Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

crossing the carpathians
It is not surprising, therefore, to see the Hallstatt chiefs of western Central Europe
adopting ideas emanating from the steppe, along with the new breed of horses now
becoming available, even though they may never have encountered a steppe nomad
face to face.
Then Came the Celts
By the middle of the fifth century there were major changes in western Central
Europe as the Hallstatt culture gave way to new developments, known archaeologically
as the La Tène culture. Centres of power shifted from the old Hallstatt core to
the northern periphery, a zone spreading from Bohemia through the Moselle and
the Marne region to the central Loire. It was here that new elites emerged. In the
confusion caused by rapid social change the growing population became destabilized,
creating waves of folk movement known from classical times as the Celtic
migrations.
By the end of the fifth century Celtic groups were moving eastwards along the
upper Danube and into Transdanubia, which formed a holding ground where
incoming communities settled among the indigenous people. With population pressures
building some Celtic groups moved on, settling in the southern part of the Carpathian
Basin, in southern Hungary, and Serbia, while others moved into the Great
Hungarian Plain from where some pushed eastwards into Transylvania. So it was that
during the fourth century Celtic communities from western Central Europe began to
settle in territories occupied by people of steppe origin. There is little evidence of
overt conflict, the incomers at first keeping to the least occupied areas and later probably
intermarrying with the resident population. The middle Danube region, then,
was a zone where, in the late fifth and early fourth centuries, the Celtic immigrants
were exposed to alien beliefs and practices and to a totally different art style emanating
from the steppe. To what extent were these nomad values incorporated into the
Celtic ethos?
To approach this question it has been conventional to consider Celtic art. In its
developed form in the fourth to second centuries Celtic art was a flamboyant expression
of a restless people willing to absorb ideas from far and wide and to meld them
into highly original abstract creations. In the earliest pieces, like the pair of wine flagons
from Basse-Yutz in the Moselle region, the disparate influences are still apparent.
The form and some of the decoration is strikingly Etruscan while the more geometric
motifs around the base hark back to Hallstatt ancestry, but the fierce wolf-like beast
that provides the handle is quite different. There is something of the steppe about it
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