Any synthesis of Europe north of the Alps in the first half of the first millennium B.C. is conditioned by imbalances in the archaeological record. Much of the evidence is derived from cemeteries with specialized inventories of grave-goods, or from high-status fortified sites of exceptional character and function, rather than from a full spectrum of settlement or material remains. Even these data are unequally distributed regionally, or at any rate unequally studied, and not equally represented in successive chronological phases. The effect of this imbalance and discontinuity of evidence can be the creation of artificial horizons, which may be used to justify historical episodes or socio-economic climaxes, and which compound a tendency towards a ‘selected highlights’ view of European prehistory.

The classification and chronology of later prehistoric Europe is still largely based upon the system devised by Reinecke at the beginning of the century, named after the Alpine type-sites of Hallstatt and La Tène. In Reinecke's scheme, Hallstatt A and B equate with the Older and Younger phases respectively of the Urnfield Culture, in absolute terms spanning the twelfth to eighth centuries B.C., whilst Hallstatt C and D, dating from later eighth to early sixth, are generally recognized as the first Iron Age in central and western Europe. The system is essentially a Central European one, with important transalpine correlations, and it has been developed in large measure from the concentration of systematic research on the rich cemetery assemblages in these regions. West of the Rhine, in both Urnfield and Iron Hallstatt phases, the cemetery inventories show a more limited range of types, with fewer examples that could be regarded as diagnostic of the Central European culture, and local regional variants that progressively lend assemblages a distinctively Atlantic aspect.