- Chapter Twenty-Nine -
be categorized into distinct social or economic groups. We can usually distinguish
ordinary burials in which the body, dressed according to sex and status, is accompa-
nied by modest grave goods, from rich interments where numerous valuable objects
display the important status the deceased held in life. This disparity in the apparent
wealth of grave goods, very striking during the First Iron Age, continued throughout
the Second Iron Age and into the Gallo-Roman period.
Rich tombs, remarkable both for their metal artefacts (including offensive and
defensive weaponry and armour) and for the size of the mound which covers them,
appear from Late Bronze Age times onward. Parade vehicles and Mediterranean
imports, prestige goods monopolized by the elite, were soon added to the indigenous
artefacts they contained. The sought-after imports are related to feasting and are
represented mainly by drinking services for the consumption of imported wine or
local mead. This burial rite is well documented in the Rhone valley, Burgundy,
Alsace and in part of Lorraine. Further west (as in Berry or the middle Loire valley),
these grave goods associated with prestige drinking occur either singly or at a later
date. The sixth century is the golden age for rich tombs containing vehicles. These
are usually associated with elaborate hill-forts considered to represent princely
residences.
Research during the last twenty years has emphasized aspects of continuity
between the cemeteries of the First and Second Iron Ages. This is apparent not only
in the uninterrupted use of a number of burial sites but also in the recognition of the
slow evolution in funerary rites, sometimes without wholesale change, and in
the artefacts associated with these practices. Social changes are apparently in course
throughout the Early and Middle La Tene periods, and there is no clear evidence for
a major break in the fifth century, as was long believed.
Champagne remains the best documented region for the entire period between the
fifth and first centuries Be. Cemeteries, generally some distance away from settle-
ment sites, reunite in death the community which inhabited a large farm or a hamlet
over several generations or even centuries. Inhumation is generally the dominant rite:
the corpse was laid out in extended position on its back in a rectangular pit that was
then infilled with black earth. Burials are usually oriented to conform to established
customs, use of a common orientation often characterizing a particular group during
a certain period.
The chariot graves of the La Tene period (presently estimated to number 250
examples in the Champagne) are both less extravagantly furnished and more
numerous than those of the First Iron Age. They normally include the remains of
a chief, buried on a two-wheeled vehicle that could have served in war. The pits
used for burials, excavated into the chalk bedrock, often include subsidiary pits
or slots to house the cart wheels and sometimes the chariot pole. These vehicle
burials occur in the same cemeteries as other types of graves. A hierarchy is dis-
cernible among the latter.
Rich men were entombed with their weapons, generally a sword and thrusting
spears: women of the same rank normally wore a torque. Then there are men's tombs
with spears, but no swords, and women's tombs where the corpse is wearing
bracelets. Finally, in the remaining half of the identifiable tombs, the deceased is
simply accompanied by pottery. Superimposed on these patterns of social division