Iron Age Europe
In Europe, the Iron Age is the last stage of the prehistoric period and the first of the protohistoric periods, which initially meant descriptions of a particular area by Greek and Roman writers. For much of Europe, the period came to an abrupt end after conquest by the Romans, though ironworking remained the dominant technology until recent times. Elsewhere, the period lasted until the early centuries AD, and either Christianization or a new conquest in the Migration Period.
Iron working was introduced to Europe in the late 11th century BC, probably from the Caucasus, and slowly spread northwards and westwards over the succeeding 500 years. For example, the Iron Age of Prehistoric Ireland begins around 500 BC, when the Greek Iron Age had already ended, and finishes around 400 AD. The use of iron and iron-working technology became widespread concurrently in Europe and Asia.
The start of the Iron Age is marked by new cultural groupings, or at least terms for them, with the Late Bronze Age Mycenaean Greece collapsing in some confusion, while in Central Europe the Urnfield culture had already given way to the Hallstatt culture. In north Italy the Villanovan culture is regarded as the start of Etruscan civilization. Like its successor La Tène culture, Hallstatt is regarded as Celtic. Further to the east and north, and in Iberia and the Balkans, there are a number of local terms for the early Iron Age culture. Roman Iron Age is a term used in the archaeology of Northern Europe for the period when the unconquered peoples of the area lived under the influence of the Roman Empire.
The Iron Age in Europe is characterized by an elaboration of designs in weapons, implements, and utensils. These are no longer cast but hammered into shape, and decoration is elaborate curvilinear rather than simple rectilinear; the forms and character of the ornamentation of the northern European weapons resemble Roman arms in some respects, while in other respects they are peculiar and evidently representative of northern art.
Timeline
ImageSize = width:1060 height:220
PlotArea = width:1000 height:180 left:60 bottom:40
AlignBars = justify
Colors =
id:time value:rgb #
id:period value:rgb #
id:age value:rgb #
id:era value:rgb #
id:eon value:rgb #
id:filler value:gray # background bar
id:black value:black
Period = from:-1300 till:500
TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal
ScaleMajor = unit:year increment:500 start:-1300
ScaleMinor = unit:year increment:100 start:-1300
PlotData =
align:center textcolor:black fontsize:8 mark: width:15 shift:
bar:Europe color:eon
from: -1100 till: 500 text:European Iron Age
bar:E.Europe color:age
from: -1100 till: -500 shift: text:Koban
from: -900 till: -725 text:Novocherkassk
bar:E.Europe color:filler
from: -500 till: 100 text:Scythian
from: 100 till: 500 text:Sarmatians
bar:S.Europe color:era
from: -1100 till: -900 shift: text:Proto-Villanovan
from: -900 till: -750 shift: text:Villanovan
from: -900 till: -400 shift: text:Golasecca culture
bar:S.Europe color:Filler
from: -400 till: 50 text:Roman Republic
from: 50 till: 300 text:Roman Empire
from: 300 till: 500 text:Migration
bar:C.Europe color:age
from: -800 till: -450 text:Hallstatt culture
from: -450 till: -100 text:La Tène culture
bar:C.Europe color:Filler
from: -100 till: 300 text:Roman Empire
from: 300 till: 500 text:Migration
bar:W.Europe color:era
from: -800 till: 50 text:British Iron Age
bar:W.Europe color:Filler
from: 50 till: 300 text:Roman Empire
from: 300 till: 500 text:Migration
bar:N.Europe color:age
from: -500 till: -100 text:Pre-Roman
from: -100 till: 300 text:Roman
bar:N.Europe color:Filler
from: 300 till: 500 text:Migration
bar:Mediter color:era
from: -1200 till: -600 shift: text:Phoenicia
from: -1200 till: -1200 shift: text:Greek Dark Ages
bar:Mediter color:Filler
from: -600 till: -145 text:Ancient Greece
from: -145 till: 300 text:Roman Empire
from: 300 till: 500 text:Migration
Eastern Europe
The early first millennium BC marks the Iron Age in Eastern Europe. In the Pontic steppe and the Caucasus region, the Iron Age begins with the Koban and the Chernogorovka and Novocherkassk cultures from. By 800 BC, it was spreading to Hallstatt culture via the alleged "Thraco-Cimmerian" migrations.Along with the Chernogorovka and Novocherkassk cultures, on the territory of ancient Russia and Ukraine the Iron Age is, to a significant extent, associated with Scythians, who developed iron culture since the 7th century BC. The majority of remains of their iron-producing and blacksmithing industries from the 5th to 3rd centuries BC was found near Nikopol in Kamenskoye Gorodishche, which is believed to be the specialized metallurgic region of the ancient Scythia.
The Old Iron Age was an era of immense changes in the lands inhabited by the Balts, i.e. the territories from the Vistula Lagoon and the Baltic Sea in the west to the Oka in the east, and between the Middle Dnieper in the south and northern Latvia to the north. In the first century A.D., the Baltic people began mass production of iron from the available limonite, widely available in swamps. The local smiths learned to harden iron into steel, which resulted in tougher weapons than stone or horn instruments.
