Urnfield Culture - Related Cultures

Related Cultures

The Central European Lusatian culture forms part of the urnfield tradition, but continues into the Iron Age without a notable break.

The Piliny culture in northern Hungary and Slovakia grew from the tumulus culture, but used urn burials as well. The pottery shows strong links to the Gáva culture, but in the later phases, a strong influence of the Lusatian culture is found. In Italy the late Bronze Age Canegrate and Proto-Villanovan cultures and the early Iron Age Villanovan culture show similarities with the urnfields of central Europe. Urnfields are found in the French Languedoc and Catalonia from the 9th to 8th centuries. The change in burial custom was most probably influenced by developments further east.

As there are no written sources, the languages spoken by the bearers of the material Urnfield culture are unknown and the evidence for them is suppositional and tentative at best. The evidence of place-names has been used to point to an association of the Urnfield materials with a Proto-Celtic language group in central Europe and it has been argued that it was the ancesteral culture of the Celtic. The Urnfield layers of the Hallstatt culture, Ha A and Ha B, are succeeded by the Iron Age "Hallstatt period" proper (Ha C and Ha D, 8th to 6th centuries BC), associated with the early Celts; Ha D is in turn succeeded by the La Tène culture, the archaeological culture associated with the Continental Celts of antiquity.

The influence of the Urnfield culture spread widely and found its way to the north-east Iberia where the Celtiberians adapted it for use in their cemeteries.