Is La Tène (Still) Relevant in British Iron Age Chronology?

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies II: The Big Picture with Bayes and Beyond" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

La Tène: a chronology that lives beyond the site, beyond regional and national boundaries; a term that conjures images of swirling ambiguous imagery, fine metalwork and shining pots. In Britain the term describes artifacts of apparently comparative date, in particular brooches. La Tène I brooches have strong affinities with examples from the type site and on the near continent, while La Tène II brooches are often exceedingly different from their apparently contemporary counterparts in France, Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland. The proposed stylistic connections between regions have been used to create the chronology of these artifacts in Britain, organized into periods, bracketed by calendar years. In turn these stylistically dated brooches have been used as evidence to date features and sites. This paper uses radiocarbon dates obtained from human and animal remains found within close association to brooches to create an independent chronology that transcends geographical, temporal, and culture-historical boundaries, and can be compared back to the data from Continental Europe. It will also discuss the implications of research on existing chronological sequences and examine the issues of using La Tène typologies as the basis for constructing Bayesian models.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Constructing Chronologies II: The Big Picture with Bayes and Beyond   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32290