Faction Research: Gaul

Reserved for Sahran's references and suggestions. Again, anyone whos got references that fit the timeframe is welcome to post as well so we can avaliate them.

I'm of the opinion that the leather tube and yoke cuirass should be the most prevalent armor in this period for rank and file professionals. I didn't know about it until Merlkir clued me into it when we first began working on the Gauls for Carthage and it seems that as people have learned about it more and more are depicting it.

I sent you the PM of the EB2 previews with it, here are some of the real life depictions I came across or Merlkir provided: http://imgur.com/a/c7gLW


Here is that somewhat dubious but relatively believable Angus Mcbride depictions of soft armor. While they look fantasyish, they have basic features which are justified by the Halstatt scabbard - we see 'studs', we see what looks like quilted (vertical and diamond) designs and a mix thereof.




We will need trouser and tunics so not all Celtic low levels are bare chested. I would suggest going with llew2's osp of the celtic trouser & torso rather than the current system of using scripting to join legs and torso armor. This would make it easier for you to have a single celtic unit with a big mix of trouser variations.

Because i know you love coins Lynores

http://www.romancoins.info/Celtic1.html

Type of object: Armor and Weapons
Material: bronze
Period: La Tène
Find spot: Marne
Country: France
Date: 400-200 BCE
Collection: Paris, St-Germain-en-Laye, Musée des Antiquités


The Kirkburn Sword


Type of object: Armor and Weapons
Material: bronze, iron, gold
Period: La Tène
Find spot: River Seine, Amfreville
Country: France
Date: 400-200 BCE
Collection: Paris, St-Germain-en-Laye, Musée des Antiquités


Type of object: Armor and Weapons
Material: bronze
Period: Insular La Tène
Find spot: Kircudbright
Country: Scotland
Date: 400-200 BCE
Collection: Edinburgh, National Museum of Scotland of Scotland


Type of object: Armor and Weapons
Material: iron
Period: Hallstatt
Country: Austria
Date: 7th c. BCE
Collection: Vienna, Naturhistorisches Museum



This is a Scabard
Type of object: Armor and Weapons
Material: bronze
Period: La Tène
Find spot: Kernavest
Country: France
Date: 5th c. BCE
Collection: Vannes, Musée de la Société Polymathique de Morbihan


Shield (Witham Shield)
Type of object: Armor and Weapons
Material: bronze
Period: Insular La Tène
Find spot: River Witham
Country: England
Date: 4-3rd c. BCE
Collection: London, British Museum



Type of object: Armor and Weapons
Material: iron, bronze, gold, silver, coral
Period: La Tène
Find spot: Agris (Charente)
Country: France
Date: 4th c. BCE
Collection: Angoulême, Musée de la Société Archéologique


Type of object: Armor and Weapons
Material: bronze
Period: La Tène
Find spot: Unknown
Date: 3-2nd c. BCE
Collection: Collection Axel Guttmann


Type of object: Armor and Weapons
Material: gold
Period: La Tène
Find spot: Chariot burial, Berru
Country: France
Date: ea. 4th c. BCE
Collection: Paris, St-Germain-en-Laye, Musée des Antiquités


Dagger and Sheath
Type of object: Armor and Weapons
Material: bronze
Period: La Tène
Find spot: Vraux
Country: France
Date: 5th c. BCE
Collection: Châlon-sur-Marne, Musée Municipal


Weapons
Type of object: Armor and Weapons
Material: iron
Period: La Tène
Find spot: Vert-la-Gravelle
Country: France
Date: 5th c. BCE
Collection: Epernay, Musée Municipal d’Archéologie



Type of object: Armor and Weapons
Material: iron, bronze
Period: La Tène
Find spot: Canosi Puglia
Country: Italy
Date: 4th c. BCE
Collection: Berlin, Museum für Vor-Frühgeschichte



Type of object: Armor and Weapons
Material: bronze
Period: La Tène
Find spot: Forker Laas Riegel
Country: Germany
Date: 3rd c. BCE
Collection: Mainz, Musuem für Antike Schiffahrt


Type of object: Armor and Weapons
Material: bronze, iron, gold
Period: La Tène
Find spot: Amfreville
Country: France
Date: 4th c. BCE
Collection: Paris, St-Germain-en-Laye, Musée des Antiquités


