Celt

A New Stone Age tool, usually a polished, ungrooved ax or adz head or blade that would be attached to a wooden shaft. The tool, often shaped like a chisel and made of stone or bronze, was probably used for felling trees or shaping wood. Great numbers of celts have been discovered in the British Isles and Denmark and they were traded widely. Bronze Age tools of similar general design are also called celts.

Term used in a number of different ways. In language studies it refers to a branch of Indoeuropean languages found now only in the far northwest of Europe (Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish and Breton) but once much more widespread. As an ethnic group Celts were described by classical writers such as Herodotus who placed their homeland — rather ambiguously — somewhere in central or western Europe. They are known to have invaded Italy and sacked Rome itself in the early 4th century bc, while in the following century groups of Celts invaded Greece, sacking Delphi, and others invaded Anatolia. In archaeology the term Celtic is often used to denote the peoples of the European Iron Age, and it is hard to dispute the likelihood that many of these peoples would indeed have been of Celtic ethnic stock and doubtless would have spoken a Celtic language. However, archaeological cultures do not necessarily coincide with ethnic or linguistic groups and it is preferable to use the cultural terms Hallstatt and La TEne when describing archaeological remains.