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39-522: The endonym of modern-day Galicians, galegos , derives directly from the name of this people. Archaeologically, the Gallaeci evolved from the local Atlantic Bronze Age culture (1300–700 BC). During the Iron Age they received additional influences, including from Southern Iberian and Celtiberian cultures, and from central-western Europe ( Hallstatt and, to a lesser extent, La Tène culture ), and from

78-644: A high degree of cultural similarity seen in coastal communities ranging from central Portugal in the south of coastal Europe, through Galicia (Spain), the Atlantic coast of France, including Armorica (Brittany) to Cornwall in southwest England and as far north as Scotland . This is evidenced by the frequent use of stone as chevaux-de-frise , the construction of cliff castles, and a similarity of domestic architecture and living spaces, sometimes characterized by roundhouses. Trade contacts extended northwards and eastwards to Sweden and Denmark and eastwards as far as

117-538: A label for the period spanning approximately 1300–700 BC in Britain, France, Ireland, Portugal and Spain; that is, the Atlantic coast of Europe. Others assign it to a cultural complex of the Bronze Age period in prehistoric Europe that is defined by the culture prevalent at this time and location. The Atlantic Bronze Age is characterized by economic and cultural exchange between far-flung communities, resulting in

156-811: A second element such as -bris (from proto-Celtic *brixs), -briga (from proto-Celtic *brigā), -ocelum (from proto-Celtic *okelo-), -dunum (from proto-Celtic *dūno-) all meaning "hill > hill-fort" or similar: Aviliobris, Letiobri, Talabriga, Nemetobriga, Louciocelo, Tarbucelo, Caladunum, etc. Others are superlative formations (from proto-Celtic *-isamo-, -(s)amo-): Berisamo (from *Bergisamo-), Sesmaca (from *Segisamo-). Many Galician modern day toponyms derive from these old settlements' names: Canzobre < Caranzovre < *Carantiobrixs, Trove < Talobre < *Talobrixs, Ombre < Anobre < *Anobrixs, Biobra < *Vidobriga, Bendollo < *Vindocelo, Andamollo < *Andamocelo, Osmo < Osamo < *Uxsamo, Sésamo < *Segisamo, Ledesma < *φletisama... Associated archaeologically with

195-456: A sizeable number of small hillforts ( castellum ). So each Gallaecian considered themselves a member of his or her populus and of the hillfort where they lived, as deduced by their usual onomastic phormula: first Name + patronymic (genitive) + (optionally) populus or nation (nominative) + (optionally) origin of the person = name of their hill-fort (ablative): Bracarenses Lucenses Other minor groups Pomponius Mela , who described

234-676: A variety of bronze swords , including carp-tongue swords, are usually found buried in lakes, rivers, or rocky outcrops. Elite feasting equipment such as spits, kettles, and meat hooks have also been found from central Portugal to Scotland. It is during this period that the Celts rose to prominence in Europe In particular, the Celtic language may have developed as an Atlantic lingua franca . Communities may have adopted elite status markers such as grip-tongue swords and bronze sheet metalwork from

273-763: Is described by the Encyclopædia Britannica (1911) as "dry in style and deficient in method, but of pure Latinity , and occasionally relieved by pleasing word-pictures." Except for the geographical parts of Pliny 's Historia naturalis (where Mela is cited as an important authority), the De situ orbis is the only formal treatise on the subject in Classical Latin . Little is known of Pomponius except his name and birthplace—the small town of Tingentera or Cingentera (identified as Iulia Traducta ) in southern Spain , on Algeciras Bay (Mela ii. 6, § 96; but

312-423: Is the case for Illyrian or Ligurian languages, its corpus is composed by isolated words and short sentences contained in local Latin inscriptions, or glossed by classic authors, together with a considerable number of names – anthroponyms, ethnonyms, theonyms, toponyms – contained in inscriptions, or surviving up to date as place, river or mountain names. Besides, many of the isolated words of Celtic origin preserved in

351-572: The Bay of Biscay more accurately than Eratosthenes or Strabo, his ideas of the British Isles and their position are also clearer than his predecessors. He is the first to name the Orcades or Orkney Islands , which he defines and locates pretty correctly. Of northern Europe his knowledge was imperfect, but he speaks of a great bay (" Codanus sinus ") to the north of Germany, among whose many islands

