The Celts - a load of Gauls?

[Justin Swanton]

Polybius is very clear that body armour for the legions was an issue of personal cost, not role. Velites don't not have armour because of their role, but because their relative poverty and youth means that they cannot afford to be hastati, and THAT defines their role.

Bingo. Affordability = equipment = role (or way of war). It's a practical rather than cultural thing.

Re shields, I've wondered about round vs oblong/rectangular shapes. My take is that a rectangular or oblong shape is practical in that it covers the soldier's body but leaves him mobile - he can pull back without the sides of his shield bumping into his neighbours. A round shield makes a solid shieldwall possible: the interlocking shields form a protective front and cannot be easily pushed back. They also have the effect of making it impossible for the soldier to retire: if the chaps behind him have their shields also interlocking then he is there for the duration of the fight. Win or die. Very good for performance.

[Erpingham]

Bingo. Affordability = equipment = role (or way of war). It's a practical rather than cultural thing.

Affordability relates to the society you find yourself in and your position within it. So even on your own terms, it has its route in culture.  I would suggest how a society fights is wrapped in a selection of things e,g. social structure, ideology, economics, weapons technology, and these are interrelated to various degrees. 

[Justin Swanton]

Bingo. Affordability = equipment = role (or way of war). It's a practical rather than cultural thing.

Affordability relates to the society you find yourself in and your position within it. So even on your own terms, it has its route in culture.  I would suggest how a society fights is wrapped in a selection of things e,g. social structure, ideology, economics, weapons technology, and these are interrelated to various degrees.

I suspect that when it comes to warfare practicality is key. Culture can be highly variable for things like art and music but when your life is on the line, you fight as your armament permits you to. Practicality depends on what weaponry your community is able to make and that depends on the size and specialisation of your community. Small tribes cannot specialise enough to support blacksmiths, and larger tribes cannot support enough blacksmiths to create body armour in quantity. You need to be a city state to create the full panoply. After that there is room for a variety of fighting doctrines or ways of war. Accessibility to a lot of horses combined with a culture of horse riding, will make a big difference in how you fight. I think it goes rather like paper scissors stone over a long period of time:

Infantry with shields can beat skirmishers.
Chariots can beat infantry with shields.
Heavier infantry and cavalry can beat chariots.
Hoplites can beat cavalry and any lighter form of infantry.
Legionaries can beat hoplites (they can get past their spear guard and take them out in close quarters swordfighting).
Phalangites can beat hoplites and but not legionaries as they require good ground and flank support, both of which legionaries can deny them.
Heavy cavalry can beat legionaries.
Pikes can beat heavy cavalry.

And so on.

[Ian61]

Damn, I thought current thinking was:-

[DBS]

Bingo. Affordability = equipment = role (or way of war). It's a practical rather than cultural thing.

Affordability relates to the society you find yourself in and your position within it. So even on your own terms, it has its route in culture.  I would suggest how a society fights is wrapped in a selection of things e,g. social structure, ideology, economics, weapons technology, and these are interrelated to various degrees. 

It also relates to whom you expect to fight and at what scale.  Hairy barbarians expecting to fight other hairy barbarians will have one set of needs, and are probably focused more on cattle rustling or tribal feuds anyway.  Hairy barbarians expecting to raid across the Rhine, Danube or Hadrian's Wall will hope not to fight anyone who can fight back, and thus also have a set of low value needs.  Fighting Agricola at Mons Graupius is not something for which your barbarian tribe plans in advance, or develops itself to undertake.  The successful barbarian incursions against civilisations (massive generalisation coming but still I think worth making) come from exploiting weaknesses in those civilisations, and/or after a period of partial assimilation (which includes acquisition of some kit and techniques), and/or sheer numbers and persistence.  The Amorites and Kassites, on paper (or should that be on clay) should never have come to dominate the Mesopotamian city states, but they did.  However, they then seem largely to have carried on with the Sumerian and Akkadian ways of warfare.

[Ian61]

and/or sheer numbers and persistence.

Good points above but would you put, for instance, the Mongls in the numbers category?

