- Trade and Exchange -
goods. This trade included both circulation between production centres and outlying
rural communities, and long-distance trade that supplied exotic goods from other
culture-areas. Most such trade in iron age Europe served primarily social purposes
- to provide objects to express and enhance status relations - rather than strictly
economic purposes. To understand the motives behind most of the circulation of
materials in prehistoric Celtic Europe, we have to think of goods in terms of their
social and communicative value, as Douglas and Isherwood (1979) have argued.
INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL TRADE AND EXCHANGE:
THE GOODSIt is important to distinguish between circulation of goods within the Celtic lands
and that between Celtic lands and those of other peoples. For the period between
600 Be and the birth of Christ, similarities in material culture and human behaviour
throughout the Celtic lands make it apparent that we are dealing with a single
'culture' on some level (Pauli 1980; Hachmann, Kossack and Kuhn 1962; Moscati
et al. 1991), though regional variations in style of ornament and in features of burial
practice and settlement structure are always present.
Trade within the Celtic lands is apparent both in a variety of raw materials (see
above) and in manufactured goods. Metals, salt and substances used for ornaments
(lignite and jet, for example) were traded throughout the period, and commerce
intensified in the final two centuries of the Iron Age. Circulation of manufactured
goods increased greatly at that time, and the evidence shows that pottery, glass
ornaments and coins produced at the centres were traded to smaller communities in
the countryside. Each category of material provides insight into the character of these
trade systems (Kappel 1969; Maier 1970; Gebhard 1989), and coins are among the
most informative (Kellner 1990). The place of origin of many Celtic coins can be
determined, and large quantities are recovered on settlements and in hoards through-
out Europe, providing excellent insight into trade during the final centuries of the
Iron Age (Nash 1978; Allen 1980).
In trade and exchange between Celtic lands and other culture-areas, amber from
the Baltic region and coral from the Mediterranean are raw materials that were
regularly imported. Both were used for ornamentation, carved into beads and as
inlay for metal jewellery, and both possessed magical meaning for the Celtic peoples
(Pauli 1975). Aside from these substances, trade with foreign lands was primarily in
finished goods.
Most striking is the complex of objects from the Mediterranean world that arrived
in substantial quantities from the sixth century Be to the time of the Roman
conquest. The interaction between Celtic Europe and the Mediterranean societies,
of which this trade was a part, was important for economic, social and artistic
developments in the second half of the Iron Age (Les Princes ceftes et fa Mediterranee
1988). Predominant among the southern imports are various kinds of bronze and
ceramic vessels associated with wine-drinking that were made in Greek, Etruscan
and Roman workshops. Ceramic amphorae in which wine was transported occur at
the centres of the sixth century Be and at the oppida of the final two centuries Be,
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