Places of Power and Passage: hillforts and monumental landscapes in the early Iron Age of central and south-eastern Slovenia.

Summary

The early Iron Age (EIA) landscape in central and south-eastern Slovenia is dominated by hillforts and barrow groups. These monumental structures express and symbolise elite power in the landscape. Despite traditional emphasis on outside agency in the formation of these landscapes, it will be shown that the EIA landscape incorporated and transformed many places of the preceding Late Bronze Age (LBA) landscape, often through monumentalisation. The expansion of hillfort settlements coincides with the increasing emphasis on visible differentiation in burial rites and the increasing role of iron technology, providing evidence for major social reconfigurations during the LBA/EIA transition and the development of visible elites. This is also reflected in the expansion of extra regional exchange. The aim of this paper is to examine these social changes and the role of elite ideology in the creation of place in and passage through these cumulative monumental landscapes. They were the result of intense, formalised elite competition throughout the EIA, which is reflected in the processions and festivals of Situla art and ultimately in the structure of the hillforts and barrow cemeteries themselves.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Biographies of Enclosure in Global Context

Keywords

Spatial Coverage