Iron Age Europe

Following Wheeler’s excavations at Maiden Castle, the multivallate hillforts of Wessex came to be seen as
responses to a specific form of warfare based around the massed use of slings. As part of the wider post-processual
‘rethink’ of the British Iron Age during the late 1980s and 1990s, this traditional ‘military’ interpretation of
hillforts was increasingly subject to criticism. Apparent weaknesses in hillfort design were identified and many of
the most distinctive features of these sites (depth of enclosure, complexity of entrance arrangements, etc) were
reinterpreted as symbols of social isolation. Yet this ‘pacification’ of hillforts is in many ways as unsatisfactory as
the traditional vision. Both camps have tended to view warfare as a detached, functional, and disembedded
activity which can be analysed in terms of essentially timeless concepts of military efficiency. Consideration of the
use of analogous structures in the ethnographic record suggests that, far from being mutually exclusive, the
military and symbolic dimensions are both essential to a more nuanced understanding of the wider social role of
hillforts in Britain and beyond.

This paper examines the various hoards belonging to
the Llyn Fawr phase of the British Bronze Age – for
which other scholars now prefer the term Earliest Iron
Age (e.g. Cunliffe 2005; Needham this volume) – and
provides an up-to-date list of relevant finds (Appendix
1). It will then consider the significance of the axes,
swords and razors belonging this phase, and review the
dating – 800 to around 600 BC – with reference to the
latest chronology for Hallstatt C on the Continent.
Finally, the implications of the disappearance of certain
bronze types during the Llyn Fawr phase for the adoption
of iron are briefly discussed.

This work essentially constitutes Part-2 of the Gods of the Celts and the Indo-Europeans (Olmsted 1994-2019). My earlier work dealt with the wider evidence that Táin bó Cuailnge (Táin) is the epic-derivative of an earlier Celtic myth. The myth embedded within the ninth century Táin developed as an aspect of the lunar festival of the first day of Spring (samain). Some fifteen episodes of the core myth are displayed on the inner and outer plates of the Gundestrup cauldron. As I have examined the connections between the Táin and the Gundestrup cauldron extensively in my earlier works, in this work I deal mostly with the tales associated with the characters depicted on the Chiemsee cauldron.
My motivation for examining and demonstrating the interrelated development of these Old Irish, Middle Welsh, and Classical narrative accounts is that early versions of several Old Irish tales seem to be depicted in the narrative portrayals on the silver cauldron found at Gundestrup in 1891 and on the gold cauldron found in the Chiemsee in 2001. However, the portrayals on the cauldrons are not a necessary part of the demonstration that these later stories developed from common prototypes. The literary connections do not depend upon establishing that the stories are portrayed on the cauldrons. Thus, this comparative literary analysis (though much of the material had oral beginnings) is of vital importance to anyone interested in the origins of Gawain and the Green Knight and of Tristan and Isolde (Tristan). The origins of GGK in the Irish tale Fled Bricrend and the origins of the prototype Tristan in Tóruigheacht Dhiarmada agus Gráinne is firmly established here, apart from the depictions of even earlier versions of these tales on the Chiemsee cauldron.
The iconographic depictions on the cauldrons are of vital importance in determining the original nature of the characters in these stories as deities. In the medieval tales which developed out of these myths, the original Gaulish deities, for the most part, have been euhemerized into kings and queens or warriors and their concubines. I demonstrate in this work that the stories associated with these cauldrons arose as myths about deities. In the Chiemsee depictions recalling Classical tales, such as some of those preserved by Ovid in Metamorphoses, the original Gaulish deities have been replaced by their Roman or Greek equivalents. The mythic nature of these Classical stories is still apparent. Here I connect the Classical deities utilized as characters in these stories with their Irish and Gaulish equivalents.

