The primitive stage of European civilization, to which the term
Hallstatt is specifically applied by archæologists, is characterized
by a knowledge both of bronze and iron, although the latter is
relatively insignificant. Its rarity indicates that we have to do with
the very beginnings of its use. In this early combination of bronze
and iron the Hallstatt culture is in strong contrast with the rest of
Europe. Almost everywhere else, as in Hungary for example, a pure
bronze age--sometimes one even of copper also--intervenes between the
use of stone and iron. Here, however, the two metals, bronze and iron,
appear simultaneously. There is no evidence of a use of bronze alone.
Bearing in mind, what we shall subsequently emphasize in the case of
Scandinavia, that in that remote part of Europe man had to put up with
the inferior metal for close upon a thousand years before the
acquisition of a better substitute, it will be seen that at Hallstatt
a remarkable foreshortening of cultural evolution had ensued. Iron, as
we have said, was still comparatively rare. Only in the case of small
objects, less often in the blades of bronze-handled swords, does this
more precious metal appear. But it is far more common than in the
earliest Greek civilizations made known to us by Schliemann and
others.
Pages of description would not give so clear an idea of this early
civilization as the pictures of their lives, which the Hallstatt
people have fortunately left to us. These are found in _repoussé_ upon
their bronzes, and particularly upon their little _situlæ_, or
metallic pails. These _situlæ_ are, in fact, the most distinctive
feature among all the objects which they have left to us. By means of
them their civilization has been most accurately traced and identified
geographically. On the opposite page we have reproduced the design
upon the most celebrated of these _situlæ_, discovered by Deschmann in
1882, at Watsch in the Tyrol. Another from Bologna, typical of the
pre-Etruscan Italian time, will be found upon a later page. Upon each
of these, the skill manifested in the representation of men and
animals is no less remarkable than the civilization which it depicts.
The upper zone of this _situla_ from Watsch apparently shows a festal
procession, possibly a wedding, for a lady rides in the second
chariot. The grooms and outriders betoken a party of distinction. As
for the second zone, doubt as to its exact interpretation prevails.
Hochstetter declares it to be a banquet, food and entertainment being
offered to the personages seated upon chairs at the left. Bertrand is
disposed to give it more of a religious interpretation. As for the
contest between gladiators armed with the cestus, all is plain. The
spectators, judges, even the ram and the helmet for reward of the
victor, are all shown in detail. It is not necessary for us to cite
more evidence. A civilization already far from primitive is surely
depicted. As for its date, all are agreed that it is at least as early
as ten centuries before Christ;[G] not far, that is to say, from the
supposed Homeric epoch in Greece.
[Illustration: BRONZE BREASTPLATE FROM OLYMPIA. (After Furtwaengler's
Olympia, 1892.)]
The Hallstatt civilizations betray unmistakable affinities with three
other prehistoric European cultures, widely separated from one
another. It contains many early Greek elements; it is very similar to
a notable prehistoric culture in the Caucasus Mountains; and it
resembles most nearly of all perhaps the pre-Etruscan civilization in
Italy. With the third of these--the Italian--it seems to have been
most nearly upon terms of equality, each borrowing from the other,
after a fashion of which we shall have occasion to speak shortly. On
the other hand, the relation of the Hallstatt culture to that of
Greece and Caucasia seems to be somewhat more filial rather than
fraternal. In describing the area of this civilization, we have seen
how firmly it is intrenched all through the southern part of
Austria-Hungary and well over into the north of the Balkan peninsula.
A comparison of Furtwaengler's magnificent collection of objects from
Olympia with those of Hallstatt instantly reveals their similarities.
To make this clear, we have reproduced one of the Olympian
breastplates, ornamented with figures, which at once suggest those
upon the _situla_ from Watsch above described. This design is doubly
interesting. It shows us a slightly higher stage of the art of figural
representation, as well as of conventional design. Not only the men
and horses, but the borders, are far better drawn. More than this, we
begin to detect a distinctly Oriental motive in other details. The
bulls and the lions--lions are not indigenous to Europe nowadays--at
once remind us of their Babylonian and Assyrian prototypes. We have
entered the sphere of Asiatic artistic influence, albeit very
indistinctly. This design here represented, it should be said, is
rather above the average of the Olympian finds of the earlier epoch.
Many of the other objects, especially the little votive figures of
beasts and men, are much more crude, although always characteristic
and rudely artistic in many ways. Through this Olympian stage of
culture we pass transitionally on to the Mycenæan, which brings us
into the full bloom of the classic Greek.
