Celtiberian culture in the Camino

[Conor Fortune]

>Ancient people built the giant
> stone cairns/piles, no-one knows why,
>but the Romans noted them and
assumed
> they were associated with the pagan
pilgrimage.

For my tuppence (or two cents, depending
on your country of origin), I'm not so sure
that cairns were necessarily markers along
a pilgrimage. All the Celtic peoples
constructed cairns and later dolmens
(three massive rocks in a table-like tomb
structure that were once covered in a
mound of earth but in modern times stand
alone due to
erosion, ). But all these were
burial chambers, usually for chieftains and
their families. It's true that we are talking
well before the Romans here. One of the
most prominent (and beautiful) cairn is in
Ireland, called Newgrange, and don't quote
me but I think it dates back about 7,000
years.

The Celts in Ireland at least often
incorporated astronomy into these cairns,
as with Newgrange there is a "roofbox"
where light enters to illuminate the central
passage once a year...only on the winter
solstice. There is also a complex of
"standing stones' circling the structure that
has some kind of astronomical function.
Standing stones around the countryside did
mark the way towards important burial sites
like this, but I don't know if I would call them
pilgrimages as in the Christian sense. (The
line is often muddied, as with Croagh
Patrick, a barefoot mountain pilgrimage in
Western Ireland based on a mixture of
traditional folklore and the legend of St.
Patrick fasting there for 40 days and nights.

However, if the Celts in Galicia followed
similar traditions to their counterparts in
Ireland, Scotland, etc., it is likely that the
cairns and burial chambers served some
kind of ritualistic meeting-place.

CF
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