Celtic Times Research Articles

Geochemistry of Gold Ores Mined During Celtic Times from the North-Western French Massif Central

The Celtic culture of Western Europe left magnificent gold objects, such as jewellery and weapons from nobility graves and hoarded coins, as well as field evidence of pre-Roman gold mining and metallurgical workshops that attest to the mining of local ores. This is the case of Central France where many precious metallic ores have been mined throughout the ages from the Prehistoric times onwards. One of the lingering problems in assessing the provenance of gold artefacts and coins is the lack of relevant data on the isotope geochemistry and mineralogy of ore sources. Forty gold ores samples were collected and studied from Limousin (French Massif Central), a very significant gold mining district from the Celtic times. Their Pb isotope compositions clearly show a local dichotomy i.e. two distinct groups of ores, one of Late Proterozoic to Early Paleozoic Pb model age and another associated to Variscan ages and consistent with field relationships, mineralogy and elemental analyses. The use of Cu and Ag isotopes, and their coupling with Pb isotopes, will refine the tracing of future metal provenance studies, but also highlight some metallurgical practices like deliberate metal additions to gold artefact or debasement of gold coins. The newly acquired Pb, Ag, and Cu isotopic data on gold ores improves our understanding of ore deposits geology and provide clarifications on the provenance of Celtic gold from this area and its economic importance.

Product innovations of key economic importance for the steel industry

Steel and materials in general entertain a special connection with time and therefore with innovation. Indeed, steel has been around for more than 4 millennia and is still innovating, which demonstrates both a status of socio-economic invariance and a cumulative innovation process, which deeply differs from the status of the “high-tech” consumer products, which are considered today as highly innovative. This is a complex situation, which is best described by telling various narratives from the standpoint of history, innovation management, sustainability, economy and business, with both long and short times perspectives. The Historian’s perspective insists on slow time, especially as regards innovation, in which steel took part. Steel and steel production technology have thus accompanied society in its long journey through time since the Neolithic, Roman and Celtic times, the Middle Ages, Modern Times and Industrial Revolutions. Today, the technological episteme seems to be frozen in a stasis that has been rolling out global steelmills across the world and most recently in China. The present technological paradigm was built under the pull of the social and economic drivers which have led to the geopolitical world as it is today. Innovation today, continues, but not visibly at the level of process engineering, but regarding metallurgy and material science, thus exploring the deep connection of steels with specific and always changing applications. Regarding process engineering, however, the on-going economic transitions, i.e. the energy, ecology and digitization transitions, may awaken Sleeping Beauty’s castle and relaunch a new series of paradigm shifts in making steel. Low-carbon technologies are being explored to meet the Climate Change challenge, which may rekindle the sustainability innovation driver. And a reexamination of the scale at which steel is made might possibly stem from Additive Manufacturing, although this is still a weak signal as far as steel is concerned.

Celtic Times(1887年)にみるアスレティック・スポーツ種目の実相

Celtic Times(1887年)にみるアスレティック・スポーツ種目の実相

Viscum album fermentatum use in osteosarcoma patients as an immunostimulant adjuvant after relapse

Osteosarcoma is a high-malignant bone tumor that can be cured in about 60% of cases with actual neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Lung is the most frequent site of relapse. Relapsed patients are usually treated with surgery every time if it is feasible and with other chemotherapy (high-dose ifosfamide) according to the risk factors (number of metastases, interval from previous tumor treatment, number of metastatic sites). With this combination treatment, we see nowadays more long-living relapsed patients even after multiple relapse. Besides surgery and ifosfamide, now there are few experimental target drugs that can be used in phases I or II experimental protocols for relapsed inoperable patients. But still there is no treatment that can be proposed as adjuvant after the second or subsequent relapses and we know from historical control that chances of further relapse after the second one increase with the number of relapses and post-second relapse-free survival is about 20% at 12 months. It is often used in oral Etoposide in clinical practice in these osteosarcoma patients but outside any protocol or evidence of improved survival (literature data are scarce). We know that the immune system plays an important role in cancer relapse control. Viscum album fermentatum has been a very popular phytocompound in North Europe since the celtic times. Many preclinical studies have been done and showed a cytotossic effect in different types of cancer and an increase in immune response cytokines. Viscum is self-administrated in about 60% of cancer patients in Germany. In 2005 we started using Viscum album fermentatum Pini in osteosarcoma patients after their second metastatic relapse. After metastasectomy for their second relapse, patients who were free from disease were treated with Viscum album fermentatum. Five patients were treated outside any protocol; no toxicity was seen; treatment was well tolerated; 3 patients relapsed after 6,12 and 22 months and the other two are still on treatment and free from disease after 18 and 15 months. Encouraged by these results that showed a prolonged DFS (equal or longer than 12 months in four out of five patients), we started a two-arm randomized protocol for osteosarcoma patients free from disease after metastasectomy for their second metastatic relapse to evaluate an improvement of post relapse-free survival compared to historical (20%) at 12 months. One-arm treatment was oral Etoposide 50 mg/m 3 daily for 21 days every 28 days for six cycles; the second arm received Viscum album fermentatum Pini 1vial sc 3 times weekly starting with Serie 0 for 1 month, then Serie I for another month and then Serie II for other 10 months for a total of 12-month treatment. All patients were studied for immunologic response to treatment (tot Linfocyte and natural killer). On May 2008, 8 patients were enrolled (four patients for each arm). Updated data will be presented.

