THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE AND REGIONAL CONTEXT OF EARLY IRON AGE SOCIETY IN SOUTH-WESTERN GERMANY

For later European prehistory, the seventh to fifth centuries BC mark a period of renewed and more intensive interaction between the Mediterranean world and Europe north of the Alps. It represents, however, only a stage in the general sequence of the symbiotic development of the two regions during prehistory and history, which has led to the observation on more than one occasion that Europe and the Mediterranean world form a larger system within which local sequences of change must be studied (e.g. Braudel 1972:168-70).