Unlike the Ancient Greeks and Romans, the people who inhabited Western Europe before the Roman conquests did not develop a written literature; as a result, our knowledge of these communities is limited. We can recreate some aspects of local cultures through archaeological research, or indirectly, through the accounts of Greek and Roman authors. But we must ask ourselves whether these accounts really reflect those societies, or are merely inadequate descriptions made by outsiders who do not understand the cultures they are writing about.