ORGANIC RESOURCES AT THE IRON AGE DÜRRNBERG SALT‐MINE (HALLEIN, AUSTRIA)—LONG‐DISTANCE TRADE OR LOCAL SOURCES?*

Remarkable preservation circumstances for organic material at the Iron Age salt‐mine on the Dürrnberg Mountain offered the opportunity to analyse a large amount of wood and human faeces. One aim of the studies was to discover the origin of the important resources food and wood. Concerning the question of ‘the linking role of the Alps in past cultures’, the archaeobotanical record proves intracultural but no intercultural connections at this place in Celtic times. The preliminary results show that the Dürrnberg population used differentiated strategies to manage a continuous food and wood supply. While the wood supply was based on the management of local sources, the food supply had to be linked into a regional and long‐distance trade system.

Mössbauer Study of a Celtic Pottery-Making Kiln in Lower Bavaria

In 1995 a well preserved 3rd century BC Celtic kiln for pottery making was excavated at Schmiedorf in Lower Bavaria. The firing chamber and the flue plate of the kiln were preserved, whereas the dome was not found. We report on a study of material from this kiln by neutron activation analysis, thin-section microscopy, X-ray diffraction and Mossbauer spectroscopy, all performed with the aim to learn more about pottery-making procedures in Celtic times.

Celtic gold coins in the light of Mossbauer spectroscopy, electron microprobe analysis and X-ray diffraction

Celtic gold coins found in Southern Germany were studied by Mossbauer spectroscopy, electron microprobe analysis and X-ray diffraction with special attention to coins rich in silver and copper. In such coins the electron microprobe analyses reveal a gold enrichment in a surface layer of more than 100 μm thickness. 197Au conversion electron Mossbauer spectroscopy also shows that the surface of the coins consists of two phases, one of which is strongly enriched in gold compared to the bulk composition. In comparison with laboratory experiments the observed phenomena suggest that coin production in Celtic times may have involved deliberate heating and etching steps to enrich the surface layer in gold by depleting it of silver and copper.

Glastonbury Abbey by James P. Carley (review)

