page_title: La Tène culture
hierarchical_section_title: La Tène culture
caption_attribution_description: Overview map of the Hallstatt (yellow) and La Tène (green) cultures. After Atlas of the Celtic World, by John Haywood; London Thames &amp; Hudson Ltd., 2001, pp. 30-37. Map update desirable, see here for discussion.
context_page_description: The La Tène culture was a European Iron Age culture.
  It developed and flourished during the late Iron Age, succeeding the early Iron Age Hallstatt culture without any definite cultural break, under the impetus of considerable Mediterranean influence from the Greeks in pre-Roman Gaul, the Etruscans, and Golasecca culture.
  La Tène culture's territorial extent corresponded to what is now France, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Southern Germany, the Czech Republic, parts of Northern Italy, Slovenia and Hungary, as well as adjacent parts of the Netherlands, Slovakia, Croatia, Transylvania, and Transcarpathia.
  The Celtiberians of western Iberia shared many aspects of the culture, though not generally the artistic style. To the north extended the contemporary Pre-Roman Iron Age of Northern Europe, including the Jastorf culture of Northern Germany.
  Centered on ancient Gaul, the culture became very widespread, and encompasses a wide variety of local differences. It is often distinguished from earlier and neighbouring cultures mainly by the La Tène style of Celtic art, characterized by curving "swirly" decoration, especially of metalwork.
context_section_description: The La Tène culture (/ləˈtɛn/; [la tɛn]) was a European Iron Age culture.
  It  developed and flourished during the late Iron Age (from about 450 BCE to the Roman conquest in the 1st century BCE), succeeding the early Iron Age Hallstatt culture without any definite cultural break, under the impetus of considerable Mediterranean influence from the Greeks in pre-Roman Gaul, the Etruscans, and Golasecca culture.
  La Tène culture's territorial extent corresponded to what is now France, Belgium,  Switzerland, Austria, Southern Germany, the Czech Republic, parts of Northern Italy, Slovenia and Hungary, as well as adjacent parts of the Netherlands, Slovakia, Croatia, Transylvania (western Romania), and  Transcarpathia (western Ukraine).
  The Celtiberians of western Iberia shared many aspects of the culture, though not generally the artistic style. To the north extended the contemporary Pre-Roman Iron Age of Northern Europe, including the Jastorf culture of Northern Germany.
  Centered on ancient Gaul, the culture became very widespread, and encompasses a wide variety of local differences. It is often distinguished from earlier and neighbouring cultures mainly by the La Tène style of Celtic art, characterized by curving "swirly" decoration, especially of metalwork.
  It is named after the type site of La Tène on the north side of Lake Neuchâtel in Switzerland, where thousands of objects had been deposited in the lake, as was discovered after the water level dropped in 1857. La Tène is the type site and the term archaeologists use for the later period of the culture and art of the ancient Celts, a term that is firmly entrenched in the popular understanding, but presents numerous problems for historians and archaeologists.
caption: Overview of the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures. The core Hallstatt territory (800 BCE) is shown in solid yellow, the area of influence by 500 BCE (HaD) in light yellow. The core territory of the La Tène culture (450 BCE) is shown in solid green, the eventual area of La Tène influence by 50 BCE in light green. The territories of some major Celtic tribes are labelled. Map drawn after Atlas of the Celtic World, by John Haywood (2001: 30–37).
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