Urnfield period

Urnfield period. Archaeologist's shorthand term for an era of Bronze Age culture in Central Europe distinguished by its burial practices, from the decline of Minoan and Mycenaean influence to the coming of Hallstatt culture; dating ranges as early as c.1500 BC down to 800 BC, or partially contemporary, in different parts of Europe, with the rise of Hallstatt. Evidence of a new form of burial is found in the Danube valley in what is now Hungary. A body was cremated, its ashes placed in an urn, and the urns deposited in cemeteries known as ‘urnfields’. The funeral practice spread westward to the area between the Elbe and the Vistula, to southern Germany, and across the Alps to Italy. By the 10th century BC the entire region shared cultural similarities. Some elements of urnfield may be found as far away as the Low Countries, the Iberian peninsula, and Britain. People of the urnfield culture or tradition may be regarded as proto-Celts as motifs from their art, such as the sun-wheel, appear again in Hallstatt, the first unmistakably Celtic culture.