This study deals with graves of Vekerzug culture, which contained weapons and horse harness. These graves reflect an evident social differentiation of Vekerzug society. Special attention in the study was paid to the most accurate geographic and cultural determination of the origin of individual weapon types and horse harness components in the context of new knowledge about Vekerzug culture and answering the question to what extent these finds reflect its interregional contacts. Important is also definition of possible armament schemes of Vekerzug culture and their comparison with armament schemes in the neighbouring cultural regions, especially with the forest-steppe Western Podolian group, Ciumbrud culture and Ferigile culture. Cultural and spatial analyses of individual types of weapons and horse harness as well as of the armament schemes of Vekerzug culture show that the problem of interregional contacts of this culture, mainly the eastern ones, must be considered more differentially than it has been previously presented in scientific literature. At the same time, they confirm the recent knowledge that the effect of eastern influences on Vekerzug culture is in scientific literature without a reason constantly overestimated.
Keywords: Eastern Hungary, Southern Slovakia, Hallstatt and Early La Tène periods, Vekerzug culture, weapons, horse harness, graves, armament schemes, interregional contacts, innovations.

One of the many remarkable discoveries made during previous archaeological excavations at the Hill of Tara, County Meath, is a craft workshop buried beneath the bank of the Iron Age ceremonial enclosure of Ráith na Ríg (Rath/Fort of the Kings). The workshop dates from around the second century BC and was used for iron and bronze smithing, and possibly glass working. Craft activity appears to have been on a small scale and, in keeping with the evidence from other Irish ‘royal’ centres whose Iron Age complexes have been the focus of more extensive excavation, lends little support to the idea of centralised production focused on high-status sites during this period. Arguably more significant to an understanding of this activity is the location of the workshop on sacred ground, within the cemetery and ceremonial precinct of Tara. This paper examines the ritual and funerary landscape that formed the immediate setting for craftworking at Tara, as well as a range of related themes that emerge from a wider study of the archaeological and ethnographic records and early Irish sources. Among the topics explored are the intrinsic qualities that link skilled crafting, in particular metalworking, with places/rites of passage; the ambiguity that surrounds the status and craft of individuals perceived as ‘other’; and the essence of power as it is expressed at Tara. Although the association between crafting and kingship is often conceived of through the prism of élite patronage of skilled artisans, early Irish and ethnographic sources suggest this may belie a more complex relationship based on shared or complementary traits, which can directly impact the society, for better or worse.

Britain has long had a marginal status in the study of the European Iron Age. The dominant narrative holds that the beginning of the Iron Age was marked by a sharp decline in contacts between Britain and the near Continent, with the breakdown of the long-distance networks of metal exchange that had been so important during the Bronze Age. Contacts are thought to have remained fairly limited up until the last two centuries of the pre-Roman Iron Age, when there was a resurgence of cross-Channel ‘trade’. This presaged the Roman conquest which brought (southern) Britain into a new European system.
I will argue here that this narrative is misleading. The impression of limited cross-Channel contact through most of the Iron Age comes from a narrow focus on the evidence of portable material culture, and certain kinds of ‘high-status’ artefacts in particular. This skews our perspective towards particular kinds of interactions. When we consider a broader range of Iron Age practices, connections between the communities either side of the Channel and North Sea become more evident. Britain was firmly embedded in the wider European Iron Age.

For almost three decades, British Iron Age studies have seen the traditional paradigm framed in terms of a timeless, hierarchical ‘Celtic society’ face sustained challenges (Collis 1981, 67; Hill 1989; Hill 2006). Regarding social organisation, hierarchies must now be demonstrated in the evidence rather than assumed. In a similar way, approaches to Iron Age gender centred on archaeological and osteological evidence remain under-developed; with a tendency instead to focus on the few classical testimonies and to gender prehistory by formal analogy (cf. Pope 2007). The challenge remains to develop an archaeological understanding of Iron Age societies: one that takes neither power-structure nor sex-class for granted; and one that prioritizes the archaeological data. The authors explore this issue by selectively addressing the ‘woman question’ in west European Iron Age studies; with a review of recent work in non-Mediterranean France providing context for the British material.