Type of object: Armor and Weapons
Material: iron, bronze
Period: La Tène
Find spot: Epiais-Rhus
Country: France
Date: 4th c. BCE
Collection: Guiry-en-Vexin, Musée Archéologique Départemental du Val-d’Oise



Type of object: Armor and Weapons
Material: iron, bronze
Period: La Tène
Find spot: Santa PaolinCEi Filottrano
Country: Italy
Date: 4th c. BCE
Collection: Ancona, Museo Archeologico Nazionale



Type of object: Armor and Weapons
Material: print media
Period: La Tène
Find spot: La Tène
Country: Switzerland
Date: 4-3rd c. BCE
Collection: Reconstruction Drw.



Type of object: Armor and Weapons
Material: bronze
Period: La Tène
Find spot: Santa PaolinCEi Filottrano
Country: Italy
Date: 4th c. BCE
Collection: Ancona, Museo Archeologico Nazionale




Now normally id send a message this long over Pm, But, Since none of this is copyright, anybody can use it. Celtic stuff from the 6th, 5th and 4th BC

"Barbarians" more or less, are my forte


I think that recreated chariot is seriously cool. 

Maybe its better to pick a certain Celtic Northern Italian tribe. Rather then taking generally Gauls.

Can you provide some names of the celtic northern italian tribes?

Not as well as others could. But just a general Gaul faction would be the same as a general Greece faction.

Phalanx300 said:

Not as well as others could. But just a general Gaul faction would be the same as a general Greece faction.

Click to expand...

I agree, there are many different tribes. But this is a Peloponnese based mod not a Gaul mod. It would take a long time to do the research into that and recreate it into m&b.

Not really, it is based on the peloponnesian war timeframe, obviously its not just greece anymore. I'm not getting negligent on other factions just because it started with them. The main issue will be the research and I could do it myself, but then it might get a bit too much to me since I have to do everything else, but I'll think of something.

For a Celtic tribe maybe the Senones who sacked Rome in 390 BC. I know the date fall just outside the PW time-frame but they were one of the oldes tribes of must have been in northen Italy for some time to be able to gather a force big enough to defeat the Etruscans and then move on Rome. 

Phalanx300 said:

Maybe its better to pick a certain Celtic Northern Italian tribe. Rather then taking generally Gauls.

Click to expand...

The Umbrians would be the native occupants of the cisalpine area, Unfortunately, we dont know that much about them. If you want to talk about the sacking of Rome, Brennus tribe was senones. But im sure that his host was made up of many tribes. Since we dont know much about the cisalpines, i think it would be safer to just make to make the faction like most of the celtic armies of the time.

Rhomphaia said:

For a Celtic tribe maybe the Senones who sacked Rome in 390 BC. I know the date fall just outside the PW time-frame but they were one of the oldes tribes of must have been in northen Italy for some time to be able to gather a force big enough to defeat the Etruscans and then move on Rome.

Click to expand...

The senones where from across the alps(I forget the specific place, but some did settle there). After sacking rome and pillaging most of the Italian peninsula The actually moved onto greece(succefully pillaging and looting there too) Then moved on to turkey.   

This is a Umbrian warrior of 430(?) BC



For the simple sake of gamplay, i would suggest a mix of Umbrian and Gallic

The senones where from across the alps(I forget the specific place, but some did settle there). After sacking rome and pillaging most of the Italian peninsula The actually moved onto greece(succefully pillaging and looting there too) Then moved on to turkey.   

This is a Umbrian warrior of 430(?) BC


The celts Arrived in Italy by the mid 5th Century BCE. As you say Senones were but a small group that sacked Rome. They would be part of a Celtic type of confederacy. The Celts only arrived in Greece and the balkans in the early 3rd century BCE so Thrace would not have been that much influenced by Celts in the time-frame of TPW. The celts from Italy actually did not move on into Greece. Even though the leader has the same name of Berennus, the Balkan invasion occured a hundered years later.
Since so little is known about the Celts in Italy at the time of the PW maybe some sort of Celtic confederacy in northen Italy, not just a specific tribe?

Well that umbrian's pretty cool looking, tube and yoke cuirass and some sort of crested greek(?) helmet with adjustable cheekguards.

And we can always go with the title of Confederacy, since that's what most barbarian armies would be. So it'd be a Senones Confederacy.

