ABSTRACT
When a people or peoples whom we can recognize as the Celts emerged from the Urnfield culture of the Late Bronze Age, their first cultural contribution to European history is labelled by archaeologists ‘Hallstatt’, from the type-site in Upper Austria. Although the Hallstatt culture of the Early Iron Age (Hallstatt C and D) was widely distributed throughout central and western Europe, its main centres, like the Heuneburg, were in the region of the upper Danube. Soon after 500 Bc, however, they were largely abandoned, and the centre of gravity shifted northwards to the Hunsrück-Eifel region west of the Rhine on either side of the lower Mosel, just before it flows into the Rhine at Koblenz, the Roman Confluentes. Here were developed new decorative styles and new types of artefacts that archaeologists call ‘La Tène’, after the type-site on Lake Neuchâtel in Switzerland. It is not a good name, since, unlike Hallstatt, it is not central to the region in which the style evolved, but we are stuck with it.
