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THE HEUNEBURG (BADEN-WÜRTTEMBERG) AND THE HALLSTATT-PERIOD CELTS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2026

Patrick Sims-Williams Open the ORCID record for Patrick Sims-Williams [Opens in a new window]
Patrick Sims-Williams*
Affiliation:
Welsh & Celtic Studies, Aberystwyth University Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, UK
*
Email: pps@aber.ac.uk
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Abstract

The Heuneburg is part of an important proto-urban complex of the Late Hallstatt period beside the upper Danube in Baden-Württemberg. Since it is not very far from the river’s source, it is widely believed to be the Celtic polis of Pyrene at the source of the Danube, mentioned by Herodotus in the fifth century bc. This identification is the main justification for associating the Danube valley with the Hallstatt-period Celts. A well-established objection is that Herodotus was under the misapprehension that the Danube rose in the Pyrenees in the far west of Europe and that he mistook the mountain-name Pyrene as the name of a polis. Two recent objections to this objection are that the term polis is especially appropriate for the Heuneburg, the ‘first city north of the Alps’, and that there is a reference to a Pyrene in the area of the Heuneburg in a fifteenth-century manuscript from Crete. Both objections are shown to be invalid, and further arguments are advanced for supposing that Herodotus’s Celts were nearer the Pyrenees than Baden-Württemberg.

Keywords

HallstattHeuneburg (Germany)PyreneHerodotusCelts

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Research paper
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The Antiquaries Journal , First View , pp. 1 - 13
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This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
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© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Society of Antiquaries of London

INTRODUCTION

The Heuneburg, beside the upper Danube in Baden-Württemberg (Germany), is increasingly and justly celebrated as one of the most important proto-urban Iron Age sites of the Late Hallstatt period. Unsurprisingly, since it is not very far from the river’s source, it has been claimed to be the Celtic polis of Pyrene at the source of Danube mentioned by Herodotus (c 485–424 bc).Footnote 1 In the twentieth century this identification completely supplanted older ones, such as Pfohren near Donaueschingen, first proposed by Beatus Rhenanus in 1531,Footnote 2 and a mons Piri (near Heidelberg?), discussed by Theodor Bergk in 1887.Footnote 3 The Heuneburg is now advertised to the general public as a ‘possible’ or ‘probable’ candidate to be Herodotus’s Pyrene or, more definitely, as ‘Heuneburg – Celtic City of Pyrene’, the ‘oldest city north of the Alps’ when ‘ancient Rome was still a small village on the Tiber’.Footnote 4 Professional archaeologists, however, often emphasise that Heuneburg being Pyrene ‘cannot be proved’ and ‘remains only a hypothesis’,Footnote 5 and many operate without mentioning the equationFootnote 6 or reject it, rightly in my opinion; for example, John Collis:

Despite claims that perhaps the Heuneburg was Pyrene, the greater likelihood is that Herodotus, like Aristotle, was confused about where the Danube rose.Footnote 7

Whether or not Herodotus’s Pyrene lay in Baden-Württemberg is of more than local significance, because the conventional association between Celts and the Danube valley in the Late Hallstatt period entirely depends on it so far as written evidence is concerned.Footnote 8 This was already clear in the influential Manuel d’archéologie préhistorique et celtique of Déchelette,Footnote 9 who noted that Herodotus was one of only two written sources for the whole area. The other was Hecataeus (c 560–480 bc), said by Stephanus of Byzantium (in the sixth century ad) to have referred to a ‘Celtic polis’ called Nyrax. Déchelette and others tentatively connected the name Nyrax with the vaguely similar Noreia in Noricum (approximately Austria and part of Slovenia), but that guess is now generally rejected.Footnote 10 The most recent suggestion, that Nyrax lay in Portugal,Footnote 11 is also a guess.

As far as written sources go, labelling sixth- or fifth-century Baden-Württemberg and areas to its east as ‘Celtic’ now depends on equating the Heuneburg with Herodotus’s Pyrene.Footnote 12 If this equation is incorrect, we have no contemporary written evidence for Celts in southern Germany during the Early Iron Age (ie before c 450 bc). This is why cautious students of the ‘West-Hallstattkreis’ now tend to say that this area is ‘often referred to as “early Celtic”, suggesting tentative connections to later cultural phenomena’.Footnote 13 Similarly, recent French archaeologists and ancient historians, surveying middle Europe in the Early Iron Age (800–450 bc) ‘before the historical Celts’, consistently avoid the adjective ‘Celtic’, despite frequent reference to the Heuneburg.Footnote 14

A RECENT DEFENCE OF THE CELTICITY OF THE HEUNEBURG

At one time, Dirk Krausse, a distinguished and prolific authority on the archaeology of Baden-Württemberg, agreed that ‘we cannot be certain that the Heuneburg was the polis of Pyrene’.Footnote 15 Now, however, he supports the equation, advancing two new arguments, which will discussed below, and defends the use of ‘Celtic’ in Hallstatt-period archaeology on more general grounds.Footnote 16 One of these grounds is that:

