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 considerable Mediterranean influence from the Greeks in pre-Roman Gaul, the Etruscans, and the Golasecca culture, but whose artistic style nevertheless did not depend on those Mediterranean influences.
Peat is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation or organic matter. It is unique to natural areas called peatlands, bogs, mires, moors, or muskegs. Sphagnum moss, also called peat moss, is one of the most common components in peat, although many other plants can contribute. The biological features of sphagnum mosses act to create a habitat aiding peat formation, a phenomenon termed 'habitat manipulation'. Soils consisting primarily of peat are known as histosols. Peat forms in wetland conditions, where flooding or stagnant water obstructs the flow of oxygen from the atmosphere, slowing the rate of decomposition. Peat properties such as organic matter content and saturated hydraulic conductivity can exhibit high spatial heterogeneity.
A bog body is a human cadaver that has been naturally mummified in a peat bog. Such bodies, sometimes known as bog people, are both geographically and chronologically widespread, having been dated to between 8000 BCE and the Second World War. The unifying factor of the bog bodies is that they have been found in peat and are partially preserved; however, the actual levels of preservation vary widely from perfectly preserved to mere skeletons.
Venray or Venraij is a municipality and a city in Limburg, the Netherlands.
Deurne is a rural municipality and eponymous village in the province of North Brabant in the Netherlands. Including the villages of Liessel, Vlierden, Neerkant, and Helenaveen, Deurne had a population of 32,437 in 2021 and covers an area of 118.36 km2 (45.70 sq mi).
The Gundestrup cauldron is a richly decorated silver vessel, thought to date from between 200 BC and 300 AD, or more narrowly between 150 BC and 1 BC. This places it within the late La Tène period or early Roman Iron Age. The cauldron is the largest known example of European Iron Age silver work. It was found dismantled, with the other pieces stacked inside the base, in 1891, in a peat bog near the hamlet of Gundestrup in the Aars parish of Himmerland, Denmark. It is now usually on display in the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, with replicas at other museums; during 2015–16, it was in the UK on a travelling exhibition called The Celts.
De Groote Peel National Park is a national park in the De Peel, a region in the southeast of the Netherlands on the border between the provinces of Limburg and North Brabant. It has a size of 13.4 km2 and preserves a peat bog that has remained partly untouched by peat cutting, which used to be extensive in the area.
The archaeology of Northern Europe studies the prehistory of Scandinavia and the adjacent North European Plain, roughly corresponding to the territories of modern Sweden, Norway, Denmark, northern Germany, Poland and the Netherlands.
Ameno is a comune (municipality) in the Province of Novara in the Italian region of Piedmont, located about 100 kilometres (62 mi) northeast of Turin and about 40 kilometres (25 mi) northwest of Novara. As of 31 December 2004, it has a population of 906 and an area of 10.0 square kilometres (3.9 sq mi).
Westhay Moor is a 513.7-hectare (1,269-acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest 2.5 kilometres (1.6 mi) north-east of Westhay village and 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) from Wedmore in Somerset, England, notified in 1971. Westhay Moor is also notified as part of the Somerset Levels and Moors Special Protection Area under the EU Birds Directive and as a Ramsar site, and a National Nature Reserve.
Kállósemjén is a village in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county, in the Northern Great Plain region of eastern Hungary.
Clara Bog is one of the largest relatively intact raised bogs remaining in Ireland. It lies southeast of the R436 regional road between the village of Ballycumber and the town of Clara, in County Offaly. Much of the bog is state-owned and managed as a nature reserve covering some 460 ha. A Special Area of Conservation covers 836 ha.
Glastonbury Lake Village was an Iron Age village, situated on a crannog or man made island in the Somerset Levels, near Godney, some 3 miles (5 km) north west of Glastonbury in the southwestern English county of Somerset. It has been designated as a scheduled monument.
Calceology is the study of footwear, especially historical footwear whether as archaeology, shoe fashion history, or otherwise. It is not yet formally recognized as a field of research. Calceology comprises the examination, registration, research and conservation of leather shoe fragments. A wider definition includes the general study of the ancient footwear, its social and cultural history, technical aspects of pre-industrial shoemaking and associated leather trades, as well as reconstruction of archaeological footwear.
The Late Roman ridge helmet was a type of combat helmet of Late Antiquity used by soldiers of the Late Roman army. It was characterized by the possession of a bowl made up of two or four parts, united by a longitudinal ridge.
Meare Lake Village is the site of an Iron Age settlement on the Somerset Levels at Meare, Somerset, England. It is a Scheduled Ancient Monument.
The Bourtanger Moor was a bog in eastern parts in the Dutch provinces of Drenthe and Groningen and the bordering German districts of Bentheim and Emsland. A remaining stretch on the border between Drenthe and the districts Emsland and Betheim is now a nature reserve, the Internationaler Naturpark Bourtanger Moor-Bargerveen.
Anthropomorphic wooden cult figurines, sometimes called pole gods, have been found at many archaeological sites in Central and Northern Europe. They are generally interpreted as cult images, in some cases presumably depicting deities, sometimes with either a votive or an apotropaic (protective) function. Many have been preserved in peat bogs. The majority are more or less crudely worked poles or forked sticks; some take the form of carved planks. They have been dated to periods from the Mesolithic to the Early Middle Ages, including the Roman Era and the Migration Age. The majority have been found in areas of Germanic settlement, but some are from areas of Celtic settlement and from the later part of the date range, Slavic settlement. A typology has been developed based on the large number found at Oberdorla, Thuringia, at a sacrificial bog which is now the Opfermoor Vogtei open-air museum.
In many areas of Scandinavia, a wide variety of items were deposited in lakes and bogs from the Mesolithic period through to the Middle Ages. Such items include earthenware, decorative metalwork, weapons, and human corpses, known as bog bodies. As Kaul noted, "we cannot get away from the fact that the depositions in the bogs were connected with the ritual/religious sphere."
Over the past four decades, extensive research has been conducted on the Archaeology of Hatfield and Thorne Moors, resulting in the discovery of important Bronze Age and Neolithic trackways. These investigations have been carried out as part of wider initiatives to understand the complex and intertwined social-ecological-climatic systems that has shaped this region over the Holocene. The current landscape has been heavily altered by humans, notably though drainage by Cornelius Vermuyden in the 17th century. This area is notable for its extensive palaeoecological work and serves as a model for other studies in environmental archaeology.
![A peat lake near Griendtsveen [nl] Netherlands Peel lake.jpg](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f8/Netherlands_Peel_lake.jpg/220px-Netherlands_Peel_lake.jpg)
