The Celtic World

Fülszöveg

THE
CE LTIC
WORLD
The story of the Celts is a story of survival, defiance, and creativity in the face of oppression; it is a tale extending from desolate prehistoric Europe, through bitter conflicts with Rome, to political rallies and folksongs of present-day Ireland and Brittany. Hundreds of illustrations of art and artifact - many in full color, many rarely published - enliven noted Oxford archaeologist Barry Cunliffe's portrayal of this paradoxical civilization.
Who were the Celts? Where did they come from? Professor Cunliffe probes these mysteries — made more perplexing by the absence of ancient Celtic written records - in a brilliant display of historical detective work. He takes us beyond ruins and artifacts to the people themselves, the way they lived, their violent temperament, gargantuan feasts, and savagery in battle.
Here at the dawn of Celtic civilization are the little-known settlements of the Central European hinterland whose inhabitants traded with distant... Tovább

Fülszöveg

THE
CE LTIC
WORLD
The story of the Celts is a story of survival, defiance, and creativity in the face of oppression; it is a tale extending from desolate prehistoric Europe, through bitter conflicts with Rome, to political rallies and folksongs of present-day Ireland and Brittany. Hundreds of illustrations of art and artifact - many in full color, many rarely published - enliven noted Oxford archaeologist Barry Cunliffe's portrayal of this paradoxical civilization.
Who were the Celts? Where did they come from? Professor Cunliffe probes these mysteries — made more perplexing by the absence of ancient Celtic written records - in a brilliant display of historical detective work. He takes us beyond ruins and artifacts to the people themselves, the way they lived, their violent temperament, gargantuan feasts, and savagery in battle.
Here at the dawn of Celtic civilization are the little-known settlements of the Central European hinterland whose inhabitants traded with distant Greek cities and expanded from the Hungarian plain to the Atlantic coast. Here are the Cimmerians, who introduced the horse to Europe and made the Celts a nation of cavalrymen that were the terror of Greece and Rome. Here are the Celtic miners, artisans, traders, and sculptors who built the first cities in barbarian Europe and developed a prosperous urban culture.
In time most of Celtic Europe fell to Rome. But on the western fringes of the Empire - in northern Scotland, the northern and western isles, and especially in Ireland - the Celtic way of life survived. Irish Celts passed on their sagas from generation to generation, and late Celtic art inspired the island missionaries who braved the terrors of Dark Age Europe to reestablish Christian centers in France, Germany, and Switzerland. Since the story of the Celts is not over, Professor Cunliffe ends his archaeological adventure on the trail of the modern Celts - the peoples of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man, and Brittany and their relatives in America, whose rediscovery of their Celtic heritage has such momentous implications for art, education, and politics.
THE AUTHOR
Barry Cunliffe is Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford, and he has excavated widely in Britain. Vissza