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From:
Subject: Re: [DNA] Galloway-NW Irish
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2006 21:52:53 EDT



In a message dated 10/1/2006 8:21:42 P.M. Central Standard Time,
writes:

Regarding the Scots I think it important to remember
that there is so much in common between Islay, Kintyre,
Arran, etc. and north east Ireland going back thousands
of years that they basically were the same people. The
difference likely being more related to subsequent
leadership and/or overlordship. I see no reason for
one faction of the Irish side to emerge dominant after
the Romans left. Genes would still be the same with
just the dynasty being changed.



Campbell doesn't even believe the dynasty changed. As opposed to others who
see a change of "elites" based on traditional legends of the Dal Riata.

Here's a summary from his own article ("Were the Scots Irish?")


"An alternative view To summarize, if there was a mass migration
from Ireland to Scotland, there should be some
sign of this in the archaeological record, but
there is none. If there was only an elite takeover
by a warband, who must have adopted lo-
cal material culture and settlement forms, there
should be signs of the language of the native
majority in the placenames, but again there is
none. A purely dynastic takeover would not
have led to language change on the scale seen,
and has no clear historical backing. My reading
of the archaeological, historical and linguistic
evidence is radically different from the tradi-
tional account, but much simpler.

I suggest that the people inhabiting Argyll
maintained a regional identity from at least the
Iron Age through to the medieval period and
that throughout this period they were Gaelic
speakers. In this maritime province, sea communications
dominated, and allowed a shared
archaic language to be maintained, isolated from
the linguistic developments which were tak-
ing place in the areas of Britain to the east of
the Highland massif in the Late Roman period.
Occasional developments in material culture
and settlement types could pass from one area
of the west to another, and of course individuals
moved between the areas, but this was not
on a sufficient scale to produce an homogenous
cultural province. By the early medieval period,
the emphasis on marine transport in Argyll
allowed the development of a formidable
navy, capable of maintaining a strong political
identity within Argyll, and allowing Dal Riata
to become an expansionist force in the area
attacking as far away as Orkney, the Isle of Man
and the west coast of Ireland (Campbell 1999:
53, figure). For a time during this early period,
Dal Riata extended its control to the area of
Antrim closest to Argyll, much as the Lords of
the Isles were to do in the later medieval period,
and this area also became known as Dal
Riata. During the Middle Irish period, when
claims of the Irish ancestry of Scottish royalty
were being elaborated, a process of ‘reverse engineering’
was used by Irish writers to explain
the existence of an Irish Dal Riata as the pro-
genitor of Scottish Dal Riata rather than vice
versa. In conclusion, the Irish migration hypothesis
seems to be a classic case of long-held historical
beliefs influencing not only the interpretation
of documentary sources themselves,
but the subsequent invasion paradigm being
accepted uncritically in the related disciplines
of archaeology and linguistics. The paradigm
has been supported by a series of mutually
sustaining positions where archaeologists have
looked to the historical-linguistic model, historians
have been supported by linguists, and
the linguists by the historians. There are clear
parallels here to the situation recently reviewed
by Patrick Sims-Williams (1998) exploring the
relationship of paradigm acceptance between
geneticists, linguists and historians, and Forsyth
(1997) in her demonstration of how linguists
were driven by outmoded archaeological
thought in the question of the origins of the
Pictish language. I believe that none of the evidence
is capable of supporting the traditional
explanations, and that closer dialogue between
historians, linguists and archaeologists can lead
to a better understanding of the construction
of identity and processes of social change in
the early medieval period. The work of Forsyth
(1997) and Taylor (1994) on Pictland, and Smith
(forthcoming) on Brittany are signs that this is
already happening. Surely the question that is
of interest here is not ‘where did people come
from?’, but ‘how did people establish and change
their personal and group identity by manipulating
oral, literary and material culture?’. In-
deed, merely by re-labelling the supposed ‘Irish
settlers’ as ‘Gaelic speakers’, following the practice
of contemporary writers such as Adomnan,
the whole issue can be studied in an atmosphere
free from the colonialist implications
which have distorted the study of early medieval western Britain. "


John


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