It is perhaps not a gross overgeneralisation to state that knowledge about and familiarity with the languages of the Celtic populations of antiquity lie on the margins or outside of the traditional horizons of ancient historians and of scholars of classical philology. When the cultural remains of Celtic peoples come under the scrutiny of scholars in these fields, it is through the lens of an outsider who is looking at the material and immaterial artefacts of these societies as if it were from a colonial perspective. This is particularly true when the Celtic languages of the ancient period, a subject where few people at all can claim any expertise, are the object of study. However, even though the linguistic study of ancient Celtic requires very special knowledge, this is less so the case with regard to the material and formal aspects of ancient Celtic epigraphy. In general, they follow the models and types of Mediterranean epigraphy, and, from a particular point of time onwards, especially those of Roman epigraphy. Still, compared with the almost innumerable epigraphic remains of the classical languages, what has come down to us from the contemporaneous Celtic languages must seem negligibly small. Even when this material is compared with that of other non-classical vernacular traditions, such as Etruscan or Iberian, it is not impressive in quantitative terms.