INTRODUCTION

It is a truism to observe that all people die. It is equally true to observe that the death of a loved one is one of the most traumatic events in life. Beliefs about the nature of life, death and what happens thereafter, are profoundly religious in nature. The study of burials brings the archaeologist into the closest possible contact with a vanished people and society - providing both the remains of the individuals and one of the very few enduring examples of very deliberate, and inherently meaningful, belief-laden activities. Jean-Louis Brunaux has phrased it thus: ‘it would be more correct to see the [world of the dead] as the terrain of an ideology - not simply funerary, but more broadly religious and eschatological.’ Burials and funerary practices are of unequalled value to the archaeologist.

There is a multitude of intervening factors between the archaeologist and an understanding of Celtic burial practices and Celtic beliefs about the Otherworld. These must be considered first, before discussing in rather more detail just what sources of information are available, and what those sources have to say about the Celtic world.

The first and most important point is that the archaeological record (which is almost all the information available over most of the time and area discussed) is of itself almost mute. The archaeological artefacts and contexts acquire meaning through a process of argument by analogy. It is therefore important that the analogies be selected with care.

A second and equally important point is that specific religious beliefs about death and the Otherworld need not be reflected in specific practices, and vice versa. Put simply, a belief in life after death may be instituted by the practice of cremation, but is equally likely to be implemented by inhumation burial. Lastly, the vagaries of survival that plague all archaeological evidence must be mentioned. It is all too likely that crucial evidence was made of perishable materials and is unlikely to survive in its usual context; therefore if it survives in an unusual context its relevance may not be recognized.

Sources

There are three principal sources of information available about Celtic burial practices and beliefs. The major source of information will always be archaeology. Two other sources require particular care In their use. The first Is the writings about Celtic society by observers from the classical Mediterranean world (elsewhere referred to as Celtic ethnographies), and the second are tales and myths with religious meanings preserved In the Celtic vernacular literature of Ireland and Wales. Both of these sources should probably be used only to provide background, avoiding applications that are too specific (Wait 1985: 21-34).

In recent years the archaeological approach to the Iron Age and the Celts has altered radically. The 1970s and early 1980s were dominated by an interpretative framework that saw the Celts in relation to the classical world of the Mediterranean, reacting to stimuli originating in Greece or Italy. To a certain extent this generalizing approach was valid and useful, but it also created a view of the Celts as timeless and traditional, a monolithic entity across Europe and across more than a thousand years. An important goal of this short discussion is to discuss ‘Celtic’ burial practices while still recognizing the internal variability within the Celtic world.

The Literary Sources

The nature and descent of the Celtic vernacular literature has been discussed in some detail elsewhere (Wait 1985: 210-34). Here it may be sufficient to observe that Irish, and to a lesser extent Welsh, myths do contain a wealth of religious information deriving from a late and provincial Celtic society. This may legitimately be used as a source, but should not be extended to apply to Celtic societies widely separated in time and space.

One immediate limitation is that these sources contain virtually no direct references to typical Celtic funerals. There are, on the other hand, many passages about the Celtic Otherworld, or Otherworlds. One problem Is that it is not made clear whether these Otherworlds are simply places where the gods dwelt, or included places where the Celtic dead went after death as well (e. g. Davidson 1988: 122-6, 167-76; MacCulloch 1949: 80-8). Another qualification Is that the modern concept of the ‘soul’ may not be appropriate In the Celtic context.

What does seem very clear Is that the Irish and Welsh Celts did believe In an Otherworld of superlative, Elysian nature, where the gods dwelt and which could be accessed through the Sidh mounds or by voyages. More common mortals (or their souls) Journeyed to an Otherworld, called Tech Duinn, or the House of Donn. This Otherworld was ruled by Donn, a somewhat mysterious figure in mythology. Tech Duinn appears to be a more sombre place than the Sidh Otherworld, reached through the far south-west coastal land of Kerry. The ‘mechanics’ of travel to Tech Duinn are never stated.

Similarly, the observations by classical visitors about Celtic society in Gaul In the first centuries BC and AD have been widely discussed (e. g. Wait 1985: 191-209; Nash 1976, 1978). These sources have their own limitations, such as the motives of the Greek and Roman observers, but nonetheless are of considerable value In understanding Gaulish Celtic society during that crucial period of change.

One of the outstanding features of Celtic belief, as remarked on by these observers is that the Celts believed in an immortal soul (Wait 1985; 205-6):

The belief of Pythagoras is strong among them, that the souls of men are immortal, and that after a definite number of years they live a second life when the soul passes to another body. This is the reason given why some people at the burial of the dead cast upon the pyre letters written to their dead relatives, thinking that the dead will be able to read them.

(Diodorus Siculus, V.28; Tierney i960: 250)

They [the druids] are chiefly anxious to have men believe the following: that the souls do not suffer death, but after death pass from one body to another . . . Funerals are on a large and expensive scale, considering the Gallic way of life; everything which they believe the dead man loved in life is given to the flames, even the animals.

(Caesar V.14, iv. 19; Tierney i960: 273)

Similar comments regarding the immortality of souls, and a further life in an Otherworld are echoed in Ammianus Marcellinus (quoting Timagenes), Pomponius Mela and Strabo (Chadwick 1966: 25, 30, 51-2).

An aspect of this belief which seems to have particularly impressed the observers was the concreteness of the afterlife. From all this emerges a conception of an Otherworld much like this world, where everyday objects would again have a place.

Ethnographic Analogy

Finally, mention should be made of a few aspects of the use of anthropological theory in interpreting archaeological evidence. The primary method is the ethnographic analogy - interpreting the archaeological record on the basis of parallels with the material culture of a society observed by modern ethnographers. This requires extensive parallels in many aspects of the two societies. Where such extensive parallelism cannot be demonstrated, a more general analogy may be employed (called general-comparative analogies). In this case a consistent relationship between burial practices and eschatological beliefs may be employed to explain a society observed archaeologically. In this mode of interpretation, it is clearly unwise to attempt too specific an explanation. There is a voluminous literature dealing with the ‘archaeology of death’ (e. g. Wait 1985: 235-40; Saxe 1970; Binford 1971; Tainter 1978; O’Shea 1984; Huntingdon and Metcalfe 1979) and the methodology is tolerably well understood.

Archaeology

Even overtly social dimensions such as political structure may also have ideological dimensions. In particular, much of the analysis of burial or mortuary practices rests upon the differential treatment of people as defined by the society itself. This may mean the differential treatment of political elites, economic groups, kin groups, or groups defined along ritual criteria. Within the burial traditions visible in the British Iron Age, several traditions appear to deal with a social majority (i. e. they are normative rites) while others apply to minority groups.