Three Olmec celts. The one in the foreground is incised with an image of an Olmec supernatural. It is likely that these "tools" had a strictly ritual function.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, the term had largely been abandoned by archaeologists, who were beginning to classify the tools into more precise sub-groups. It remains in use in a few specific artifact types such as the Danubian and Shoe-last celts, as well as in Olmec studies.
Etymology
The term "celt" came about from what was very probably a copyist's error in many medieval manuscript copies of Job 19:24 in the Latin Vulgate Bible, which became enshrined in the authoritative Sixto-Clementine printed edition of 1592; however the Codex Amiatinus, for example, does not contain the mistake.[1] In the passage: Stylo ferreo, et plumbi lamina, vel certe sculpantur in silice (It is indeed carved with an iron pen on a plate of lead or in stone), the certe ("indeed") was spelled as celte by mistake, which would have to be the ablative of a non-existent third declension noun celt or celtis, the ablative case giving the sense "with/by a celt". This is now considered to be the case by most scholars, although some are still prepared to consider the existence of a real Latin word. A 'Celt' was thus wrongly assumed to be a type of ancient chisel. Eighteenth century antiquarians then adopted the word for the stone and bronze tools they were finding at prehistoric sites.