Not only in museums and the media, but also in international scientific competition for publication and third-party funding, terms like ‘Celts’ or ‘Celtic’ may be more attractive than anonymous prehistoric terms such as Hunsrück-Eifel-Culture, Northwest Alpine Zone of the Late Hallstatt Culture, or La Tène Culture(s).Footnote 17

Another is that:

In any case, if archaeology truly wants to be and remain the leading discipline of Celtic Studies, it can hardly do without the concept of the Celts.Footnote 18

Revisionism, Krausse argues, has undermined Central European prehistoric research:

Unnoticed by wide sections of German-language research, the international discussion about the origins of ‘Celtic’ has meanwhile, in some respects, developed in a direction that radically calls into question the findings and doctrines of Central European prehistoric research. […] Publications claiming to prove the origins of the Celts in different regions of Europe, based on supposedly hard scientific facts, are proliferating.Footnote 19

Mentioning the ‘shaky hypotheses’ (wackligen Hypothesen) of numerous outsiders, especially in Britain,Footnote 20 he regrets that German-language Iron Age research ‘seems to have lost interpretative sovereignty over its own subject matter some time ago, as the major narratives on the topic of “Celts” and “Celtic” are now produced by others’.Footnote 21

Unfortunately, in his zeal to defend the autonomy of ‘Central European prehistoric research’, Krausse misrepresents the views of its imagined opponents.

As an example, I take my own paper ‘An alternative to “Celtic from the East” and “Celtic from the West”’.Footnote 22 This was well-received by archaeologists;Footnote 23 Krausse, however, objects to my:

raising the question of whether Germanic rather than Celtic was spoken at the Heuneburg (Herbertingen-Hundersingen, Sigmaringen district, Germany) in the sixth century bc,[ Footnote 24 ] although in the same passage he supports the opinion that the Germanic languages only developed around 500 bc. Here one only need note that the heuneburg was already abandoned as early as the first half of the fifth century bc.Footnote 25

That would indeed be nonsense, but what I actually wrote was quite different:

If a linguistic label really had to be attached to the ‘eastern Hallstatt culture’, Anreiter’s ‘Eastern Alpine Indo-European’ would be preferable both to ‘Celtic’ and even more so to ‘Germanic’, recently suggested by Renfrew (Reference Renfrew, Koch and Cunliffe2013, 216) when rightly questioning whether ‘the Hallstatt chiefs of the Heuneburg in the 6th century bc […] spoke a Celtic language at all’.Footnote 26

And the quoted opinion about Germanic not coming into existence much before 500 bc Footnote 27 was due to Mallory et al,Footnote 28 not to me. The confusion is all Krausse’s. He continues:

When, for example, the Heuneburg is classified as belonging to the ‘eastern Hallstatt culture’,[ Footnote 29 ] this falls short of the bare minimum of archaeological knowledge expected even of a linguist, especially when formulating theses of such considerable scope.Footnote 30

In fact, I was referring to Austria and Hungary on page 515, not to the Heuneburg, as readers can verify for themselves.

Krausse, citing Déchelette,Footnote 31 says that I wrongly accuse Déchelette ‘of having interpreted the entire Hallstatt culture as Celtic’.Footnote 32 In fact, I was referring to scholars in ‘the mid nineteenth century’,Footnote 33 and gave a cross-reference to a paper, cited by Krausse, where I noted Déchelette’s contrary opinion, citing those precise pages, 571 and 602.Footnote 34

Krausse’s criticisms of other scholars seem to be intended to discourage readers from bothering to read the sceptics for themselves. A context is suggested by the following paragraph, where he quotes Thomas Paulsen:

It is entirely incomprehensible that there are still Greek scholars or ancient historians who ‘partly amused, partly irritated, turn up their noses at the […] attempt by some archaeologists to equate the Celtic settlement of Pyrene, mentioned by the Greek historian Herodotus, […] with the Heuneburg in Upper Swabia’.[ Footnote 35 ] Polemics and interdisciplinary ignorance, however, will hardly be able to permanently halt […] the progress of knowledge in prehistoric archaeology.Footnote 36

THE TWO NEW ARGUMENTS FOR THE HEUNEBURG’S CELTICITY

Polemics aside, Krausse makes two new points in favour of Pyrene being Heuneburg.

The first is that the Heuneburg, as one of the most important political and economic centres north of the Alps in the sixth/fifth centuries bc, particularly deserved the Greek accolade of being called a polis.Footnote 37 This argument overlooks the fact that, when Greek writers in the time of Hecataeus and Herodotus deal with ‘barbarian’ territory, polis need not refer to more than a ‘town’. This was already pointed out in a paper published in Stuttgart in 1997.Footnote 38 Herodotus’s Pyrene, if it ever existed, was not necessarily an important place like the Heuneburg.

Krausse’s second point is more complicated, but a detailed discussion will cast indirect light on how Herodotus and then Aristotle came to hold their erroneous ideas about the length of the Danube.