390-684: The Castro culture existed, in honour of the castro people that settled in the area of Calle — the Callaeci . The Romans established a port in the south of the region which they called Portus Calle , today's Porto , in northern Portugal. When the Romans first conquered the Callaeci they ruled them as part of the province of Lusitania but later created a new province of Callaecia ( Greek : Καλλαικία ) or Gallaecia . The names "Callaici" and "Calle" are

429-968: The Conventus of Gallaecia, Asturica and, perhaps, Cluniense into the new province of Gallaecia ( Greek : Kallaikia ), with the colony of Bracara Augusta ( Braga ) as its provincial capital. Gallaecia during the Empire became a recruiting district of auxiliary troops ( auxilia ) for the Roman Army and Gallaican auxiliary cavalry ( equitatae ) and infantry ( peditatae ) units ( Cohors II Lucensium , Cohors III Lucensium , Cohors I Bracaraugustanorum , Cohors III Bracaraugustanorum , Cohors III Callaecorum Bracaraugustanorum , Cohors V Callaecorum Lucensium , Cohors VI Braecarorum , Cohors I Asturum et Callaecorum ) distinguished themselves during Emperor Claudius ' conquest of Britain in AD 43-60 . The region remained one of

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468-660: The Lusitani and the Turduli Veteres . Regarded as hardy fighters, Gallaeci warriors fought for the Lusitani during Viriathus ' campaigns in the south , and in 138-136 BC they faced the first Roman incursion into their territory by consul Decimus Junius Brutus , whose campaign reached as far as the river Nimis (possibly the Minho or Miño ). After seizing the town of Talabriga (Marnel, Lamas do Vouga – Águeda ) from

507-663: The Mediterranean ( Phoenicians and Carthaginians ). The Gallaeci dwelt in hill forts (locally called castros ), and the archaeological culture they developed is known by archaeologists as " Castro culture ", a hill-fort culture (usually, but not always) with round or elongated houses. The Gallaecian way of life was based in land occupation especially by fortified settlements that are known in Latin language as "castra" (hillforts) or "oppida" (citadels); they varied in size from small villages of less than one hectare (more common in

546-766: The Straits of Gibraltar , and describes the countries adjoining the south coast of the Mediterranean ; then he moves round by Syria and Asia Minor to the Black Sea , and so returns to Spain along the north shore of the Euxine, Propontis , etc. After treating the Mediterranean islands, he next takes the ocean littoral —to west, north, east and south successively—from Spain and Gaul round to India, from India to Persia , Arabia and Ethiopia ; and so again works back to Spain. Like most classical geographers he conceives of

585-485: The Urnfield period (Bronze D and Hallstatt A) and they must also have acquired the skills for their production, and ritual knowledge about their proper treatment involving deposition. These changes may indicate processes related to language change. The emergence of Celtic languages with a Proto-Celtic homeland in west-central Europe can be explained by elite contact from east to west. However, this view contrasts with

624-655: The 5th century AD. These fortified villages tended to be located in the hills, and occasionally rocky promontories and peninsulas near the seashore, as it improved visibility and control over territory. These settlements were strategically located for a better control of natural resources, including mineral ores such as iron. The Gallaecian hillforts and oppidas maintained a great homogeneity and presented clear commonalities. The citadels, however, functioned as city-states and could have specific cultural traits. The names of such hill-forts, as preserved in Latin inscriptions and other literary sources, were frequently composite nouns with

663-636: The Atlantic trading port of Brigantium (also designated Carunium ; either Betanzos or A Coruña ). This livelihood in hillforts was common throughout Europe during the Bronze and Iron Ages, getting in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, the name of 'Castro culture" ( Castrum culture) or "hillfort's culture", which alludes to this type of settlement prior to the Roman conquest. However, several Gallaecian hillforts continued to be inhabited until

702-566: The Augustan legates Gaius Antistius Vetus and Gaius Firmius fought a difficult campaign to subdue the Gallaeci tribes of the more remote forested and mountainous parts of Gallaecia bordering the Atlantic Ocean , defeating them only after a series of severe battles, though no exact details are given. After conquering Gallaecia, Augustus promptly used its territory – now part of his envisaged Transduriana Province , whose organization

741-545: The Elder and father of Lucan . The general views of the De situ orbis mainly agree with those current among Greek writers from Eratosthenes to Strabo ; the latter was probably unknown to Mela. But Pomponius is unique among ancient geographers in that, after dividing the Earth into five zones, of which two only were habitable, he asserts the existence of antichthones , inhabiting the southern temperate zone inaccessible to

