Nordwestblock

Hypothetical European cultural region

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The Nordwestblock (

prehistoric culture in the present-day Netherlands, Belgium, far-northern France, and northwestern Germany, in an area approximately bounded by the Somme, Oise, Meuse and Elbe rivers, possibly extending to the eastern part of what is now England,^{[citation needed]} during the Bronze and Iron Ages

from the 3rd to the 1st millennia BCE, up to the onset of historical sources, in the 1st century BCE.

The theory was first proposed by two authors working independently:

another language may have existed somewhere in between Germanic and Celtic in the Belgian region.^[2]

The term Nordwestblock itself was coined by Hans Kuhn,[3] who considered the inhabitants of the area neither Germanic nor Celtic and so attributed to the people a distinct ethnicity or culture up to the Iron Age. So far, this has not been proven or disproven.

Language hypotheses

Main article:

Belgian language

See also: Germanic substrate hypothesis

The hypothetical language or languages spoken by the Iron Age Nordwestblock population are a matter of speculation, as there are no written records of such languages as is the case with the Germanic language, but can be inferred based on analysis of

Proto-Celtic

*kʷ becoming *p. All that taken together means that any word starting with a /p/ in a Germanic language that is not evidently borrowed from either Latin or a p-Celtic language, such as Gaulish, must be a loan from another language. Kuhn ascribes those words to the Nordwestblock language.

Linguist

Peter Schrijver assumes the pre-existence of pre-Indo-European languages linked to the archeological Linear Pottery culture and to a family of languages featuring complex verbs, of which the Northwest Caucasian languages might have been the sole survivors. Although assumed to have left traces within all other Indo-European languages as well, the influence of an unknown substrate would have been especially strong on Celtic languages originating north of the Alps and on the region including Belgium and the Rhineland.^{[8][page needed}

]

It is uncertain when Germanic began to gain a foothold in the area. The Nordwestblock region north of the Rhine is traditionally conceived as belonging to the realms of the Northern Bronze Age, with the Harpstedt Iron Age generally assumed to represent the Germanic precedents west of the

Old Frankish

from the 4th century.

The issue still remains unresolved and so far no conclusive evidence has been forwarded to support any alternative. Mallory considers the issue a salutary reminder that some anonymous linguistic groups that do not fully obey the current classification may have survived to the beginning of historical records.

Prehistoric composition

The following prehistoric cultures have been attributed to the region and are compatible with but do not necessarily prove the Nordwestblock hypothesis.

The

West-Baltic culture of cairns

  Milograd culture

The Bell Beaker culture locally developed into the Bronze Age Barbed Wire Beaker culture (2100–1800 BCE). In the 2nd millennium BCE, the region was at the boundary between the Atlantic and Nordic horizons, split up in a northern and a southern region, roughly divided by the course of the Rhine. To the north emerged the Elp culture (1800-800 BCE), featuring an initial tumulus phase showing a close relationship to other Northern European tumulus groups (sharing pottery of low quality: Kümmerkeramik) and a subsequent smooth local transformation to the Urnfield culture (1200–800 BCE). The southern region became dominated by the Hilversum culture (1800–800 BCE), which apparently inherited the previous Barbed Wire Beaker cultural ties with Britain.

From 800 BCE onward, the southern area was influenced by the Celtic Hallstatt culture. The current view in the Netherlands holds that subsequent Iron Age innovations did not involve substantial Celtic intrusions but featured a local development from Bronze Age culture.^[10]

From 750-600 BCE, areas formerly occupied by the Elp culture emerge as the probably-Germanic Harpstedt culture west^[9] of the Germanic Jastorf culture, and the southern parts become assimilated to the Celtic La Tène culture, as is consistent with Julius Caesar's account of the Rhine forming the boundary between Celtic and Germanic tribes.

Later, the Roman retreat resulted in the disappearance of imported products like ceramics and coins and a return to virtually-unchanged local Iron Age production methods. To the north, people continued to live in the same three-aisled farmhouse, and to the east, completely-new types of buildings arose. More to the south, in Belgium, archaeological results of the period point to immigration from the north.^[11]

Roman era

With the onset of historical records (Tacitus, 1st century), the area was generally called the border region between Celtic (Gaulish) and Germanic influence.

Tribes located in the area include the

Some of those tribes would later join the Frankish confederation.

See also

• Ambrones
• Archaeology of Northern Europe
• Dutch mythology
• Germanic substrate hypothesis
• Old Europe (archaeology)
• Old European hydronymy

References