View source for Italo-Celto-Germanic contacts

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The initial phase of the Elp culture (1800-1200 BC) in the Low Countries is characterised by tumuli related to the [[Italo-Celtic|Tumulus culture and later to the Urnfield culture]]. 

Dutch-German lowland areas share cultural roots with the southern Scandinavian area[Butler, Arnoldussen, and Steegstra 2011/2012] which predate technologic and economic exchanges between Urnfield and [[Germanic|Northern Bronze Age Scandinavia]][Kristiansen and Suchowska-Ducke 2015].

These complicated cultural-economic networks  that preclude precise ethnic (and thus linguistic) differentiation, supports the maintenance of late contacts between the languages ancestral to Germanic and [[Celtic]], assuming a position of Proto-Celtic to the north of the Hallstatt culture – as supported by the known homelands of the La Tène culture.

Lacking aDNA samples to obtain admixture analysis, careful investigation of I2a2a-M223 lineages – found today distributed among [[Germanic]] and [[Italo-Celtic]] territories – might bring light to population movements and exchanges during the Bronze Age and the Iron Age in Europe.


== References ==

* [*Butler, Arnoldussen, and Steegstra 2011/2012] Butler, J.J., S. Arnoldussen, and H. Steegstra. 2011/2012. Single-edged socketed Urnfield knives in the Netherlands and western Europe. Palaeohistoria 53/54:65-107.

* [*Kristiansen and Suchowska-Ducke 2015] Kristiansen, Kristian, and Paulina Suchowska-Ducke. 2015. Connected Histories: the Dynamics of Bronze Age Interaction and Trade 1500–1100 bc. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 81:361-392.
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