The Oriental affinities of the Hallstatt culture have been especially
emphasized by recent archæological discoveries at Koban, in the
Caucasus Mountains. A stage of culture transitional between bronze and
iron, almost exactly equivalent to that of the eastern Alps, is
revealed. Similarities in little objects, like fibulæ, might easily be
accounted for as having passed in trade, but the relationship is too
intimate to be thus explained. Hungary forms the connecting link
between the two. In many respects its bronze age is different from
that of Hallstatt, notably in that the latter seems to have acquired
the knowledge of iron and of bronze at about the same time. In Hungary
the pure bronze age lasted a long time, and attained a full maturity.
A characteristic piece is represented herewith. In respect of the
representation of figures of animals such as these, Hallstatt,
Hungary, and Koban are quite alike.
[Illustration: HUNGARIAN BRONZE VESSEL. (After Hampel, 1876.)]
Have we proved that bronze culture came from Asia by reason of these
recent finds in the Caucasus? Great stress has been laid upon them in
the discussion of European origins. Are we justified in agreeing with
Chantre that two currents of culture have swept from Asia into
Europe--one by the Caucasus north of the Black Sea and up the Danube;
the other across Asia Minor and into the Balkan peninsula, thence
joining the first in the main center of Hallstatt civilization, east
of the Alps? The point seems by no means established. Relationship
does not prove parentage. Far more likely does it appear that the
Koban culture is a relic or an offshoot rather than a cradle of bronze
civilization. And even Chantre, ardent advocate as he is of Oriental
derivations, seems to feel the force of this in his later writings,
for he confesses that Koban is rather from Mediterranean European
sources than that Europe is from Koban. Most probable of all is it,
that both Hallstatt and Koban are alike derived from a common root in
the neighborhood of Chaldea.
III. _The Hallstatt (or Celtic?) civilization of bronze and iron
roughly overlies the present area occupied by the broad-headed Alpine
race; yet this type is not always identified with the Oriental
culture. It seems to have appeared in Europe in a far lower stage of
civilization, and to have subsequently made progress culturally upon
the spot._
To trace any definite connection between race and civilization in
Europe is rendered extremely hazardous scientifically by reason of the
appearance along with bronze of the custom of burning instead of
burying the dead, their ashes being disposed in cinerary urns, jars,
or other receptacles. By this procedure all possible clew to the
physical type of the people is, of course, annihilated at once. It has
become almost an axiom among archæologists that bronze culture and
incineration are constant companions. Wherever one appears, the other
may confidently be looked for. Together they have long been supposed
to be the special and peculiar attributes of a new broad-headed
immigrant race from the East. To prove this conclusively is, of
course, absolutely impossible for the above-mentioned reason. Of the
two, it seems as if incineration would be a more reliable test of race
than a knowledge of bronze; for burial customs, involving as they do
the most sacred instincts and traditions of a people, would be most
persistently maintained, even throughout long-continued migrations.
The use of bronze, on the other hand, being a matter of obvious
utility, and capable of widespread dissemination commercially, is
seemingly of far less ethnic significance.
To indicate the uncertainty of proof in these matters, let us suppose
that the Hallstatt civilization, for example, is the result of an
immigration of a brachycephalic Oriental civilized race overlying a
primitive native long-headed one. That seems best to conform to the
data, which northern Italy at least affords. Suppose the new
people--call them Celts with the best authorities, if you
please--brought not only bronze and iron, but the custom of
incineration. Prior to their appearance inhumation was the rule. What
would be the result if one attempted to determine the physical
character of that people from a study of the remains in their
necropoli? All the crania to be found in the graves with the precious
objects of bronze would in no wise represent the people who brought
that bronze. They burned their bridges behind them at death, and
disappeared for good and all. And the remains left to the archæologist
would represent precisely that class in the population which had
nothing to do with the main characteristics of its civilization. And
then, again, we must bear in mind that the interments in these
necropoli as a whole, both with burned or buried dead, constitute a
selected type. Neither Hallstatt, Watsch, nor any of the burial places
of their type were open to the great mass of the common people. They
were sacred spots, far removed among the mountains from any centers of
population. Only the rich or powerful presumably had access to them.
They are no more typical of the Hallstatt people, therefore, than
interments in Westminster Abbey are representative of the English
masses. All our data are necessarily drawn from a class within a
class. Inductions from them must be very gingerly handled.
The situation above described seems to prevail almost everywhere in
the Hallstatt cultural area. Two distinct burial customs denote
possibly two separate peoples, the inhumers being certainly the older.
In the Hallstatt necropolis, for example, about one third of the
graves once contained human remains, all the others containing mere
ashes. So ancient are these graves that only eight crania from the
hundreds of interments of the first class are available for study.
These are of a pronounced long-headed type.[H] The modern populations
of this part of Europe are, as we have seen, among the broadest-headed
people in the world, as are also all the modern Illyrians. Yet from
the great necropolis at Glasinac in Bosnia, with its twenty thousand
tumuli, the meager Hallstatt returns are amply corroborated.[I] The
ancient inhabitants were as long-headed as they are pronouncedly of
the opposite type to-day. Up in Bohemia and Moravia also, according to
Niederle, the first bronze-age people, such as we know them, were
still dolichocephalic quite like their predecessors in the pure stone
age. And here also is incineration just about frequent enough to make
it uncertain whether the human remains are typical or not.
