Spanning the years 1200 BC - 475 BC this stage of Celtic culture is broken into four phases:A & B late Bronze Age, from c 1200 to 700 BC; C Early Iron Age, from c700-600 BC; D from c 600 to 475 BC It covered the central parts of Europe with its epicenter in Central Austria. It stretched from eastern France to Western Hungary but was not one continous, homegenous culture. It was split into two cultural areas - the western and the Eastern. When the Halstatt period began all the requirements to develop an advanced civilsation were in place.

There was already a long tradition of tarding copper and tin, necessary for Bronze works. Typically the tin cam from Cornwall, which even today is a celtic region - Kernow. Then from around 700 BC new supplies of Iron became common and all the pieces were in place to develop the area. The tribes of the Hallstat region were already mining salt, a key preservative of food. The provision of Bronze, Iron and Salt allowed Halstatt to become wealthy and allowed for the development of fine goods. From 800 BC, some burials of rich people can be identified buried with items such as wheeled wagons or iron swords. The next phase, Hallstatt C, saw the construction of fortified hilltop settlements to the North of the Alps.

The precursors of the settlements that Caesar would later encounter in Gaul. These locations included burial mounds with high quality offerings like expensive imported treasures. Then moving onto the Hallstatt D period we see the centering of the most elaborate burial sites to the south-western part of Halstatt. This is taken to suggest a focussing of power and influence into one area. That area may have been the Greek trading port of Massilia (today called Marseilles) During excavations carried out from 1846 to 1863, over 1000 burial sites were unearthed at Hallstatt, providing a wide range of artefacts, such as saltmining equipment, weapons, pottery and imported bronze vessels.

This culture represents with La Tène one of the key moments in Celtic Art.