Culture and Celtic Speech

The 'Celticity Project' takes its impetus from the fact that those things termed 'Celtic' are today simultaneously of growing general interest, controversial (in both the academic and political arenas), and poorly understood. In this period, with the turbulent course of European integration on the one hand, and devolution to the cultural regions and nations within nations on the other, experts in Celtic studies are uniquely placed to illuminate the reality of the historical and cultural relations of Ireland, Britain, mainland Europe, and their respective parts. However, owing to the universal centrifugal tendency of academic specialization, a view of the big picture is a rarity and liable to be individualistically subjective. Too few scholars venture out of their preferred discipline, period, and geographic domain. And of those few, too many fall into the trap of duelling with shades - synthesizing or criticizing what the linguists or archaeologists thought a generation ago. Therefore, we embarked on a major project which amounted to swimming upstream against the more usual pattern of funded research these days. Rather than staking out a discrete bit of under-exploited turf to explore and publish more-or-less fully, we were aiming for that 'big picture' invoked above - Celticity and Celtic studies in both their totality and in quantifiable significant detail