Hallstatt Culture
The Hallstatt Culture, named after the Austrian village of Hallstatt where significant archaeological finds were made, represents a critical phase in European prehistory, roughly spanning from 1300 to 500 BCE. This culture is divided into four periods, with Hallstatt A and B aligning with the Urnfield culture of the late Bronze Age, characterized by cremation practices and burial of ashes in urns. Hallstatt C and D mark the transition to the early Iron Age, associated with the early Celts and the rise of inhumation practices, where entire bodies were buried with valuable grave goods, indicating emerging social hierarchies.
Trade played a pivotal role in the development of Hallstatt Culture, facilitated by access to key routes through passes and rivers. This exchange brought Mediterranean goods like wine and bronze to northern Europe, while local resources such as tin, copper, and salt were traded south. The culture is notable for its distinctive artistic expressions, including abstract representations of humans and motifs like the "Hallstatt duck" and solar disc. Significant archaeological sites, including hill forts and burial mounds across various regions, reveal the wealth and complexity of societies during this era. The discovery of a Celtic princess's grave in Vix and elaborate burial goods highlights the cultural and artistic achievements of the Hallstatt people.
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Hallstatt Culture
Related civilization: Celts.
Date: c. 1100-450 b.c.e.
Locale: Northern Europe, present-day Austria
Hallstatt Culture
In 1824, K. P. Pollhammer uncovered an ancient tomb outside the Austrian town of Hallstatt, by a lake in an Alpine valley some thirty miles (forty-eight kilometers) southeast of Salzburg. In 1846, a salt-mine manager, George Ramsauer, excavated nearly one thousand graves there, along with pottery, bronze vessels of Greek and local origins, gold and Baltic amber jewelry, and weapons of an unexpected material—iron. More graves were later discovered.
They fell into two periods: Hallstatt A and B covered the Urnfield culture (1300-800 b.c.e.) of the late Bronze Age. The Urnfield peoples, who cremated the bodies of their dead and placed the ashes in urns for burial, had helped spread bronze-working throughout Europe. Hallstatt C and D covered the early Iron Age (800-500 b.c.e.) and can be identified with early Celts, since the advent of iron-working was accompanied by the custom of inhumation (burial of the entire body) instead of cremation. In these graves, often found in hill forts, chiefs were buried with costly goods, including four-wheeled carts, indicating the emergence of social differentiation based on trade.
Hallstatt culture developed where passes and rivers made it possible to trade with the Mediterranean. Mediterranean wine, oil, bronzes, jewelry, and iron-working skills moved north, paid for with tin, copper, hides, textiles, amber, salt, and salt-cured fish and pork. Salt was so important that Rome later paid its legionnaires with it, a salarium argentum (money for salt), the origin of the word “salary.” From Spain to Hungary, hill forts and settlements arose along these trade routes, evolving into industrial centers.
In eastern France, a Hallstatt D hill fort on Mont Lassois dominated the headwaters of the Seine River. In an associated barrow at the nearby village of Vix in 1953, René Joffroy discovered the remains of a Celtic princess on a dismantled wagon wearing a golden crown, its ends terminating in winged horses. Her grave goods included bronze and amber jewelry, a Greek Black Figure pot, silver and bronze vessels, and a huge two-handled bronze jar, or krater, weighing 460 pounds (209 kilograms) on which a frieze showed a Greek charioteer, four horses, and hoplite infantrymen. Celtic art of this period shows a concern with nature, with humans portrayed almost abstractly using triangles and circles. The “Hallstatt duck” and solar disc motifs are found on pottery and other artifacts.
Iron continued to be relatively rare during the Hallstatt period, but its impact was evident in materials excavated from the 40-foot-tall (12-meter-tall) Hohmichelle barrow, located near the Heuenburg hill fortress overlooking the Danube River in southern Germany. The planks used to construct the main chamber had been sawn from logs with a two-man iron saw. Another burial excavation, in 1978 at Hochdorf, Germany, revealed an iron-plated wagon along with an iron drinking horn more than three feet (one meter) in length.
Bibliography
Freidin, Nicholas. The Early Iron Age in the Paris Basin: Hallstatt C and D. Oxford, England: B.A.R., 1982.
Hodson, Frank Roy. Hallstatt: Dry Bones and Flesh. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Mason, Philip. The Early Iron Age of Slovenia. Oxford, England: Tempus Reparatum, 1996.
Raymond, Robert. Out of the Fiery Furnace: The Impact of Metals on the History of Mankind. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986.