Ancient site · Other
Hallstatt salt mines and cemetery
High above the lake town of Hallstatt in Austria, people mined rock salt from the Bronze Age onward. Salt was precious for preserving food, and the trade made the community rich.
From 1846 Johann Georg Ramsauer excavated a huge prehistoric cemetery here, with more than a thousand burials, many rich in bronze and iron objects. These finds were so important that the whole Early Iron Age culture of central Europe is named after Hallstatt. A great landslide in the mid-4th century BCE ended the ancient mining.
- Dates
- c. 1200–350 BCE (prehistoric mining)
- Still standing
- No, or only traces
- UNESCO World Heritage
- Yes
- Location
- 47.56° N, 13.65° E
How we know
No writing existed here; the story comes from more than a thousand excavated graves and finds in the salt mines.
Nearby sites
- Ötzi the Iceman (find site) died c. 3230 BCE
- Heuneburg 7th–5th century BCE (mudbrick wall c. 600 BCE)
- Nebra sky disc find site (Mittelberg) disc buried c. 1600 BCE
- Vinča–Belo Brdo c. 5700–4500 BCE (later reoccupied)
- Starčevo culture dated c. 6200–4500 BCE
- Pantheon, Rome c. 126 CE; a church since 609
Related
- Hallstatt culture archaeological culture
- The world in 1500 BCE: Chariots and Empires chapter