'Interpretatio': Roman Word Power and the Celtic Gods

Abstract

As recently remarked by Poulton and Scott,' archaeological perspectives on Celtic deity are largely derived from the Romano-Celtic period, with studies employing 'the evidence of epigraphy and iconography to reveal how particular Roman and Celtic gods were identified with each other'.2 This paper explores a specific form of postConquest epigraphy: name-pairing interpretatio. Defined by Tacitus as 'the interpretation of alien deities and of the rites associated with them' (Germania 43), interpretatio lies at the heart of the Roman articulation of alien religion. It may therefore seem unsurprising that in defining the character, function, and organisation of Celtic deity, the archaeology of Iron Age religion has relied heavily on epigraphic interpretatio. What is surprising, this paper will argue, is that we have failed to address the post-Conquest context in which epigraphic interpretatio was generated. On the contrary, the complex interactions between Roman and native in the early post-Conquest period have been bypassed in attempts to isolate 'Celtic' features from a Romano-Celtic data base. This paper attempts to resituate interpretatio as a post-Conquest discourse, generated in a context of unequal power relationships which ultimately vitiate interpretatio as a guide to the pre-Conquest gods of Britain. The archaeology of Iron Age ritual and religion has long been characterised by reliance on retrospective inference: in other words, a dependence on evidence for practices under the Roman hegemony in defining the characteristics of Iron Age religion. It is, of course, true that a lack of pre-Conquest data in many areas of ritual has often forced a reliance on post-Conquest material, but self-critical awareness of this practice and its implications has been wanting. Even so, it is clear that archaeological faith in this type of retrospective inference is maintained by assuming that RomanoCeltic practices are essentially 'Celtic', with at best a Roman veneer. This approach, questioned from the Roman perspective by Henig,3 is typified by the work of G. Webster I R. Poulton and E. Scott, 'The Hoarding, Deposition and Use of Pewter in Roman Britain', in E. Scott (ed.), Theoretical Roman Archaeology: First Conference Proceedings (1993), I 15-32. 2 Poulton and Scott, op. cit. (note I), 123. 3 M. Henig, Religion in Roman Britain (1984), see esp. 14.