GERMANY AND THE ALPS

Oppida occur from the Swiss plateau in the south to the German Mittelgebirge in the north, but present no coherent pattern in chronology, construction, distribution.

Density of occupation or size. The extensive excavations at Manching make it the best known site, but in few respects does it have parallels, and those - open settlement on a river bank, murus gallicus defences - lie more with western than with central Europe.

Small centres of trade and production were already appearing at the beginning of La Tene D around 120 BC, sites such as Basle, Berne and Breisach, or specialist settlements such as the salt-producing site of Bad Nauheim. Typically these sites are undefended and lie on river routes. Already Manching (Figure 10.2) was something of an exception. It was huge in comparison to other open settlements, and it started much earlier, around 300 BC. When other sites were abandoned for more defensive locations, Manching stayed where it was, and was given ramparts around 120 BC. Though the area enclosed by the defences was large, around 350 ha, it was not exceptional - the Heidengraben bei Grabenstetten and Kelheim were larger, but in terms of the area of dense occupation and its size (around three times the size of Roman London), it seems to have had no peer. It is also exceptional in terms of its longevity, as most sites were occupied for only a generation or two at the most. Even after the construction of its ramparts, Manching survived for another seventy-five years, finally being abandoned or destroyed around the middle of the first century BC.

In the Mittelgebirge, many sites which had been occupied in Hallstatt D and La Tene A were reoccupied and refortified. Some, like the Staffelberg, were only

Figure 10.2 The oppidum of Manching and its relationship to earlier La Tene flat cemeteries, iron smelting sites, and religious enclosure (Viereckschanze).

Sporadically occupied; others like the Steinsberg bei Romhild have produced plentiful finds. In the latter case the extensive, but limited, range of the ironwork (for instance large numbers of ploughshares) may be connected with some ritual deposition, and hoards are also known from the Dunsberg in Hesse and from Tiefenau, in the later oppidum on the Engehalbinsel in Berne.

The date of abandonment of these sites too presents no coherent picture. Excepting Switzerland, which properly forms part of Gaul, no sites in the areas later conquered by Rome survived as Roman towns. Most, like Manching, had been abandoned a generation or more before the conquest. But further north, in the Mittelgebirge, some sites such as the Alteburg bei Arnstadt were still extensively occupied, perhaps as late as Augustan times, like the oppida in Bohemia. Thus, though they did not form a cohesive defensive, economic and trading system, individual sites could survive in apparent isolation.