Irene Strychalski spoke on the town of Hallstatt and Celtic culture.

A recent meeting of the Fredonia Shakespeare Club’s 2025-26 season was held at the home of Irene Strychalski who is hosting and also presenting her paper on Hallstatt and Celtic Culture.

After a brief business meeting, she presented her paper. The town of Hallstatt clings to the inner curve of the Hallstattian Lake, a kidney bean shaped stretch of water surrounded mostly by vertical rock walls, in the northern Austrian Alps. Its World Heritage status is due to ancient salt mining, the unique and beautiful landscape with stunning mountains, lakes and caves, as well as ancient evidence of significant human economic activity.

The town exhibits lovely half-timbered houses literally glued to the mountainside, as well as a delightful town square on a steep incline down to the lake. It is now also a busy tourist destination, so beloved in fact, that a replica of Hallstatt was created in China.

For more than 800 years, the remarkable people known as the Celts held sway over much of Europe, the British Isles and part of Asia Minor. Despite the vast sweep of territory their culture encompassed, the Celts never developed a written language of their own or built a unified nation.

The Celts probably descended from Stone Age peoples of Europe, who began to populate the Continent about 10,000 BCE. These hunter-gatherers gradually settled down to cultivating crops and raising livestock. By 4,000 BCE farming and cattle raising communities had become dominant in much of central and northern Europe and Britain.

Within another 2,500 years, bronze and metalworking techniques had spread from the Balkans to these lands as trade routes developed. Around the start of the first Millenium BCE, a new culture took root. Skilled in bronze work, these Europeans eventually became masters of iron as the technology of smelting and fashioning metal became available to them. Scholars have divided Celtic history into three overlapping phases. The first, the Hallstatt era, was named for this village and is the focus of this paper.

The picturesque village of Hallstatt is in the shadow of the Salzberg, a towering mountain with a heart of rock salt. For centuries, beginning around 1,000 BC until around 400 BC this mountain had been mined for its salt, a resource so precious to prehistoric peoples- both as a means of preserving food and as a trading commodity-that salt has sometimes been referred to as White Gold. The Hallstatt salt mine is the world’s oldest salt mine, with a history spanning over 7,000 years. The presence of salt had originally attracted these “Protocelts’ to this cold and mountainous terrain. Archaeologists estimate that early miners extracted about 2 and ½ million cubic yards of rock salt from 12,300 feet of prehistoric tunnels and galleries, plunging almost a mile into the hillside.

Conditions must have been abysmal. Leather caps and shoes protected the miner’s heads and feet, and communication was via whistles made from bone. Torches of fir and spruce were their only light. The men at first worked singly, chipping away at the unyielding crystal and then scooping up fallen slivers with wooden shovels. Later, a two-man approach improved results, with one man placing his pick on the rock and a second man striking the back of the pick with a mallet. Porters stooped under back packs made from animal hide held rigid by wooden frames, as they carried the salt to collection points. There, the salt was placed into large wooden pails to be winched to the surface using rope of twisted bark fibers. A community of people associated with the mines sprang up close to the tunnels. The inhabitants either worked underground, owned interests in the enterprise, organized the distribution of salt, or defended the settlement from attack, which eventually allowed the people of Hallstatt to become wealthy. Aside from fish caught in nearby lakes, much of their food had to be imported from outside. This lifestyle was a novelty in a region whose population had hitherto lived largely in scattered, self-sufficient little agricultural communities.

Yet this type of complex enterprise was becoming the norm in the Iron Age. Iron was first produced in Asia Minor around 3,000 BCE, proving superior to bronze in durability and malleability. Iron production transformed every area of Celtic life as the metal came into general use during 6-500 BCE. Sharp axes, iron hoes and iron sickles changed farming practices; hammers, chisels, drills and nails improved carpentry; iron knives, pots and roasting spits facilitated food production. Celtic blacksmiths also learned how to produce iron tires, rendering heavy duty wagons sturdier still. However, iron really came into its own in the production of weapons. Blacksmiths learned how to work the edge of a sword until steel was created, rendering Celtic swords into fearful slashing instruments. Further refinements in wheel production led to the evolution of the Celtic chariot as an offensive weapon. A skillful charioteer drove the horses and a warrior armed with spears; a sword and a knife would thrust his spears from the chariot or jump off for close combat.

1864 was the beginning of multiple archeological excavations around Hallstatt. The first graveyard yielded 980 graves, more than 6,000 bronze, iron and gold artifacts, jewelry, pottery, tools, weapons, clothing and more. Each person was buried with their earthly goods in preparation for the afterlife, which they believed was a parallel world where one’s earthly possessions would be used again. Graves in this cemetery were not equally endowed, suggesting some social stratification, perhaps a lower working class and an upper wealthier class. Celts were diverse but often described by ancient sources as tall, fair-skinned and muscular with hair colors ranging from blond to red to dark brown, sometimes bleached with lime water and spiked for battle. Body paint and loud shouting also helped to terrify opponents. The Celts were also excellent weavers, leatherworkers and needleworkers. Their clothing was mainly made from sheep’s wool and was very colorful: capes and dyed tunics of every color, and trousers called breeches. The women wore sleeved blouses and long skirts. Bronze was worked into fine wire, which was then fashioned into various garment fasteners, bracelets, rings and necklaces. Hollow bronze casting was used for armlets. High ranking people wore gold bracelets, necklaces and other jewelry. Many Celts were fastidious about their personal grooming. Archaeologists uncovered tweezers, razors and hand mirrors in certain graves. Later, personal objects made from iron were also used.

The Celts occupied square or rectangular one-roomed log houses. These were clustered together within a protective wall. A central fireplace allowed for cooking and heating. Multiple decorated bronze, or iron cooking vessels and utensils were used. Hand formed clay pots were extensively decorated as well. Especially in the cold months, the family sat around the fire along with any animals they had, such as tame pigs, goats or dogs. The Hallstatt Celts ate a rich diet of grains (barley, wheat and millet) for bread and porridge, supplemented by protein from domesticated animals along with wild game. They foraged berries, nuts, apples and wild vegetables such as leeks, onions and beans when possible. The Celts were lively people, playing games, some of which have continued to this day, such as hurling.

By 600 BCE iron was coming into regular use and commerce along established trade routes flourished. The chieftains of the various settlements had become very wealthy with graves filled with every conceivable luxury item. However, in the 5th century BCE, perhaps due to disruptions in trade, many of the settlements were abandoned and the wealth of this early period began to fade. This culture was followed by two other periods of Celtic culture, called the Latin and the Roman periods.