THE FINDS FROM LA TÈNE IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM: LA TÈNE, UN SITE, UN MYTHE 6

Discovered in 1857, the site of La Tène, in Switzerland, played an important role in the rapid development of European prehistory in the mid-nineteenth century including the adoption of the three-age system in which it was named as the type site for the later Iron Age. The finds from it are now scattered across museums in Europe and America, and those in London are published here as part of a project to locate and publish all the finds from the site. The discovery of the site and the dispersal of its finds are discussed in the context of contemporary understandings of the past and collecting practices. Usually seen as votive offerings placed in a river, the finds have been re-interpreted recently as the remains of a trophy that displayed the bodies and equipment of an army defeated in c 220–200 bc.