CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CELTS AND GERMANS IN
THE RHINELAND
--.•. --
Colin Wells
W
hen 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 Hunsriick-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 Tene', after the type-site on Lake Neuchatel 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.
The Hunsriick-Eifel uplands were not particularly good agricultural land, and the
wealth of the area was based primarily on its mineral deposits, which included
copper, gold and iron. Here and in the adjacent valleys of the Mosel and the Rhine,
in the early fifth century BC, the grave goods suggest increasing wealth. Elite burials
in two-wheeled chariots, evolving out of the four-wheeled wagon burials of the
earlier period, are often associated with horse gear and warriors' equipment in men's
graves, and gold torques and jewellery in women's, along with imported Greek and
Etruscan luxury goods, such as beaked wine-flagons of a type that gives rise to local
imitations (Figure 31. I ).1 Trade contacts with the Mediterranean world remain
strong, and imported goods are also found in Champagne and Belgium, as well as
beyond the Rhine, although not in such quantity as in the Hunsriick-Eifel region.
The La Tene style (La Tene Ia) evolved partly from the final phase of Hallstatt
culture (Hallstatt D), partly under the orientalizing influence of imports. Although
during the fifth century the potter's wheel was introduced into the Hunsriick-Eifel,
the pottery types still follow their Hallstatt D predecessors. On the other hand, the
La Tene metalworkers in particular begin to imitate and to transform imported
shapes and motifs, so that motifs that originally emanated from the Near East and
were mediated through the Greeks and the Etruscans evolve in the hands of La Tene
craftsmen into the rich and elaborate abstract and semi-abstract or geometrical styles