Right now we're sitting inside the brand new
Celt Arts and Identity exhibition at the British Museum
and what we're exploring is something perhaps a bit unusual and a bit unexpected
rather than being a conventional show about people like Vikings
Celts is really a story about a name and the different ways that that name
that label celts, has been used over the last two and half thousand years
So we follow the story of how it was first used by the Ancient Greeks
to refer to their Western neighbours that they saw as barbarians from about 500 BC
right through to how it's been used in much more modern times
to refer to the modern celtic nations
Everything that you see around you when you come in to this space is actually build
so every single exhibition that we put on down here is completely different
and one of the things we've asked the designers to do with this exhibition
is to reflect some of the objects
so when you come in you're going to see a lot of soft curves and bright colours
and more organic spaces
I think the biggest myth and the biggest maybe preconception
that people have about the Celts
is that the story of the celts over the last two and half thousand years
is one of marauding kind of warriors kind of raging across Europe
and getting somehow stuck
in what we think of today as the Modern Celtic nations
But actually when we look archaeologically that isn't really the story that we see
and we can unpick that a little bit and
and start to realise that we are looking at different peoples
and whilst people obviously did move around in the past
just as people do today
that doesn't have to mean that we're looking at huge waves of migration
we think it's much more likely that we're looking at movement of ideas
so when we see this widely shared art style
we're looking at local manifestations of it rather than just
something which has been sweeping across Europe
swept by a tide of a single people
that isn't the story that we're really telling anymore
When you talk to people about the Celts and ask then what they thought
two things that came up an awful lot were mud huts
people who were you know don't have a very sophisticated way of living
and barbarian warriors charging naked into battle covered in blue body paint
and like a lot of stereotypes there's a little probably drop of truth in some of that
but actually the most incredible thing for me
about the ancient peoples and who the Greeks are calling Celts
is how incredibly sophisticated they are when we look at the objects they made
So I hope as people come round the exhibition they'll get a sense
that everything that they're looking and technologically is really on a par with the classical world
and that far from being isolated northern barbarians
these were incredibly sophisticated and well connected people
My specialist period is the Iron Age
and I think the reason why I love that period so much
is because when you look at the incredible objects that people were making and using
they have this absolutely incredible abstract art style
And we have to think that this is actually coming into being
and being first created North of the Alps
by those peoples sort of supposedly barbarian peoples
that the Greeks are calling Keltoi
Round about the same time that in Greece the Parthenon sculptures were being erected
So whilst in the classical world we're seeing an increasing trend
towards more and more naturalistically representing the human form and animals
what we're seeing North of the Alps is something that I think is really magic
which is people taking those forms of natural and animal faces and beasts and things
and distilling them down to their essence
so rendering them in just two or three swirling lines
but creating something that never less conjures up a sense
that a creature might be looking at you
from this piece of art that you're looking at
And I find that absolutely compelling and brilliant
and it's a wonderful way into the art that's being made
and the world of these people who lived two and a half thousand years ago
I think the reason why we wanted to tell a bigger story than that
so not just talking about the ancient peoples that are called Celts
but bringing the exhibition right up to the present
is because Celts is a word which still has a huge resonance for people today
And we wanted to explore that and I think that is partly because
it has this sort of just like the art
a kind of shape shifting potential to be redefined
and to be understood in different ways
so it's something people have been able to constantly redefine
to reflect their ever- changing identities
but which has remained a really really powerful and potent word
One of the key things we want people to take a way from the show
is that Celtic identities are cultural rather than genetic
So there's no kind of Celtic gene, you can't test somebody to see if they're a Celt
But nevertheless we are looking at what does actually unite the peoples
that have used this name and across a really broad suave of time
so we're following the story of language and very particularly of art
and the way that we can trace connections
right down through two and a half thousand year period
even if the words and the names that have been used
to describe some of those deeper histories have changed a lot over time