The history of Austria covers the history of Austria and its predecessor states. In the late Iron Age Austria was occupied by people of the Hallstatt Celtic culture, they first organized as a Celtic kingdom referred to by the Romans as Noricum, dating from c. 800 to 400 BC. At the end of the 1st century BC, the lands south of the Danube became part of the Roman Empire. In the Migration Period, the 6th century, the Bavarii, a Germanic people, occupied these lands until it fell to the Frankish Empire established by the Germanic Franks in the 9th century. The name Ostarrîchi (Austria) has been in use since 996 AD when it was a margravate of the Duchy of Bavaria and from 1156 an independent duchy of the Holy Roman Empire.

The Avar March was a southeastern frontier province of the Frankish Empire, established after successful Frankish campaigns and conquests of Avarian territories along the river Danube, to the east from the river Enns, in what is today Lower Austria and northwestern Hungary. Since the Frankish conquest in the late 8th century, there were several administrative changes in those regions. Territory along the river Danube, from the river Enns to the Vienna Woods, was ruled directly, as a frontier extension (march) of the Frankish Bavaria, while regions further to the east, up to the river Rába, were initially designated to remaining Avarian princes, under the Frankish supreme rule. During the 820s and 830s, additional administrative changes were made in the wider region of Frankish Pannonia, inhabited mainly by Pannonian Slavs. Territories of the remaining Avarian princes were fully incorporated, and Avars eventually disappeared from the region.