Barter is the exchange of goods for other goods perceived by the participants to be of equal value. The purpose of the transaction is acquisition of goods, and interaction is peaceful. For trade in raw materials, barter trade was probably the predominant mechanism, to judge by what we know of historical cases in medieval Europe and elsewhere. We have archaeological evidence for the use of packhorses (Wyss 1989) and freight boats (Ellmers 1969) to transport materials, and ancient writers emphasize the importance of the river systems of Gaul for Celtic trade (Timpe 1985: 260). Payment of tolls in the course of such trade seems to have been a regular practice (Timpe 1985: 276), at least at the end of the Iron Age.
The gold, silver and bronze coinage of the final two centuries BC provides good information about barter trade. The regular sizes and weights of coins, and especially the balances for weighing precious metals - more than thirty have been found at Stradonice in Bohemia - indicate that coins served as standards of value in a barter system (Steuer 1987). The recovery of balances, as well as moulds for casting coin blanks, at small settlements, as well as at oppida, suggests that this early monetary system permeated the late iron age countryside.
Gift Exchange
Fischer (1973) has outlined arguments for interpreting unusual and particularly valuable (in labour investment and transportation) objects in Celtic Europe in terms of gifts given between powerful members of societies. Drawing on classical literary sources and anthropological studies of gift exchange, Fischer argues that such special objects as the Grachwil hydria and the Vix krater can be understood as political gifts, presented to potentates in Celtic Europe for the purpose of establishing congenial relations for political or economic reasons.
The special objects that lend themselves to this interpretation are more common in the Early Iron Age than in the Late. In the later context, nearly all of the imports are objects that were produced in large quantities in Roman workshops, even though they were apparently highly regarded in Celtic Europe and are found associated with high-status individuals.
Booty
Reinecke (1958) addressed the problem of distinguishing archaeologically between objects of trade and those seized as booty. The distinction is not always easy. As Grierson (1959) argues for the early medieval world, we need to think in terms of a range of different mechanisms of goods transmission. For the fourth and third centuries BC, during the time of the Celtic raids and migrations to other parts of Europe, Bujna (1982: 421-2) envisions a major role being played by the seizing of booty. Later, to account for the abundance of bronze cauldrons on the Saale and lower Elbe rivers, Redlich (1980) suggests that some were obtained through Germanic raids into Celtic territory, though the large number of such cauldrons found in similar contexts suggests that barter trade may have been the principal mechanism of their transmission.
Mercenary Activity
The service of Celts as mercenaries in armies of east Mediterranean lands is well documented in ancient historical sources (Szabo 1991). The introduction of coinage into Celtic Europe has been connected with this mercenary activity. The earliest Celtic coins were gold, fashioned after the gold staters of Philip of Macedon (359-3 36 BC) and his son Alexander the Great (336-323 BC), and it is likely that these prototypes were brought into Celtic central Europe by mercenaries returning home (Mannsperger 1981: 234). Much of the gold jewellery from the fourth century BC onwards in Celtic Europe, as well as the local gold coinage from the early third century, may have been made of remelted gold brought by returning mercenaries.
Exogamy as Exchange
During the final 150 years before the birth of Christ, numerous personal ornaments, including fibulae and belt decorations, were brought from non-Celtic lands into the Celtic regions. The objects are characteristic of women’s costume, and the finds, which occur in sets, may reflect the movement of women from outside Celtic territories into Celtic communities as marriage partners (Kramer 1961; Polenz 1982: 214-15). Textual sources at the end of the Iron Age attest to the practice of such intergroup marriage, and the foreign jewellery may be the archaeological reflection of that practice. This mechanism of exchange would involve transmission of cultural information between Celtic and other peoples too, along with the material signs of the exchange.
World History