[Imperial Dave]

Damn, I thought current thinking was:-

me too

[Justin Swanton]

Damn, I thought current thinking was:-

[Justin Swanton]

OK, teeny weeny clarification. I was thinking of this lot as following one after the other in time (more or less):

Infantry with shields can beat skirmishers.
Chariots can beat infantry with shields.
Heavier infantry and cavalry can beat chariots.
Hoplites can beat cavalry and any lighter form of infantry.
Legionaries can beat hoplites (they can get past their spear guard and take them out in close quarters swordfighting).
Phalangites can beat hoplites and but not legionaries as they require good ground and flank support, both of which legionaries can deny them.
Heavy cavalry can beat legionaries.
Pikes can beat heavy cavalry.

So the infantry vs skirmishers comes at the beginning of organised warfare and the pikes vs heavy cav comes in the late Middle Ages. Or something like that.

[Mark G]

So now you are removing society and culture entirely.

It's not going to work, forget the grand theories.

[DBS]

and/or sheer numbers and persistence.

Good points above but would you put, for instance, the Mongls in the numbers category?

I don't know enough about the Mongols to offer a meaningful opinion, but would observe that the nomads on the eastern reaches of the steppe had lived in proximity to the Chinese civilisations for centuries, so that surely had some effect, and secondly, the steppe nomads seem to have always been able to have an impact disproportionate to their numbers and kit versus sedentary civilisations until either the nomads ran out of steam or descended into internecine squabbles, or the current generation of sedentary opponents learned, adapted and got the measure of them.

Even so, the steppe peoples seem still to have largely focused on squabbling with other steppe peoples or raiding, rather than conquering, sedentary peoples. Strong leadership was needed to harness that aggression for longer term, more ambitious goals.

[Justin Swanton]

the steppe nomads seem to have always been able to have an impact disproportionate to their numbers and kit versus sedentary civilisations until either the nomads ran out of steam or descended into internecine squabbles, or the current generation of sedentary opponents learned, adapted and got the measure of them.

There was a very good 2-part article on the Mongols some time back in Slingshot. The upshot as I recall was that sedentary civilisations never really got the measure of steppe nomads until gunpowder was widely used. Before the musket infantry had no effective answer to an army consisting of highly mobile archers. Muskets were the beginning of the improvement of ranged weapons culminating in the 20+km range howitzers that dominate the battlefield today.

[Ian61]

There was a very good 2-part article on the Mongols some time back in Slingshot.

Indeed, I remember reading that which may have been in my mind when I asked the question.

[aligern]

Back to Celts?
The weakness of Cunliffe's argument in Celtic from the West is that Celtic culture and artefacts and Celtic language are clearly found in Eastern Europe , probably before they are traceable in the West . I don't doubt the existence of substantial trade in the West and the relative ease of sea based transport compared to land migration. However there is good reason to believe that peoples move West from Gaul into Britain, such as the Parisii to Yorkshire, the Belgae to the South coast. Meanwhile tribes were moving out innan Eastward direction to become the Scordiscii and others in the Balkans and the three Galatian tribes in Anatolia. All these appear to have common language and culture with the Gauls, as do the Celts who moved south to become Celtiberians or those that moved into Italy, the Boii, The Senones, Insubres, etc.
Tribes on the move appear to either be split offs from an original tribe with the same name, or new formations that likely named themselves. Tracing the names and journeys backwards tends to give a central European core starting point that fits with the story that the artefacts mostly tell.
Lastly the Celtic way of war is more properly described as the Celtic way of war against the Romans because the vast majority of descriptions are of battles against Rome. What appears in these fights is that , at first, the Celts start by going head to head against the Romans.  They realise that this does not work. They then try standing on hills to get the advantage of height, then they move to ambushes and guerilla tactics as they realise that beating the Romans frontally is difficult, nigh impossible. The Germans follow the same pattern, just later.  However, we do not know even whether the original tactic of forming a battle line is what the Celts would do against each other.  It may well be that the linear formation was a response to how they thought that tge Romans could best be countered. Perhaps in Celtic internecine warfare tactics fitted more to the social structure with smaller groups of professional warriors gathered around a chief seeking out parallel bands of opponents?


Roy
 

[Justin Swanton]

However, we do not know even whether the original tactic of forming a battle line is what the Celts would do against each other.  It may well be that the linear formation was a response to how they thought that tge Romans could best be countered. Perhaps in Celtic internecine warfare tactics fitted more to the social structure with smaller groups of professional warriors gathered around a chief seeking out parallel bands of opponents?

It would seem that forming a battleline is the natural result of two sizeable groups of men fighting each other, as this fight between the Russian football supporters of Spartak and Zenit demonstrates.