Under these circumstances, three suppositions are open to us. We may
hold that these long-headed crania of the Hallstatt people are
worthless for any anthropological purposes whatever. This one would
certainly be tempted to do were the testimony, such as it is, not so
unanimous. Or, secondly, we may assume that these long-headed
Hallstatt people belonged to a period subsequent to the appearance of
the brachycephalic type in western Europe. If we do so, we place them
in the same class with the Teutonic race which so certainly appears
to overlie this one in the later iron age in Switzerland and
throughout southern Germany; for the Helvetians and the _Reihengräber_
conquerors from the north surely imposed a novel culture, albeit a
militant one, upon the long-settled Alpine people, racially speaking.
The Hallstatt civilization is immeasurably too early to permit of this
hypothesis. At this time the long-headed Teutonic peoples about
Scandinavia were certainly vastly inferior in culture, as we shall
attempt to prove shortly. Thus we are forced to the third conclusion
if we admit the competency of our cranial evidence--namely, that the
Hallstatt people in this early bloom of civilization in Europe were
allied to the Mediterranean type of the south. No other source for
such a dolichocephalic population is possible. Our stock of types of
this kind is exhausted.
It does not require a great credulity to admit of this hypothesis,
that the Hallstatt people were of Mediterranean type. Were not the
Greeks, the Phoenicians, and the Egyptians all members of this same
race? One single difficulty presents itself. Over in Italy, throughout
the valley of the Po, an entirely analogous civilization to that of
the eastern Alps occurs. Hallstatt and Villanova, Watsch and Bologna,
are almost identical culturally. And yet over here in Italy the new
culture of bronze and of incineration seems to be borne by a
broad-headed people of the same type as the modern one. Thus, for
example, at Novilara so long as the bodies were all inhumed, the
people were of the long-headed Mediterranean type once indigenous to
the whole of Italy, now surviving, as we have seen, only in the
southern half. On the other hand, when incineration begins to appear
in this place, the human remains still left to us are of a mixed and
far more broad-headed type. It would seem admissible to assume that
when the modern brachycephalic Alpine race submerged the native one it
brought new elements of civilization with it. Many Italian
authorities, at all events, agree in ascribing the new culture--call
it Umbrian with Sergi, or proto-Etruscan with Helbig--to a new race of
Veneto-Illyrian or Alpine physical proclivities. What they have not
definitely proved, however, is that any necessary connection between
race and culture exists. There is much to show that the broad-headed
race came in some time before the introduction of the new arts. Even
in the later _Terramare_ period, preceding the Italian Hallstatt
culture, when stone and copper only are in evidence, a change of
physical type in the people apparently begins, just as also in France
in the neolithic period.
The most indubitable testimony that the Alpine race did not appear in
western Europe, armed _cap-à-pie_ with bronze and other attributes of
culture, is afforded by the lake dwellings of Switzerland. Here in the
pile-built villages of the Swiss lakes we can trace an uninterrupted
development of civilization from the pure stone age through bronze and
into iron. Beginning at a stage of civilization about equal to that of
the ancient Aryan-speaking peoples, judged by the root words known to
us; not only knowledge of the metals, but of agriculture, of the
domestication of animals, and of the finer arts of domestic life, have
little by little been acquired. Equally certain is it that no change
of physical type has occurred among these primitive Swiss, at least
until the irruptions of the Teutonic Helvetians and others at the
opening of the historic period. From the very earliest times in the
stone age a broad-headedness no less pronounced than that of the
modern Swiss prevailed among these people.[J] Here would seem to be
pretty conclusive proof that the Alpine race entered Europe long
before the culture with which its name has been all too intimately
associated.
In the outlying parts of Europe, perhaps even in Gaul, it is extremely
doubtful whether any closer connection between race and culture exists
than in the Alps. It has long been maintained that the brachycephalic
people of the Round Barrows introduced bronze into Britain. Surely, as
we have already shown, things point to that conclusion.[K] Beddoe,
Dawkins, and other authorities maintain it at all events. Yet Canon
Taylor makes it pretty evident that the new race arrived in Britain,
as it certainly did in Gaul, considerably in advance of any knowledge
of the metals. As for Scandinavia, much the same relation holds true.
Both race and culture, as we shall see, came from the south, but it is
by no means clear that they arrived at the same time or that one
brought the other. In Spain, Siret has asserted that bronze came in
the hands of a new immigrant broad-headed race, but the authoritative
opinion of Cartailhac discovers no direct evidence to this effect.