His argument is based on a reference to Pyrene in a late fifteenth-century Cretan copy of the scholia on Apollonius of Rhodes’s third-century bc Argonautica.Footnote 39

According to the fantastic geography of Apollonius’s poem, the waters of the Danube descend from the northern Ocean past the semi-mythical Rhipaean mountains – these were traditionally located somewhere in the north-east of Europe (fig 1).Footnote 40 Reaching the borders of the Thracians and Scythians, one branch of Apollonius’s Danube turns east to the Black Sea while the other turns west to the Adriatic.Footnote 41 The existence of this imaginary Black Sea–Adriatic sea-passage to the Mediterranean was a common misconception in antiquity.Footnote 42 The Argonauts take this route along the Danube from its Black Sea mouth and down to the Adriatic.Footnote 43 Next, after sailing about in the Adriatic, they sail up the Po to its (imaginary) three-way confluence with the Rhône and with an unnamed third river that flows westwards to the ocean in the far west.Footnote 44 From this confluence they follow the Rhône through unidentified (Swiss or Italian?) lakes ‘in the land of the Celts’, avoiding a perilous further branch that would lead past ‘the Hercynian peak’ to the Ocean; if suggested by a real river,Footnote 45 this perilous branch may be the Rhine, or even the Seine. Finally, they proceed down the Rhône, past Celts and Ligurians, to the Tyrrhenian Sea.Footnote 46

Fig 1.

Real and imaginary rivers.

A map depicting the fantastic geography of Apolloniusʼ poem, showing the Danubeʼs descent from the Northern Ocean past the Rhipaean Mountains.
Fig 1. Long description

A map depicting the fantastic geography of Apolloniusʼ poem, showing the Danubeʼs descent from the Northern Ocean past the Rhipaean Mountains. The map includes various rivers, lakes, and geographic features labeled with their names. Key locations include Heuneburg, Hallstatt, Belgrade, and the Celtic Lake(s). The map also shows the Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, Adriatic Sea, Tyrrhenian Sea, and the Black Sea. The Rhipaean Mountains are located in the northeast. The Danube River flows from the Northern Ocean, passing through Scythia and Thrace. The map also highlights the Celtic Sea (Gulf of Lion) and the Po River. The map uses lines to indicate the flow of rivers and arrows to show direction. The map is a blend of real and imaginary geography, illustrating the mythical and historical understanding of the region during the time of Apolloniusʼ poem.

The oldest text of the scholia on ApolloniusFootnote 47 quotes On Ports, the lost early fourth-century bc work of Timagetus, as having stated that the waters of the Danube descend from ‘the Celtic mountains’ (not the Rhipaean mountains) ‘in the land of the Celts’ (Gaul?) and flow into ‘the Celtic lake’ (λíμνη), from which one branch flows into the Black Sea and the other into ‘the Celtic Sea’ (θάλασσα), which is an attested name for the Gulf of Lion.Footnote 48 Timagetus’s Argonauts exit via the latter branch ‘to Tyrrhenia’ (ϵἰς Τυρρηνíαν) – evidently going down the Rhône, as in Apollonius.Footnote 49 Although the entry in the scholia concludes by saying that Apollonius followed Timagetus, there is an important difference: Timagetus’s Danube seems not to flow into the Adriatic, but goes the whole way from the Black Sea to the Tyrrhenian Sea, via the Danube and Rhône.Footnote 50 This doctrine, that the Danube turned into the Rhône, would be taught much later by Theodore of Tarsus (ad 602–90), the Greek archbishop of Canterbury.Footnote 51

Timagetus’s geography is even vaguer than Apollonius’s; his ‘Celtic lake’ vaguely resembles Apollonius’s lakes ‘in the land of the Celts’, but there is no hint as to its location.

Rather than following the older ms L on Timagetus, Krausse cites the late fifteenth-century ms P,Footnote 52 as partially quoted and translated by Howald and Meyer.Footnote 53 The recension found in ms P may have been composed as late as c 1300–1475,Footnote 54 and is generally regarded as inferior to that in ms L, having a tendency to abbreviate, simplify and smooth out difficulties in a cavalier manner.Footnote 55

Whereas ms L says that according to Timagetus one branch of the Danube flowed from ‘the Celtic lake’ into the Black Sea and the other into the ‘Celtic Sea’ (the Gulf of Lion),Footnote 56 and that the Argonauts took the latter branch ‘to Tyrrhenia’ (ϵἰς Τυρρηνíαν), ms P reverses the order of the Black Sea and the Celtic Sea branches and has the Argonauts sailing ‘upstream’ from the Black Sea branch ‘to Pyrene’ (ϵἰς Πυρήνην), from where they sail through the other mouth into ‘the Celtic Sea’ – with no mention of Tyrrhenia.Footnote 57 Although Krausse wants ms P’s Pyrene to be the Heuneburg and suggests that ‘the Celtic lake’ might be Lake Constance,Footnote 58 south of the Danube, an identification rejected by Delage,Footnote 59 it is far more likely that the introduction of Pyrene is due to medieval awareness of the Pyrenees or to a scholarly memory of Pyrene in Herodotus and/or Aristotle.Footnote 60 Quite possibility P’s ϵἰς Πυρήνην is due to misreading L’s ϵἰς Τυρρηνíαν, for Wendel notes confusion between initial Π and Τ elsewhere in ms P.Footnote 61

