Alice Roberts
Author of The Incredible Human Journey
About the Author
Alice Roberts is an anthropologist, writer and broadcaster and has presented several landmark BBC series including The Incredible Human Journey, Origins of Us and Coast.
Works by Alice Roberts
The Little Book of Humanism: Universal lessons on finding purpose, meaning and joy (2020) 53 copies, 2 reviews
THE FOLIO BOOK OF SCIENCE 16 copies
Spider house, with Alice Roberts [Documentary, 2014] — Presenter — 1 copy
Associated Works
The Celts: Blood, Iron & Sacrifice 4 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Roberts, Alice
- Legal name
- Roberts, Alice May
- Birthdate
- 1973-05-19
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- Bristol, England, UK
- Places of residence
- Bristol, Gloucestershire, England, UK
Cardiff, Wales, UK - Education
- Red Maids' School, Westbury-on-Trym
University of Wales College of Medicine (MB|B.Ch|B.Sc|1997)
University of Bristol (Ph.D|2008) - Occupations
- academic (University of Bristol)
television and radio presenter
anatomist
osteoarchaeologist
author
paleopathologist - Organizations
- University of Manchester
British Humanist Association (patron|president|2019-2022) - Awards and honors
- Fellow, Royal Society of Biology (2011)
Members
Reviews
Lists
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 26
- Also by
- 4
- Members
- 1,795
- Popularity
- #14,332
- Rating
- 4.0
- Reviews
- 47
- ISBNs
- 96
- Languages
- 7
- Favorited
- 3
Alice Roberts wrote The Celts: Search for a Civilization as a companion book to her BBC2 television three-part series The Celts: Blood, Iron, and Sacrifice (https://youtu.be/zA-itb5NwDU?si=gTOPnkXeqObpdt4g ; not the greatest quality, caveat emptor). I read the book and then watched the series, and feel as if both prove helpful and beneficial, and in that order.
The reason why the television series proves important involves the Celts and the nature of the evidence: they did not leave us with a collection of texts. We have some stories and myths from the British and Irish Isles which were written down far later but seem to preserve some of the Celtic stories, and that which was written about the Celts, primarily by the Greeks and Romans who encountered them. Most of what we know from the Celts themselves comes as a result of archaeological explorations: sites and burials. Thus, the visual medium proves very helpful in getting a good mental picture of what we can know about the Celts.
The television series, understandably according to the nature of the medium, is more straightforward in its presentation. Each episode is framed by one of the three great battles between Rome and Celtic people: Brennus and the Celtic defeat and destruction of Rome in 387 BCE; Julius Caesar defeating Vercingetorix at Alesia in modern-day France in 52 BCE; Boudica’s revolt and its violent suppression in Britain in 60 or 61 CE. All of the various sites and discoveries which are profiled in the book are presented, although in different orders: the Hallstatt salt mines, the fort at Heuneburg, the Hochdorf Prince, torcs of the Snettisham Hoard, evidence of La Tène and the La Tène culture, the Tartessian inscriptions of the 8th century BCE, the Celtic dispersion into Galatia and the evidence at Gordion, the “Dying Gaul” and the Vachères Warrior, the Gunderstrup Cauldron, the Glauberg Warrior, the Bettebühl Princess, bog people and possible sacrifice of kings by the Druids, and the like.
The show presents all of this data and these discoveries and suggests almost a seamless whole: the Celts as people sharing a language family spread across Portugal, Spain, France, Great Britain, Ireland, the Alpine regions of Switzerland, Italy, and Austria, and parts of southern Germany at least, from at least 800 BCE and the end of the European Bronze Age and enduring, at least in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany, until modern times.
What seems confidently set forth in the television series is presented with a lot more apprehension and many more questions in the book. The same evidence is there: Greek and Roman narratives; archaeological discoveries; linguistic data; myths and stories which likely reflect at least some authentic Celtic memory.
The basic claim seems pretty audacious: since archaeological and DNA data do not suggest anything like the major disruptions in Western Europe as took place with the Yamnaya and the Corded Ware Culture of the early 3rd millennium BCE, and the Germanic and various steppe people migrations of the 1st millennium CE, most of what we understand as Western Europe was therefore populated by various tribes of people known to the Greeks and Romans as the Celts. Evidence of a Celtic language can be perceived in Tartessian inscriptions ca. 800 BCE in Portugal; Celtic languages persist in Brittany and the British and Irish Isles; and Celtic aspects of names can still be discerned in place names in Western Europe. To this end, whatever material culture remains are discovered in Western Europe from the Bronze and Iron Ages are thus associated with the Celts and as Celtic.
The Tartessian inscription evidence is fascinating and begs the question: if some people of Celtic heritage around 2700 years ago perceived some benefit in the idea of writing, and even worked to modify Phoenician to add vowels and suit their purposes, what happened? People deemed Celtic by the Greeks and Romans manifestly had interactions with Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans; the fort at Heuneburg featured a Phoenician style not otherwise in evidence in Western Europe. Thus they associated, to some degree, with people who wrote and had writing, and some of them even tinkered with writing. So why did they not develop their own writing system and write things down?
The question is live and active because these questions which arise about who the Celts are and how they would understand themselves will be nearly impossible to answer because we have so little evidence of anything in their own voice. We can note points of cultural and linguistic connections between the Iberian Peninsula and the British and Irish Isles; we can see the archaeological evidence from France and the Alpine regions of central Europe which come from places which will have people deemed Celtic. They all probably did speak an Indo-European language, and their languages might all have been in what we deem the Celtic family. We do know they lived in various tribes, and so ostensibly would have some points of cultural continuity but also discontinuity.
The book and the television series do well at presenting what evidence we have for the people who inhabited what we know as Western Europe from around 1000 BCE until the Roman conquest, and in many respects beyond. We know they were called the Celts, a term which seems to refer to “warriors,” and had tribal names and associations. They likely spoke languages in the same language family and perhaps remained mostly mutually intelligible. We know there were religious figures known as Druids but can only speculate about much of what “Celtic religion” would have been. We see significant material remains demanding significant cultural complexity, presenting undeniable evidence of civilization. But our understanding remains limited, and questions will remain live and open.… (more)