The Celtic Inscriptions of Britain: Phonology and Chronology, c. 400–1200

This is the first comprehensive linguistic study for 50 years of the stones from western Britain and Brittany, inscribed in the Roman and Irish Ogam alphabets. The stones are a major source for the history of the Celtic–speakers of post–Roman Britain and for the development and divergence of their languages, yet the dating of the 370 inscriptions remains uncertain. Now, through a new study of the phonological development of the Brittonic and Irish branches of Celtic, Patrick Sims–Williams places the chronology of the inscriptions on a surer footing. The book will be of interest to archaeologists, historians and art historians, as well as to philologists interested in the methods and problems of historical phonology and onomastics.

List of Tables and Figures. Preface. Part I: Introduction. 1.1 The Corpus. 1.2 The Reading of the Inscriptions. 1.31 Previous Linguistic Work on the Inscriptions. 1.4 The Chronology of the Inscription: The Problem. Part II: British Phonology (1–98). Part III: British Chronology. 3.1 Construction of Table 3.1. 3.2 Construction of Table 3.2. 3.3 New Order of Columns. 3.4 Comparison of Linguistic and Epigraphic Relative Dating: Table 3.3. 3.5 Conflicting Epigraphic and linguistic Dates: Table 5.2. 3.6 Absolute Dating. 3.7 Summary of Absolute Dating From Non–inscriptional Sources. 3.8 Synthesis of Epigraphic and Linguistic Dates. Part IV: Irish Phonology (1–43). Part V: Irish Chronology. 5.1 Construction of Table 5.1. 5.2 Problems in Table 5.1. 5.3 Periodization of the Irish or Possible Irish Names: Table 5.2. 5.4 Comparison of Linguistic and Epigraphic Relative Dating. 5.5 Summary. 5.6 Absolute Dating of Irish Periods. 5.7 Brittonic and Irish Chronology Compared. Part VI: Conclusion and List of Proposed Dates. 6.1 Conclusion. 6.2 List of Proposed Dates. Appendices. 1. Simplified Texts of Inscriptions. 2. Concordance to ECMW and CICC Numbering. 3. Absolute Dates in LHEB for Sound Changes. Abbreviations and Bibliography. Index of Forms Discussed. Index of Other Forms Mentioned. Ancient Forms (mostly Celtic and Latin). Medieval and Modern Forms. Brittonic. Irish.

Patrick Sims–Williams is Professor of Celtic Studies at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He is the author of ‘ Religion and Literature in Western England, 600–800’ (1990) and ‘Britain and Early Christian Europe’ (1995). He is also the co–editor of ‘Ptolemy: Towards a Linguistic Atlas of the Earliest Celtic Place–Names of Europe’ (2000), and the editor of Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies .

"[Sims–Williams′s] concern is to give due weight to all the possibilities rather than to rush into one attractive interpretation. This will make the book extremely valuable as a restraining influence on the rasher tendencies of other scholars. The Celtic Inscriptions of Britain is a major achievement in Celtic historical linguistics and will be an indispensible work of reference for many years to come." Antiquity <!––end––> "( Celtic Inscriptions of Britain ) represents an invaluable contribution to its field." Cumbrian Medieval Celtic Studies