The people of the Metal Ages

The Iron Age is often seen as the time of the appearance in history of

the European peoples, the “barbarians” as they were seen by Rome.
These people included a number of different tribes and groups, the
configuration of which changed over time; all had more or less obvious
roots in the Bronze Age. Ethnicity is not easy to establish, however,
and the fact that, for example, the Romans ascribed an area to a
particular people does not necessarily mean that those inhabiting that
area constituted an ethnic and linguistic group. Continuous changes in
the composition of tribal formation occurred in the Iron Age as groups
bound together through alliances created by gift giving, trade, and
aggression. From Greek, and later Roman, writers and from Assyrian
texts, historical information about some of these people has been
preserved. The main groups presented by these texts are the Celts in
western Europe, the Germanic people of northern Europe,
the Slavs from eastern Europe, and Cimmerians, Scythians, and,
later, Sarmatians coming into southeastern Europe from the Russian
Steppe. The texts describe what to their authors appeared as
barbarous customs in cultures they did not understand, but they also
provide historic insights into the movements of different peoples and
tribes during this unrestful period.

It was also during the Iron Age that individually named people
appeared for the first time in European sources, and the names of
kings, heroes, gods, and goddesses have become known through
legendary writers such as Homer. In the main, however, the Metal
Ages were before literature began to immortalize individuals, and in
general little is known about individual people or even groups from
these periods. It remains up to the archaeologist to explain how the
people lived and who they were, since they are known only through
their art, their actions, and their own physical remains. Their art
shows the people through figures and drawings, but always in a
stylistic or symbolic way rather than as portraits. This is even the case
in the wall paintings from Mycenaean Crete, which show detailed full-
figure drawings of women and men in different costumes and involved
in various, presumably partly ceremonial, activities. The figurative
representations, whether drawings or statues, do not give accurate
insight into the appearance, health, and mentality of these people, but
evidence of this is provided by their physical remains and the things
they made and used.

Their appearance can to some extent be reconstructed on the basis of

skeletal materials from graves. Owing to changes in burial rites, these
are better preserved from some periods than others, but in general
there is good evidence. The people were close to the same height as
people living today and were of a similar build. In some areas, as
demonstrated by the Early Bronze Age cemetery at Ripa Lui Bodai, in
Romania, people of different racial characteristics were buried in a
similar manner within one cemetery, suggesting that the population
was racially mixed. It is quite likely that such mixture was common in
many areas, suggesting that the cultures correspond to social
structures rather than ethnic or racial ones.