RESOURCES

The peoples of iron age Europe exploited a wide range of resources, including different kinds of stone, timber, clays and mineral ores, as well as salt and graphite, jet, lignite and sapropelite.

Stone was quarried for use in fortification walls and, particularly in the period of the oppida, for pavings for streets and house floors (e. g. Meduna 1970). Different kinds of stone, including sandstone and limestone, were employed for sculpture, many examples of which survive (Megaw and Megaw 1989). Some special kinds of stone were used for decorative and household purposes, for example shale from

Figure 12.1 Map showing some of the principal sites mentioned in Chapters 12 and 13.

Which ornaments, vessels and spindle-whorls were made at Hengistbury Head in Britain (Cunliffe 1987) (Figure 12.i). Stone was also important for grinding grain. Waldhauser’s (1981) study of rotary querns in Bohemia demonstrates the complex system of quarrying and trade (Figure 12.2) that brought this important device into general use during the third and second centuries BC.

Wood was the primary substance for construction of buildings of all kinds, and at the oppida large quantities of timber were employed for building the walls. Wood was important for weapons (especially spear shafts and shields), tools, furniture, vessels and vehicles, including wagons, carts and boats, as well as for sculpture. In most environments in temperate Europe, wood does not survive from the Iron Age; only under special circumstances is wood preserved, as m the marshy lakeshore at La Tene (Vouga 1923).

Clays were extracted from the ground for the manufacture of pottery and for daub for the walls of buildings, as well as for constructing ovens, kilns and furnaces. In most regions of temperate Europe, good clays were readily available, and technical studies (Cumberpatch and Pawlikowski 1988) indicate that most communities used local clays rather than bringing material in from outside.

In contrast to copper and tin, iron was available locally to most communities in temperate Europe. In the hilly uplands of central and western Europe that formed

Figure 12.2 Distribution of late iron age grindstones in northern Bohemia, according to origin of raw material: i - quartz porphyry, one object, 2 - two or more objects, 3 - source; 4 - phono-lite of Kuneticka Hora type, one object, 5 - two or more objects, 6 - source; 7 - basalt of Mayen type, from the Middle Rhineland of Germany; 8 - other. (Adapted from Waldhauser 1981:

198, map 2.)

The heartland of the Celtic world, rich surface deposits of iron ore often required little mining technology for their extraction. Iron began to replace bronze as the principal material for tools and weapons at the start of the Iron Age, in the period 800-600 BC, and in the fourth and third centuries BC the exploitation of iron deposits increased greatly. By the time of the oppida, beginning around 200 BC, very sizeable quantities of iron ore were mined and smelted (Pleiner 1980). At virtually all of the oppida, we have indications of iron-making. At Manching, for example, bog iron ore was extracted (Jacobi 1974), and at Kelheim, iron was mined by means of pits dug into the limestone covering layer (Schwarz et al. 1966).

Although iron replaced bronze for tools and weapons, bronze continued in use for ornaments such as fibulae, pendants and bracelets; vessels including cauldrons and jugs; figurines; and coins. Some of the new bronze objects may have been made from old metal still in circulation or discovered in hoards dating from the Bronze Age, but copper and tin mining continued in the Iron Age at deposits that had been exploited earlier (PIttloni 1976). Unlike Iron, these metals do not occur widely in nature, and most communities had to rely on trade systems to obtain them.

Gold was probably obtained principally from mountain streams. At Modlesovice near Strakonice in Bohemia, remains of gold-washing operations, including wooden troughs, dated to La Tene B2 (about 300-250 BC), have been identified (Pauli 1974).

In the final centuries of the Iron Age, much of the gold used in coins and rings may have derived from gold imported from the Mediterranean world, partly in the form of payment to Celtic mercenaries who served in armies in east Mediterranean lands (Szabo 1991).

Silver is rare in iron age temperate Europe until the latter half of the second century BC, when silver coinage began north of the Alps (Kramer 1971). Much of the silver probably arrived through interaction with the Roman world. Celtic and Roman silver coins are common north of the Alps during the final century and a half before Christ.

Salt was procured through underground mining and through evaporation. Maier (1974: 328) indicates 350 known sites of salt extraction in Europe dating from Neolithic times on. The best evidence from the Celtic period comes from the salt mines at Hallstatt and at the Diirrnberg in the Austrian Alps. Those mines yield information about technology and scale of mining, from about 1000 BC to the end of the prehistoric Iron Age. The evidence from the mines and the associated cemeteries demonstrates a relatively large-scale and highly organized procurement technology, as well as a profitable enterprise, to judge by the trade goods present in the graves (Pauli 1978). There is evidence of salt evaporation at numerous sites throughout Europe (Nenquin 1961), for example at Seille in France, Bad Nauheim in Germany, and Hengistbury Head in Britain.

A substantial industry developed in the extraction of graphite-bearing clays for the manufacture of pottery. In the Bronze and Early Iron Ages, graphite was favoured as a surface decoration on fine pottery, and in the Early Ea Tene period some communities began making pottery of a natural graphite-clay mix. During the second and final centuries BC, pottery of this composition was very actively manufactured in the Celtic lands east of the Rhine (Figure 12.3). At Manching, 24 per cent of the sherds studied came from graphite-clay vessels, and comparable quantities appear at other oppida east of the Rhine, as well as at smaller settlements (Kappel 1969).

Different forms of coal were mined for the manufacture of personal ornaments. Jet and lignite were extracted and cut into ring jewellery and beads, especially in the Early Iron Age (Rochna 1961), and sapropelite was used for bracelets in the Fate Iron Age (Rochna and Madler 1974).