Solar disc pendant, circles forming a cross

Four-pointed solar disk engraved on a pendant.

The relatively low number of finds dated to the second half of the 5th century B.C. are a sign of the growing influence of the La Tène civilization and the adoption of the Celtic culture by the locals living in the northwestern part of the Carpathian Basin.

At the beginning of the 4th century B.C., waves of migration - which had been described by authors of the Antiquity - brought Celtic peoples to Italy and the Carpathian Basi. A whole range of La Tène cemeteries in Northern Transdanubia can be connected to this historical event.

Late Iron Age culture (5th century B.C. - end of the 1st century B.C.) was established and spread by the Celts. The La Tène civilization, which received its name after a site in Switzerland discovered in the 19th century, lay between present-day Central France and the Czech Republic.

The Gauls are tall of body, with rippling muscles, and white of skin, and their hair is blond, and not only naturally so, but they also make it their practice by artificial means to increase the distinguishing color which nature has given it. For they are always washing their hair in lime-water, and they pull it back from the forehead to the top of the head and back to the nape of the neck...,since the treatment of their hair makes it so heavy and coarse that it differs in no respect from the mane of horses. Some of them shave the beard, but others let it grow a little; and the nobles shave their cheeks, but they let the mustache grow until it covers the mouth...

The clothing they wear is striking - shirts which have been dyed and embroidered in varied colors, and breeches, which they call in their tongue bracae, and they wear striped coats, fastened by a buckle on the shoulder; heavy for winter wear and light for summer, in which are set checks, close together and varied hues.

(Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, V:28-30)

The whole race which is now called both "Gallic" and "Galatic" is war-mad, and both high-spirited and quick for battle, although otherwise simple and not illmannered. And therefore, if roused, they come together all at once for the struggle, both openly and without circumspection, so that for those who wish to defeat them by stratagem they become easy to deal with (in fact, irritate them when, where, or by what chance pretext you please, and you have them ready to risk their lives, with nothing to help them in the struggle but might and daring); whereas, if coaxed, they so easily yield to considerations of utility that they lay hold, not only of training in general, but of language-studies as well. As for their might, it arises partly from their large physique and partly from their numbers. And on account of their trait simplicity and straightforwardness they easily come together in great numbers, because they always share in the vexation oh those of their neighbors whom they think wronged.

(Strabo, Geography, IV:2)

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