Biada zwyciężonym – gospodarka i relacje społeczne w kulturze lateńskiej

The economy of any community depends on the values which are considered to be the most important. Social organization and technologies are subordinated to their implementation. In traditional societies, including people of the La Tène culture, the most significant issues concerned the status of individuals and the resulting interpersonal relations. The position in rank was manifested and gained through participation in military expeditions. The economy was subordinated to military action. Nonetheless, new technologies and financial solutions created opportunities for military success. This, however, has its price in enormous social inequalities and almost permanent war.

A helyi lakosság továbbélése Pannoniában a településszerkezeti változások tükrében – előtanulmány

A késő vaskori és a pannoniai kora római falvak településein gyakran előforduló veremházak kapcsán az objektumtípus és a települések továbbélésének lehetőségét vizsgálja a tanulmány. A La Tène D-kori falvak római kori vicusokká való átalakulása többtényezős, amelyen keresztül a romanizáció folyamata is nyomon követhető.

The Hoard of Celtic Coins from Deutsch Jahrndorf (Austria, 1855)

The Deutsch Jahrndorf (Burgenland, Austria) hoard was discovered in 1855. It contained Bratislava Celtic coinage – gold denominations and silver tetradrachms of the Biatec group. Altogether, 163 coins have been studied either by autopsy or from their earlier publications; originally however, they were surely more numerous. Although the treasure was discovered south of the Danube, 15 km away from the Bratislava oppidum acropolis, there is no doubt about its direct association with this site. Its contents provide a unique insight into the production of gold denominations, both anepigraphic and with the legends BIATEC or BIAT. Silver tetradrachms of the Biatec group include the majority of known die combinations. The Deutsch Jahrndorf hoard represents a unique source for better understanding the Bratislava coin production. Based on our present state of knowledge of the late La Tène chronology, the hoard was probably concealed in the third quarter of the 1st century BC; a more precise date cannot be established. New discoveries of Roman style constructions on the Bratislava oppidum acropolis help us better understand the phenomenon of relations between the Roman Republic and local Celtic elites; the detailed study of the hoard in question contributes to this topic from the numismatic point of view.

The economy of the La Tène culture communities based on the example of research from Upper Silesia

The results of excavations show that the La Tène culture community which inhabited the microregion of the contemporary village of Samborowice (Upper Silesia, Poland) in the Iron Age did not differ from its brethren from the area of Moravia and the middle basin of the Danube. Our intention is to try to identify the most important features of local economy based on newly acquired archaeobotanical and archaeozoological sources. The results from Samborowice in the form of a set of cereals characteristic of La Tène culture settlements from Central Europe suggest that the set of remains being analysed comes from a period when changes to the selection of cereals had yet to occur. The population in this period of history applied a model of economy based on agriculture and livestock rearing, with cattle being the most important animals, followed by pigs and small ruminants interchangeably.

Neither “Celtic” nor “Dacian”: The Site of Židovar at the Edges of La Tène, Carpathian and Roman Worlds

The paper reviews long-standing interpretation of the late Iron Age site of Židovar as “Celtic”, “Dacian” and “Celto-Dacian”. Arguing that this standpoint is derived from biased culture-historical ethno-determinism, the evidence is reconsidered from excavation journals of Branko Gavela and published research on Židovar. Evidential basis is discussed, such as sratigraphic difficulties and chronology, as well as some common misconceptions of the site’s characteristics. Deadlocks are emphasized regarding the conclusions on its ethnic belonging. The paper calls for a new approach that goes beyond ethno-cultural determinism and urges the employment of “relational locality”. This perspective considers the site and its immediate surroundings as the first order community, i.e. the spatio-social focal point entangled in diverse, multidirectional and supra-regional relational networks. This would mean that the community of Židovar actively mediated different templates coming from the “globalized” koines of La Tène Pannonian, Danubian-Carpathian and Roman worlds, and bricolaged them in distinctive local ways.

Kučeravá Starohradišťanka

A fragment of a bronze figurine discovered recently at the Staré Hradisko oppidum, which represents a female with her arms on the hips, stands out from similar artefacts from a stylistic and technological point of view. The present paper analyses the artefact from the stylistic point of view by setting it into the context of other anthropomorphic statuettes from the Middle Danube area and the technological standpoint utilising microscopy and elemental composition analysis of the alloy. The artefact contributes in an original way to the discussion on the nature of La Tène art in the Recent and Late La Tène period.

Re-approaching Celts: Origins, Society, and Social Change

This work re-approaches the origins of “the Celts” by detailing the character of their society and the nature of social change in Europe across 700–300 BC. A new approach integrates regional burial archaeology with contemporary classical texts to further refine our social understanding of the European Iron Age. Those known to us as “Celts” were matrifocal Early Iron Age groups in central Gaul who engaged in social traditions out of the central European salt trade and became heavily involved in Mediterranean politics. The paper focuses on evidence from the Hallstatt–La Tène transition to solve a 150-year-old problem: how the Early Iron Age “Celts” became the early La Tène “Galatai,” who engaged in the Celtic migrations and the sacking of Rome at 387 BC.