The Earlier Iron Age in Britain and The Near Continent

by Haselgrove, Colin

• ISBN13: 9781842172537
• ISBN10: 1842172530
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-07-24
• Publisher: Oxbow Books Ltd

Summary

For much of Britain, the Earlier Iron Age has eluded attention and been characterised more by what it lacks than what it comprises: for Bronze Age studies it lacks bronze, while from the perspective of the Later Iron Age it lacks elaborate enclosures. This is in stark contrast with mainland Europe which has yielded a wealth of burial evidence and links with Mediterranean trade. New evidence on both sides of The Channel has evened out these findings, however, and we can now confidently claim that in Britain the Earlier Iron Age (c.800 - 300 BC) was a period of important social and cultural changes. The twenty-six papers in this book seek to establish what we know (and do not know) about Earlier Iron Age socities in Britain and the near Continent.

Table of Contents

Characterising the earlier Iron Age	p. 1
The character of late Bronze Age settlement in southern Britain	p. 24
800 B.C., the great divide	p. 39
Llyn Fawr metalwork in Britain : a review	p. 64
Intensification of animal husbandry in the late Bronze Age? : the contribution of sheep and pigs	p. 80
After 'Celtic' Gelds : the social organisation of Iron Age agriculture	p. 94
Refiguring rights in the early Iron Age landscapes of East Yorkshire	p. 103
Pitted histories : early first millennium B.C. pit alignments in the central Welsh Marches	p. 119
Environmental evidence from the Iron Age in north central Britain : putting archaeology in its place	p. 135
Simple tools for tough tasks or tough tools for simple tasks? : analysis and experiment in Iron Age flint utilisation	p. 144
A bloodless past : the pacification of early Iron Age Britain	p. 160
Building communities and creating identities in the first millennium B.C.	p. 174
Deposits and doorways : patterns within the Iron Age settlement at Crick Covert Farm, Northamptonshire	p. 185
Ritual and the roundhouse : a critique of recent ideas on the use of domestic space in later British prehistory	p. 204
The character of Earlier Iron Age societies in Scotland	p. 229
The early Iron Age of the peak district : re-reading the evidence	p. 248
The early to later Iron Age transition in the Severn-Cotswolds : enclosing the household?	p. 259
The aesthetics of landscape on the Berkshire Downs	p. 279
Settlement in Kent from 1500 to 300 B.C.	p. 293
The Atlantic West in the early Iron Age	p. 306
English and Danish Iron Ages - a comparison through houses, burials and hoards	p. 328
Familar landscapes with unfamiliar pasts? : Bronze Age barrows and Iron Age communities in the southern Netherlands	p. 338
The emergence of early Iron Age 'chieftains' graves' in the southern Netherlands : reconsidering transformations in burial and depositional practices	p. 354
Early La Tene burial practices and social (re)constructions in the Marne-Moselle region	p. 374
Boundaries and identity in early Iron Age Europe	p. 390
Rethinking earlier Iron Age settlement in the eastern Paris Basin	p. 400
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