Hallstatt

Hallstatt is a village like something out of a fairytale.

Savvy Hallstatt residents have started to charge tourists to use their lavatories.

A construction worker walks with a ladder in the replica village of Austria's UNESCO heritage site, Hallstatt, in China's southern city of Huizhou, on June 1, 2012.

Among the many substances Celtic tribes mined was salt in areas such as Salzburg in Austria where evidence of the Hallstatt culture was found by a mine manager in the 19th century.

Before the discoveries at Hallstatt and La Tène, it was generally considered that the Celtic heartland was southern France, see Encyclopædia Britannica for 1813.

Bronze fitting from France in the "vegetal" style Overview of the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures.

During Hallstatt times, monumental burial mounds were erected in western Slovakia, with princely equipment consisting of richly decorated vessels, ornaments and decorations.

Hallstatt and La Tène cultures flourished during the late Iron Age from around 450 BC possibly under some influence from the Greek and Etruscan civilisations.

However it is possible in Belgium that especially in the northern areas the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures were brought by new elites, and that the main language of the population was not Celtic.

Iberia main seeAlso Until the end of the 19th century, traditional scholarship dealing with the Celts did acknowledge their presence in the Iberian Peninsula citation citation as a material culture relatable to the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures.

Imports of luxury goods stretching from the North and Baltic seas to Africa have been discovered in the cemetery at Hallstatt.

Iron Age main Hallstatt swords Iron became increasingly common from the 13th century B.C. Before that the use of swords was less frequent.

It is characterized by elegant, stylized curvilinear animal and vegetal forms, allied with the Hallstatt traditions of geometric patterning.

Its eight exhibition rooms include artefacts such as New Stone Age stone axes, 80 pottery jars from the Hallstatt era and Celtic bronze jewellery.

See the article Hallstatt for details and references.

The Atlantic system had by this time effectively collapsed, although England maintained contacts across the Channel with France, as the Hallstatt culture became widespread across the country.

The concept that the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures could be seen not just as chronological periods but as "Culture Groups", entities composed of people of the same ethnicity and language, had started to grow by the end of the 19th century.

The contemporary La Tène Culture is indicated in green tones, the preceding Hallstatt Culture in yellow.

The core Hallstatt territory (800 BCE) is shown in solid yellow, the area of influence by 500 BCE (HaD) in light yellow.

The Hallstatt culture was succeeded by the La Tène culture of central Europe, which was overrun by the Roman Empire, though traces of La Tène style are still to be seen in Gallo-Roman artefacts.