HERODOTUS’S PYRENE RECONSIDERED

Timagetus and Apollonius do help us is in providing a plausible context for Herodotus’s ideas about the great length of the Danube, for Herodotus was well acquainted with stories about the Argonauts.Footnote 62

Discussing the (supposedly) transcontinental length of the Nile, Herodotus opines,Footnote 63 illogically, that its length in Africa is similar to the (supposedly known) length of the Danube in Europe, which (he says) flows through Europe from the polis of Pyrene, in the land of the Keltoi, who, with the exception of the Kynetes/Kynesioi (in Portugal),Footnote 64 are the most westerly people in Europe, living beyond the Pillars of Hercules (the strait of Gibraltar) – therefore somewhere near the Atlantic Ocean.Footnote 65 Surely, then, Herodotus’s Pyrene, unlike the Heuneburg, lay in the far west of Europe and he was mistaken about the length of the Danube.

His mistake is understandable in view of the statement by Strabo that the source of the Danube was unknown until Tiberius came across it, a day’s march from Lake Constance, in 15 bc.Footnote 66 That earlier Greek geographers did not know its true source is confirmed by Aristotle’s statement,Footnote 67 possibly improving on Herodotus, that Pyrene is a mountain towards the west in Celtica, from which the Danube flows across Europe to the Black Sea and from which, conversely, the Tartessus (Guadalquivir) enters the ‘sea outside the Pillars of Hercules’ (ie flowing into the Atlantic).Footnote 68

The Guadalquivir does not really reach as far as the Pyrenees, any more than the Danube does, but Aristotle’s scenario has a certain plausibility, bearing in mind the imaginary transcontinental rivers in Timagetus and Apollonius, especially the former’s Danube–Rhône and the latter’s Danube–Adriatic. Further examples of such rivers include the Nile linking the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean (known to, but rejected by, Herodotus 2.21) and the Danube apparently flowing into the Loire according to Pseudo-Scymnus, c 135 bc.Footnote 69 Such transcontinental rivers did not really exist, but the use of land bridges to enable traders to move from river to river may have fostered the notion that they did.Footnote 70

The occurrence of the name Pyrene in Herodotus and Aristotle is most simply explained by the assumptions that their source(s) associated Celts with the area of the Pyrenees and that they supposed that the Danube reached the Pyrenees. It is not immediately clear whether their Danube was supposed to meet the Pyrenees (a) near their northern, Atlantic end, perhaps via a river such as the Ariège or the GaronneFootnote 71 or the Adour,Footnote 72 or (b) near their southern, Mediterranean end, perhaps via the Rhône. Krausse’s objection that Aristotle cannot have believed in waterways crossing France, because rivers such as the Saône-Rhône would obstruct them,Footnote 73 may attribute more precise knowledge to the philosopher than he really possessed. (He was clearly unaware that the Ebro would prevent the Guadalquivir reaching the Pyrenees.)

The merits of a northern versus southern Pyrenean location for the ‘Danubian’ Celts of Herodotus and Aristotle have been discussed in detail elsewhere.Footnote 74 Both are possible: (1) Apollonius’s imaginary east–west river flowing between the supposed Po/Rhône confluence and the western Ocean (4.630) might well meet the Atlantic somewhere near the northern Pyrenees; (2) alternatively, the Danube–Rhône waterway of Timagetus and Theodore of Tarsus would suit a south Pyrenean location, for Aeschylus and ‘historians of former times’ thought that the Rhône reached Iberia, as noted by Pliny (37.11.32) and Strabo (3.4.19).Footnote 75 Pliny himself (3.4.33) thought that Rhoda (Ciutadella des Roses) in Spain took its name from the Rhône (Rhodanus).Footnote 76 Moreover, Herodorus of Heraclea (c 400 bc) recorded the presence in southern Iberia ‘up to the Rhône’ of Kelkianoi – an ethnonym that looks suspiciously like a slip for Keltianoi.Footnote 77

Early Greek geographers such as Ephorus in the fourth century bc and Eratosthenes in the third wrongly supposed that the Celts possessed most of Iberia.Footnote 78 Herodotus may well have thought the same, for he only mentions Celts, Tartessians and Cynetes in the Peninsula. From this perspective, his Pyrenean Celts could easily be supposed to inhabit territory all the way from western France to ‘beyond the Pillars of Hercules’.

