In contrast to Continental Europe, where the Iron Age is abundantly represented by funerary remains as well as by hill-forts and major centres, the British Iron Age is mainly represented by its settlement sites, and especially by houses of circular ground-plan, apparently in marked contrast to the Central and Northern European tradition of rectangular houses. In lowland Britain the evidence for timber round-houses comprises the footprint of post-holes or foundation trenches; in the Atlantic north and west, the remains of monumental stone-built houses survive as upstanding ruins, testimony to the building skills of Iron Age engineers and masons. D. W. Harding's fully illustrated study explores not just the architectural aspects of round-houses, but more importantly their role in the social, economic and ritual structure of their communities, and their significance as symbols of Iron Age society in the face of Romanization.

A fully illustrated study of Iron Age round-houses, which explores not just their architectural aspects but more importantly their role in the social, economic and ritual structure of their communities, and their significance as symbols of Iron Age society in the face of Romanization.

This is a fully illustrated study of Iron Age round-houses, which explores not just their architectural aspects but more importantly their role in the social, economic and ritual structure of their communities, and their significance as symbols of Iron Age society in the face of Romanization.

The Earlier Iron Age (c. 800-400 BC) has often eluded attention in British Iron Age studies. Traditionally, we have been enticed by the wealth of material from the later part of the millennium and by developments in southern England in particular, culminating in the arrival of the Romans. The result has been a chronological and geographical imbalance, with the Earlier Iron Age often characterised more by what it lacks than what it comprises: for Bronze Age studies it lacks large quantities of bronze, whilst from the perspective of the Later Iron Age it lacks elaborate enclosure. In contrast, the same period on mainland Europe yields a wealth of burial evidence with links to Mediterranean communities and so has not suffered in quite the same way. Gradual acceptance of this problem over the past decade, along with the corpus of new discoveries produced by developer-funded archaeology, now provides us with an opportunity to create a more balanced picture of the Iron Age in Britain as a whole. The twenty-six papers in the book seek to establish what we now know (and do not know) about Earlier Iron Age communities in Britain and their neighbours on the Continent. The authors engage with a variety of current research themes, seeking to characterise the Earlier Iron Age via the topics of landscape, environment, and agriculture; material culture and everyday life; architecture, settlement, and social organisation; and with the issue of transition - looking at how communities of the Late Bronze Age transform into those of the Earlier Iron Age, and how we understand the social changes of the later first millennium BC. Geographically, the book brings together recent research from regional studies covering the full length of Britain, as well as taking us over to Ireland, across the Channel to France, and then over the North Sea to Denmark, the Low Countries, and beyond.

This book was written at a time when the older conventional diffusionist view of prehistory, largely associated with the work of V. Gordon Childe, was under rigorous scrutiny from British prehistorians, who still nevertheless regarded the ‘Arras’ culture of eastern Yorkshire and the ‘Belgic’ cemeteries of south-eastern Britain as the product of immigrants from continental Europe. Sympathetic to the idea of population mobility as one mechanism for cultural innovation, as widely recognized historically, it nevertheless attempted a critical re-appraisal of the southern British Iron Age in its continental context. Subsequent fashion in later prehistoric studies has favoured economic, social and cognitive approaches, and the cultural-historical framework has largely been superseded. Routine use of radiocarbon dating and other science-based applications, and new field data resulting from developer-led archaeology have revolutionized understanding of the British Iron Age, and once again raised issues of its relationship to continental Europe.