Our knowledge of many iron age societies in France is based essentially on material recovered from cemeteries. Leaving aside a few intermediate cases, burials can often be categorized into distinct social or economic groups. We can usually distinguish ordinary burials in which the body, dressed according to sex and status, is accompanied by modest grave goods, from rich interments where numerous valuable objects display the important status the deceased held in life. This disparity in the apparent wealth of grave goods, very striking during the First Iron Age, continued throughout the Second Iron Age and into the Gallo-Roman period.
Rich tombs, remarkable both for their metal artefacts (including offensive and defensive weaponry and armour) and for the size of the mound which covers them, appear from Late Bronze Age times onward. Parade vehicles and Mediterranean imports, prestige goods monopolized by the elite, were soon added to the indigenous artefacts they contained. The sought-after imports are related to feasting and are represented mainly by drinking services for the consumption of imported wine or local mead. This burial rite is well documented in the Rhone valley. Burgundy, Alsace and in part of Lorraine. Further west (as in Berry or the middle Loire valley), these grave goods associated with prestige drinking occur either singly or at a later date. The sixth century is the golden age for rich tombs containing vehicles. These are usually associated with elaborate hill-forts considered to represent princely residences.
Research during the last twenty years has emphasized aspects of continuity between the cemeteries of the First and Second Iron Ages. This is apparent not only in the uninterrupted use of a number of burial sites but also in the recognition of the slow evolution in funerary rites, sometimes without wholesale change, and in the artefacts associated with these practices. Social changes are apparently in course throughout the Early and Middle La Tene periods, and there is no clear evidence for a major break in the fifth century, as was long believed.
Champagne remains the best documented region for the entire period between the fifth and first centuries BC. Cemeteries, generally some distance away from settlement sites, reunite in death the community which inhabited a large farm or a hamlet over several generations or even centuries. Inhumation is generally the dominant rite: the corpse was laid out in extended position on its back in a rectangular pit that was then infilled with black earth. Burials are usually oriented to conform to established customs, use of a common orientation often characterizing a particular group during a certain period.
The chariot graves of the La Tene period (presently estimated to number 250 examples in the Champagne) are both less extravagantly furnished and more numerous than those of the First Iron Age. They normally include the remains of a chief, buried on a two-wheeled vehicle that could have served in war. The pits used for burials, excavated into the chalk bedrock, often include subsidiary pits or slots to house the cart wheels and sometimes the chariot pole. These vehicle burials occur in the same cemeteries as other types of graves. A hierarchy is discernible among the latter.
Rich men were entombed with their weapons, generally a sword and thrusting spears: women of the same rank normally wore a torque. Then there are men’s tombs with spears, but no swords, and women’s tombs where the corpse is wearing bracelets. Finally, in the remaining half of the identifiable tombs, the deceased is simply accompanied by pottery. Superimposed on these patterns of social division
IS an evolution in grave goods through time which is quite well understood today. Taking weaponry as an example, spears and, in a secondary way, daggers, define the extreme end of the First Iron Age at the Jogasses cemetery: the following series of burials, those of the earliest La Tene horizon, usually contain three spearheads. Thereafter, the sword accompanied by a single spear and a sword belt is the usual panoply; finally, from the third century, shields are represented. Changing dress fashions, women’s jewellery, and fighting gear provide a reflection of both evolution through time and of the the social and family status of individuals. Indications in the funerary record of specialists, such as traders or artisans, are very unusual. The burial evidence allows us to posit an essentially rural society, and seemingly a homogeneous one. Its weaponry illustrates both its independence from external influences and its wealth.
Several factors represent breakpoints in the gradual evolution of this rural society. Thus it has been possible to observe, particularly in the Aisne, that cemetery layout m the fifth century was based on family groupings in place of the sexual segregation that characterized the previous horizon (Demoule 1982). This is the main observable social change which occurs during the fifth century, apart from the gradual evolution from ‘Hallstatt’ to ‘La Tene’ in terms of material culture. The appearance of objects bearing pseudo-filigree decoration (Duval 1977) or of anklets in the women’s tombs of the third century (Kruta 1985) is indicative of links with central Europe. Is this just a question of trade contacts or is it rather a matter of population movements as suggested by the Latin sources? Opinion remains divided. The introduction of cremation, which spread southward from the north Champagne region during the third and second centuries BC, is sometimes attributed to the Belgae. Material culture evolved further at this time and impressive structures began to be placed in cemeteries: square enclosures and buildings defined by heavy earthfast wooden posts. The grave, as such, lost importance as a focus for attention in favour of monumental superstructures. These latter heralded the development of traditions represented in due course by Gallo-Roman gravestones and funerary monuments.
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