- Chapter Thirteen -
Because of the spectacular nature of the Vix krater and other wine-associated
imports, the wine trade has attracted considerable research attention, but other
categories of imports show that the interaction between the Mediterranean world
and central Europe was diverse. For example, the Grafenbiihl grave of around 500
BC (Ziirn 1970) contained ornamental sphinxes of amber, bone and ivory, and
remains of furniture from the Mediterranean world. Grave 6 in the Hohmichele
tumulus at the Heuneburg included silk textiles (Hundt 1969), from the East. At the
oppida, surgical instruments, balances, mirrors, fibulae, finger-rings, cameos, glass
vessels and bone writing implements from the Roman world are well represented
(Svobodova 1985). Archaeological evidence for the goods that were traded for all of
the Mediterranean imports is sparse. Textual evidence suggests that the Celtic
communities were supplying raw materials and organic products - things that would
not survive archaeologically in recognizable form (Wells 1984).
Export trade from the Celtic lands in other directions is attested archaeologically,
however. Glass ornaments, probably manufactured at the major oppida, are well
represented north of the Celtic regions, for example in the Netherlands (Peddemors
1975) and in Thuringia (Lappe 1979), and Gebhard (1989: 185) suggests that the
Celtic glass industry was producing specifically for export trade in the final phase of
the Iron Age. Graphite-clay pottery has been found at sites in regions north of the
Celtic lands as well (Kappel 1969) and was probably an export item. Fine painted
pottery of late La Tene type occurs north of the Celtic production areas (Figure 13.3)
and apparently was traded into those regions. Iron weapons made by Celtic smiths
were traded northward (Eggers 1951: 38; Frey 1986), as were bronze cauldrons,
which are well represented on the North European Plain (Redlich 1980) and occur
even further north (Hachmann 1990: 652, fig. 24). The stylistically 'Celtic' cauldrons
from Denmark, such as those from Bra, Gundestrup and Rynkeby, may have been
manufactured in Celtic workshops in central Europe (Frey 1985: 257; Hachmann
1990), but many investigators now argue for a Danish or, in the case of Gundestrup,
south-eastern European origin (Megaw and Megaw 1989: 176).
CONTEXT OF TRADE AND EXCHANGE
I distinguish here two levels of context for consideration of trade and exchange.
One is the historical and economic context of the Greater Mediterranean world,
including the Celtic regions north and west of the Alps, during the second half of the
final millennium BC. The other is the specific context of the archaeological sites on
which evidence for trade is found.
Peoples of Europe traded with one another regularly from at least the Neolithic
period on, but during the Iron Age, trade intensified within temperate Europe, and
trade became much more extensive from central Europe outward. In order to under-
stand this growth in trade, we need to view developments in Europe in the context
of change in the Greater Mediterranean world, in the sense used by Braudel (1972)
in his study of that great geographical entity in late medieval times. By the Iron Age,
the peoples of temperate Europe, like others bordering on the civilizations of the