Celts Across The Alps

The project deals with the history of the so-called Celts. By this we mean the late Iron Age cultural development in Western and Central Europe, also known as the La Tène culture, which lasted from about 500 to 15 BCE. This is not to be understood as a uniform culture or a "people", but rather as numerous local groups that show certain cultural similarities or differences. The mobility and migratory movements of these Iron Age populations will be discussed in more detail here. This topic is described, for example, by Greek and Roman authors, when the "Celts" came in different phases over the Alps to northern Italy and as far as Greece. But their traces can also be found in archaeological material, which will be investigated in this project using various methods. In this particular case, Iron Age cemeteries (Early Latène Period, ca. 450-250 BC) from the Lower Austrian Traisen Valley such as Franzhausen, Gemeinlebarn and Walpersdorf are to be investigated and compared with those from the northern Italian Po Valley (Casalecchio die Reno, Marzabotto and Carzaghetto). For this purpose, those cemeteries were selected in northern Italy that represent the so-called first immigration generation and therefore are equipped with the same grave goods as north of the Alps and were not yet influenced by northern Italian cultures. Different methods are used for this: On the one hand, the archaeological material is first cleaned and restored, then drawn and arranged and descriptions are made. Then, comparative pieces are searched in other contemporaneous graves in the local area, but also in the closer surroundings, such as in Hungary, Slovakia or Moravia. The forms of the graves and the burial rites (e.g. inhumation, orientation,..) are also compared. But also, and this is the actual topic of the project, they will be compared precisely with the selected burials in northern Italy. Another block of methods deals with the examination of the skeletons found. In addition to classical anthropology, which also works with comparisons and descriptions to find out special features (e.g. bone fractures, diseases), scientific methods such as the analysis of isotopes (strontium, oxygen and nitrogen) are used here. These can indicate whether people moved over longer distances or what their dietary habits were. Another method is the examination of human DNA, which can find out possible relatives and also diseases (e.g. leprosy, hepatitis,..). In addition to researchers from the University of Vienna and the NHM Vienna, researchers from the University of Bologna, the MPI Jena/Leipzig, the University of Basel and the University of Mittweida are also involved in order to obtain a comparative picture of the different Iron Age population groups and to obtain indications of mobility and migration phenomena. Interdisciplinary scientific cooperation is particularly important in order to obtain a holistic picture.