wealth and source of precious metal, as exemplified by the gold from the late-third-century Waldalgesheim chariot grave, increasingly—and of particular value to the archaeologist—coin types indicate local tribal areas, although with the expansion of trading between centers, coins of high value became distributed far beyond their point of origin.

Certain features of the oppida, which evolved in the course of the second century b.c. as tribal centers supported by open settlements and individual farmsteads, point to the evolution of urbanization for the first time north of the Alps. The degree to which this development may have been influenced by the nature of the town planning of contemporary Mediterranean society is a matter of debate, but it is clear from modern excavations of 200 or so sites in Hungary, the Czech and Slovak republics, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and France that there are considerably more variations than Caesar’s general description might lead one to expect. Even so, the similarities in the association of the oppida and their attendant open sites with such activities as large-scale pottery making, smelting and the forging of iron, glass production, and the minting of coins remain as valid today as when first noted by French proto-historian joseph déchelette.

Déchelette excavated Mont Beuvray and was struck by the similarity in material from the French site and material obtained, largely unsystematically, at Stradonice in Bohemia and published in 1903 by Josef Píc, the head of the Archaeology Department of the National Museum in Prague. Déchelette translated Píc’s excavation report and elaborated his own views in his massive Manuel d’archéologie préhistorique, celtique et gallo-romain, which was first published between 1908 and 1914 but in many ways has never been superseded.

Modern Research and the Case of the Vanishing Celts

A long series of excavation campaigns at Manching near the Bavarian town of Ingolstadt that commenced in 1938 marks the most thorough examination of an oppidum, although to date, only a fraction of the 380-hectare site with its roughly circular 7-meter-long murus gallicus (Gallic wall) has been examined. The site, a center of the Vindelici, the dominant tribe of the region until subjugated by Rome in 15 b.c., evolved from a series of settlements with their attendant cemeteries in the third century b.c. to the main enclosure, which evolved over a couple of generations during which time signs of burning indicate the strength of local rivalries. Inside the enclosure, regular habitation areas and industrial zones repeat patterns discovered elsewhere. Long-range trade and perhaps intermarriage are indicated by the occasional discovery of forms of female ornaments originating in the alpine region. Even more striking is the discovery of a model tree with ivy leaves made of gold-foil-covered wood whose parallels are with Italo-Greek gold work. The existence of a tree cult was recorded by classical historians.

Other evidence of later La Tène cult practices come from the vicinity of a number of square- or rectangular-banked enclosures, several with deep well shafts and square internal structures. At least some of the latter have been interpreted as temples, and among finds that seem to support their ritual use are the striking heraldic wooden animal figures from a well at Fellbach-Schmiden outside Stuttgart, which date to the late second or early first century b.c., and the somewhat older stone head of a Celt accidentally discovered in several pieces in a pit just outside a rectangular enclosure, which may have had a ritual purpose, at Ms˘ecké Zehrovice west of Prague.

In the nineteenth century, only in France was it possible to combine both Gauls and Romans in a construct of national identity—the Franks, who had given their name to the country, vanished below the horizon of popular interest. In other parts of Europe, however, the Celts, unlike Germans, Slavs, and Hungarians, were not associated with national governments nor, except in Ireland, with aspirations to separate nationhood. Since World War II, the Celts, with their widespread historical presence across Europe, Turkey, and North Africa, have been seen as an antidote to the type of essential or genetically based racism that caused the Holocaust. As the precursors of national states, they seem to offer