780-632: The Galician seashore and their dwellers around 40 AD, divided the coastal Gallaeci in non-Celtic Grovii along the southern areas; the Celtic peoples who lived along the Rías Baixas and Costa da Morte regions in northern Galicia; and the also Celtic Artabri who dwelled all along the northern coast in between the latter and the Astures . The Romans named the entire region north of the Douro , where

819-477: The Gallaeci did not adopt writing until contact with the Romans constrains the study of their earlier history. However, early allusions to this people are present in ancient Greek and Latin authors prior to the conquest, which allows the reconstruction of a few historical events of this people since the second century BC. The oldest known inscription referring to the Gallaeci (reading Ἔθνο[υς] Καλλαϊκῶ[ν] , "people of

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858-561: The Gallaeci") was found in 1981 in the Sebasteion of Aphrodisias, Turkey , where a triumphal monument to Augustus mentions them among other fifteen nations allegedly conquered by this Roman emperor. Protected by their mountainous country and its isolation, the Gallaican tribes did not fall under Carthaginian rule , though a combined Gallaeci- Lusitani mercenary contingent led by a chieftain named Viriathus (not to be confused with

897-735: The Mediterranean. This Bronze Age culture was characterized by distinct regional centers of metal production, linked by regular maritime trade. The main centers were in southern England and Ireland, northwestern France, and western Iberia (Spain and Portugal). Items associated with this culture are often found in hoards or deposited in ritual areas. Metal finds have typically been preserved in watery contexts such as rivers, lakes, and bogs. This cultural complex includes various items, such as socketed and double-ring bronze axes, sometimes found buried in large hoards in Brittany and Galicia. Military equipment such as lunate spearheads, V-notched shields, and

936-600: The Turduli Veteres, he crushed an allegedly 60,000-strong Gallaeci relief army sent to support the Lusitani at a desperate and difficult battle near the Durius river , in which 50,000 Gallaicans were slain, 6,000 were taken prisoner and only a few managed to escape, before withdrawing south. It remains unclear if the Gallaeci participated actively in the Sertorian Wars , although a fragment of Sallust records

975-514: The continent of Africa as surrounded by sea and not extending very far south. The editio princeps of Mela was published at Milan in 1471; the first critical edition was by Joachim Vadian (Wien, 1518), superseded by those of Johann Heinrich Voss (1658), Johann Friedrich Gronovius (1685 and 1696), A. Gronovius (1722 and 1728), and Tzschucke (1806–1807), in seven parts (Leipzig; the most elaborate of all); G. Paithey's (Berlin, 1867) for its text. The English translation by Arthur Golding (1585)

1014-774: The folk of the northern temperate regions from the unbearable heat of the intervening torrid belt. On the divisions and boundaries of Europe , Asia and Africa , he repeats Eratosthenes; like all classical geographers from Alexander the Great (except Ptolemy ) he regards the Caspian Sea as an inlet of the Northern Ocean, corresponding to the Persian and Arabian ( Red Sea ) gulfs on the south. His Indian conceptions are inferior to those of some earlier Greek writers; he follows Eratosthenes in supposing that country to occupy

1053-455: The hill forts are the famous Gallaecian warrior statues - slightly larger than life size statues of warriors, assumed to be deified local heroes. The Gallaecian political organization is not known with certainty but it is very probable that they were divided into small independent chiefdoms who the Romans called populus or civitas , each one ruled by a local petty king or chief ( princeps ), as in other parts of Europe. Each populus comprised

1092-423: The knowledge of divination by the entrails of beasts, by feathers and flames, now howling barbarian songs in the tongues of their homelands, now alternately stamping the ground in their rhythmic dances until the ground rang, and accompanying the playing with sonorous shields . The Gallaeci came into direct contact with Rome relatively late, in the wake of the Roman punitive campaigns against their southern neighbours,

1131-613: The last redoubts of Celtic culture and language in the Iberian Peninsula well into the Roman imperial period, at least until the spread of Christianity and the Germanic invasions of the late 4th/early 5th centuries AD , when it was conquered by the Suevi and their Hasdingi Vandals ' allies. Atlantic Bronze Age The Atlantic Bronze Age is a term that has never been formally defined. Some take its meaning to be

