Situated on the Danube in the Baden-Wurttemberg area of Germany, Heuneburg was a long-lived hillfort, the stronghold of local chiefs since the Bronze Age.
Their prestige and power was demonstrated by their success in controlling the supply of local products, such as iron for tools and weapons and lignite, gold and jet for jewellery, and in obtaining other materials - salt from the Hallstatt region, copper and tin for manufacturing bronzes, and from further afield coral and amber.
From around 600 BC, however, the Heuneburg chief experienced a great boost to his competitive position. Heuneburg's situation made it an ideal point for the Greek traders based far down the river system at Massilia to bribe their way into the central European exchange network and divert the raw materials they required south to the Mediterranean.
To achieve this they showered Mediterranean wine and fine wine drinking vessels on the local chief. These have been found not only in Heuneburg itself but also in the nearby princely barrow burials of the Hohmichele cemetery. In one of these a scrap of silk was recovered in the excavation - this had travelled through Central Asia, passing through who knows how many hands, all the way from China.
Back in the hillfort, the Greek traders had been indulging the vanity of the local chief in a curious way. The strong stone-faced timber-framed rubble rampart typical of these hillforts' defences was replaced by a singularly inappropriate Mediterranean style clay-built wall with buttresses - extremely imposing but hardly well suited to the rains and snows of central Europe.