Rhomphaia said:

The senones where from across the alps(I forget the specific place, but some did settle there). After sacking rome and pillaging most of the Italian peninsula The actually moved onto greece(succefully pillaging and looting there too) Then moved on to turkey.   

This is a Umbrian warrior of 430(?) BC


The celts Arrived in Italy by the mid 5th Century BCE. As you say Senones were but a small group that sacked Rome. They would be part of a Celtic type of confederacy. The Celts only arrived in Greece and the balkans in the early 3rd century BCE so Thrace would not have been that much influenced by Celts in the time-frame of TPW. The celts from Italy actually did not move on into Greece. Even though the leader has the same name of Berennus, the Balkan invasion occured a hundered years later.
Since so little is known about the Celts in Italy at the time of the PW maybe some sort of Celtic confederacy in northen Italy, not just a specific tribe?

Click to expand...

In the 5th and early 4th centuries BC, migratory Germanic tribes pressured Gallic Celts living in the Danube regions to push South in search of new territory. They were likely familiar with the Po River Valley, in north central Italy, from trade arrangements with Etruscans who were there. The Gauls crossed the Alps en masse capturing and settling Etruscan territory by force. The Gallic tribes were united only by blood and origin and each maintained their own kings or warlords. Some of these tribes settled into cattle and cereal farming along with peaceful cohabitation, but others maintained aggressive policies towards their new neighbors.

I recently hit a snag in reading up on the cisalpine. Apparently one of my sources got the Umbrian and ligurians mixed up(Never ever trust wikipedia!). So i sort of retract my whole mixture of gual and umbrians.

Apparently the umbrians where the culture that surrounded rome.

The Ligurians where a culture of unknown origins. Pretty interesting.

As such, some 'Celtic' statues in modern France depict robed Ligurian warriors, sometimes wearing Celtic chain, but wearing the very distinctly non-Celtic Ligurian peasant-warrior robes under it.

Edit The only time i use wikipedia is as a means to more information, I never really use it as a resource and this only solidifies my reasoning.

I believe in this timeframe Patavium was a Venetic city. The Veneti where tribes with Etruscan/Latin, Celtic and Illyrian influences. The myth says the Veneti came from Asia Minor and Patavium was founded by a Trojan prince after the Trojan war.

They where famous for their horse breeding. The horse(man) on the left is probably Venetic. 

Reproduction of Bronze belt plaque from Vace,Slovenia,Yugoslavia,400 BC, Hallstatt culture (IllyrianCelt warriors)

Hertog Jan said:

I believe in this timeframe Patavium was a Venetic city. The Veneti where tribes with Etruscan/Latin, Celtic and Illyrian influences. The myth says the Veneti came from Asia Minor and Patavium was founded by a Trojan prince after the Trojan war.

They where famous for their horse breeding. The horse(man) on the left is probably Venetic. 
Reproduction of Bronze belt plaque from Vace,Slovenia,Yugoslavia,400 BC, Hallstatt culture (IllyrianCelt warriors)

Click to expand...

Italy was broken up into a bunch of smaller tribes

Something like this:

/the veneti where apparently allied with rome for most of its history and even sent troops to help Rome at the battle of Cannae. Even though i dont really know, im guessing they survived the celtic push into Italy.

I will be moving on these guys next. If anyone has further references, please post here.

The "Ugly Women" thread reminded me of something.  Tacitus and Ammianus Marcellinus both mention Celtic noblewomen leading armies and participating in battles.  I also seem to recall a diplomatic dispute, some time between Caesar's initial landing in Britain and the final Roman conquest when the Romans were playing their usual game of divide and conquer with the Briton nobility, when their aribitrator stripped a female noblewoman of her title to rule a small kingdom in southern Britannia because they did not recognize a female inheritor to the throne.

I've not seen any evidence to indicate that Celtic women-warriors were widespread enough to warrant dedicated units, but it would be kosher for one or two of the Gallic characters to be female rather than male.  I can't imagine it would require any change of game mechanics either, depending on how the base game's gender tags work.  Hardly a crucial point, but the option for male player characters to marry into the Celtic nobility the same way female player characters could would be an interesting way to add extra differentiation to the Gallic faction.

Need anything else? There are tons of Artifact sites out there

There are several anachronistic materials in the first page. I'll just wait for Sahran's pm, no problem.