ABSTRACT
The Marnian Var iant is well-known to be easily recognized by inspection among other La Tène sub-areal manifestations. The westoriented graves are full of a black grave fill, and the predominantly inhumed supine skeletons are supplied with a seemingly complete inventory of dress items, equipment, artefacts of personal interest, and food and distinctive pottery for the afterlife. Most of the cemeteries include at least one, and sometimes several, chariot burials. More-recent multivariate factor analyses of internal diversity and co-var iation of the r ich archaeological burial inventory and settlement-cemetery relations have shown that the internal distribution of artefacts tends to cluster in three or four main geographically integral subcultural groups (Fig. 15.2; Rowlett 1967, Rowlett & Pollnac 1972, Pollnac and Rowlett 1977, Rowlett 1978). These analyses produce geographic groups of contiguous sites in (a) the East Marne, (b) the Marne-Ardennes Group of northern Marne and southern Ardennes, and (c) the Marne-Aisne Group of western Marne and southern Aisne. In south-central Marne a small group which perhaps should be called the West Group (as it is western in the Marnian area), is set apart primarily by some ceramic characteristics and a penchant for minute circular ornamentation on its rangy fibulae and other bronzes. Otherwise, the cultural content of this group is similar to that of the East Marnian, and perhaps belongs to that set.
