Watch
Description
I will tell a number of intersecting stories which spin-off from a grant given to me in the 1970s by the Institute, to explore the origins of Iron Age oppida in the Auvergne (Aulnat, Corent, Gondole, Gergovie), in the area occupied by the Arverni, well known for its kings Luernios and Bituitos, and the leader of the Gallic revolt against Julius Caesar, Vercingetorix. That work led to the establishment of a research group for the Iron Age, l’Association pour la Recherche sur l’age du Fer en Auvergne, which has its official base in a sixteenth-century house, the Maison Domat, in the village of Mirefleurs, near Clermont-Ferrand. The house itself is of architectural and art historical interest but was also used in the process under which the ‘Modern Celts’ (the inhabitants of Brittany, Ireland and Britain) were ‘invented’ in the sixteenth century by George Buchanan, and with such figures as Bremond Domat, John Stuart (Duke of Albany and Comte d’Auvergne), the Medici family, the kings of France, and was even the background for a Hollywood version of Cinderella.