Paleoetnología de la Hispania Céltica. Etnoarqueología, etnohistoria y folklore by Pedro R. Moya-Maleno

Abstract

Reviewed by: Paleoetnología de la Hispania Céltica. Etnoarqueología, etnohistoria y folklore by Pedro R. Moya-Maleno David Wallace-Hare (bio) Pedro R. Moya-Maleno, Paleoetnología de la Hispania Céltica. Etnoarqueología, etnohistoria y folklore. (British Achaeological Reports S2996 (I–II)). Oxford: BAR Publishing, 2020. ISBN 9781407316703. 664 pages. £141 / €211.5 / US$282. With Paleoetnología de la Hispania Céltica. Etnoarqueología, etnohistoria y folklore, Pedro Moya-Maleno undertakes the ambitious project of surveying the economy, social organization, and religious views of pre-Roman societies of Hispania Celtica, essentially Celticspeaking areas of the pre-Roman Iberian Peninsula. The author uses both conventional routes for investigating this theme, viz., archaeology and literary sources, in addition to a novel ethnoarchaeological and ethnohistorical approach focusing on reading Celtic cultural features backwards and forwards using persistent local traditions. The inclusion and privileging of the latter data marks Moya-Maleno’s work as unique and pioneering. The book begins with what is arguably the most important section for Celticists, laying out the conceptual framework and providing a step-by-step guide to the author’s unique methodology (11–64). The introduction explains why folklore and laterdocumented local traditions have not been brought to bear for filling in large gaps in our understanding of ancient Hispano-Celtic populations in the Iberian Peninsula. Moya-Maleno outlines a history of the continual sidelining of the use of folklore and local traditions by various disciplines to understand ancient Celtic populations in Europe. He rejects a search for a single Celticity in Europe, but seeks rather sui generis Celtic cultural features in the Iberian Peninsula. He problematizes the concept of the Celt, and the introduction makes clear that he is fully aware of the on-going debates surrounding the application of the terms lo celto y la céltica ‘the Celt and the Celtic’ (30) either to evoke a pan-Celticity or as a catch-all term for the extensive cultural, linguistic, and [End Page 255] material correspondences we can see in temperate Europe during the first millennium bce and first few centuries ce. Productively, Moya-Maleno wants to recover active histories and unknown aspects of Celticity as expressed in areas of the Iberian Peninsula—the northern Peninsula especially—by including evidence derived from oral history, folklore, and local traditions. He helps readers see why this should be done by reviewing the history of the pre-Roman, Roman, and post-Roman Iberian Peninsula through the lens of the perdurance of traditions (38–51). Moya-Maleno takes great pains to show that Celtic strands of tradition are just one of many that those wishing to recover Celtic material via ethnographic data (for instance) must sort through carefully and cautiously. This awareness of the plurality of traditions in the Peninsula is refreshing to see in a work on Celtic Hispania and signals a healthy move in our field towards inclusion and interdisciplinarity. After the extensive introduction (comprising three chapters: an introduction, a chapter on methodology, and a review of types of sources), the book follows a fairly straightforward format which attempts to recover/uncover aspects of daily life in Hispania Celtica. These later sections comprise the bulk of the work and are well-segmented for ease of reference. Chapter 4 reviews the territory, economy, and subsistence modes of Celtic Hispania. Chapter 5 examines social organization in Celtic Hispania and rounds off Volume i. Volume ii is devoted to the religious worldview (cosmovisión) of Hispania Celtica. Readers will get the most out of the long-distance links Moya-Maleno is able to tease out regarding Celtic religion and social organization. Two sections that showcase the benefits of this book are the discussion of rites of passage (Chapter 5.3), where he examines animalization traditions—wherein villagers dress up as animals for ritual purposes—and their Celtic foundations, and the treatment of the complex topic of sacred trees (6.2.4b) in local and ancient Hispano-Celtic traditions. I mentioned that the work is ambitious in scope, attempting as it does to rescue important hermeneutic strands of Hispano-Celtic tradition in the oral literature and customs of pre-modern Spain and Portugal. Moya-Maleno has had to...