1170-840: The later Lusitani general bearing the same name that battled the Romans in Hispania in the mid-2nd century BC) is mentioned in Hannibal 's army during his march to Italy during the Second Punic War , participating in the battles of Lake Trasimene and Cannae . On his epic poem Punica , Silius Italicus gives a short description of these mercenaries and their military tactics: […] Fibrarum et pennae divinarumque sagacem flammarum misit dives Gallaecia pubem, barbara nunc patriis ululantem carmina linguis, nunc pedis alterno percussa verbere terra ad numerum resonas gaudentem plauder caetras […] Rich Gallaecia sent its youths, wise in

1209-496: The local Romance languages could have been inherited from these Q-Celtic dialects. Through the Gallaecian-Roman inscriptions, is known part of the great pantheon of Gallaecian deities, sharing part not only by other Celtic or Celticized peoples in the Iberian Peninsula, such as Astur — especially the more Western — or Lusitanian, but also by Gauls and Britons among others. This will highlight the following: The fact that

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1248-534: The more widely accepted view that Celtic origins are linked to the central European Hallstatt C culture . Pomponius Mela Pomponius Mela , who wrote around AD 43, was the earliest known Roman geographer . He was born at the end of the 1st century BC in Tingentera (now Algeciras ) and died c.  AD 45. His short work ( De situ orbis libri III. ) remained in use nearly to the year 1500. It occupies less than one hundred pages of ordinary print, and

1287-752: The northern territory) to great walled citadels with more than 10 hectares sometimes denominated oppida , being these latter more common in the Southern half of their traditional settlement and around the Ave river . Due to the dispersed nature of their settlements, large towns were rare in pre-Roman Gallaecia although some medium-sized oppida have been identified, namely the obscure Portus Calle (also known as Cales or Cale ; Castelo de Gaia , near Porto ), Avobriga ( Castro de Alvarelhos – Santo Tirso ?), Tongobriga ( Freixo – Marco de Canaveses ), Brigantia ( Bragança ?), Tyde/Tude ( Tui ), Lugus ( Lugo ) and

1326-458: The origin of today's Gaia , Galicia, and the "Gal" root in "Portugal", among many other placenames in the region. Gallaecian was a Q-Celtic language or group of languages or dialects, closely related to Celtiberian, spoken at the beginning of our era in the north-western quarter of the Iberian Peninsula, more specifically between the west and north Atlantic coasts and an imaginary line running north–south and linking Oviedo and Mérida. Just like it

1365-501: The sertorian legate Marcus Perperna Veiento capturing the town of Cale in around 74 BC. Later in 61-60 BC the Propraetor of Hispania Ulterior Julius Caesar forced upon them the recognition of Roman suzerainty after defeating the northern Gallaeci in a combined sea-and-land battle at Brigantium , but it remained mostly nominal until the outbreak of the first Astur-Cantabrian War in 29 BC . Paulus Orosius briefly mentions that

1404-740: The south-eastern angle of Asia, whence the coast trended northwards to Scythia, and then swept round westward to the Caspian Sea. As usual, he places the Riphean Mountains and the Hyperboreans near the Scythian Ocean. In western Europe his knowledge (as was natural in a Spanish subject of Imperial Rome) was somewhat in advance of the Greek geographers. He defines the western coast-line of Spain and Gaul and its indentation by

1443-747: The text is here corrupt). The date of his writing may be approximately fixed by his allusion (iii. 6 § 49) to a proposed British expedition of the reigning emperor, almost certainly that of Claudius in AD 43. That this passage cannot refer to Julius Caesar is evidenced by several references to events of Augustus 's reign; especially to certain new names given to Spanish towns. Mela, like the two Senecas , Lucan , Martial , Quintilian , Trajan , Hadrian , were all part of Italic communities settled in various parts of Spain that eventually relocated in Rome. It has been conjectured that Pomponius Mela may have been related in some way to Marcus Annaeus Mela , son of Seneca

1482-424: Was entrusted to suffect consul Lucius Sestius Albanianus Quirinalis – as a springboard to his rear offensive against the Astures . In the later part of the 1st century BC military colonies were established and the pacified Gallaeci tribes were integrated by Augustus into his new Hispania Tarraconensis province. Later in the 3rd century AD, Emperor Diocletian created an administrative division which included

1521-569: Was one, "Codanovia", of pre-eminent size; this name reappears in Pliny the Elder 's work as Scatinavia . Codanovia and Scatinavia were both Latin renderings of the Proto-Germanic * Skaðinawio , the Germanic name for Scandinavia . Mela's descriptive method follows ocean coasts, in the manner of a periplus , probably because it was derived from the accounts of navigators. He begins at

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