Session: #1093

Content:

Academic use of the term “Celtic” has long been controversial, with material, chronological, and lingual critiques. These criticisms have resulted in increasingly nuanced scholarship regarding the Iron Age and Early Medieval communities (800 BCE – 1000 CE) with “Celtic” language and material culture, acknowledging regional and chronological variation. Despite methodological and theoretical developments, bioarchaeological investigations remain a minority within “Celtic” studies; reasons for this paucity vary between regions, but include poor preservation, fewer developer-funded excavations, and, for the Welsh early medieval period, a comparative lack of surviving historical sources. However, in the past decade, several new discoveries of human and animal remains from archaeological excavations has led to a boom in osteological research in Wales, facilitating new comparisons to the better-studied areas within the “Celtic” world. These excavations cover a multitude of site types including Iron Age hillforts, Viking era settlements, and early medieval cist cemeteries, greatly increasing the interpretative potential of the remains. In particular, recent investigations have highlighted the interconnectedness of regions in these periods, emphasising a shared Irish Sea heritage, as well as building on links between the Celtic West and Scandinavia and the Mediterranean world. These relationships form the inspiration for this session, which will integrate these results into our broader understanding of the Celtic West from 800 BCE to 1100 CE and contextualise the scientific data from human and faunal remains. This session invites all papers from osteoarchaeological and zooarchaeological perspectives (including biomolecular and histological studies), particularly those which integrate the funerary evidence or explore links between regions.

Session: #1093

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