In the older phase of the Iron Age appear in different cultures between the middle highlands and the northern german region in her form and size comparable vessels which were called in the past with different concepts like „Eierbecher“ (“egg cup”), „Kelchbecher“ (“calyx beaker”) oder „Fußbecher“ (“food beaker”). Besides, it concerns mostly small-dimensioned vessels of type bowl with conical or convex crooked wall which own a distinctive foot, state ring, several presser food or thickened, only slightly outwardly pulled ground. The overview to the researches which dealt with the early Iron Age “Fußschüsseln” (foodbowls) shows that this vascular type was examined up to now only on regional base and mostly only in connection with several ceramic continuance of the respective cultures. There is no international analysis of the form types and a chronological arrangement building up on it. The question of their function is not cleared till this day unambiguously. The connection with the “Ofenmodelle” of the “Billendorfer Kultur” raises new questions in compound with former interpretations. The formative and typochronological references to the ovenmodels of the Billendorf Culture in Saxonia are an indication of the usage of these foot bowls as oil or tallow lamps which has been previously assumed. Finally the “Fußschüsseln” should be arranged cultural-historical. A total number of 407 of foot bowls were detected until today. 271 of them are “whole or completely reconstructable” vessels (67 %). 24 are wall sherds of bowls (6 %), 13 are foot fragments (3 %). The rest 99 pieces allow no final permit about condition (24 %). 274 copies, so the large part, are from graves, 12 copies are known from settlement connections. Particulary in the older phase of the early Iron age, the same or similar types of the “Fußschüsseln” are common in the Belgian-Dutch region of Limburg in the west about beyond the Rhine area and north Hessian till the Thuringian basin in the east. This fact is a tip to the intensive communication within the highland regions which further enclosed the north and a little weaker form also southern and western Lower Saxony; in younger phase of the early Iron Age the middle and northern Netherlands too. The formation of such a “communication space” is concurrently response to the development of the “Hallstattkreis” in the south. This process formed the basis for the intensification of northern influence in the younger early Iron Age which revealed itself, e. g. with socially outstanding women, in the takeover of jewellery elements and costume elements like the spiral rings as a cervical jewellery. The cultures have to be seen much stronger in a “tension field” between the south and the north. The food bowls (“Fußschüsseln”) are an indication for these relations.

Why do people fight each other? How is it possible that people who are able to peacefully live together at one moment, can kill each other at another? These are questions that have been occupying philosophers and social scientists for a long time. This small book shows that answers to these fundamental questions on the human condition tend to be looked for in our deep past. Since archaeology is our prime source of information on that past, it is the investigation of prehistory that should concern us when dealing with such questions. This text aims to do so, by contrasting a case of extreme violence in relatively peaceful Early Neolithic society, to ways people had to resolve social tensions in violent societies of the Bronze and Iron Age in Europe. Using insights from psychology, it shows people are first and foremost social beings, and that both violence and peace are rooted in sociality.

Abstract: „Something happened in the East but more in the West and South.“ Some critical remarks on the  eastern  influences  in  Vekerzug  culture.  In  the  study  presented,  we  discuss  the  eastern  influences  in  the  Vekerzug culture based on a detailed analysis of  its material sources and some selected aspects, such as funerary customs and costumes. In the research of  the Early Iron Age the eastern influences in the Vekerzug culture tradi-tionally are not only overestimated in comparation to the influences of  the Eastern Hallstatt culture and the Cen-tral and Eastern Balkans but also incorect as scythian interpreted. The participation of  the eastern influences from the East European forest-steppe zone as well as from the North Caucasus in the formation of  the material sources of  the Vekerzug culture is indeed not negligible, but it is not so significant and strong that it is possible to indicate the Vekerzug culture as Eastern, Skythoid or even Scythian culture.Vekerzug culture as a culture of the Hallstatt Period was not part of the sphere of influence of the eastern elites, but it was itself  a driving force in the cultural and historical development of  the Iron Age in the eastern part of  Central Europe and she had been in the strong integration process with the Eastern Hallstatt culture. The foreign influences were selectively absorbed by the Vekerzug culture, selectively modified into local and selectively passed on into the neighboring cultural regions.

Keywords: Vekerzug culture, Eastern influences, Hallstatt and Early La Tène Periods, analysis of finds, funerary cu-stoms, costumes, innovations, interregional contacts

The subject of the present analysis are bronze rings (bracelets/armlets?) decorated with a cord ornament, known in archaeological literature as type Șimleul Silvaniei and Rustoiu 3. The paper starts out with an overview of past research on the impact from the Dacian territory on Iron Age inhabitants of Poland since type Șimleul Silvaniei bracelets are an element of this phenomenon. It follows with an analysis of the context of discovery of these ornaments in the area to the north of the Carpathians and the Sudety. Next, insights obtained from this analysis are used as a point of departure to examine the chronology, origin and distribution of type Șimleul Silvaniei in reference to the conclusions of Romanian researchers Aurel Rustoiu and Cristinel C. Plantos.

