Bridging the gap at La Téne

Extract

Some thirty years ago, I took part in the Seminar für Ur- und Frühgeschichte der Universität Basel's traditional field trip to La Tène. We discussed the various interpretations put forward for a site that had given its name to the later Iron Age in Europe: bridges, toll, battle, fort, refugium, accident, votive deposit, sanctuary. We berated the methods of investigation of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: they could not bridge the gap between what was found and what La Tène had come to mean in the ensuing century. Thirty years on, things have changed.