Can we define a British Iron Age?

Summary

The Iron Age in Britain has traditionally been seen as a period of hierarchical, warrior-based, Celtic societies, characterised by hillforts, defended settlements and elaborate weaponry. The dominant interpretive models have emanated from Wessex – that area of central southern England where the largest and most impressive hillforts are found. In recent decades, however, archaeologists have increasingly recognised the marked regional differences inherent in Iron Age societies across different parts of Britain. As a result, the conventional, Wessex-dominated models have fallen from favour and been replaced by a myriad of regionally-focussed analyses. This approach, however, has its own problems. Different regions of Britain might have very different archaeological sequences in the Iron Age, yet there are some traits (including the uptake of continental La Tène art styles, the paucity of visible burial rites and the use of the roundhouse as the normative domestic form), that display a layer of cultural unity underlying this apparent variation. This paper explores how we might reconcile these tensions between regional distinctiveness and broad-scale cultural similarities across the British Iron Age.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20906