Grave goods from Hallstatt
As a place with salt production, Hallstatt was a special location in prehistoric times. The burial ground in the high valley has been explored for almost 200 years. The early excavations took place under the direction of Johann Georg Ramsauer. His long-time colleague and successor Isidor Engl carried out his own research in the 1870s, proceeding just as carefully and documenting his findings excellently. The archaeological material from the Engl excavations was not taken to Vienna (now the Natural History Museum) like that from the Ramsauer excavations, but to the newly founded Upper Austrian State Museum in Linz. It was inventoried and has since formed an essential part of the Prehistory and Early History Collection. As the burial contexts of the objects documented by Engl have been preserved in the museum order and were also published by Karl Kromer in the 1950s, they are still suitable for scientific analysis even after such a long time.
The cemetery material from Hallstatt in the OÖLKG collection dates mainly from the Early Iron Age, which has been referred to as the "Hallstatt Period" after this important site since the late 19th century. The Hallstatt culture extended over a large geographical area from eastern France via southern Germany, Bohemia and Austria to western Hungary in the period between approx. 750 and approx. 450 BC and included Alpine areas as well as present-day Slovenia. High-quality objects such as bronze jewellery and iron tools, the quality and size of buildings and evidence of intensively used trade networks testify to a culture in which (artistic) craftsmanship and mobility were of great importance. Questions about the social structure and religious beliefs remain unanswered, as these cannot be clearly deduced from the archaeological findings and there are no written sources.
