kell]

Actually, the Turkic and Mongol peoples are racially different from each other. Mongols are Mongoloid, and Turks are Turanid caucasoid. Their languages are related and their styles of combat are similar, but so are all other steppe peoples.

[Verginius Rufus]

Galatia in Turkey was the land of the Galatoi (Celts), although the area included non-Celtic-speakers...like the people addressed in St. Paul's letter to the Galatians (which was written in Greek).

Galatea (Galateia) is an unrelated name from Greek mythology, found already in Homer and Hesiod.

I don't know if Galicia in Poland (also spelled Galitzia, Galizien, Galicja) is connected to the ancient Galli or not.

[Wallace T.]

The largest portion of the Irish who fought in the Continental Army was Scotch-Irish, who were descendants of Lowland Scots, with some Highland Scots, Northern English, and "original Irish" mixture, who emigrated to Northern Ireland in the 16th and 17th Centuries, as part of an attempt by the Tudor and Stuart monarchs to establish loyal subjects in Ireland. The Lowland Scots spoke Scots English, a dialect of English, and not a Celtic language. The Celtic languages had died out in the Lowlands during the Middle Ages. The Lowlanders were linguistically Anglo-Saxon and at least partially Germanic (Anglo Saxon and Scandinavian) by race and culture.

[Verginius Rufus]

There could be some Irish admixture in the Lowlands (from the early middle ages, when Gaelic was brought from Ireland). Apparently some of the old place names in the far southern part of mainland Scotland are P-Celtic (going back to people related to the Welsh and the Cornish, rather than to Q-Celtic immigrants from Ireland).

[bugsplat]

I believe this may be where they spend the off season resting from this past miserable season.

www.nba.com/celtics/

To be sure, please check the above site out.

[SunkenCiv]

Just updating the GGG information, not sending a general distribution.

Keith DeVries, scholar, curator
by Gayle Ronan Sims
Philadelphia Inquirer
7/20/2006

Keith R. DeVries, 69, curator of the Mediterranean section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and a professor at Penn, died of cancer Sunday at the Fountains at Logan Square, where he had been for four days. He lived in Center City. Dr. DeVries' career at Penn and the museum spanned more than 35 years... He began a scholarly interest in Greece, especially the city of Corinth, that continued throughout his life... Dr. DeVries' study of Corinthian pottery led him to propose a chronological adjustment for the Greek colonization in the central Mediterranean. Previously, King Midas was thought to be buried in Gordion, in central Turkey. That tomb is now believed to be of an earlier ruler, perhaps Midas' father, Gordias... He also was writing a book titled Homosexuality and the Athenian Democracy. Dr. DeVries is survived by two brothers, Roger and David.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

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[SunkenCiv]

Archaeologists Rewrite Timeline Of Bronze And Iron Ages, Alphabet
Cornell University | 12-19-2001 | Blaine P. Friedlander Jr.
Posted on 12/24/2001 8:04:31 AM EST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/596279/posts

Archaeologists Find Celts in Unlikely Spot: Central Turkey (Ellas Go Bragh!?)
The New York Times | December 25, 2001 | JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Posted on 12/25/2001 3:06:25 PM EST by Pericles
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/596739/posts

Archaeologists Find Celts in Unlikely Spot: Central Turkey
NY Times | December 25, 2001 | JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Posted on 12/27/2001 2:45:39 PM EST by Apollo
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/597641/posts

Chemistry Used to Unlock Secrets in Archeological Remains
VOA News | 27 Apr 2002 12:35 UTC | Written by Laszlo Dosa , Voiced by Faith Lapidus
Posted on 04/30/2002 9:10:04 PM EDT by vannrox
http://freerepublic.com/focus/news/675661/posts

King Midas' Modern Mourners
Science News | Nov. 4, 2000; Vol. 158, No. 19 , p. 296 | Jessica Gorman
Posted on 11/28/2004 9:23:26 PM EST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1290040/posts

[Hegemony Cricket]

Hmmm. Usually I just find giblets in central turkey...