The Hallstatt culture was the predominant Central European culture from the 8th to 6th centuries BC (European Early Iron Age), developing out of the Urnfield culture of the 12th century BC (Late Bronze Age) and followed in much of Central Europe by the La Tène culture.

By the 6th century BC, the Hallstatt culture extended for some 1000 km, from the Champagne-Ardenne in the west, through the Upper Rhine and the upper Danube, as far as the Vienna Basin and the Danubian Lowland in the east, from the Main, Bohemia and the Little Carpathians in the north, to the Swiss plateau, the Salzkammergut and to Lower Styria.

It is named for its type site, Hallstatt, a lakeside village in the Austrian Salzkammergut southeast of Salzburg. The culture is commonly linked to Proto-Celtic and Celtic populations in its western zone and with (pre-)Illyrians in its eastern zone.

In 1846, Johann Georg Ramsauer (1795–1874) discovered a large prehistoric cemetery near Hallstatt, which he excavated during the second half of the nineteenth century. Eventually the excavation would yield 1,045 burials.

Frank Delaney (born October 24, 1942) is an Irish novelist, journalist and broadcaster. He's the author of New York Times best-seller "Ireland", the non-fiction book "Simple Courage: A True Story of Peril on the Sea", and many other works of fiction, non-fiction and collections. He was born in Tipperary, Ireland.

In 1970, Delaney began working as a newsreader for the Irish state radio and television network RTE. In the early 1970s he became a news reporter for the BBC in Dublin, and covered an intense period of violence known as The Troubles. After 5 years of reporting on the violence, he moved to London to work in Arts broadcasting. In 1978, he created the award-winning weekly show "Bookshelf" for BBC Radio Four, which covered books, writers and the business of publishing. Over the next five and a half years, he interviewed over 1400 authors including Anthony Burgess, John Updike, Margaret Atwood, Christopher Isherwood and Stephen King. On television, Delaney wrote and presented for Omnibus, the BBC weekly arts series. He served as the Literature Director of the Edinburgh Festival in 1980, and he hosted his own talk show "Frank Delaney" in the early 1980s, featuring an array of cultural and literary personalities. Afterward, he created and presented "Word of Mouth", the BBC's award winning show about language, as well as a variety of radio and television documentaries including specials on James Joyce, Robert Graves, Hemingway in Paris, and the Shakespeare Industry. He presented "The Book Show" on the Sky News satellite channel for many years.