Abstract: „Courageous as an eagle, fast as a horse.” The graves with weapons and horse harnesses in Vekerzug culture: case study. In this paper, we discuss graves of the Vekerzug culture, which contained weapons and horse harnesses. Providing a more complex overview of these graves was at the centre of our interest, focused mainly on a culural-spatial analysis of the various types of weapons and horse harnesses, the possibility of identification the social status of the warriors and horsemen within their community, the possible relation of weapons and horse harnesses to the specific gender or age category of the buried individuals and identifying the factor, which affected the composition of these graves and the mutual combination of different types of weapons and horse harnesses. The graves with weapons and horse harnesses are key to assessing the question of the nature and intensity of the eastern influences in the formation of the Vekerzug culture. The results of their analysis confirm the previous conclusions, that in the research of the Early Iron Age the share of the eastern influences in the Vekerzug culture is still overestimated, while the western and southern influences as well as the local traditions of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age are underestimated.

Keywords: East Hungary, Southwest Slovakia, Hallstatt and Early La Tène Periods, Vekerzug culture, graves with weapons and horse harnesses, grave accesories, funerary customs, schemata of weaponry, male costumes, social aspect, innovations

Latènezeitliche Gehöfte sind in Mittel- und Westeuropa weit verbreitet. Dieser Artikel beschäftigt sich vornehmlich mit den Gebäuden aus jüngerlatènezeitlichen Gehöften (sog. Viereckschanzen) und dem Vergleich charakteristischer Gebäudeformen von Mittel- und Westeuropa. Zudem werden die angenommenen Bauschemata in den Gehöften neu beleuchtet.

In der Zusammenfassung soll es "Bauschema" nicht "Baumschema" heissen.
Zudem steht die Publikation zum Martberg, nicht bei N wie Nickel, die als erstes genannt werden muss sondern am Ende der Literaturliste nach dem Buchstaben S. 
Kann schonmal passieren:):)

The household and the local community are widely viewed as fundamental building blocks of Iron Age societies. They provided the context for much of daily life, and as such they were arguably the social arenas with the greatest day-to-day significance for Iron Age people. Recent years have seen increasing interest in exploring the social dynamics of the household and the local community, providing a challenge to traditional narratives of social change during the Iron Age, in which these spheres are often portrayed as peripheral or irrelevant.
This chapter will examine how the household and the community were constituted in different Iron Age societies, and attempt to grasp their internal social relations. Evidence will be drawn mainly from the ways that people ordered and inhabited their houses and settlements.

This work analyses the material and stratigraphic evidences recorded at the archaeological site of Cabeço Redondo (Moura), which result from archaeological excavations and the study of decontextualized artifacts recovered after the destruction of the site. Data confirm the presence of a rural occupation and an edified space profoundly remodeled along several constructive phases. The stratigraphic data and the analysis of the artifacts reveal a chronology which covers the whole 5th century B.C., with the possibility that the occupation started at the late 6th century B.C. At the same time, it was possible to confirm the presence of a singular and monumental building on the Portuguese left bank of the Guadiana River, parallelizable with the ones existing on the Spanish Medium Guadiana bank.

Since the late 2nd century BC, large fortified sites known as oppida developed in the landscapes of temperate Europe. Many of these settlements can be classified as cities or towns, representing a phenomenon of early urbanisation that predates the Roman conquest. The oppida have been explored archaeologically since the 19th century, but new research is providing exciting information about aspects such as public spaces, sanctuaries and neighborhood organisation. Moreover, it is increasingly acknowledged that we need to take into account other forms of large, non-fortified agglomerations that in many cases preceded the oppida by some decades. The picture that emerges is much more complex than traditionally thought, allowing new insights into Late Iron Age societies. The Roman military conquest brought with it profound transformations, although with very different outcomes depending on the specific regions and sites.