Southeast Europe
In the Greek Dark Ages, edged iron weapons were widely available, but a variety of explanations fits the available archaeological evidence. From around 1200 BC, the palace centers and outlying settlements of the Mycenaean culture began to be abandoned or destroyed, and by 1050 BC, the recognizable cultural features had disappeared.The Greek alphabet began in the 8th century BC. It is descended from the Phoenician alphabet. The Greeks adapted the system, notably introducing characters for vowel sounds and thereby creating the first truly alphabetic writing system. As Greece sent colonists eastwards, across the Black Sea, and westwards towards Sicily and Italy, the influence of their alphabet extended further. The ceramic Euboean artifact inscribed with a few lines written in the Greek alphabet referring to "Nestor's Cup", discovered in a grave at Pithekoussae dates from ; it seems to be the oldest written reference to the Iliad. The fragmentary Epic Cycles, a collection of Ancient Greek epic poems that related the story of the Trojan War, were a distillation in literary form of an oral tradition developed during the Greek Dark Age. The traditional material from which the literary epics were drawn treats the Mycenaean Bronze Age culture from the perspective of the Iron Age and later Greece.
Notable and autochthonous groups of peoples and tribes of Southeastern Europe organised themselves in large tribal unions such as the Thracian Odrysian kingdom in the east of Southeastern Europe in the 5th century BC. By the 6th century BC the first written sources dealing with the territory north of the Danube appear in Greek sources. By this time the Getae had branched out from the Thracian-speaking populations.
Central Europe
In Central Europe, the Iron Age is generally divided in the early Iron Age Hallstatt culture and the late Iron Age La Tène culture. The transition from bronze to iron in Central Europe is exemplified in the great cemetery of Hallstatt, discovered near Gmunden in 1846, where the forms of the implements and weapons of the later part of the Bronze Age are imitated in iron. In the Swiss or La Tène group of implements and weapons, the forms are new and the transition complete.The Celtic culture, or rather Proto-Celtic groups, had expanded to much of Central Europe, and, following the Gallic invasion of the Balkans in 279 BC, as far east as central Anatolia. In Central Europe, the prehistoric Iron Age ends with the Roman conquest.
From the Hallstatt culture, the Iron Age spreads westwards with the Celtic expansion from the 6th century BC. In Poland, the Iron Age reaches the late Lusatian culture in about the 6th century, followed in some areas by the Pomeranian culture.
The ethnic ascription of many Iron Age cultures has been bitterly contested, as the roots of Germanic, Baltic and Slavic peoples were sought in this area.
Italy
The name of this Iron Age civilization derives from a locality in the frazione Villanova of Castenaso, Città metropolitana di Bologna, in Emilia, where a necropolis was discovered by Giovanni Gozzadini in 1853–1856. It succeeded the Proto-Villanovan culture during the Iron Age in the territory of Tuscany and northern Lazio and spread in parts of Romagna, Campania and Fermo in the Marche. The main characteristic of the Villanovans were cremation burials, in which the deceased's ashes were housed in bi-conical urns and buried. The burial characteristics relate the Villanovan culture to the Central European Urnfield culture and the successive Hallstatt culture. The Villanovans were initially devoted to agriculture and animal husbandry, with a simplified social order. Later, specialized craftsmanship activities such as metallurgy and ceramics caused the accumulation of wealth, which resembled the appearance of social stratification.The Latial culture ranged approximately over ancient Old Latium. The Iron Age Latial culture coincided with the arrival in the region of a people who spoke Old Latin. The culture was likely therefore to identify a phase of the socio-political self-consciousness of the Latin tribe, during the period of the kings of Alba Longa and the foundation of the Roman Kingdom.
The Este culture or Atestine culture was an Iron Age archaeological culture existing from the late Italian Bronze Age to the Roman period. It was located in the present territory of Veneto in Italy and derived from the earlier and more extensive Proto-Villanovan culture. It is also called "civilization of situlas", or paleo-Venetic.
The Golasecca culture emerged during the early Iron Age in the northwestern Po plain. It takes its name from Golasecca, a locality next to the Ticino where, in the early 19th century, abbot Giovanni Battista Giani excavated its first findings. Remains of the Golasecca culture span an area of roughly 20,000 square kilometers south of the Alps and between the Po, Sesia and Serio rivers, dating from the ninth to the fourth century BCE. Their origins can be directly traced from that of Canegrate and to the so-called Proto-Golasecca culture. The Golasecca culture traded with the Etruscans and the Hallstatt culture on the north, later reaching the Greek world and northern Europe. In a Golasecca culture tomb in Pombia, researchers found the oldest known remains of common hop beer in the world.
The Fritzens-Sanzeno culture is attested in the late Iron Age, from the sixth to the first century BC, in the Alpine region of Trentino and South Tyrol; in the period of maximum expansion it reached into the Engadin region.
The Camuni were an ancient people of uncertain origin who lived in Val Camonica – in what is now northern Lombardy – during the Iron Age, although human groups of hunters, shepherds and farmers are known to have lived in the area since the Neolithic. They reached the height of their power during the Iron Age due to the presence of numerous iron mills in Val Camonica. Their historical importance is, however, mostly due to their legacy of carved rocks, c. 300,000 in number, which date from the Palaeolithic to the Middle Ages.