Tom MooreElizabeth MooreColin Haselgrove - The Later Iron Age in Britain and Beyond

T HE L ATER I RON A GE IN B RITAIN AND B EYOND

edited by

Colin Haselgrove and Tom Moore

Oxbow Books

First published in the United Kingdom in 2007. Reprinted in 2017 by

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Oxbow Books and the individual contributors, 2007

Paperback Edition: ISBN 978-1-78570-910-4

Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-78297-552-6 (epub)

Mobi Edition: ISBN 978-1-78297-553-3 (mobi)

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Cover by Christina Unwin based on an idea by Rachel Pope; reconstruction of burial by Simon James

The nature and causes of the changes that took place in the last centuries of the Iron Age, particularly in southern Britain, have been a major focus of interest ever since Evans (1890) pioneering study of the Aylesford cemetery and its continental antecedents. The idea of a culturally distinct Late Iron Age in south-east England triggered by Belgic immigrants (Iron C) was formalised in the earlier twentieth century (e.g. Hawkes and Dunning 1931) and retained its significance even after Roy Hodson deconstructed invasion as the primary agent of change in Iron Age Britain. Emphasising the long trajectory of insular groups, Hodson (1964) replaced the by now over-complex ABC system (Hawkes 1959) with a simpler binary opposition, between an essentially indigenous early pre-Roman Iron Age lasting up to c. 100/50 BC, followed by a late pre-Roman Iron Age, defined by the introduction of La Tne D metalwork to Britain, and by the inception of the Aylesford culture acknowledged as a distinctive, foreign element in south-east England. Elsewhere, the Woodbury Culture (Late) held sway up to, and in many highland areas beyond, the Roman conquest, although now subject to strong continental influences, reflected in innovations like coinage, rotary querns, and wheel-made pottery. Owing to the late dating in vogue in the 1960s, Hodson attributed several features to his late phase which Hawkes and his generation associated with Iron B and which we too would now see as much earlier including currency bars, elaborate multivallation and decorated saucepan pottery.

Hodsons model of steady development from the Bronze Age followed by a short period of continentally-induced changes was adopted by Barry Cunliffe (1974a) for his highly influential Iron Age Communities in Britain , both in his initial presentation of the material (

Since the 1970s, most discussions of Late Iron Age developments have followed Cunliffes lead, firstly by focusing on south-east England, and secondly, by invoking mainly external causes. What the relevant changes actually represented has been largely a matter of theoretical fashion: in the brief heyday of processualism, they were construed as urbanisation linked to the intensification of external trade (Cunliffe 1976; 1978; Haselgrove 1976); in the 1980s, they became the rise and fall of paramount chiefdoms fuelled by Roman trade in prestige goods, as in the coreperiphery model (Haselgrove 1982; 1984; 1987; Cunliffe 1988; 1991); nowadays, they are viewed as dynasty building and the adoption of continental-style identities, driven by Roman political agency and cultural imperialism, and even migration (Millett 1990; Creighton 2000; 2006; Hill 2002). There have been some attempts to explain the changes of the Late Iron Age in more local terms and to play down the role of external trade, but these have been in the minority, and, perhaps significantly, have been directed at areas outside south-east England (e.g. Fitzpatrick 1989; 2001; Sharples 1990).

Partly under the growing influence of post-processual approaches, disquiet about the then current models of the Late Iron Age and especially the focus on south-east England began to be voiced in the late 1980s and continued to mount up through the 1990s. As Haselgrove (1989, 13) noted, little attention was given to the formative role of the Middle Iron Age, despite growing evidence to suggest that many supposedly Late Iron Age changes began earlier or were rooted in changes prior to the first century BC. The prevailing orthodoxy was also at variance with Iron Age studies in continental Europe, where the Middle La Tne period is widely regarded as marking a radical realignment in social structures (e.g. Duval 1976; Bintliff 1984; Haselgrove 1990; Pion 1990; Collis 1995; Kristiansen 1998). Haselgrove (1989) called for more research on the social and economic changes in the rest of Britain, which the new settlement data being generated by rescue archaeology suggested were more far reaching and extensive than had hitherto been thought, a view that subsequent work has reinforced (e.g. Hill 1995; 2002; Armit 1999; Haselgrove 1999a; 2004). It is now apparent that the archaeological record left by Iron Age communities outside the pottery- and burial-rich areas of southern Britain, far from being impoverished, has been distorted by complex cultural and depositional factors, whilst the apparent coexistence of culturally Middle and Late Iron Age groups in parts of southern Britain has cast further doubt on this terminology (Hill 1995), even where it once seemed to make sense

Reflecting these concerns, the recent review of research on Iron Age Britain called for new narratives to be developed to explain the widespread transformation in settlement, social structure, and material culture from c. 400300 BC onward (Haselgrove et al. 2001, 2831). The present book has its origins in a seminar on this theme held at the University of Durham in March 2002. The meeting also sought to set British developments in a wider geographical context by inviting papers on neighbouring countries such as Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands. Further papers have since been added to enhance the regional coverage (Cripps; Davies; Frodsham et al.; Hamilton; Haselgrove), or to address other topics (Collis; Macdonald; Van der Veen and Jones). As we will see, the contributors offer a diversity of approaches and many papers also eschew traditional boundaries, instead seeking an integrated analysis of community and identity. While not excluding the highly visible changes in south-east England (e.g. Bryant; Carr; Hamilton; Hill), the majority of contributions focus on regions and topics that have received less attention in the past. We will begin with a brief discussion of terminology and of the new theoretical directions that have started to take shape in Iron Age studies, before going on to examine the specific themes in more detail.

In this book, the Later Iron Age is taken to cover the period from c. 400300 BC onward until the Roman conquest. Such a framework is more appropriate to the many regions of the British Isles and north-west Europe that lack a distinctive Late Iron Age horizon characterised for example by oppida or wheel-made pottery, and where significant changes can be argued to have begun rather earlier and/or to have been played out well into the first millennium AD (e.g. papers by Armit; Hunter; Webley). Whilst the traditional terminology is retained in some papers, there is nonetheless a mood not to be constrained by rigid chronological divisions wherever other temporalities are implied by the material, and general agreement that Late Iron Age developments can only be fully understood in a wider temporal and geographical context.