Editorial

5 Editorial With the present monothematic volume Studia Hercynia returned to tradition set by volumes Vand VI (2001 and 2002) publishing proceedings of conferences on Iron Age (or ‘Celtic’ to use the terminology of the time) archaeology. There are some significant differences as well. While the previous volumes based on conferences organised by Jan Bouzek and Venceslas Kruta were clearly focused on specific and often prestigious themes (Celts and the Mediterranean, Celtic Numismatics), we took a more ‘free-style’ approach, publishing papers which bring new data or ideas regardless of the specific topic. The core of the volume is made up by papers and posters presented during the annual conference Iron age in Central Europe, co-organised in Prague in 2018 by the Institute of Classical Archaeology along with the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Other papers were included to complete the volume based on a simple criterion: they provide intriguing new information usually of transregional interest. The papers discuss both Hallstatt and La Tène period and in geographical terms they cover an area from Bavaria and Salzburg land, through Bohemia and Slovakia, passing through Northern Italy up to the Balkans. New discoveries based on surveys in the hinterland of the Hallstatt period hillfort of Minice in Central Bohemia are presented by V. Čisťakova and her colleagues. K. Winger on the other hand pieced up a synthesis of an early excavation of the Hallstatt period burial mound of Kriegenbrunn, Bavaria, from the old, stray and often insufficient documentation. H. Wendling then brings up the latest news from the cemeteries of Dürrnberg, in whose publication he has been significantly involved over the last several years. Unlike the Early Iron Age papers, which often scrupulously exploit data from a single site, the papers on the flat-graves period are rather characterised by more or less far-flung syntheses. H. Geschwind carries out a long-needed analysis and contextualisation of the famous ‘Bohemian’ Hohlbuckelringe from Marzabotto, showing that things are not as simple as often presented. D. Repka undertook a meticulous analysis of burial enclosures in Slovakia and Ivan Drnić presents a masterly synthesis of scabbards decorated with pairs of fantastic animals in the Balkans. The volume is concluded with a paper by R. Čambal – a careful contextualisation of single object helping to add another stone into the complex, rich and still largely fragmentary mosaic of LT C2–D1 metallic artefacts. As repeatedly shown by our publication history – and as also implied by the title – Studia Hercynia always strove at studying the ancient world in its complexity and at understanding the Bronze and Iron Ages of Cisand Transalpine Europe as parts of a single – no matter how multifaceted – story. We are sure that more volumes dedicated to Hallstatt and La Tène cultures – by themselves or in interaction with the Mediterranean world – will follow. The editors