The social position of ancient Celtic women cannot be determined with certainty due to the sarcity and low quality of the available sources. On one hand, great female Celts are known from mythology and history; on the other hand, women's status in Celtic societies was in many ways socially and legally constrained.
Historical knowledge of Celtic women's status is almost entirely obtained from Greek and Roman sources, which may have been biased or inaccurate. Some information may also be taken from orally transmitted myths later reflected in Celtic literature of the Christian era. However, written accounts and collections of these myths are only known from the early Middle Ages, long after the Roman conquests and the spread of Christianity, which casts doubt on their reliability.
Archaeology has provided some evidence for ancient Celtic women's position. Reliefs and sculptures of Celtic women are known from the Gallo-Roman culture. Prestigious burials of Celtic women have been found alongside genetic evidence for matrilineality and matrilocality among some Celtic peoples.
Duration and extent of Celtic culture
The Celts (Ancient Greek ; Latin ) were tribes and tribal confederations of ancient Europe, who resided in west central Europe in the Late Bronze Age and early Iron Age (the Hallstatt culture). In the La Tène period they expanded, through migration and cultural transmission, to the British Isles, northern Iberia, the Balkan peninsula and Asia Minor. The Greeks and Romans commonly referred to areas under Celtic rule as or .Livy, Ab urbe condita 5.34 They had a relatively uniform material culture (especially in the La Tène period) and non-material culture (customs and norms), which differed from neighbouring peoples like the Italians, Etruscans, Illyrians, Greeks, Iberians, Germans, Thracians, and Scythians.Helmut Birkhan: Kelten. Versuch einer Gesamtdarstellung ihrer Kultur. pp. 32 ff.
The Celtic mainland was characterised by this culture from 800 BC at the earliest until about the fifth century AD (end of the Roman rule in the Celtic sphere and Christianisation of Ireland). Claims made by some Celtic scholars, that traces of Celtic culture are already visible in the second millennium BC, are controversial. In Post-Roman Britain, Celtic culture and rule continued, until pushed to the margins of the island after the arrival of the Anglo-Saxon settlers. In Ireland, Celtic culture remained dominant for even longer.
Linguistically, the Celts were united as speakers of Celtic languages, which were and are Indo-European languages related most closely to German and Latin, with clear common features.Bernhard Maier: Lexikon der keltischen Religion und Kultur. pp. 187, 295 f.
Evidence References to Celtic women are rare and, with the exception of medieval source material from Brittany and the British Isles, derived from the writings of the Celts' Greek and Roman neighbours. In addition, the overwhelming majority of these sources come from the first century BC and the first century AD. The main problem, however, is the fact that the term Celtic spans such an enormous area, from Ireland to Anatolia; there is no reason to expect that the position of women was the same over this whole area. Source material must, therefore, be clarified by archaeological evidence, which, however, can only answer certain kinds of questions.
Archaeology
Archaeological finds are almost entirely burials; in the Hallstatt culture area, which is the dispersion area of this cultural material, especially at Dürrnberg near Hallein, this material can already be identified as Celtic in the Late Hallstatt phase (sixth century BC). The grave goods of female inhumations indicate cultural exchange with southern Europe, especially the North Italian Este and Villanovan cultures.Helmut Birkhan: Kelten. Versuch einer Gesamtdarstellung ihrer Kultur. pp. 43, 307 f.
Female burials are associated with specific grave goods, such as combs, mirrors, toiletries (nail cutters, tweezers, ear spoonsHelmut Birkhan: Kelten. Bilder ihrer Kultur. pp. 351, image 658.), spinning whorls (flywheel of a pindle, a tool for making yarn,Since the wooden body of the spindle does not survive, it is the clay whorl which is most commonly found in graves; stone weights from wooden looms are also common) pottery vessels, necklaces, earrings, hairpins, cloak pins, finger rings, bracelets and other jewellery. A large majority of graves have no gender-specific grave goods, but where such goods are found, they almost always belong to female graves.Sievers/Urban/Ramsl: Lexikon zur Keltischen Archäologie. A–K und L–Z, pp. 78, 149, 387, 633, 1849 f.
The Vix Grave from modern France is the most famous rich female burial, but there are several other significant ones. In the Vix Grave a huge bronze krater or mixing bowl was found which indicates the high status of the woman buried there. It derives from a Greek workshop and is 1.6 m high, weighs over 200 kg and has a volume of 1100 litres, making it the largest metal vessel to survive from the ancient world.Arnulf Krause: Die Welt der Kelten, pp. 131 f. In eight cremation graves from Frankfurt Rhine-Main from the middle and late La Tène period, which contained young girls, statues of dogs were found, measuring 2.1 to 6.7 cm in length. They were made of jet, clay, glass and bronze; their purpose, whether amulet, votive gift or toy, cannot be determined.Sievers/Urban/Ramsl: Lexikon zur Keltischen Archäologie. A–K und L–Z, p. 810. There is evidence that in the earlier Celtic periods rich torcs of precious metal were mainly worn by females. Later, torcs are found almost exclusively in hoard contexts and gender cannot be determined; however, items like the Gundestrup cauldron dating between 150 BC and 1 BC show torcs being worn by both genders.
