The earliest material culture that is generally recognised as belonging to the Celts is the Hallstatt culture, which spans the late Bronze and early Iron Ages. The culture takes its name from the cemetery of an ancient salt-mining community in the Austrian Alps, which was excavated between 1846 and 1863. Hallstatt became wealthy from the salt trade, and the graves of its inhabitants contained rich offerings, including long slashing swords that the excavators immediately recognised from descriptions of Celtic weaponry in ancient Greek sources. Appropriately, although Hallstatt sounds very Germanic, it is actually a Celtic place name, meaning ‘salt place’. The Hallstatt culture is divided into four phases, Hallstatt A (1200-1000), B (1000-800), both of the late Bronze Age, and C (800-600) and D (600-450), of the early Iron Age. The culture first developed along the Danube in Austria and southern Germany and in Bohemia as part of the Urnfield complex and it was only in its Iron Age phases that it developed a truly distinctive character. The Iron Age Hallstatt culture became enormously influential, spreading to much of Germany and the Low Countries, Switzerland, France, Spain, Portugal and south-eastern Britain by 500 bc. Although, thanks to the evidence of ancient Greek writers, we can be confident that the people of the Hallstatt heartland were Celts, the Hallstatt culture itself is not identical with them, that is, the emergence of the culture does not mark the emergence of the Celtic-speaking peoples themselves. The spread of the culture was more likely the result of trade and social contact between peoples who already spoke Celtic languages and shared similar values, than of migrations out of the Hallstatt heartland. Even when the Hallstatt culture was at its peak, there were Celtic-speaking peoples
Who did not come under its influence; Celtic Spain adopted it selectively, Ireland not at all.
There is little to distinguish the earliest phase of the Hallstatt culture from the rest of the Urnfield complex. Urnfield influence declined in the Hallstatt B period, when distinctive styles of weapons, including a long slender sword, appeared. More dramatic change followed the introduction of iron working to central Europe in the eighth century. Hillforts increasingly began to dominate the landscape in the Hallstatt heartland in Austria, southern Germany and Bohemia. Around the forts were clustered cemeteries of luxuriously furnished barrow burials, the richest of which often contained horse gear and four-wheeled funerary wagons. The practice of placing vehicles in elite burials became a long-lived characteristic of the Celts, though war chariots later replaced wagons. These developments are evidence of the emergence of a markedly hierarchical and centralised society of powerful and wealthy chiefdoms. A change from the cremation burials of Urnfield times to inhumation points to wider changes in beUef systems accompanying the social changes. The cause of this transformation of Hallstatt society is not at all clear. One possibility is that the availability of more effective iron weapons allowed the warrior elite to achieve a stronger hold on power. The obvious importance of the horse in the Hallstatt C culture, and the appearance of a long slashing sword suited to cavalry warfare, has led to suggestions that the changes may be connected to the arrival of horse-mounted Indo-Iranian nomads, called the Cimmerians, who dominated the western Eurasian steppes at this time. Cimmerian immigrants may have become assimilated with the warrior elite and introduced the new burial customs, inhumation being the normal way to dispose of the dead among the Indo-Iranian nomads. Alternatively, the indigenous elite may simply have borrowed these alien and exotic customs from the Cimmerians as a means of displaying and reinforcing their status. Another likely factor in the emergence of Hallstatt C culture was probably nothing more complicated than a rising population. In all pre-industrial societies agricultural production was by far the most important source of wealth. The level of agricultural production was directly related to the amount of effort, human and animal, that was applied to the land, so the greater the population, the greater the workforce, the greater the production and the greater the surplus for the elite to cream off for themselves from the toiling peasantry. (This was why the first civilisations all emerged on fertile flood plains, such as Mesopotamia, which could easily support very dense populations even using simple farming techniques.)
In the final phase of the Hallstatt culture (Hallstatt D), the centre of the culture shifted west, to the upper reaches of the Danube, the Rhine, the Neckar, the Moselle, the Saone and the Seine rivers. Powerful centralising forces were at work in this area. A host of small hillforts were abandoned during the sixth century to be replaced by a relatively
Limited number of large hillforts, which emerged as pre-eminent pov/er centres. These were the strongholds of the powerful chieftains whose burials have been found in the surrounding countryside. These so-called ‘princely’ burials were far more splendidly furnished than earlier Hallstatt burials. Possibly the most magnificent of these burials, of a six-foot (1.8 metres) tall male aged 30 to 40 discovered near Hochdorf in Germany, included a funerary wagon, a bronze couch, gold-covered shoes, drinking horns and other feasting gear and imported luxury metalwork, including a Greek bronze cauldron. These late Hallstatt chieftains clearly lived in some splendour. The Hochdorf burial was covered with an enormous barrow, 100 feet (30.5 metres) high. If a vast barrow was not sufficient to emphasise the high status of its occupant, some were also topped with monumental stone sculptures, such as the rough sandstone warrior from Hirschlanden in Germany. This warrior is naked apart from a neck tore and a sword, both of which were symbols of power in the Hallstatt world, and a conical helmet. Later Classical writers would often comment on this Celtic practice of going into battle naked. The great barrows often served as a focus for later burials, as other family members sought to associate themselves in death with these symbols of dynastic power. One huge barrow built around 600 bc at Magdalenenburg bei Vlissingen in Germany remained in use for 200 years and eventually contained 120 secondary burials. The frequency of elite burials declined in the course of the sixth century, reflecting the decline in the number of major power centres. Power was becoming centralised not only in fewer places but also in fewer hands.
