today at 2:53 AM
I just finished listening to the audiobook of Mark Kurlanskys Salt: A World History[0]. Fascinating and highly recommended.
[0] https://www.markkurlansky.com/books/salt-a-world-history/
today at 7:22 AM
Can confirm, it's a fantastic book!
today at 5:58 AM
The name Halstatt seems to mean Salt Town.
today at 7:29 AM
Hallstatt means salt stead - a place where you find salt.
Stadt (town) was derived from Statt - here's a good explanation of that: https://www.duden.de/sprachwissen/sprachratgeber/Stadt-Statt...
today at 7:44 AM
Thanks! Learned a lot
today at 6:34 AM
No, it means nothing. You shall not needlessly anglicize.
The name Hallstadt (not the two l letters) means Salt Town.
Or, actually "place". In a lot of location names of germanic origin "stadt" doesn't the current semantics, of being a town with > 10.000. More often than not it just means "place".
And "Hall" is an old term for salt. Many towns related to salt have it in their names, in many places of Germany and Austria. "Halle an der Saale" in Thüringen, Bad Reichenhall (Bayern), Hall im Tirol (Österreich), Schwäbisch-Hall (Baden-Württemberg) etc.
"Hall" is believed to be of celtic origin.
And the double l is important. German is a language where in the written form you look at the letters and you immediately see how it is spoken. A double vocal makes the speed slower, and a double consonant makes the speech faster. So "Halstadt" would be slow Hal (so more emphasize on the "a" instead), and "Hallstadt" would be a fast "Hall", similar in speed like the english "hell": little emphasize on the "a".
today at 8:08 AM
Medieval German didn't have fixed rules for writing. The same word was written in different ways on the same page, so many words inherited from the Middle Ages cannot be taken literally under modern writing rules.
today at 6:47 AM
The not/note typo strikes again, it reverses the meaning of a phrase.
today at 5:52 AM
Hallstatt is one of these places to visit. It's topology alone is crazy, built on the edge of a mountain right above a lake. Nobody reasonable would build a city there, unless there was a really good reason for it. And the value of salt was that reason. But that topology is also the reason why a lot of the city is extremely old today.
Hallstatt as a town is also affected by overtourism, especially since some Asian soap opera used it as a film location. But it is one of the places that is still worth a visit.
today at 8:39 AM
because of the overtourism problem I would advise against a visit
today at 3:44 AM
What did they do for light?
today at 8:41 AM
IIRC it was torches there seem to be several archaeological finds
today at 7:12 AM
This is one of the problems with what the Celts did: they didn't write. And they used a lot of biological material (like leather, wood) which is all gone by now. AFAIK the celts were already "gone" (assimilated / diversified into local tribes) when the Romans (which were writers) arrived. So we don't even have roman writing about the celtic customs.
For example, there is are excavations around https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keltenwelt_am_Glauberg and AFAIK it's still not clear if that area is mostly a castle, or if it was mostly some cultic thing -> nothing written, not even in clay or chiseled into stone.
Similarly, in this article https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallstatt_(Arch%C3%A4ologie) that describes the salt mining in Hallstadt since the bronze age there is only so much that they know.
So, did they use torches? They have decayed over this time.
We know however that they had some kind of meat industry at Hallstein. They had plenty of salt, and so they used that to make meat durable. Animal skulls survived the times ...
today at 4:08 AM
I would expect oil lamps.