and while there was continuing debate as to whether these were relics of the Romans or of local Teutonic tribes, the presence in the graves of imports from the Mediterranean was recognized as being significant.

La Tène and the Rise of a New Power North of the Alps

During the fifth century b.c., the Hallstatt centers of power gradually waned, and there are signs that there was unrest: rich barrow burials were robbed, and princely centers, such as at Heuneburg, were destroyed. The old centers were apparently replaced in status by centers of power to the north and west, in the Champagne-Ardennes region of northern France and Belgium, in the iron-rich Hunsrück-Eifel region between the Rhine and the Mosel Rivers, and in Bohemia. The burial mounds of this period are smaller, there are fewer southern imports (and those are mostly Etruscan), and the types and styles of weapons and ornaments change. Lost wax casting was replaced by bivalve molds for bronze ware and the hammering and stamping of sheet gold. The style of decoration changed, too, from simple rectangular incised designs to the creation of fantastic beasts or ambiguous human heads on fibulae, neck and arm rings, belt hooks, horse harnesses, and chariot fittings in the fifth century b.c. This period lasted until the expansion of the Roman Empire over territories from Britain to Romania and from Italy to Jutland during the period from the late second century b.c. to the later first century a.d.

The first attempt to establish a relative chronology for the Iron Age was made by the Swede hans hildebrand in 1872. He was followed by the great French archaeologist gabriel de mortillet in 1875 and then by Otto Tischler in 1881, whose scheme was in turn refined by the Bavarian paul reinecke in a number of papers beginning in 1902. As a result, La Tène is still generally divided into early, middle, and late (or I, II, and III) in France, Italy, and Switzerland and into A, B (=I), C (=II), and D (=III) in Austria, Germany, the czech republic, and the rest of central and eastern Europe. Although this chronology, which is largely based on the analysis of cemetery evidence in southern Germany and western Switzerland, has undoubtedly been applied too readily to very different bodies of material, with the exception of the British Isles, it has not been superseded or challenged.

The site of La Tène is on the northernmost tip of Lake Neuchâtel in western Switzerland. The collector Hansli Kopp began gathering material from the lake in 1857, and the artificial lowering of the Jura Lakes system between 1868 and 1900 led to systematic excavation by Émile Vouga, beginning in 1885, and his son, Paul Vouga, commencing in 1906. After 1872, the site’s name became accepted as designating the second phase of the Iron Age. Most of what was found in the Vougas’ excavations was iron, wood, and wickerwork, including the piles of a collapsed bridge, iron swords, decorated scabbards, spearheads, shield bosses, fibulae, belt hooks, axes, knives, and shears. There were few or no female objects and virtually no pottery, glass, or bronze, but there was a considerable amount of cattle and horse bones and some human skeletal remains, including skulls with clear cut marks. With the exception of coins and iron swords and their scabbards, the bulk of material from La Tène remains scientifically unstudied, and the site is now largely assigned to the period of maximum Celtic expansion, with the La Tène C (III) tree-ring dating of wooden shields giving a date of 229 b.c. There is still disagreement as to whether it was a ritual site or a trading post.

From the earlier La Tène phase (ca. 500–300 b.c.), high-status graves provide evidence of long-distance trade, particularly in coral, amber, cowrie shells from the eastern Mediterranean, and even silk, but imports were fewer and generally comprised bronze Etruscan situlae (containers), with the importance of Etruria north of the Alps first being recognized by Herman Gunthe in 1871. The drinking service was still part of the funerary rite, but it now consisted of Etruscan bronze stamnoi (double-handled wine-mixing jars and bronze spouted flagons) and either imported or locally made Celtic imitations. One of these, with a close affinity to one discovered in a chariot grave at the salt-mining complex at Dürrnberg-bei-Hallein