Culture de Jastorf

The Jastorf culture was an Iron Age material culture in what is now northern Germany and southern Scandinavia spanning the 6th to 1st centuries BC, forming part of the Pre-Roman Iron Age and associating with Germanic peoples. The culture evolved out of the Nordic Bronze Age. 6th century BC, Jastorf A (Hallstatt D) 5th century BC, Jastorf B (La Tène A) 400–350 BC, Jastorf C (La Tène B) 350–120 BC, Ripdorf (La Tène C) 120–1 BC, Seedorf (La Tène D) The Jastorf culture is named after a site near the village of Jastorf, Lower Saxony (). It was characterized by its use of cremation burials in extensive urnfields and links with the practices of the Northern Bronze Age. Archeology offers evidence concerning the crystallization of a group in terms of a shared material culture, in which the Northern Bronze Age continued to exert cultural influence on the Celtic Hallstatt culture in the southern parts of the area. The Jastorf culture extended south to the northern fringes of the Hallstatt culture, while towards the north a general congruence with the late phases of the Northern Bronze Age can be noted. Gravefields in today's Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg, western Pomerania, in Brandenburg and in Lower Saxony show continuity of occupation from the Bronze Age far into the Jastorf period and beyond. The specific contributions from the various quarters witnessing the meeting of Celtic and indigenous cultures during the early periods can not be assessed by the present state of knowledge, although a shift to a northern focus has been noted to accompany the dwindling vitality of continental Celtic cultures later on. The Jastorf culture's area was first restricted to what is today northern Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein. It then developed a "very expansive" character (Wolfram 1999), expanding towards the Harz hills and reaching by about 500 BC Thuringia, Lower Silesia, and the lower Rhine region, thus covering the southern and western parts of Lower Saxony.