Early Brittany

Abstract

Who are the Bretons and where do they come from? This is a question with not only historical and ethnological implications, but even political ones which sometimes tend to cloud the landscape.Professor Léon Fleuriot teaches Celtic i n the second University at Rennes (Université de Haute-Bretagne) . He is a specialist in Old Breton (Le vieux Breton : éléments d'une grammaire, Paris, 1964; Dictionnaire des gloses en vieux Breton, Paris, 1964), a language barely known from glosses in Latin manuscripts from the scriptoria of the oldest Breton monasteries, from place-names and surnames in the cartularies of these monasteries. This has made him more interested still in the history and culture of the people speaking Old Breton, and he has revised all the evidence about them. Part I of this article is a version of the introduction to a large work on this subject not yet published.Dr P.-R. Giot, specialist in Brittany, well known to the readers of Antiquity, is head of the Laboratoire d'Anthropologie–Prehistoire–Protohistoire et Quaternuire Armoricains in the first University at Rennes (Université de Rennes) . From the study of the dry bones of the old inhabitants of the country he has got involved in their history and archaeology.