Callaecia

Social and commercial relations between the peoples of the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula and those of Brittany and the British Islands date back to very remote times. Trade in tin between Ireland and Galicia was already established during the late Neolithic and the similarities found all along the coasts of Atlantic Europe could indicate that those contacts existed during the period of megalith construction as well. These ancient connections continued during the Bronze Age, when a well-defined socio-cultural and commercial zone called the Atlantic Facade. Cunliffe affords northwestern Iberia particular importance within the zone, noting how the complex influence of western seaways converged "around the isolated yet reassuring stepping-stone of Galicia" (Cunliffe 2001:60). Koch has discussed the social basis of early celticization, presenting a model in which he argues that the consolidation of a proto-Celtic language took place during the Late Bronze Age (c.1300-600 BC) in the Atlantic Zone. According to a number of authors, Celtic language(s) became the lingua franca for the whole area at the time.

The northwest of Iberia, which had played an important role in the Bronze Age Atlantic Area, also had an impact on the process of the celticization of the whole Peninsula. After several decades of unconvincing attempts by scholars to demonstrate that the celticization of the Iberian Peninsula took place through invasion waves from the Hallstatt and La Tène area, current Spanish research considers mono-causal invasionist theories as serious oversimplifications, adopting instead a model based on the assimilation of selected cultural elements by the indigenous elites during the Bell Beaker and Stella people age.This model is in turn based on the existence of a cultural substratum with origins in the Atlantic Bronze Age cultural area of the northwestern Peninsula, which had already assimilated linguistic and ideological traits such as the use of a proto-Celtic or Celtic language, hill-forts (castros) with circular stone houses (Ayán et al. in press), certain burial rites, and religious ideologies and practices involving common divinities and religious sites such as springs, brooks, rivers, mountains and woods. This proto-Celtic substrate preserved in the northwest spread during the later Bronze and Iron Age to the highlands of the Iberian mountains and the Eastern plateau, where it developed into the culture of the Celtiberians. From there, it later spread to extensive areas of the north and west of the Peninsula, where it was easily absorbed by the proto-Celtic substratum. However, the proto-Celtic culture of the extreme northwest retained most of its cultural characteristics. Thus, the celticization of the Iberian Peninsula may have had its origin in the northwest, which could explain similar cultural, socio-economic, linguistic and ideological patterns (Almagro-Gorbea 1992, 1993:146-48; Cunliffe 1997:139).

Philological evidence can also be obtained by a comparison between Galician linguistic remains and those of Celtiberia and Gaul. Various forms of evidence, mostly inscriptions and a number of place names ending in -briga, -brigs, indicate that a Celtic language was spoken over much of central and western Iberia.

The Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies will launch a new research project into the Atlantic Zone Celts. The research is called, Project 8: Ancient Britain and Atlantic Zone (ABrAZo: Ireland, Britain, Armorica and the Iberian Peninsula): Celticisation from the West?

Arguments based in archaeology and genetics have recently been put forward in favour of Celtic origins in the Atlantic Bronze Age rather than the central European territories of the early Hallstatt and La Tène archaeological cultures of the Iron Age. However, a hypothesis of ‘Celticisation from the West’ has yet to be fully formulated or tested in detail from the perspective of Celtic and Indo-European historical linguistics.

The Project Callaecia wants to do its contribution to this new optics of the Celtic studies. This is the reason for wich the Project Callaecia intends to serve exclusively as a key of help and collaboration, offering our own particular views and researches.