A Celtic script in the eastern La Tène culture ?

Abstract

Jürgen Zeidler : A Celtic script in the eastern La Tène culture ?, p. 69-132. In a large area of the eastern La Tène culture, extending West-East from Bavaria to western Hungary and North-South from Bohemia to Carinthia and Styria, comb decorated graphite vessels have been found, mostly dating from the first century BC, on which a variety of marks appear on the bottom. About 1200 of them are known up to now, and c. 660 are listed here in an appendix (with the exception of Norican material). Previously, these vessel marks have usually been understood as individual potters’ brands. In this paper, however, the theory is proposed that the marks reveal an almost complete La Tene alphabet. Short inscriptions on vessels, coins and in one case on mine timber show the same shapes of letters and give some hints at their phonetic values. Tentative readings seem to point to names and words in the Gaulish language. It is argued that the script underlying the marks was adopted and adapted in the third century BC at the latest, i.e. the time of the earliest coins. The alphabet is in all probability derived from Camunic or from Venetic, like the ‘Raetic’ local scripts and Norican on Magdalensberg. The use of this writing system was maintained until the first centuries ad and obviously adopted by people with a ‘Germanic’ material culture. This is clear from similar vessel marks of the early Roman period from Moravia and sporadically from Silesia, Brandenburg and Hessia. The La Tène script shows a remarkable similarity to the runic Futhark as well, and it is suggested that it may have been a Celtic intermediary stage in the transmission of an (ultimately) Etruscan type of alphabet to northern Germany and Scandinavia where the earliest ‘proto-runic’ and runic inscriptions have been found.