O'Donnell Lecture 'People called Keltoi, the La Tène Style, and ancient Celtic languages: the threefold Celts in the light of geography'

O'Donnell Lecture
‘People called Keltoi, the La Tène Style, and ancient Celtic languages: the threefold Celts in the light of geography'
Professor John Koch of the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies will deliver this year’s O’Donnell Lecture at Aberystwyth University.

The title of Professor’s Koch’s lecture will be ‘People called Keltoi, the La Tène style, and ancient Celtic languages: the threefold Celts in the light of Geography’.

The lecture takes place in lecture theatre A12 in the Hugh Owen Building on Tuesday 13 May and starts at 7 p.m. A warm welcome to all.

The origins of the Celts are usually identified with the Hallstatt and La Tène archaeological cultures of Iron Age central Europe (roughly 750-400 BC). The chief aim of the lecture is to show that there is earlier and better evidence for groups called Keltoi 'Celts' by the Greeks and for Ancient Celtic languages in the extreme south-west of Europe, in the kingdom of Tartessos in what is now southern Portugal and south-west Spain. Therefore, Celtic origins more probably belong to the Atlantic Late Bronze Age (about 1200 to 750 BC), a cultural zone that included Britain.

Professor Koch has been working at the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies in Aberystwyth since 1998. He previously taught Celtic Studies at Boston College and Harvard University in the United States. His publications include the 5-volume Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia (2006), An Atlas for Celtic Studies: Archaeology and Names in Ancient Europe and Early Medieval Ireland, Britain, and Brittany (2007), and The Gododdin of Aneirin: Text and Context in Dark-Age North Britain (1997).