The Iron Age

European Museums, Budapest History Museum, Hungary

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The Iron Age

(800 B.C. - turn of the 1st century B.C./A.D.)

In the 8th century B.C., significant changes took place in the culture and crafts of the population living in the region of the Danube and Tisza rivers. The knowledge of iron smelting and forging spread during this period, while the bronze industry declined. These changes mark the beginning of the Iron Age.

The technology of the production of iron objects was invented simultaneously in several places in Europe. The first iron ornaments and weapons were forged in the region of the North Caucasus, Transylvania and the Balkans. With the spread of iron crafts, a new phase of technical development began, which also brought economic and social transformations with itself.

In the period between the Early Iron Age and the eastern conquest of the Celtic peoples, the Great Hungarian Plain and its northern confines came under the influence of the Pre-Scythian and Scythian cultures dominating the maritime plains to the north of the Black Sea. The territories west of the Danube, however, belonged to the Central European cultural community; first to the Hallstatt culture, later on, from the last decades of the 5th century B.C., to the Celtic world.

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The Iron Age

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Source:  Budapest, Hungary