In der Gemarkung Altfriedland, im 1. Bauabschnitt des von der E.DIS AG initiierten Neubaus der 110-kV Kabelanlage Heinersdorf – Metzdorf Nord, gelang die Aufdeckung einer Vielzahl von kulturellen Aktivitäten
aus der Frühen Eisenzeit (8./7. Jahrhundert v. Chr. bis 6./5. Jahrhundert v. Chr.). Die dokumentierten archäologischen Strukturen bieten aussagekräftige Einblicke in die räumlich-funktionale Gliederung einer
lokalen Siedlungskammer im Oderbruch.

Ces quarante dernières années, l'âge du Bronze de la Corse a fait l'objet d'au moins dix tentatives de phasage et/ou de périodisation. 1 S'il n'était nullement question dans notre travail de les commenter une à une, on a néanmoins souligné l'importante hétérogénéité, tant chronologique que terminologique, qui les caractérise. Très logiquement, ce premier constat trouve en partie son explication dans la disparité des éléments -et de leur fi abilité chronologique intrinsèque -pris en considération pour défi nir la « teneur » des phases. Ces tentatives prennent en compte l'évolution supposée de l'architecture et du mégalithisme (Grosjean 1971), du mobilier (Lorenzi 1992) ou d'un ensemble de critères hypothétiquement corrélés à des dynamiques culturelles souvent extérieures utilisées comme des jalons . Dès lors, l'obtention d'un nouveau schéma évolutif s'imposait d'emblée comme une nécessité.

This paper* considers the evidence for the abandonment of souterrains in that part of east central Scotland characterized by Wainwright as 'southern Pictland'. The evidence suggests that most souterrains here were deliberately destroyed, or at least infilled, and that none seems to have outlasted the early third century AD. The process of destruction seems to have been associated with a significant degree of ritual activity not previously noted. It is postulated that the evidence would allow for a single episode of abandonment (a 'souterrain abandonment horizon'), in the late second or early third century AD, which might be related to a major reorientation of social and political structures, perhaps associated with changes in Roman frontier policy.

