ABSTRACT
The early La Tène (La Tène A) assemblage found in 1879 in the aristocratic grave at the Klein Aspergle, near Ludwigsburg in Baden-Württemberg (Pl. 3; Kimmig, 1988), which first attracted Paul Jacobsthal’s attention to the study of early Celtic art in the winter of 1921, provides us with an ideal introduction to the beginnings of fifth-century La Tène art, and the problems associated with its origins. The central burial of the tumulus, one of the most impressive of a group in the near neighbourhood of the Hohenasperg fortification, had been robbed in antiquity, and the finds in question came from a subsidiary chamber that had survived the depredations of the robbers. What struck Jacobsthal so forceably was, first, the fact that a Greek cup, itself of no intrinsic quality, should be found at all in a north-alpine burial, and second, that the Greek imports were accompanied by bronze vessels of Italic form or manufacture and goldwork that displayed stylistic elements reflecting Greek forms.
