In the early winter of 1953, just after the debunking of the Piltdown fossil forgery perpetrated in the early part of this century near Uckfield, Sussex, a blizzard of correspondence descended on the British Museum (Natural History). Among the letters was a fairly ominous one addressed to Kenneth Oakley. Purporting to be a message from one 'Elihu Progwhistle', a professional medium whose seances were being monopolized by a spirit 'identifying itself as the solicitor Charles Dawson', the note angrily denounced the whole investigation. It relayed the ghost's warning that it would take violent extra-legal action against the Piltdown detectives unless they gave up the search.

There is a tendency, in these days of steadily increasing enthusiasm for excavation, to overlook the very considerable body of Greek and Roman literature extant which deals with the geography and history of the British Isles during the Roman occupation (43–410 A.D.) Few people have studied all the evidence; few history books pause to discuss the authorities for such familiar stories as those of Caratacus and Boudicca, or even to spell their names correctly. The reason is that many of these documents have never been edited in England, and no attempt has been made to collect them in handy form, and discuss the date, purpose, and value of each. The purpose of this article is to review the most important authors and estimate briefly the value of the contribution of each. There are no fewer than 49 writers in Greek and 79 in Latin who make direct mention of the British Isles; and though it is true that many of these do little more than mention them, or repeat the statements of previous authorities, we are still left with a number of independent sources of information.

Sir John Rhŷs, whose name is justly honoured by all students of the history of Britain, is nevertheless indirectly responsible for much vague conjecture concerning the Keltic problem by English archaeologists. I write ‘English’ advisedly, for Irish archaeologists—with a profound knowledge of Keltic philology—have definitely refuted the theories propounded by Rhys and maintained in various modified forms by subsequent archaeologists in England. In Wales, the other Keltic country concerned, archaeology unfortunately remained up to recent times the happy hunting-ground of antiquaries whose knowledge of both archaeology and philology was very restricted. Her professional archaeologists, in more recent years, have been hampered by an ignorance of the philological problem and have therefore naturally subscribed to the point of view of the modern English school of thought. On the other hand, some Welsh philologists, often with little or no knowledge of the archaeological evidence, have ridiculed the theories advanced by Rhŷs and the later English writers on the subject. My present purpose is to submit to the readers of ANTIQUITY a case for relinquishing entirely the generally accepted attitude of modern English archaeology towards the Keltic problem.

The authors find numerous cut-marks on human bones from an Early Iron Age cemetery in Kazakhstan and review a wide range of possible explanations. They discount cannibalism and find that the cuts and fractures fit best with a range of ritual mutilations known to ethno-archaeologists of the Altai region

At the date of about 1000 B.c., that is to say a little after the A beginning of the Iron Age and two centuries before any effective colonization by the Etruscans coming from Asia Minor, northern and central Italy may be partitioned into five distinct spheres of civilization. For convenience of treatment I shall assume that each of these spheres represents a comparatively homogeneous people, passing over the question whether there may not have been submerged minorities of some local importance. And I shall give each of these five peoples, or nations as they may not unfairly be called, a conventional name of geographic derivation, to avoid the endless and futile controversies as to tribal nomenclature. As the accompanying map therefore will show the north-west is occupied by the Comacines, part of Venetia by the Atestines, the Bolognese region by the northern Villanovans, Tuscany and part of Latium by the southern Villanovans. East of the Apennines, from Rimini to Aufidena, the Adriatic coast and the central Apennines were held by the Picenes, who must be understood for this purpose to include some of the tribes known to history as Samnites in addition to a small number of Umbrians. The first four of these nations were related by more or less close ties of kinship and practised the same burial rite of cremation, but the Picenes were of wholly different origin and used only the rite of inhumation. Of the Ligurians, occasionally mentioned by classical writers as occupying the coast of the Italian Riviera, it is impossible to say anything as they have left no remains by which their civilization in the Iron Age can be judged.