This revised edition of my 2001 Celtic Art in Transition during the First Century BC has been rewritten to include a grammar of the artistic techniques used to construct the abstract imagery on coins and on repousse sheet metal from a limited set of basic shapes. The most important new piece incorporated into this study is the Chiemsee cauldron. Although found by Jens Essig with a metal detector, with the top covered by 30 cm of muck at the bottom of the Chiemsee in 2001, the cauldron has been locked away in vaults ever since its initial discovery. It has never been exhibited for public inspection. This revised edition of my 2001 study is the only work which has attempted to study the Chiemsee motifs in comparison to those on the Gundestrup cauldron as well as in comparison to other items of north Gaulish production.
The similarities between the art style of the motifs in the Chiemsee cauldron and those in the Gundestrup cauldron are so blatant, either the Chiemsee cauldron was made by ancient craftsmen working in the same style as those who created the Gundestrup cauldron, or it is a copy created after the discovery of the Gundestrup cauldron in Denmark in 1891. If the Chiemsee cauldron is not a recent copy, both it and the Gundestrup cauldron must have been produced in the same region during the same period. If the Chiemsee cauldron is real, then a determination of the find spot of the Gundestrup cauldron will determine that of the Chiemsee cauldron and vice-versa.
The research for the original 2001 edition of this work utilized a high-resolution scanner and Adobe Photoshop to generate plates with arrays of motif-images rendered to the same size, enabling one easily to examine and compare, side-by-side, pieces of similar style and technique, no matter what the original scale of the image. Thus, images of the small-scale motifs on coins could be magnified and set side-by-side with images of the reduced largescale motifs on sheet-metalwork items, such as phalerae and cauldrons. A comparison of the motifs studied in this fashion demonstrates that the decorative imagery on both eastern and western European metalwork during the first-century BC, apart from Greece and Rome, was driven by coin art. The metalwork items were the productions of metalsmiths who were at the same time mint masters. Since the tribal coinages are generally localized in their find distributions, these coins enable one to determine the region in which a given motif was utilized in the artistic repertory.
In this revised edition a detailed analysis of the artistic technique behind the Chiemsee cauldron has been added to that of the Gundestrup cauldron. This revised study of the art of the Celtic cauldrons, in relation to each other as well as to that on coins, utilized around 50 high-resolution 80-megabyte digitalized images of the Gundestrup and Chiemsee cauldrons to examine the artists techniques in greater detail. Furthermore, in 2003-4 the Danish National Museum conducted a detailed study of the techniques used to construct the Gundestrup cauldron, which was published in Acta Archeologica: 76 (Nielsen et al: 2005) and is now available on academia.edu. The conclusions of this study included the important result the Gundestrup-cauldron silver came from two sources: one used to mint north Gaulish quinars and the other to mint Armorican Coriosolite staters, demonstrating that the Gundestrup cauldron was made from western, not eastern, sources of silver. The results of this Danish-National-Museum study have been incorporated into the present work as well as into my other more recent studies of the Gundestrup and Chiemsee cauldrons published in academia.edu.
After a cursory inspection, the National Museum in Munich decided not to accept the Chiemsee cauldron, suspecting that it might have been made of dental gold during WW2. This suspicion was based upon a vague similarity in the gold and silver percentages in dental gold to the percentages of these metals in the cauldron. This horrifying suggestion finally culminated in the National Geographic documentary: The Chiemsee Cauldron and the Nazi Temple of Doom. After being at the center of a fraud trial in Switzerland, ending in a bankruptcy sale in 2012, the cauldron made its way to a new vault in Houston, Texas. Again, the cauldron became the centerpiece of a lawsuit.
Because of all of this negative publicity, aside from an analysis of the composition of the Chiemsee-cauldron metals, I seem to be the only scholar who has attempted a serious examination of the motifs on the cauldron. The low levels of 7 ppm of either platinum or palladium determined in 2007 by Peter Northover, compared to a minimum of 5000 ppm of each metal for dental gold, proves the fallacy of this dental-gold surmise, removing a lot of the stigma associated with the cauldron. The 1.3 ppm lead in the cauldron also demonstrates that it cannot have been made from an amalgam of electrolytic gold (as Northover then suggested). Aside from the 70-80% gold, the cauldron also contains 20-25% silver. If the gold came from electrolytic gold, electrolytic silver would then be the purest source of silver which could have been added to create the amalgam. However, such an amalgam would still contain a minimum of at least 50 ppm lead, since electrolytic silver contains 250 ppm lead.
Gold/silver nuggets from Cornwall show a similar composition to the Chiemsee cauldron amalgam in gold and silver as well as similar trace elements of lead and platinum, and they are the likely source for the metal used to construct the cauldron. The zinc, which Northover found in the solder to fasten the cauldron plates, could have come from cementation-produced brass, which was being created in north Gaul as early as 80 BC, twenty years before the probable construction-date of the Chiemsee cauldron. The presence of zinc in the solder cannot be used to deny the ancient origin of the cauldron. The ancient nature of the Chiemsee cauldron then rests upon an examination of the motifs portrayed on it.
In 2019 the then-owner requested that I examine the Chiemsee cauldron. After an initial study of the photos and Northover’s metallurgical analysis of the cauldron, the late Ralph Rowlett and I concluded that the cauldron might indeed be late Iron Age in date. The likely genuine nature of the cauldron was confirmed by a careful inspection of the piece in Houston. Three years of research and writing about the cauldron have followed that initial inspection. It is my firm belief that there is no possibility whatsoever that the Chiemsee cauldron is fake. Ralph Rowlett and I presented our initial findings in a joint lecture to the Archaeological Institute of America in St Louis (“Tale of Two Kettles”, November 11, 2019). Earlier, I had presented these findings to the Celtic Congress in Bangor, Wales (July, 2019).
In 1995 a mint-master metalsmith’s workshop was uncovered in Swabia. However, the finds were not published until 2011. The finds include a hammer for finishing small objects, files, chisels, eight iron piece-punches with different faces: a fine line, two sorts of dots, an oval, a fine curve and a broader curve. The find also included the iron dies for silver quinarii produced by these punches (Ziegaus 2011: 289-294). We now know the exact techniques used to produce the coin images. The analysis of Gaulish coins also has been revised to incorporate the conclusions of John Sills’s 2003 study Gaulish and Early British Gold Coinage as well as Philip de Jersey’s series published in academia.edu on the Câtillon-II hoard.
This work, which includes a detailed analysis of the art style of the Chiemsee cauldron (as well as that of the Gundestrup and Rynkeby cauldrons), thus, completes three years of research and writing on all aspects of the Chiemsee cauldron. This work also completes fifty years of research and writing about all aspects of the Gundestrup cauldron. Other works on the Gundestrup and Chiemsee cauldrons published by me on academia.edu as a result of this research include: Celtic Gods who Control Rejuvenation, Rebirth, and the Island where the Sun Sets (2021a); The Armorican Origins of the Silver and Gold Celtic Cauldrons from Gundestrup and the Chiemsee (2021b); A History of the Chiemsee Cauldron (2021d), and The Myths Portrayed on the Chiemsee Cauldron (2022). A revised edition of my earlier work on the gods and myths portrayed on the Gundestrup cauldron is also available on academia.edu: The Gods of the Celts and the Indo-Europeans (1992-2019). One may also find on academia.edu all my works of the Coligny calendar.
The original research, conducted in 1999-2000, begun after viewing, for comparison with western European items, the important pieces of Thracian silverwork housed in Romanian and Bulgarian museums. The research required the computer-generation of around 1500 four-megabyte images of the motifs under study to be projected onto 142 plates. The original study was made available in a joint publication of Archaeolingua and Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft. By combining plates from the original edition and eliminating those which were of lesser importance, I have limited the number of plates in this addition to 82. Where plates have been eliminated from the current edition, I have provided references to the earlier edition. By transforming the images for this addition from 300 dpi to 72 dpi, I was able to divide the work into four sections, each containing around twenty 450-kilobyte plates (with 10 to 12 comparable items per plate), keeping each section under 10 megabytes for ease of downloading.