CONCLUSION

This fresh scrutiny of the relevant texts has shown that there is no good reason for locating Herodotus’s Pyrene at the Heuneburg, or indeed Pfohren or anywhere else in or near Baden-Württemberg. Here ‘Celtoscepticism’ undermines cherished opinions. Scrutiny, however, can also refute ‘Celtosceptic’ opinions. For example, the longstanding ‘Celtosceptic’ opinion that no ancient author ever referred to Keltoi in BritainFootnote 79 has been undermined by a reconsideration of what Hipparchus says about Pytheas.Footnote 80 Perhaps, then, further examination of ancient texts will finally reveal a reference to Keltoi in southern Germany or Austria in the fifth or sixth centuries bc. Or possibly ancient DNA and isotopic studiesFootnote 81 will reveal significantly close relationships between social groups in Baden-Württemberg and ones in areas further west that are more securely labelled ‘Celtic’.

Until that time, the ethnic and linguistic situation at the Heuneburg in the sixth and fifth centuries must be regarded as simply ‘unknown’. Even if one wanted – which I do not – it would be impossible to prove that Celtic was not spoken in Baden-Württemberg at that period. Before giving Celtic the benefit of the doubt, however, we must remember that (a) beside languages known to modern scholarship by ethnic names such as ‘Celtic’ and ‘Raetic’, there existed others, possibly many others, such as ‘Eastern Alpine Indo-European’, inferred from toponymy,Footnote 82 and (b) conventional ethnological and archaeological assumptions about Celticity in Early Iron Age Central Europe all depend ultimately either on antiquarian interpretations of a few authors such as Herodotus or on projecting later evidence backwards.

To label the Heuneburg as ‘Celtic’ solely on archaeological grounds, without any linguistic or textual evidence, would be too confusing: the general public, and most students of ‘Celtic studies’, expect a ‘Celtic’ hillfort to have something to do with people independently labelled ‘Celts’ by historians and/or linguists. ‘Celtic’, at least in studies of the ancient world, does not have an arbitrary art-historical meaning comparable to, say, ‘Gothic’ in ‘Gothic architecture’. If such an ahistorical meaning were ever accepted in Celtic archaeology, it could not aspire to be ‘the leading discipline of Celtic Studies’.Footnote 83 This is why Krausse understandably attaches such importance to locating Pyrene in Baden-Württemberg.

It might be argued that the Heuneburg can still be marketed as a ‘Celtic city’ because its residents shared some customs and material characteristics with known Keltoi and/or Celtic-speakers elsewhere. That is a slippery slope. Krausse offers Polybius’s Veneti as a good example of an ethnic group that resembled Keltoi culturally, but differed in ethnonym and language:

The part of the plain [of the Po] near the Adriatic never ceased to be in the possession of another very ancient tribe called Veneti, differing slightly from the Celts in customs and costume and speaking another language.Footnote 84

‘In such cases,’ Krausse notes, ‘one could also use the term “Celtoid”.’Footnote 85 How useful would this be? And how would the general public, the media and funding bodies react if the Heuneburg were marketed as ‘Celtoid’? It is surely better to label it ‘Early Iron Age’, pending the discovery of more precise evidence. It can stand on its own spectacular merits, without borrowing the name Pyrene from Herodotus.

Footnotes

1. See Krausse et al Reference Krausse, Wieland and Schmitt2025, 13, 16, 66–70, 89–91, 104–11.

2. Mundt Reference Mundt2008, 286.

3. Cf Sims-Williams Reference Sims-Williams2016, 15.

4. See www.heuneburg-pyrene.de and www.heuneburg-pyrene.de/en/celtic-city (both accessed 2 March 2026); cf Jung Reference Jung, Karl and Leskovar2017 on the ‘marketing’ of the site.

5. For example, Fernández-Götz and Krausse Reference Fernández-Götz and Krausse2012, 29, Reference Fernández-Götz and Krausse2013, 478.

6. For example, Buchsenschutz et al Reference Buchsenschutz, Chardenoux, Gruel, Lambert, Lejars and Verger2015, 6, 75–6; Fernández-Götz Reference Fernández-Götz2018.

7. Collis Reference Collis2003, 165

8. Bittel Reference Bittel1934, 108.

9. Déchelette Reference Déchelette1913, 568.

10. For example, Collis Reference Collis2003, 126, 188; Sims-Williams Reference Sims-Williams2016, 8–9, Reference Sims-Williams2017, 431, Reference Sims-Williams2020, 514.

11. Bouiron Reference Bouiron2022, 210–11, 280, 328–33, 617.

12. Krausse (Reference Krausse, Posluschny, Verse and David2024, 154) refers to ‘historical sources’ (historische Quellen) for Celtic migrations eastwards in the ‘5th/4th century’, presumably meaning the possibly mythical migration of Segovesus from Gaul to the notoriously ill-defined Hercynian Forest (Bohemia?), dated to c 600 bc by Livy (5.34), but to c 400 bc by many modern scholars (see Tomaschitz Reference Tomaschitz2002, 41–52, 182–3; Collis Reference Collis2003, 21–2, 111, 169–70; Buchsenschutz et al Reference Buchsenschutz, Chardenoux, Gruel, Lambert, Lejars and Verger2015, 76–7; Schönfelder Reference Schönfelder2024, 99–100). How long before their historically attested 3rd-century bc eastward migrations the Celts may have spread east is discussed by Kysela Reference Kysela, Militký, Kysela and Tisucktá2019, Sims-Williams Reference Sims-Williams2020, 513, and Brunaux Reference Brunaux2022, 155, 358–65, 388 n 18. On the Hercynian Forest, see Tabula Imperii Romani M–33, 1986, 42–3; Kidd Reference Kidd1988, 930–1.

