The Gallaecian warrior statues are a series of sculptures produced in northwest Iberia (today Galicia and northern Portugal) in the immediate pre-Roman period. Usually associated with the Gallaecian tribal complex they are also sometimes described as statues of Lusitanian, Luso-Gallaecian or Castrejo Culture origin.
Showing armed men slightly larger than natural size, [1] the statues are believed to represent deified local heroes and to date principally from between the 2nd Century BCE to the 1st Century CE. [2]
The Celtic languages are a group of related languages descended from Proto-Celtic. They form a branch of the Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, following Paul-Yves Pezron, who made the explicit link between the Celts described by classical writers and the Welsh and Breton languages.
Portuguese is a western Romance language of the Indo-European language family, originating in the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It is an official language of Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe, while having co-official language status in East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, and Macau. A Portuguese-speaking person or nation is referred to as "Lusophone". As the result of expansion during colonial times, a cultural presence of Portuguese speakers is also found around the world. Portuguese is part of the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia and the County of Portugal, and has kept some Celtic phonology in its lexicon.
Lusitanian mythology is the mythology of the Lusitanians, an Indo-European speaking people of western Iberia, in what was then known as Lusitania and Gallaecia. In present times, the territory comprises most of Portugal, Galicia, Extremadura and a small part of Salamanca.
Barroso or Terras de Barroso is the traditional name of the region formed by the Portuguese municipalities of Montalegre and Boticas.
Gallaecia, also known as Hispania Gallaecia, was the name of a Roman province in the north-west of Hispania, approximately present-day Galicia, northern Portugal, Asturias and Leon and the later Kingdom of Gallaecia. The Roman cities included the port Cale (Porto), the governing centers Bracara Augusta (Braga), Lucus Augusti (Lugo) and Asturica Augusta (Astorga) and their administrative areas Conventus bracarensis, Conventus lucensis and Conventus asturicensis.
The Portuguese people are a Romance nation and ethnic group indigenous to Portugal who share a common culture, ancestry and language. The Portuguese people's heritage largely derives from the Indo-Europeans and Celts, who were Romanized after the conquest of the region by the ancient Romans. A small number of male lineages descend from Germanic tribes who arrived after the Roman period as ruling elites, including the Suebi, Buri, Hasdingi Vandals and Visigoths. The pastoral Caucasus' Alans left small traces in a few central-southern areas. The Umayyad conquest of Iberia also left Moorish, Jewish and Saqaliba genetic contributions in the country.
Runesocesius was a deity whose name appears on an inscription from the region of Évora, the Roman Ebora in modern Portugal in the area inhabited by the Celtici in Lusitania. He has generally been thought of as a Lusitanian god.
Lusitanian was an Indo-European Paleohispanic language. There has been support for either a connection with the ancient Italic languages or Celtic languages. It is known from only six sizeable inscriptions, dated from circa 1 CE, and numerous names of places (toponyms) and of gods (theonyms). The language was spoken in the territory inhabited by Lusitanian tribes, from the Douro to the Tagus rivers, territory that today falls in central Portugal and western Spain.
Hispano-Celtic is a term for all forms of Celtic spoken in the Iberian Peninsula before the arrival of the Romans. In particular, it includes:
The Gallaeci were a Celtic tribal complex who inhabited Gallaecia, the north-western corner of Iberia, a region roughly corresponding to what is now the Norte Region in northern Portugal, and the Spanish regions of Galicia, western Asturias and western León before and during the Roman period. They spoke a Q-Celtic language related to Northeastern Hispano-Celtic, called Gallaecian or Northwestern Hispano-Celtic. The region was annexed by the Romans in the time of Caesar Augustus during the Cantabrian Wars, a war which initiated the assimilation of the Gallaeci into Latin culture.
Castro culture is the archaeological term for the material culture of the northwestern regions of the Iberian Peninsula from the end of the Bronze Age until it was subsumed by Roman culture. It is the culture associated with the Gallaecians and Astures.
Minho was a former province in Portugal, established in 1936 and dissolved in 1976. It consisted of 23 municipalities, with its capital in the city of Braga. Today, the area would include the districts of Braga and Viana do Castelo. Minho has substantial Celtic influences and shares many cultural traits with neighbouring Galicia in Northwestern Spain. The region was part of the Roman Province and early Germanic medieval Kingdom of Gallaecia. Historical remains of Celtic Minho include Briteiros Iron Age Hillfort, the largest Gallaecian native stronghold in the Entre Douro e Minho region, in North Portugal. The University of Minho, founded in 1973, takes its name from the former province.
Galicians are a Romance ethnic group from Spain that is closely related to the Portuguese people and has its historic homeland is Galicia, in the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula. Two Romance languages are widely spoken and official in Galicia: the native Galician and Spanish.
The languages of Portugal are Portuguese, Mirandese and Portuguese Sign Language. Historically, Celtic and Lusitanian were spoken in what is now Portugal.
The paleo-Hispanic languages were the languages of the Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula, excluding languages of foreign colonies, such as Greek in Emporion and Phoenician in Qart Hadast. After the Roman conquest of Hispania the Paleohispanic languages, with the exception of Proto-Basque, were replaced by Latin, the ancestor of the modern Iberian Romance languages.
Gallaecian, or Northwestern Hispano-Celtic, is an extinct Celtic language of the Hispano-Celtic group. It was spoken by the Gallaeci at the beginning of the 1st millennium in the northwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula that became the Roman province of Gallaecia and is now divided between the present day Spanish regions of Galicia, western Asturias, and the west of the Province of León and the Norte Region in northern Portugal.
The Ourense Torcs are a pair of Iron Age gold torc neck rings found near Ourense in Northwest Spain in the 1950s. They were acquired by the British Museum in 1960.
The Gallaeci or Callaeci were an ancient Celtic tribe of Gallaecia, living in the northwest of modern Portugal, roughly in today's western half of the Porto District, from the west of the Tâmega river valley to the Atlantic coast in the west and north of the Douro river. The Greek name of the tribe was Kallaikoi.