The Carpathian and Danubian area

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of Iron Age societies in the eastern Carpathian basin and lower Danube region, from the Great Hungarian Plain to the Black Sea, drawing on funerary and settlement data from the different regions. The first iron objects occur in Transylvania in the late Bronze Age, but ironworking only developed fully in the early first millennium BC. Throughout the period, the area was open to contacts with central Europe, as well as the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions. The so-called Scythian and Celtic horizons in the Carpathian basin were both associated with newcomers, although the nature and extent of population movement remains open to discussion. In the north Balkans, a series of opulent graves and fortified settlements attests to the development of an aristocracy with strong ties to the Greek world, followed in the late Iron Age by the rise of the impressive but short-lived Dacian kingdom.