13. Gretzinger et al Reference Gretzinger, Schmitt, Mötsch, Carlhoff, Lamnidis, Huang, Ringbauer, Knipper, Francken, Mandt, Hansen, Freund, Posth, Rathmann, Harvati, Wieland, Granehäll, Maixner, Zink, Schier, Krausse, Krause and Schiffels2024, 1467 (my italics).

14. Buchsenschutz et al Reference Buchsenschutz, Chardenoux, Gruel, Lambert, Lejars and Verger2015, 75–152.

15. Krausse Reference Krausse and Vitali2006, 135.

16. Krausse Reference Krausse, Posluschny, Verse and David2024.

17. Ibid, 152–3: Nicht nur im musealen oder medialen Bereich, sondern auch im internationalen wissenschaftlichen Wettbewerb um Publikationen und Drittmittel sind Begriffe wie „Celts“ oder „celtic“ ggf. attraktiver als anonyme prähistorische Termini, wie Hunsrück-Eifel-Kultur, Nordwestalpiner Kreis der Späthallstattkultur oder Latènekultur(en).

18. Ibid, 183: In jedem Fall kann die Archäologie, wenn sie tatsächlich Leitdisziplin der Keltenforschung sein und bleiben möchte, auf den Keltenbegriff schwerlich verzichten.

19. Ibid, 151: unbemerkt von weiten Teilen der deutschsprachigen Forschung hat sich die internationale Diskussion um die Ursprünge „des Keltischen“ inzwischen teilweise in eine Richtung entwickelt, die die Erkenntnisse und Lehrmeinungen der zentraleuropäischen prähistorischen Forschung radikal infrage stellt. […] Publikationen, die angeblich auf der Basis vermeintlich harter naturwissenschaftlicher Fakten die Ursprünge der Kelten in unterschiedlichen Regionen Europas belegen, überschlagen sich förmlich (my ellipses).

20. Ibid, 155 n 39.

21. Ibid, 155: Allerdings scheint insbesondere die deutschsprachige Eisenzeitforschung diese Deutungshoheit über ihren Forschungsgegenstand schon länger verloren zu haben, denn die großen Narrative zum Thema „Celts“ und „Celtic“ produzieren inzwischen Andere.

22. Sims-Williams Reference Sims-Williams2020.

23. For example, Ruiz Zapatero Reference Ruiz Zapatero2025, 544: ‘a brilliant paper’; Waddell Reference Waddell2026, 175–6: ‘a more economical interpretation of the origin of the Celtic languages consonant with historical and linguistic evidence’.

24. Sims-Williams Reference Sims-Williams2020, 515.

25. Krausse Reference Krausse, Posluschny, Verse and David2024, 154 and nn 32–3 : ‘… die Frage aufzuwerfen, ob man auf der Heuneburg (Herbertingen-Hundersingen, Lkr. Sigmaringen, DE) im 6. Jahrhundert v. Chr. nicht eher Germanisch als Keltisch sprach [Sims-Williams Reference Sims-Williams2020, 515], obwohl er an gleicher Stelle die Auffassung vertritt, dass die germanischen Sprachen sich erst um circa 500 v. Chr. herausgebildet hätten [Ebd. 524; hier sei nur angemerkt, dass die Heuneburg bereits in der ersten Hälfte des 5. Jahrhunderts v. Chr. aufgegeben wurde]’.

26. Sims-Williams Reference Sims-Williams2020, 515. ‘Anreiter’ refers to Anreiter Reference Anreiter1997, Anreiter et al Reference Anreiter, Haslinger, Roider, Parsons and Sims-Williams2000, 115, and Anreiter Reference Anreiter2001. As noted in Sims-Williams Reference Sims-Williams2016, 9, Anreiter’s ‘East Alpine Region’ is ‘east’ of Lake Constance and its linguistic profile – late Celtic place-names over a pre-Celtic Indo-European stratum – continues through Noricum into Pannonia.

27. Sims-Williams Reference Sims-Williams2020, 524.

28. Mallory et al Reference Mallory, Dybo and Balanovsky2019, 1483.

29. Sims-Williams Reference Sims-Williams2020, 515.

30. Krausse Reference Krausse, Posluschny, Verse and David2024, 154: Wenn zum Beispiel die Heuneburg zur „eastern Hallstatt culture“ [Sims-Williams Reference Sims-Williams2020, 515] gerechnet wird, dann wird hier das erforderliche Mindestmaß an archäologischer Informiertheit unterschritten, dass man auch von einem Linguisten erwarten darf, zumal wenn er Thesen von so erheblicher Reichweite formuliert.

