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What was the societal structure of Celtic culture in the Hallstatt period? There does not seem to be much information online about this.

My preliminary research consists of looking on Wikipedia for citations and Amazon at books like "Celtic Magic", but nothing seems very high quality.

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    I'm not sure I understand why the downvotes - certainly the question would benefit from documenting preliminary research, but history (as I understand it) deals with sociopolitical organization of historical cultures. "We don't know" is a perfectly viable answer - but history has ways to deal with things we don't know - we can extrapolate from similar cultures for example.
    – MCW ♦
    Apr 23, 2020 at 15:11
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    @MarkC.Wallace I didn't downvote, but my guess would be that they reflect the lack of evidence for prior research, combined with the fact that it is a question about prehistory. I've noticed that questions about prehistory do seem to be less-favourably received by some of our community for some reason..
    – sempaiscuba
    Apr 23, 2020 at 15:48
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    I downvoted due to the lack of preliminary research. If they would like to add what they’ve searched for so far I think that would help.
    – user42241
    Apr 23, 2020 at 15:55

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That's for a reason: You will find a lot of speculation but the plain answer is: we do not know. Now you will say "But ..." and I will repeat "We do not know".

There is, for instance, this burial mound in Hochdorf, Germany, and its "inhabitant" is sometimes referred to as a "Fürst" = Lord because of the extraordinary riches that were buried together with him, and the fact that the grave was not robbed after it had been laid and was mostly intact.

http://www.keltenmuseum.de/

But the findings are by no means a hint to his importance or social role during his life. We don't know the habits of those people in life, and burial mounds weren't rare at that time.

There are a lot of interesting places from the time between late bronze age (e.g. Urnfield) and La Tene culture all over Europe, together with reconstructions of the material legacy and residues (e.g. Heuneburg) and of course the eponymous Hallstatt in Austria, but no hints to social stratification that would make sense in our eyes.

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    Agreed - but we can make statements about similar cultures - there are general patterns of socio-political organization for cultures of similar wealth/complexity/social organization. We can infer their economic system from the grave goods present, which tell us about their technology, their means of production, etc. Good answer
    – MCW ♦
    Apr 23, 2020 at 15:22
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    Thanks. Sure, but i din't want to start a lecture :-) Quite some work is published about the gifts of that grave, the provenence of the material from isotopes, the handicraft and the make of the reconstructions, environmental reconstruction, possible contacts to the eastern Mediterranean, etc. With a more focussed question we can try more detailed answers.
    – user43870
    Apr 23, 2020 at 15:26
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    ... and the danger is that with too much interpretation we introduce too much of our world view. Those guys never had an Empire in their history, or medieval fiefdom to compare or something like a nobility. That's the danger with saying "He was a prince !", which, from a mere archeologicla point of view is a premature and unfounded conclusion.
    – user43870
    Apr 23, 2020 at 15:31

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