ABSTRACT
The first communities in temperate Europe that can arguably be called "towns" developed during the Early Iron Age, between about 600 and 500 b.c. About 20 such settlements have been identified archaeologically, from France in the west to Czechoslovakia in the east. Cemetery sites of the Late Bronze Age have been abundantly excavated and well published, and the people thus have a good understanding of the mortuary aspect of the period. Finally, the discovery of postholes at the bottom of one of the ditches around one part of the settlement, apparently the remains of a palisade that stood in the ditch, was unexpected. Analytical methods at Hascherkeller were guided by two factors —achieving the goals of recovering as much information as possible about the economy of the community and the interests of student participants in the research.
