The Coligny Calendar

Looking for archaeological evidence of the Celtic Calendar is problematic. With up to eight potential targets for significant alignments it can be a matter of faith whether a monument is aligned accurately to a specific sunrise or just facing a general sunrise direction. It has been argued that the Coligny Calendar is independent correlating evidence, but this too may be ambiguous in tracing ancient timekeeping.

The Coligny Calendar is a series of bronze plates found with inscriptions near the French town of Coligny about 70 miles (120 kilometres) east of Paris (see map above). It was found in fragments with parts of a bronze statue of Mars and about half of it has been recovered. It was discovered in the dying years of the 19th century and attracted a lot of attention because it appeared to have Gaulish inscriptions. Reconstructed it appears to be a calendar of the year, or rather a calendar of five years. This allows some idea of how the year was adjusted to keep in step with the seasons. This would be necessary as the months appear to be lunar, with an extra month inserted every two or three years. Beyond this things start to get more controversial.

The year seems to be divided into two halves Samon and Giamon. Samon is based on the word for summer and Giamon on the word for winter. Majority opinion is that Samon equates with the festival Samhain, so it would mark the end of summer. This does seem to rely on Samhain being the same date everywhere. Is this certain? No. As an example many Greek months had months with the same names but in very different times of year. The ‘Celtic’ world was a vast area, with no central authority. People would have held festivals according to local needs and named them according to local tradition. In Greece months were named as a show of local identity. It is possible that Celtic tribes also made a point of differing from their neighbours to show independence. It is possible they didn’t.

What we can say is that the Coligny Calendar would seem to rule out accurate alignments in monuments. The year is twelve or thirteen lunar months long and the festivals are tied to the lunar months, not to the sun. Because the lunar year is eleven days out of step with the solar year it means that a day of a festival, measured by our calendar (and the sun) could vary by thirty days. The sun could rise at the mid-quarter point during a waning moon, which may be a bad thing. You can delay the festival for a couple of weeks till the omens are right, but then the sun has moved on and your alignment is out. The next year round, with the moon eleven days out of step, you’d have a good chance of a waxing moon for the same time of year. If the lunar phase is essential for good omens, and from the calendar it would appear to be, then a festival must be held on the right day by the moon, not the sun. So the Coligny Calendar would appear to rule out an eight-fold calendar.

Except it’s not that simple.

For a start the vast majority of Iron Age archaeologists in the UK and Ireland don’t think the Iron Age inhabitants of the British Isles were Celtic. They think the Celts lived on the continent, and they’ve found no evidence of a Celtic invasion. On the contrary they’ve found quite distinctive native cultures in the British Isles of this period. This means the Coligny Calendar can’t be applied to sites in the British Isles. More troubling is that it might not be able to be applied to the prehistoric continental peoples either.

The Coligny Calendar is not prehistoric, but how close to the prehistoric period is it?

Some people say it must date from the 1st century BC. The reason is that there appears to be no Roman naming of the months and the lunar basis of the months isn’t Roman for this period. Gaul was conquered by Julius Caesar from around the middle of the 1st century BC, but was really Romanised by Augustus in the late 1st century BC. If there is no Roman influence then, some argue, it must date from this period before Romanisation occurred.

The most recent estimates for the calendar’s date are that it was inscribed around the late 2nd century AD to early third century AD. This is based on a palaeographical study, an analysis of the letter types used. This doesn’t mean that the calendrical system couldn’t have been in use for many years before, but it would suggest that the inscription was made a long while after the territory had been Romanised. This poses a problem because without any other data we cannot tell if there is more Roman influence in the calendar than many have given credit for. The Romans were great organisers. Did the Gauls after two or three hundred years of Roman influence tidy up an ad hoc calendar into one with twelve (or thirteen months) rather like the Greek system?

Ultimately the Coligny Calendar sums up the problems with the Celtic Calendar as a whole. The evidence is there, but it’s ambiguous. There are festivals marked on the calendar which could be mid-quarter days, but only three of them. Are we missing a piece with the fourth festival or did it simply not exist?

At the moment the existence of the Celtic Calendar is an open question and, unless something spectacular is found, it’s likely to remain that way. At the moment archaeologists don’t need to know what the calendrical system of Iron Age peoples was to answer the sort of questions they like to ask.

Part One of A Celtic Calendar was – The ‘Celtic Calendar’ and the Solstices – from May 2
Part Two of A Celtic Calendar – was What is an Equinox? – from May 9
Part Three of A Celtic Calendar – was The Midquarter Days – from May 16
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