The Celtic World: A History, from Four Courts Press, will be introduced by renowned medievalist and scholar of the Hill of Tara, Edel Bhreathnach.
The book is an historical exploration of how understandings of the ancient Celts, and the concept of a European-wide world inhabited by Celtic-speaking peoples, developed over time.
The study of this Celtic past, from Ireland to the Black Sea, has often been a disputed and debated territory, and for centuries the true story of these ancient Celtic-speakers was obscured by fanciful origin myths.
Linguistic studies and archaeological discoveries in the nineteenth century began to expose a rich and complex narrative that is still being clarified today, including dramatic finds in France and Germany.
These were people who have bequeathed a remarkable archaeological heritage, an astonishing art style, several living languages, and, - in Irish and Welsh - the most substantial body of early written texts in a non-Latin tongue in western Europe.
Waddell is a former Professor of Archaeology in the University of Galway. His books include Archaeology and Celtic myth, and Pagan Ireland: ritual and belief in another world.
