An outline, era by era

Hallstatt and La Tène Celtic cultures

Iron Age · ~1200 – ~500 BCE

Hallstatt and La Tène are the names of two successive archaeological cultures of Iron Age central and western Europe. The Hallstatt culture, named after a cemetery above a salt mine in Austria, flourished from about 800 to 450 BCE. It is known for iron working, salt mining, hill forts and rich burials of chiefs, some with wagons and imported goods from the Mediterranean world. The La Tène culture, named after a site on Lake Neuchâtel in Switzerland, followed from about 450 BCE and spread across much of Europe, from France to the Carpathians and, in time, the British Isles.

La Tène is known above all for its flowing, curving art on metalwork, weapons and jewellery. Greek and Roman writers called the peoples of these regions Keltoi or Galli, and many scholars call them Celtic, although the link between archaeological cultures, languages and peoples is debated. These societies were made up of many tribes, with no single state or empire. They matter because they shaped the early history of much of Europe, traded and fought with Greeks, Etruscans and Romans, and left a artistic tradition that later revivals drew on.

Things happened, and the rest is history

  1. The Celts sack Rome

    Heroic tale

    The legend

    A Gaulish army under a chief named Brennus defeats the Romans at the river Allia and marches into Rome. The Romans hold out on the Capitoline Hill, where sacred geese raise the alarm during a night attack. When the Gauls weigh out gold for a ransom, Brennus throws his sword on the scale and says 'Woe to the conquered.'

    The rest is history

    A Gaulish force really did defeat the Romans and capture much of Rome, traditionally in 390 BCE, though some ancient writers give a date a few years later. The detailed stories of the geese, the ransom and the famous sword were written down centuries afterwards, notably by Livy, and they served Roman pride. Roman tradition also claimed that Camillus arrived and drove the Gauls out without any ransom, which is probably invention. The sack left a lasting fear of Gauls in Roman memory. Archaeology has found traces of burning of about this period in parts of Rome, though they are hard to date exactly.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryLivy. Ab Urbe Condita (History of Rome), Book 5. Latin history, c. 20s BCE.
    2. PrimaryPlutarch. Life of Camillus. Greek biography, c. 100 CE.
    3. BookCunliffe, Barry. The Ancient Celts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.General survey of Celtic archaeology and ancient testimony.

  2. The Gauls attack Delphi

    Heroic tale

    The legend

    In 279 BCE a huge Celtic army marches south into Greece to plunder the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi. The god protects his shrine with earthquakes, storms and ghostly warriors. The Celts are driven off in panic, and their leader Brennus kills himself.

    The rest is history

    Celtic warbands did invade Macedonia and Greece in 279 BCE, and they were turned back near Delphi by Greek forces. The supernatural help is a later embellishment, told by Pausanias and others, and it was used to praise Apollo and the Aetolian Greeks. Other Celts crossed into Asia Minor and settled in the region later called Galatia. The Greek image of the fierce, doomed Gaul was repeated in art, for example the Dying Gaul statue, known from a Roman copy of a Hellenistic bronze.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryPausanias. Description of Greece, Book 10. Greek travel writing, c. 170 CE.
    2. BookMitchell, Stephen. Anatolia: Land, Men, and Gods in Asia Minor. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.Covers the settlement of the Galatians.
    3. BookCunliffe, Barry. The Ancient Celts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

  3. The Druids and their human sacrifices

    Popular belief

    The legend

    Druids, the priests of the Celts, are said to gather in sacred oak groves, cut mistletoe with golden sickles and burn captives alive in giant wicker figures. Many people also believe they built Stonehenge.

    The rest is history

    Julius Caesar and Strabo wrote about druids as priests and judges in Gaul and Britain, and Caesar describes wicker figures filled with victims. These accounts come from Roman outsiders, who had reasons to portray their enemies as savage, and no archaeology has confirmed the wicker figures. The mistletoe rite is from Pliny the Elder. Stonehenge is far older than the Iron Age: its main stages date to roughly 3000 to 1500 BCE. The Celts' own religion left no written texts, so much about druids remains unknown.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryCaesar, Julius. Commentarii de Bello Gallico (Gallic War), Book 6. Latin, c. 50 BCE.
    2. PrimaryPliny the Elder. Naturalis Historia, Book 16. Latin encyclopedia, c. 77 CE.
    3. BookHutton, Ronald. The Druids. London: Hambledon Continuum, 2007.Critical study of what is and is not known about druids.

  4. The Lady of Vix and the princely wine bowl

    Popular belief

    The legend

    A woman is buried in a chariot beneath a great mound in Burgundy with a gold torc and a bronze bowl so large it could hold a thousand litres of wine. It is often said she was a Celtic queen, and that her Greek bowl shows Celts were already great wine drinkers.

    The rest is history

    The grave at Vix was excavated in 1953 and dates to about 500 BCE, in the late Hallstatt period. The bowl, a Greek-made bronze krater about 1.6 metres tall, held roughly 1,100 litres, and it was probably a diplomatic gift or trade item. The woman, perhaps in her thirties, was clearly of very high rank, but whether she was a queen or a priestess is unknown. The grave shows Hallstatt elites had links with the Mediterranean, through trade that passed up the Rhône and by the Greek colony of Massalia.

    Sources

    1. BookRolley, Claude, ed. La tombe princière de Vix. Paris: Picard, 2003.Full scholarly publication of the burial (in French).
    2. BookCunliffe, Barry. Europe between the Oceans: 9000 BC to AD 1000. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.

  5. The Celts as one people from one homeland

    Popular belief

    The legend

    The Celts are often pictured as a single people who swept across Europe from a homeland in Austria, carrying one language, one art and one culture to Ireland and Scotland.

    The rest is history

    Greek and Roman writers did use Keltoi and Galli for peoples in central and western Europe, and Celtic languages were spoken across a wide area. But the old idea that Hallstatt and La Tène represented one invading people is now widely questioned. Archaeologists see changing trade, ideas and elites rather than a single migration, and the link to Britain and Ireland is especially debated. Celtic languages there are known only from later records. Modern 'Celtic' identity owes much to scholarship of the 1700s and 1800s. The Hallstatt cemetery itself was excavated from 1846 under Johann Georg Ramsauer, who recorded nearly a thousand graves.

    Sources

    1. BookCollis, John. The Celts: Origins, Myths and Inventions. Stroud: Tempus, 2003.Argues the Celts as a single people is a modern construction.
    2. BookJames, Simon. The Atlantic Celts: Ancient People or Modern Invention? London: British Museum Press, 1999.
    3. BookCunliffe, Barry. The Ancient Celts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

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