Celtic Europe

Pre-Celtic Europe in the Late Neolithic and Copper-Bronze Ages

Prior to the spread of Celtic culture from central Europe,Western Europe was occupied by Neolithic and Copper-Bronze Age farmers. These people farmed the land and built huge megalithic burial chambers, such as New Grange, in the Boyne Valley, and ritualistic and ceremonial centers, such as Stonehenge, in England, and Carnac, in France. Some of these sites may have served as calendrical devices or celestial observatories. It is unlikely that these Neolithic farmers were wantonly wiped out by the later Celtic invaders in a wholesale slaughter. Rather, it is more plausible that they were conquered and absorbed as the agricultural lower classes who supplied the food to an invading, pastoralist elite (see below), a story that repeats itself [Page 457]throughout the modern ethnographic literature as well. Quite possibly, some of the later megalithic people were speakers of a Celtic language themselves but had moved westward prior to the development of an Iron Age pastoralist economy. The influence of these early farming people can be seen in the continuation of an art style that emphasizes flowing tendrils and spirals from the Neolithic through the Iron Age, from the carvings on the great entry stone at New Grange, to the illuminated manuscripts in the Book of Kells, and the Lindisfarne Gospels nearly 4,000 years later. This art style may have influenced the later La Tène style, or led to its wide acceptance.

The Coming of the Celts from Central Europe: Their Earliest Archeological Appearances at the Iron Age Sites of Hallstatt and La Tène

The earliest (not the oldest) archaeological evidence for the Celts comes from two sites in central Europe, Hallstatt and La Tène. Hallstatt is a salt mine in Austria in which the2,000-year-old brine-preserved body of a man was found in 1734. The body has been lost, the local people having assumed at the time that he was pagan and unworthy of Christian reburial. A century later, the area was excavated archeologically and found to have been an extensive Iron Age Celtic settlement that carried on long-distance trade in salt. Salt-preserved tools, clothing, and shoes have been excavated from this site. This mid-European mining culture may have developed out of the earlier Urnfield culture and been influenced by or converged with the equestrian Cimmerian peoples from north of the Black Sea, migrating onto the Hungarian Plain and up the Danube after being pushed west by the expanding Scythian people. During the Hallstatt period, we witness the development of mobile, warrior elite with several different centers of development from Spain to the areas north of the Danube. We know them from large pit burials that included four-wheeled wagons, long slashing swords, horse trappings, and, later, gold and Mediterranean trade items, such as are found with the rich burials of the “Princess” of Vix, in France, and the “Prince's” tomb from Hochdorf, near Stuttgart, Germany, which contained a magnificent 9-foot-long bronze couch supported by small human figurines who appear to be riding unicycles. The Hallstatt period came to an end around 500BCE, when it was replaced by the La Tène era.

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