Hallstatt Culture

   In 1846 Johann Georg Ramsauer, a mining inspector from Hallstatt in Upper Austria, discovered an Iron Age gravesite. His report of his findings was the first written account of a prehistoric burial ground in central Europe. Ramsauer turned the area into a tourist attraction, visited by, among others, Emperor Franz Joseph and his wife, Empress Elisabeth (1837–1898), in 1856. The grave and some 2,000 more like it in the region were part of a wider civilization that stretched between eastern France to the Balkans from approximately 700 BCE to the beginning of the Common Era. Significant finds of artifacts and burial grounds have taken place in all provinces of modern Austria. The peoples were ethnically Illyrian. After about 400 BCE, however, they were joined in Upper Austria and Salzburg by significant numbers of Celts. The Romans, who occupied the region shortly before the beginning of the Common Era, called both peoples Taurisci.

   The chief occupation of those who lived around Hallstatt was salt mining. Celtic settlers around Vienna began the cultivation of wine on the Leopoldsberg, today within the city limits, and the surrounding area. The practice has endured into the 21st century.

   See also Carnuntum.