ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter to characterise the early Iron Age in central Europe, clarifying place and time, but most importantly, what life was like. A large number of detailed specialist studies about the Hallstatt culture exist in all areas of this study, but syntheses that are both super-regional and sufficiently detailed are few and far between. There is little comprehensive literature in English on the late Bronze and early Iron Age in central Europe beyond a very superficial level, although the region is often included in large-scale overviews (e.g. Collis 1984, Kristiansen 1998). One ends up with the impression that the early Iron Age is either a uniform Hallstatt block or, alternatively, a conglomerate of groups without much in common. Spread over a rather complicated modern political setting of nation and language borders, the divide into western and eastern Europe during the Cold War particularly influenced the way in which the Hallstatt culture was studied; namely in a fragmented, regionally focussed way along modern nation boundaries.
