Hallstatt

A site on Lake Hallstatt in the Austrian Alps with a cemetery of over 3000 cremation and inhumation graves with great quantities of local and imported grave goods. There were prehistoric salt mines in the area. Hallstatt is also a late Bronze age and early Iron Age cultural tradition, c 1200-6000 BC in continental temperate Europe. The term also refers to a cultural period of the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age in central Europe, divided into four phases, Hallstatt A, B, C, and D. In central European archaeology the terms Hallstatt A (12th and 11th centuries BC) and Hallstatt B (10th-8th centuries BC) are used as a chronological framework for the urnfield cultures of the Late Bronze Age. The first iron objects north of the Alps appear at the close of this period, and the Iron Age proper begins with the Hallstatt C (or I) stage of the 7th century BC. The area of fullest development is Bohemia, upper Austria and Bavaria, where hillforts were constructed and the dead were sometimes interred on or with a four-wheeled wagon, covered by a mortuary house below a barrow. Sheet bronze was still used for armor, vessels, and decorative metalwork, but the characteristic weapon was a long iron sword (or bronze copy). These swords are found as far afield as southeast England, in the so-called 'Iron Age A' cultures. During the Hallstatt D (or II) period, in the 6th century, the most advanced cultures are found further west, in Burgundy, Switzerland, and the Rhineland. Wagon burials are still prominent and trade brought luxury objects from the Greek and Etruscan cities around the Mediterranean. By the close of this period in the mid-5th century BC, elements of Hallstatt culture are found from southern France to Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. The Hallstatt precedes the La Tène period; the Hallstatt Iron Age culture certainly developed out of the Urnfield Bronze Age groups.

Site 50 km east of Salzburg, Austria, which has given its name to the earlier Iron Age of central Europe (c700-500 BC). The site of Hallstatt itself consists of a cemetery of some 3000 graves on a mountain slope above the valley, there are also extensive salt mines in the area and a settlement in the valley, largely inaccessible under the modem village. Excavations of the cemetery in the last century have provided the basis for the subdivision of the Hallstatt culture: Hallstatt A and B belong to the Late Bronze Age Urnfield culture (12th-8th centuries bc); Hallstatt C and D belong to the Iron Age (7th and 6th centuries bc). It was succeeded by the La TLne culture and a few of the latest graves at Hallstatt itself belong to this later period. The Hallstatt Iron Age culture certainly developed out of the Umfield Bronze Age groups, but there were a number of important changes: iron technology was introduced and gradually replaced bronze for many tools and weapons; inhumation replaced cremation as the dominant burial rite and settlement in hillforts became more common. The most marked changes, however, appear in the field of social organization: Hallstatt Iron Age society appears strongly differentiated, with chieftains buried in richly equipped graves with four-wheeled vehicles and fine goods of pottery and metal, some locally made, others imported from the Mediterranean civilizations (see Hohmichele, Vix). The wealth and status of the Hallstatt chieftains was indeed based in part on trade with the Mediterranean world: in exchange for raw materials such as metal ores, amber and salt and perhaps also perishable products such as skins and textiles, the chieftains obtained fine pottery and metal vessels produced in the workshops of the cities of Greece, Magna Graecia and Etruria. There was also extensive trading within the territory of the Hallstatt culture itself.