The Hallstatt Period

Hallstatt is a very scenic lakeside tourist town in Austria. It is famous for the lakeside view, the paleolithic, bronze age, and iron age archeological sites in the area - including the site that generated the recognized archeological artifact epoch known as the "Hallstatt Period", and it's Salt Mine, which is the oldest active mining operation in the world.


Hallstatt is also famous for its "Charnal House" where the skulls and long bones of deceased residents are exhumed after 10 years of burial, cleaned of flesh, decorated with painted names and symbols (such as flowers), and displayed. This practice ended some time ago, but as recently as 1992 a skull was added to the collection at the request of the deceased. It must be mentioned that this is a venerated crypt associated with and located on the grounds of the local church.

The swans in the lake are very tame, and apparently used to being fed by passers by. This one was just begging to have his picture taken!

To get to the Salt Mines, which are high up on the mountain above the town, the most convenient means of transport is the funicular. It is sort of a cross between an elevator, a cable car, and a railway. It works very well, and you get to enjoy great views on your ride up and down the mountain. It certainly beats climbing! We used funiculars many times during our trip.

Once at the salt mine, we put on coveralls and took a tour of the mine. They have a number of interesting displays that tell you all about salt mining, and a theme of the tour is the circumstances of the discovery of an ancient miner who had been killed in a mining accident some unknown time in the past, and rediscovered by miners in the 17th century. The body was carried out of the mine by the miners and taken to the priest, who assumed that the man had been killed relatively recently (only a couple of hundred years before or so) and gave him a good christian burial. Unfortunately, to this day no one knows exactly where he was buried.

One of the interesting things that we saw while we were up the mountain was this helicopter delivering wet concrete to men who were working on one of the buildings there. As expensive as this process must have been, it seems to have been the only reasonable alternative to trying to mix it on the spot, with raw materials that had been transported up the mountain!