10. The Princess of Vix shows the impact of Greek culture on the Hallstatt Celts.
Sometime during the sixth century BC, a thirty-year-old, high-status woman died in Vix in modern France. The woman — the so-called princess of Vix— was buried in standard Hallstatt fashion in a bronze-decorated wagon on a timber mortuary house under a mound. However, amongst her grave goods were valuable Mediterranean goods. The most impressive of these foreign status symbols was a 1.5-meter-high bronze Greek krater — a giant mixing bowl for wine. Archaeologists believe that Vix may have been a center for controlling the wine trade across the rest of mainland Europe — hence the theme of the Princess’s grave goods. However, what the Vix burial also demonstrates is how much the Celts prized Mediterranean culture.
