Ancient identities: 'Celts' & Roman soldiers

We use names to describe past peoples and groups, but there is a danger that these, often established long ago, may be misconceived and become a hindrance, rather than a help, to understanding our histories. Such questions of identity are especially fraught for the worlds that I study, Iron Age Europe and the Roman empire, and so have become central to my own work.

We 'know', for example, that during the centuries before Rome, much of Europe, and especially Britain and Ireland, were 'Celtic'; this is part of established popular history. Yet at least for the isles this is actually an entirely modern idea; Ireland and the non-English British peoples have only been thought of as 'Celtic' since 1700. Like many archaeologists I think that this idea is a construct which obscures a more complex historical reality, and distorts our shared history. I have argued this in print (Atlantic Celts) & public presentations.

At the same time, understandings of the Roman world are also in flux, as post-colonial views challenge the orthodoxy that generally the conquered simply 'Romanised', i.e. gratefully adopted 'superior Roman civilization'. In reality, different peoples followed their own unique cultural trajectories, rejecting, ignoring or, often, reinventing 'Romanness' for themeselves. And so, in my view, did the soldiers of Rome's vast multiethnic armies, no cogs in a war machine, but members of a far-flung 'imagined community' who created a shared 'military Rome' of their own. 'The soldiers' constituted a major identity group who partnered the emperor and the great landowners, not as obedient pawns but as dangerous allies, to dominate everyone else. This is a central theme of my book, Rome & the Sword.