31. Déchelette Reference Déchelette1913, 571, 602.

32. Krausse Reference Krausse, Posluschny, Verse and David2024, 154: […] rekurriert Sims-Williams auf Joseph Dechelette, dem er unterstellt, er hätte die gesamte Hallstattkultur pauschal als keltisch gedeutet.

33. Sims-Williams Reference Sims-Williams2020, 512, citing Müller-Scheeßel Reference Müller-Scheeßel2000.

34. Sims-Williams Reference Sims-Williams2016, 9 n 14.

35. Paulsen Reference Paulsen, Pankau, Baitinger and Stobbe2023.

36. Krausse Reference Krausse, Posluschny, Verse and David2024, 173 (his ellipses, except the final one below): ist es gänzlich unverständlich, dass es immer noch Graezisten bzw. Althistoriker gibt, die „teils amüsiert, teils irritiert die Nase [rümpfen] über den […] Versuch mancher Archäologen, die vom griechischen Historiker Herodot […] erwähnte keltische Siedlung Pyrene mit der oberschwäbischen Heuneburg gleichzusetzen“ [Paulsen Reference Paulsen, Pankau, Baitinger and Stobbe2023]. Polemik und interdisziplinäre Ignoranz werden jedoch die Erkenntnisfortschritte der Prähistorischen Archäologie […] kaum dauerhaft aufhalten können.

37. Ibid, 167–9. He now says that it is ‘probably (!) the oldest place in Central Europe to be mentioned in writing’ (Krausse Reference Krausse, Krausse, Wieland and Schmitt2025, 111): So wird man sich bis auf Weiteres darauf verständigen, dass es sich bei der Heuneburg um die einzige stadtartige Siedlung im fraglichen Bereich der oberen Donau handelt – wenn man so will, um eine „keltische Polis“ – und damit wahrscheinlich (!) um den ältesten schriftlich erwähnten Ort ganz Mitteleuropas.

38. Hansen Reference Hansen and Nielsen1997; cf Hansen and Nielsen Reference Hansen and Nielsen2004, 36, 162.

39. This is ms P (Bibliothèque national de France, ms grec 2727), as quoted and translated in Die römische Schweiz: Howald and Meyer Reference Howald and Meyer1940, 8–9.

40. Falileyev Reference Falileyev2025, 65.

41. Apollonius 4.282–93; cf Strabo 1.2.39. Where the two branches diverged is disputed (Delage Reference Delage1930, 207–9); although somewhere near Belgrade has been suggested, Kauliakos (4.324) suggests a connection with the Kaulikoi near the Ionian gulf, mentioned by Hecataeus (see Bouiron Reference Bouiron2022, 1765 and 1910). The similarity to Cauliacum (‘Caulius’s estate’) in Gaul (Holder Reference Holder1896–1913, i, 867, iii, 1167) is coincidental as -iakos was a widespread suffix (Sims-Williams Reference Sims-Williams2006, 9 and 302).

42. Delage Reference Delage1930, 203–4; Dicks Reference Dicks1960, 62–3, 120–1; Silberman Reference Silberman1988, 50–1, 196 n 10, 201 n 15; Sims-Williams Reference Sims-Williams2016, 11 n 30.

43. Apollonius 4.323–30.

44. Ibid 4.592–634. Line 630 refers to the west rather than the north; see Delage Reference Delage1930, 224–5; Vian Reference Vian1981, 97 n 3; Race Reference Race2008, 379 n 84 (the maps in Vian and Race omit this western river). A river such as the Loire or Garonne is a possible inspiration.

45. Cf Fränkel Reference Fränkel1968, 507.

46. Apollonius 4.634–51.

47. ms L (copied ad 960–80).

48. Wendel Reference Wendel1932, 40, citing Appian, Roman Wars, 12.95 for ‘the Ligurian and Celtic Sea’. Cf Strabo 2.5.28, 3.1.3, 4.1.6, 4.2.1: Galatikos/Keltikos kolpos.

49. Wendel Reference Wendel1935, 273; Lachenaud Reference Lachenaud2010, 438–9.

50. Delage Reference Delage1930, 66, 70–1, 202, 210.

51. Bischoff and Lapidge Reference Bischoff and Lapidge1994, 310–11; their reference (p 443) to Pomponius Mela confusing the Phison with the Rhône is a slip. Scholia on Apollonius seem to attribute to Aeschylus the opinion that the Danube flowed both into the Adriatic and into the Tyrrhenian Sea: Delage Reference Delage1930, 201; Lachenaud Reference Lachenaud2010, 448.