The final conclusions which would seem to follow from our tedious
summary is this: That the nearly contemporaneous appearance of a
brachycephalic race and the first knowledge of metals indicative of
Oriental cultural influences in western Europe, is more or less a
coincidence. The first civilized peoples of the Hallstatt period seem
to have been closely allied, both in physical type and culture, with
the Greeks and other peoples of the classic East. Among them, perhaps
over them, swept the representatives of our broad-headed Alpine type
who came from the direction of Asia. These invaders may have been the
Scythians, although the matter is incapable of proof. Pressure from
this direction set both culture and population in motion toward the
west, in much the same way that the fall of Constantinople in the
fifteenth century induced the Renaissance in Italy.
IV. _The remarkable prehistoric civilization of Italy is due to the
union of two cultures: one from the Hallstatt region having entered
Europe by way of the Danube, the other coming from the southeast by
sea being distinctly Mediterranean. From these evolved the Umbrian and
the Etruscan civilizations, followed in the historic period by the
early Latin._
The earliest culture in Italy worthy the name is found in the
_palafitte_ or pile dwellings, in the northern lakes, and in the
so-called _terramare_ settlements in the valley of the Po. The former
are not distinguishable from similar structures in the Swiss lake
dwellings, but the _terramare_ are entirely peculiar to Italy. Their
like is not found anywhere else in Europe. Briefly described, they are
villages built upon raised platforms of earth, encircled by a moat,
and generally having a ditch or small pond in the middle, in which an
altar is erected. These complicated structures are built upon the low,
marshy, alluvial plains along the Po, but show many points of
similarity with the true pile dwellings. The people of this early
period were in the pure stone age, with few arts save that of making
the coarser kinds of pottery. From their osseous remains, they seem to
have been of a long-headed type, quite like their predecessors, who
were cave dwellers. After a time, without any modification of the
modes of construction of their settlements, new elements appear among
these _terramare_ people, bringing bronze and introducing cremation.
At about the same period, as we have said, the Alpine broad-headed
race began its submergence of the primitive Ligurian type, leading to
the formation of the north Italian population as we see it to-day.
This type surely invaded Italy from the north and northeast.
From the foregoing considerations it will appear that there were two
constituent streams of culture and also of men here uniting in the
valley of the Po and on the northern slopes of the Apennines.
Possibly, as Chantre affirms, these two streams were from a common
Oriental source, here being reunited after long and independent
migrations. At all events, a remarkable advance in culture speedily
ensued, superior to either of those from which its elements were
derived. For the civilization unearthed at Villanova, in the Certosa
at Bologna, at Este, and elsewhere, while in much of its bronze work
similar to the Hallstatt types, contained a number of added features,
obviously either indigenous or brought directly from the south. The
Hallstatt affinities are especially revealed in the _situlæ_ to which
we have already called attention. That of Arnoaldi, discovered at
Bologna, betrays much the same grade of skill in manufacture as the
one from Watsch. Its flat development is shown by the accompanying
cut. The scenes represented are not dissimilar. The boxers armed with
the cestus, the chariots, and horses closely resemble one another. No
doubt of a close intercourse between the two regions of Bologna and
Austria can possibly exist.
[Illustration: ARNOALDI SITULA, BOLOGNA.
(From Revue Archéologique, 1885, vol. ii, Plate XXV.)]
The influence of the second or native element in prehistoric Italian
civilization appears most clearly in the Etruscan period. Etruria,
lying south of the Apennines, was more essentially Italian, as we
might expect, than the region about Bologna, where the Umbro-Hallstatt
or continental culture flourished. It is easy to note the superiority
in the former case. It is most clearly indicated in the pottery. Here
we find an art which is truly indigenous to the climate and soil of
the Mediterranean.
Popularly, the word "Etruscan" at once suggests the ceramic art; the
progress effected in a short time was certainly startling. To give an
idea of the sudden change, we have reproduced upon page 30
illustrations of typical bits of Italian pottery.[L] The first vase,
prior to the full Etruscan culture, shows its crudity at once, both in
its defects of form and the plainness and simplicity of its
ornamentation. Such a vessel might have been made in Mexico or even by
our own Pueblo Indians. In a century or two some teacher made it
possible to produce the sample depicted in the next cut. Perfect in
form, superb in grace of outline, its decoration is most effective;
yet it betrays greater skill in geometrical design than in the
representation of animate life. The dog drawn on the girdle is still
far from lifelike. Then come--probably after inspiration from Greek
art--the possibilities in complex ornamentation represented by our
third specimen. Not more pleasing in form, perhaps less truly artistic
because of its ornateness, it manifests much skill in the delineation
of human and animal forms. The culture culminates at this point. From
profusion of ornament and overloaded decoration, degeneracy begins. It
is the old story of the life and decay of schools of art, time in and
time out, the world over.
[Illustration: EARLY ETRUSCAN.