The Celts in Illyricum - whoever they may be: The hybridization and construction of identities in southeastern Europe in the third and fourth centuries BC

Abstract

The current view of the scholarship is that ‘Celtic’ migration in the fourth and third centuries BC significantly impacted on the formation of identities in central and southeastern Europe. This work questions the notion of ‘Celtic’ identity and patterns of ‘roaming tribal migrations’ in light of recent criticisms, using post-modernistic notions of culture and ethnicity as a fluent and socially constructed phenomena, as well as contextual criticism of the Greco-Roman discourse on barbarians that is presented in written sources from antiquity. The ‘Celtic’ arrival in southeastern Europe and the formation of identities with a ‘Celtic ethnic element’, such as Scordiscan, are seen here in regional settings and explained as a consequence of the process of hybridization and restructuring of existing identities through a selective acceptance of global cultural templates from the Mediterranean and temperate Europe.