Salzburgs tränenreiche Urgeschichte – Bernstein als Medium sozialer und kultureller Interaktion.

Summary: Amber, a fossil tree resin, due to its specific physical properties has a genuine aura that has made it popular both as a gemstone and as a magical-religious amulet to this day. The supra-regional – 'global' in ancient terms – distribution of Baltic succinite is also reflected in the Eastern Alps. The central communication corridor along the Salzach and the Tauern transit in particular features a high density of amber objects during all epochs. The region therefore serves as a model case for investigating temporally variable aspects of the appropriation, use, symbolic significance and dissemination of amber. In addition to very rare Bronze Age objects and more frequent use in the Early Iron Age, the Dürrnberg near Hallein, along with the adjacent salt district at Hallstatt, is one of the main European centres of amber use during the Late Hallstatt and Early La Tène periods. Here, new quantitative and qualitative analyses provide evidence for changing patterns in the fashion of wearing, use and symbolic-magical meaning of amber jewellery. In the later La Tène period, there was a gradual decline in amber use both regionally and in other areas of Europe. This trend continued in the Roman Empire in the area of the municipium Claudium Iuvavum (Salzburg), before a final but short-lived revival of amber jewellery began in the Early Middle Ages. In a diachronic perspective, time-specific patterns in the use and integration of the strange raw material into the indigenous material culture and magic ideas become evident. Amber, however, does not only appear as a 'by-product' of purely economic communication along trans-regional trade and transport relations of the so-called 'Amber Roads'. Rather, qualitative and quantitative analyses show that amber was consciously chosen and rejected as a medium of social communication at different times and that specific meaning was variably attributed. In processes of intentional cultural appropriation, the exotic material thus reveals differentiated decision-making and agency of indigenous communities in Central European pre- and protohistory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]