John T. KochFLSW is an American academic, historian, and linguist who specializes in
Celtic studies, especially prehistory, and the early Middle Ages.[1] He is the editor of the five-volume Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia (2006, ABC Clio). He is perhaps best known as the leading proponent of the Celtic from the West hypothesis.
Since 1998, he has been senior research fellow or
reader at the
Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, University of Wales, where he has supervised a research project called Celtic Languages and Cultural Identity,[1] the output of which includes the five-volume Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia (2006), and An Atlas for Celtic Studies (2007).
He has published widely on aspects of early Irish and
Welsh language, literature and history. His works include The Celtic Heroic Age (first published in 1994, 4th edition in 2003), in collaboration with
John Carey; The Gododdin of Aneirin (1997), an edition, translation and discussion of the early Welsh poem Y Gododdin; and numerous articles published in books and journals. A grammar of
Old Welsh and a book on the historical
Taliesin are in the works.[1]
Koch supervises (as senior fellow and project leader) the Ancient Britain and the Atlantic Zone Project (covering
Ireland,
Armorica, and the
Iberian Peninsula) at the
University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies.[4] In 2008, Koch gave the O'Donnell Lecture at Aberystwyth University titled People called Keltoi, the
La Tène Style, and ancient Celtic languages: the threefold Celts in the light of geography.[5][6] In 2009, Koch published a paper,[7] later that year developed into a book, Tartessian: Celtic from the Southwest at the Dawn of History, detailing how the
Tartessian language may have been the earliest directly attested Celtic language with the Tartessian written script used in the inscriptions based on a version of a
Phoenician script in use around 825 BC. This was followed by Tartessian 2: Preliminaries to Historical Phonology in 2011, focused on the Mesas do Castelinho inscription.
This idea, the subject of three
edited volumes in a series by Koch and
Barry Cunliffe called Celtic from the West (2012–2016), is controversial.
Published books
Co-editor: Celtic from the West 3: Atlantic Europe in the Metal Ages ― Questions of Shared Language. Celtic Studies Publications series. Oxbow Books. 2016.
ISBN978-1785702273.
Cunedda, Cynan, Cadwallon, Cynddylan: Four Welsh Poems and Britain 383–655.
University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies. 2013.
ISBN978-1907029134.
Co-editor: Celtic from the West 2: Rethinking the Bronze Age and the Arrival of Indo-European in Atlantic Europe. Celtic Studies Publications series. Oxbow Books. 2013.
ISBN978-1842175293.
Tartessian: Celtic from the Southwest at the Dawn of History. Celtic Studies Publications series (2nd ed.). Oxbow Books. 2013 [2009].
ISBN978-1891271175.
Co-editor: Celtic from the West: Alternative Perspectives from Archaeology, Genetics, Language and Literature. Celtic Studies Publications series. Oxbow Books. 2012.
ISBN978-1842174753.
Co-author: The Celts: History, Life, and Culture. ABC-CLIO. 2012.
ISBN978-1598849646 (2 vols.).
Tartessian 2: The Inscription of Mesas do Castelinho – ro and the Verbal Complex – Preliminaries to Historical Phonology. Celtic Studies Publications series. Oxbow Books. 2011.
ISBN978-1907029073.
An Atlas for Celtic Studies: Archaeology and Names in Ancient Europe and Early Medieval Ireland, Britain, and Brittany. Celtic Studies Publications series. Oxford:
Oxbow Books. 2007.
ISBN978-1842173091.
^Working hypothesis 6: Non-IE influence in the West and the separation of
Celtic from
ItaloCeltic
1. The
Beaker phenomenon spread when a non-Indo-European culture and identity from
Atlantic Europe was adopted by speakers of Indo-European with
Steppe ancestry ~2550 BC.
2. Interaction between these two languages turned the Indo-European of
Atlantic Europe into
Celtic.
3. That this interaction probably occurred in South-west Europe is consistent with the historical location of the
Aquitanian,
Basque, and
Iberian languages and also aDNA from
Iberia indicating the mixing of a powerful, mostly male instrusive group with
Steppe ancestry and indigenous Iberians beginning ~2450 BC, resulting in total replacement of indigenous paternal ancestry with R1b-M269 by ~1900 BC.
4. The older language(s) survived in regions that were not integrated into the
Atlantic Bronze Age network.¶NOTE. This hypothesis should not be construed as a narrowly ‘Out of Iberia’ theory of Celtic. Aquitanian was north of Pyrenees. Iberian in ancient times and Basque from its earliest attestation until today are found on both sides of the Pyrenees. The contact area envisioned is
Atlantic Europe in general and west of the
CWC zone bounded approximately by the
Rhine. in KOCH, John T. "Formation of the Indo-European branches in the light of the Archaeogenetic Revolution" draft of paper read at the conference 'Genes, Isotopes and Artefacts. How should we interpret the movement of people throughout Bronze Age Europe?' Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, 13-14 December 2018.
^The separation of the Pre-
Germanic dialect from the Pre-
Balto-Slavic/
Indo-Iranian, and its reorientation towards Pre-
Italo-Celtic, was the result of
Beaker influence in the western CWC area that began ~2550 BC. in KOCH, John T. "Formation of the Indo-European branches in the light of the Archaeogenetic Revolution" draft of paper read at the conference 'Genes, Isotopes and Artefacts. How should we interpret the movement of people throughout Bronze Age Europe?' Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, 13-14 December 2018.