52. Krausse Reference Krausse, Posluschny, Verse and David2024, 161.

53. Howald and Meyer Reference Howald and Meyer1940, 8–9.

54. Wendel Reference Wendel1932, 44.

55. Ibid, 33–51, 1935, xv; Lachenaud Reference Lachenaud2010, xiv–xv.

56. Lachenaud Reference Lachenaud2010, 438–9.

57. For the text of ms P, see Schaefer Reference Schaefer1813, 284, and Wendel Reference Wendel1935, 273 n 22. The next part of Krausse’s supposed quotation from ms P is in fact from ms L: Wendel Reference Wendel1935, 280; Lachenaud Reference Lachenaud2010, 451.

58. Krausse Reference Krausse, Posluschny, Verse and David2024, 161.

59. Delage Reference Delage1930, 229.

60. See Wendel Reference Wendel1935, 273 n 22; Vian Reference Vian1981, 97 n 3, and especially Wendel Reference Wendel1932, 40, who gives a detailed explanation of the confusion in ms P.

61. Wendel Reference Wendel1932, 38.

62. Delage Reference Delage1930, 62–3.

63. Herodotus History 2.33 and 4.49.

64. On the Cynetes, see Sims-Williams Reference Sims-Williams2016, 13; Guerra Reference Guerra2025.

65. Cf Herodotus History 4.8.

66. Strabo 7.1.5.

67. Aristotle Meteorology 1.13.

68. See Sims-Williams Reference Sims-Williams2016, 20–1.

69. Cf Sims-Williams Reference Sims-Williams2016, 19.

70. See the maps in Moret Reference Moret, Olmer and Roure2015, 226, fig 6; Krausse Reference Krausse, Posluschny, Verse and David2024, 162 and 166, figs 5–6; Krausse et al Reference Krausse, Wieland and Schmitt2025, 107, 110, 146–7, 178. See also the maps illustrating ancient ideas about the course of French rivers in Sideri Reference Sideri2016. Cf Fränkel Reference Fränkel1968, 507–9.

71. Collis Reference Collis, Popa and Stoddart2014, 302.

72. Sims-Williams Reference Sims-Williams2016, 19.

73. Krause Reference Krausse, Posluschny, Verse and David2024, 162–3.

74. Sims-Williams Reference Sims-Williams2016; García Alonso Reference García Alonso2025. Inevitably such studies – such as Hansen and Nielsen Reference Hansen and Nielsen2004, 158, and Krausse Reference Krausse, Posluschny, Verse and David2024, 164 – discuss the significance of a Pyrene civitas between Marseille and Gibraltar in the Ora Maritima by Avienus (4th century ad), lines 559–60: quondam Pyrenae latera civitas ditis laris/stetisse fertur … ‘it is said that once upon a time the city Pyrene, a prosperous town, stood …’ (Murphy Reference Murphy1977, 36–7, 68, 115). Guillaumin and Bernard, however, the latest editors of the poem (Reference Guillaumin and Bernard2021, 24, 147–8), note that this translation involves emending Pyrenae to Pyrene and omitting the metrically superfluous latera as an interpolated gloss, perhaps referring to Lattes, ancient Lattara. They point out that incorporated glosses are unparalleled in the rest of the poem, whereas lacunae are common, and therefore hypothesise a lacuna of unknown length between quondam Pyrenae latera ‘once upon a time the flanks of the Pyrenees’, and civitas ditis laris/stetisse fertur ‘a city with rich habitations is said to have stood’; cf Bouiron Reference Bouiron2022, 292 n 172, 318, 337, 639–41). If they are correct, whatever occurred on ‘the flanks of the Pyrenees’ is unknowable and Avienus’s once prosperous civitas becomes nameless, unlocated and irrelevant to Herodotus.

75. See Hansen and Nielsen Reference Hansen and Nielsen2004, 158.

76. Delage Reference Delage1930, 225–6.

77. Sims-Williams Reference Sims-Williams2017, 421–9.

78. Strabo 2.4.4 and 4.4.6; Josephus, Contra Apionem, 1.67.

79. Cf Krausse Reference Krausse, Posluschny, Verse and David2024, 180.

80. Sims-Williams Reference Sims-Williams2025.

81. Cf Gretzinger et al Reference Gretzinger, Schmitt, Mötsch, Carlhoff, Lamnidis, Huang, Ringbauer, Knipper, Francken, Mandt, Hansen, Freund, Posth, Rathmann, Harvati, Wieland, Granehäll, Maixner, Zink, Schier, Krausse, Krause and Schiffels2024; Schönfelder Reference Schönfelder2024, 103.

82. Anreiter Reference Anreiter1997; Anreiter et al Reference Anreiter, Haslinger, Roider, Parsons and Sims-Williams2000.

83. Krausse Reference Krausse, Posluschny, Verse and David2024, 183.

84. Polybius 2.17.5. Similarly Strabo 2.5.28 says that Celts and Ligurians are ‘of different ethnicity but similar in their lifestyle’. Such comments are still made about the Bretons and French, and the Welsh and English.

85. Krausse Reference Krausse, Posluschny, Verse and David2024, 181: Man könnte in solchen Fällen auch den Begriff „keltoid“ verwenden.

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Figure 0

Fig 1. Fig 1 long description.Real and imaginary rivers.