The aim of this book is to present an in-depth analysis of the socio-economic dynamics that took place from the Bronze Age until the middle of the eighth century BC, in the Latium Vetus (Italy). To understand the archaeological record, knowledge of the transformations through time of the various landscape units is necessary. Such knowledge was obtained by studying historical, geological and pedological maps, and by using air photography, pollen diagrams and soil augering as well as observations in the field. The presentation of the evidences takes the form of a catalogue that lists 232 sites: settlements, tombs (both isolated and necropoleis), hoards and ritual loci. This is the first time that all available archaeological evidence of the study area is catalogued in a single format. Furthermore, a number of locational variables for each site were analysed, using GIS techniques and statistical analysis, in order to identify certain tendencies in the location of settlements. A functional analysis of the catalogued sites was also conducted considering the potential natural harbours along the coast and evaluating the agricultural potential of the sites’ territories. In the concluding chapter an up-to-date explanation of the emergence of social inequality and the warrior elite is proposed as well as a global (proto)history of the subsistence economy and settlement patterns in the Bronze Age and Iron Age. In addition, a new and simple method is suggested for reconstructing the territories of the ancient protohistoric polities.

The Gauls (or Celts) in Italy present us with a number of conundrums, such as the alleged 'invasion' of Italy, the pre-invasion Celtic-speaking peoples in North Italy, the nature of 'Celticity' in the 4th-1st centuries BCE, the discrepant 'Celtic' identities and material cultures, the role of the Padane drachma (dramma Padana), the entangled world across the Alps, and many more. 
This paper provides a review of the research on the Celts/Gauls in Italy starting with the Bronze Age down to the Roman period, reviewing the available ancient evidence and modern scholarly debates.
Sorry, just page 1 due to copyright issues.
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Ralph Haeussler (2017). The Galli. In Gary D. Farney, Guy Bradley (Eds.), The Peoples of Ancient Italy (pp. 719–754). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781614513001-035
Book DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781614513001
Online ISBN: 9781614513001

A copy of my dissertation using GIS to analyze settlement patterns for the European Iron Age Castro Culture in Northwest Portugal. It will also be available through the University of Texas at Austin's online dissertation and thesis repository: https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/dissertations

Pathological changes and other alterations in an Iron Age horse skeleton from Danebury, Hampshire, England are described and used to interpret the possible use of the animal. The low level of pathology present in what is a relatively old animal (c.16-18 years of age at death) suggests that the horse was not heavily used, perhaps employed to pull a light cart or chariot or occasional riding. The presence of a horizontal fissure in the caudal epiphysis of the thoracic vertebra 14 may indicate that it was used for riding, possibly with either a pad saddle or bareback.