Another example of a richly furnished female grave is a grave chamber of the necropolis of Göblingen-Nospelt (Luxembourg), containing an amphora of fish sauce (garum fish sauce from Gades was a widely popular food seasoning), a bronze saucepan with strainer lid, a bronze cauldron, two bronze basins with a bronze bucket, a Terra sigillata plate, several clay cups and jugs, a mirror and eight fibulae.Sievers/Urban/Ramsl: Lexikon zur Keltischen Archäologie. A–K und L–Z, p. 650. The reconstructed grave chamber is depicted in Helmut Birkhan: Kelten. Bilder ihrer Kultur. p. 323, image 567.
Archaeological finds in the 19th century were often interpreted in light of contemporary ideas about gender without consideration of differences between modern and ancient cultures. Gender roles were assumed to be unalterable and, accordingly, grave goods were identified as "male" or "female" without ambiguity. Only when it became possible to determine the sex of human remains through osteological analysis was this approach revealed as overly simplistic.Sievers/Urban/Ramsl: Lexikon zur Keltischen Archäologie. A–K und L–Z, pp. 632 f.
Literary sources Written evidence is first transmitted by the Greeks: the historian and geographer Hecataeus of Miletus (Periegesis), the seafarer and explorer Pytheas of Massilia (On the Ocean) (both of these works survive only in fragments), the geographer and ethnologist Herodotus (Histories) and the polymath Poseidonius (On the Ocean and its Problems). Nothing of Poseidonius' work survives directly; it is only transmitted as citations in other authors, such as Julius Caesar's (Commentarii de Bello Gallico). Other Greek writers include Diodorus Siculus (Bibliotheke), who used older sources, Plutarch (Moralia), who took a position on the role of women, and Strabo (Geography), who expanded on the work of Polybius (Histories) through personal travels and research.
Among the works of Roman historians are the universal history of Pompeius Trogus (Philippic History) which only survives in the epitome of Marcus Iunianus Iustinus. As a Gaul himself (he belonged to the Vocontii tribe), Trogus would have transmitted much of his information at first hand. Tacitus (Annals) described Britannia and its conquest by the Romans; Ammianus Marcellinus (Res Gestae) had served as a soldier in Gaul; Livy (Ab Urbe Condita) reported on Celtic culture; Suetonius (Lives of the Caesars) was also a Roman official and describes Caesar's Gallic Wars; and the senator and consul Cassius Dio (Roman History) recounted the campaign against the Celtic queen Boudicca. Julius Caesar had portrayed an image of the Celts in his Bellum Gallicum, tailored above all to his own domestic political purposes.Helmut Birkhan: Kelten. Versuch einer Gesamtdarstellung ihrer Kultur. p. 181.
Among later historians, there is also Gerald of Wales who was born to a Cambro-Norman family in the 12th century and composed an important account of the history and geography of the British Isles.
Social position
Women as secular and religious leaders The social position of women differed by region and time period. The mainland Celtic "Princess" tombs of Bad Dürkheim,Sievers/Urban/Ramsl: Lexikon zur Keltischen Archäologie. A–K und L–Z, pp. 102 f. Reinheim,Sievers/Urban/Ramsl: Lexikon zur Keltischen Archäologie. A–K und L–Z, pp. 1570 f. WaldalgesheimSievers/Urban/Ramsl: Lexikon zur Keltischen Archäologie. A–K und L–Z, pp. 1971. and Vix show that women could hold high social positions; but whether their position was a result of their marital status is unclear. Thus modern authors refer to them as both "ladies" and "princesses".Alexander Demandt: Die Kelten, p. 50; Bernhard Maier: Geschichte und Kultur der Kelten. p. 142. The chariot found in the grave of an elite female person in Mitterkirchen im Machland is accompanied by valuable goods like those listed above.Helmut Birkhan: Kelten. Bilder ihrer Kultur. p 320, Image 561, 562. PlutarchPlutarch: Mulierum virtutes 6. names the women of Cisalpine Gaul as important judges of disputes with Hannibal. CaesarCaesar: De bello Gallico 6,19: … vitae necisque potestatem. stresses the "power of life and death" held by husbands over their wife and children. StraboStrabo Geôgraphiká III 3, 7 mentions a Celtic tribe, in which the "Men and women dance together, holding each other's hands", which was unusual among Mediterranean peoples. He states that the position of the sexes relative to each other is "opposite... to how it is with us."Strabo Geôgraphiká IV 4, 3 Ammianus Marcellinus,Ammianus Marcellinus Res gestae XV 12, 1 in his description of the manners and customs of the Gauls, describes the The name is modern, modelled on the furor Teutonicus of Lucan Bellum Civile 1.255 (heroic fury) of the Gallic women, as "large as men, with flashing eyes and teeth bared."Helmut Birkhan. Nachantike Keltenrezeption. pp. 598 f. To understand this statement properly, it is necessary to know that Romans at this time had an average height of 1.5 metres, while Celtic women in the time of Caesar were sometimes 1.55 m tall. They were, therefore, from the point of view of ancient historians, actually as large as (Roman) men.
Recent research has cast doubt on the significance of these ancient authors' statements.Bernhard Maier: Lexikon der keltischen Religion und Kultur. pp. 132 f. The position of Celtic women may have changed, especially under the influence of Roman culture and law, which saw the man as head of his household.Frank Siegmund in the SWR-Interview from the series Die Kelten: Die Frauen, das Essen und der Luxus der Kelten, online