The Urnfield culture was an ancient culture of central Europe about which little is known, as they left no writing. Their name comes from their custom of cremating the dead and placing them in cemeteries consisting of rows of urns that remained above-ground with no burial. Since few other artifacts remain, scholars have only guesses about them, and disagree to a large extent. Some consider them ancestors of the Celts, and they may have spoken an early form of Celtic. Their civilization probably was at its peak during the middle of the 1st millennium BC.