REVIEWS james p. carley, Glastonbury Abbey. Glastonbury: Gothic Image Productions, 1996. Pp. xxviii, 192. Plates, illustrations, tables, charts, isbn: 0-906362-23-7. £9.95. It is a pleasure to welcome this paperback reissue of Glastonbury Abbey, first published by Boydell and Brewer in 1988. At the end of the book its new publishers advertise their own guided tours of 'sacred sites of Britain and Ireland': Professor Carley is surely an excellent guide to the sacred site ofGlastonbury. The book, well-illustrated, gives the history of Glastonbury from Celtic times onwards. It also discusses Glastonbury's saints, relics, and manuscripts, as well as the researches of antiquarians and archaeologists. In this reissue the author adds references to work published since 1988, particularly in The Archaeology and History of GlastonburyAbbey (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1991), which he co-edited with Lesley Abrams. However, readers ofArthuriana will be most interested in chapter eight, 'Arthur, Avalon and the Bridge Perilous.' This chapter discusses the 'discovery' of Arthur's bones at Glastonbury in 1191, the origin of the names Avalon and Glastonbury, and associations of local places with Arthur's death. The author also explores Celtic sources for the legend ofArthur. Professor Carley has done magnificent work on many aspects ofGlastonbury studies (particularly as regards manuscripts); but it would be wrong to expect him to be equally at home with earlier material in Welsh. Nevertheless, some points make one uneasy. On pages 159-60 he discusses the Welsh Four Branches of the Mabinogi, which he confuses with TheMabinogion (the collection ofeleven Welsh tales ofwhich the FourBranches are part). He claims the FourBranches concern 'the prototypical British god Maponos, that is, the divine youth.' But this may be doubted, particularly as the Four Branches never mention the god Maponos. Professor Carley also tells us that Pwyll, the hero of the first branch, meets Arawn, prince of the Other World, on a magic mound, where they agree to exchange physical form, kingdoms, and wives for a year. But if we actually refer to the text, we find that Professor Carley's 'magic mound' is really a clearing in a wood; that Arawn is no prince, but a crowned king; and that Pwyll is unmarried. If Professor Carley nods even in reproducing a text, what must we make of his notions that the tale of Pwyll 'is a Celtic equivalent to the Leda and the Swan tale and distantly prefigures the events surrounding Arthur's own conception,' while Pwyll himself'in his role as god-king and tribal wiseman, seems to be a prototype ofPelles, the Fisher King of the Grail stories, whose residence is at the fabled Corbenic and who is wounded in his thigh as a punishment for drawing the sword of David'? The kind ofspeculation which Professor Carley reproduces is especially unfortunate in the light of recent research on the Four Branches of the Mabinogi, which is summarized in this reviewer's Medieval WeUh Literature (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1997), pp. 68-79. This research allows us to identify Professor Carley's 'magic mound' (where Pwyll meets, not Arawn, but his Other World bride-to-be Rhiannon). It is now known to be Banc-y-Warren, two miles east of Cardigan in West Wales, where it makes a kink in the highway to Aberystwyth. (Will Gothic Image now include it ARTHURIANA 7-2 (1997) REVIEWS on their Sacred Sites tours?) As for the date and authorship of the Four Branches, there is good reason to regard them as the work ofGwenllian (c. 1098-1136), princess of Gwynedd and Dyfed. The fact that we can now give the Four Branches a precise dating and social provenance will do much to assist our understanding ofearlyWelsh traditions, not least the Arthurian tradition. The above criticisms do not detract from the usefulness oíGlastonburyAbbey. The book will keep its value for many years. When a new edition is needed, Professor Carley should point out that Glastonbury's mysterious Irish priory of 'Ocymild' (p. 19) can be identified from the handbooks of Irish religious houses as Ardaneer, near Loghill in west County Limerick. ANDREW BREEZE University ofNavarre, Pamplona ...

Celtic gold torcs

Torcs are a specific type of ornamented metal neckring, which are typical artefacts of ancient barbarians. This study of Celtic gold torcs introduces the use of modern technology to analyse and classify the finds. The results emphasise the dynamic character of goldworking practised in the late, pre-Roman Celtic times.

Settlement Patterns in Anglo-Saxon England

The scientific study of rural settlement in Britain was initiated in 1883 when Seebohm published The English Village Community. In this study he argued for a continuity between the Roman villa and the Anglo-Saxon vi1lage. In 1897, however, Maitland published his Domesday Book and Beyond by way of rejoinder to Seebohm’s views. Thereafter it became customary for historians, geographers and archaeologists alike to regard the nucleated settlements of the English lowlands as Anglo-Saxon creations, implanted by groups of free English settlers in a countryside emptied, by force or fear, of its Romano-British occupants. Of late this hypothesis, which lays so much stress on Germanic as distinct from earlier achievements, has come under criticism from several quarters. Archaeologists are increasingly conscious of the survival into the Dark Ages of a British tradition in ornamentation even in England. As a philologist, Jackson has adduced sufficient linguistic evidence to undermine, even for eastern Britain, the old theory of the nearcomplete extermination of the Celts and has argued for a bilingual phase when English settlement was being effected. On a narrow front in the Cotswolds the historian, Finberg, has cogently portrayed various facets of continuity between the Roman villa and the adjoining village at Withington. On a broader front, Aston has demonstrated the limitations of Maitland’s thesis on the origin of the manor; he suggests that the primary Anglo-Saxon penetration of England was carried out not by freemen, each owning one hide of land, but under lordly direction and was therefore organized by large estates. The vacuum created by this sapping of the traditional view of Anglo-Saxon settlement has not been filled by the adoption of a convincing alternative hypothesis. This absence of an alternative is largely due to fundamental misconceptions about the organization of that Celtic society which occupied England before the advent of either Romans or Saxons. The purpose of this article is to remove these misconceptions and, by so doing, to show that the basic patterns of settlement distribution in the English lowlands date from at least Celtic times.

Further Discoveries of the Neolithic and Bronze Ages at Peterborough

In 1910 Mr. G. Wyman Abbott read to this Society a paper in which he gave some account of his discoveries of early British remains at Fengate, Peterborough (see Archaeologia, lxii, 352 ff.). Since that date he has been assiduous in collecting from the same locality such further material as has been brought to light in the process of gravel-digging. This new material already serves to indicate that the site was occupied continuously from Late Neolithic down to Late Celtic times, and, if only for that reason, is of the highest importance, since it is but seldom that a site with signs of habitation covering so long a period comes to light in this country.

The Irish greyhound of celtic times

The Irish greyhound of celtic times