The refocusing of the Hallstatt culture to the west was connected to the founding of a Greek colony at Massalia (Marseille) c. 600 bc. Beginning in the eighth century, Greek city-states had seen founding overseas colonies as a useful way of defusing social tensions caused by rising populations. Although these colonies were independent from the outset, they created greatly increased commercial opportunities for their mother cities and also helped to diffuse Greek influences around the Black Sea and most of the Mediterranean. Greek colonies founded in Italy in the eighth century, for instance, played a formative role in the emergence of the Etruscan civiHsation in Tuscany, which was in turn the major influence on the civilisation of early Rome. The Greeks had bitter commercial rivals in the Phoenicians, whose homeland was in modern Lebanon. Stimulated by the demands of the powerful Assyrian empire in Mesopotamia, the Phoenicians had pioneered trade routes through the Mediterranean and the Pillars of Hercules to establish a monopoly of trade with Europe’s Atlantic coastal zone, which was the source of valuable metals, especially tin. Gades (Cadiz) became their main trading post in the region. The Phoenicians regarded geographical knowledge as a valuable commercial secret, not to be shared, so it is not at all certain how far they sailed north along the Atlantic coast. Possibly they were the first representatives of the Mediterranean civilisations to make contact with the Celts of Britain. The competitive
Greeks actively sought to open alternative trade routes. With its fine natural harbour and easy access to north-western and central Europe via the valley of the Rhone and its tributary the Saone, Massalia was a very promising location: it prospered and has never ceased to be a major port.
The new trade route opened by the foundation of Massalia enriched the west Hallstatt chiefdoms and gave them access to exotic Mediterranean luxuries, such as wine and the fine tableware associated with wine drinking. Control over the consumption and distribution of these luxuries, probably at feasts, became an important way for the Hallstatt elite to display and reinforce their status: it must have been rare indeed for the common people to have access to them, as Mediterranean imports have rarely been found outside hillforts and princely burials. It is unclear how these luxuries were paid for. They may have been diplomatic gifts designed to facilitate trade in more mundane commodities such as grain, hides and slaves. Along with the luxuries came other forms of Mediterranean influence. Hallstatt craftsmen borrowed and adapted decorative elements from Mediterranean metalwork and incorporated them into a rich mix of native and Scythian influences to create their own distinctive geometrical, vegetal and animal ornaments that mark the emergence of Celtic art. Another important Greek influence was the introduction of the potter’s wheel.
Most long-distance trade in the Iron Age was conducted through a chain of intermediaries - the goods getting more expensive every time they changed hands - with the final recipient probably having little idea of an object’s ultimate source. Valuable commodities could travel very long distances this way: for example, Chinese silk has been found in the grave of a Hallstatt ‘princess’ at Heuneburg in Germany. Greek traders may usually have gone no further than Bragny-sur-Saone, near the confluence of the Saone, Doubs and Dheune rivers. Large quantities of Massaliot wine amphorae and Mediterranean pottery and glass found here suggest that Bragny was the major centre for the onward distribution of Mediterranean imports in the sixth century. Despite this, it is likely that some Greeks found their way to the Hallstatt heartlands, as c. 580 BC the hillfort at Heuneburg was equipped with mud-brick walls and bastion towers identical to those used in contemporary Greek military architecture but quite alien to local traditions. The walls were unsuited to local climatic conditions and they were soon replaced: unlike baked brick, mud-brick dissolves in rainwater. It is also likely that a Greek craftsman from Sparta or Taranto visited the hillfort of Mont Lassois in eastern France and while there cast (or at least assembled) the magnificent bronze krater (a wine vessel) which was discovered in a ‘princess’s’ burial nearby at Vix. The krater’s huge size - it was 1.64 metres high and weighed 208 kilogrammes - would have made transporting it over a long distance impractical. Stories told by these traders and travellers made the Mediterranean world aware of the peoples called Keltoi for the first time. The Hallstatt Celts could probably see
Plate / Kraier, from the tomb of a Princess Vix (bronze). Greek school (sixth century bc)
Source: Musw Archwlogique. Chatillon Sur Seine, France/Hridgeman Art Library.
Nothing but advantages in the new links being forged with the Mediterranean civilisations, but they were to have fatal consequences for their descendants. By beginning the integration of the Celtic world into the Mediterranean economy and spurring the process of political centralisation, they ultimately also made it more vulnerable to conquest and political and cultural assimilation by the Romans.
The opulent world of the Hallstatt chieftains came to an abrupt end around 450 bc with the abandonment of all the main power centres, at least one of which, the Heuneburg, was violently destroyed. The reason for the decline of the Hallstatt chiefdoms is unclear. The Massaliotes’ increasing interest in subjugating the Celtic and Ligurian tribes of Provence, and competition from the Etruscans, who had opened new routes over the Alps, may have led to a decline of the Rhone trade routes. This may have cost the Hallstatt chieftains their monopoly on the distribution of Mediterranean imports and deprived them of the prestige goods they needed to underpin their status. Another factor in the decline of the Hallstatt chiefdoms seems to have been the rise of new centres of chieftainly power to the north. Associated with the rise of
These chiefdoms was an astonishingly inventive new culture, the La Tene culture.
World History
