Europe in the Iron Age

This chapter introduces the regional framework within which the archaeology of Iron Age Europe is presented in Chapters 4–17 of the book, and examines some key aspects of climate, environment, and population during the period. It outlines the main features of European physical geography—including landscapes, mountain ranges, river systems, and coastlines—discussing their roles as barriers to and facilitators of human connectivity during the Iron Age. Topography, soil types, and natural resources all had a major impact on subsistence practices and lifeways across the continent; climate changes presented specific challenges to the people at the end of the Bronze Age and in several phases during the Iron Age. Biological anthropology informs us about Iron Age health and nutrition, while isotope and DNA analyses of human remains are increasingly shedding new light on individual mobility and population histories through the period.

Central Europe

This chapter covers the area between eastern France and western Hungary, and from the Alps to the central European Mittelgebirge, following the established division between the early Iron Age (Hallstatt) and later Iron Age (La Tène) periods, beginning each section with a summary of the history of research and chronology. After characterizing the west–east Hallstatt cultural spheres, early Iron Age burial rites, material culture, and settlements are explored by region, including the phenomenon of ‘princely seats’. In the fifth century BC, a new ideological, social, and aesthetic concept arose, apparent both in the burial record, and especially in the development of the new La Tène art style. This period also saw the emergence of new, larger proto-urban forms of settlement, first unfortified agglomerations, and later the fortified oppida. Finally, the chapter examines changes in the nature and scale of production, material culture, and religious practices through the first millennium BC.

Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of the origins and development of Iron Age studies in Europe and outlines the main research themes explored in this book. The period is understood to begin when iron first came into general use, between 1000 and 600 BC in different regions. It is the final recognized period of prehistory, continuing in lands outside the Roman Empire until the arrival of Christianity in the later first millennium AD. The archaeology of the Iron Age shows intensification of subsistence production, manufacturing, and trading, as iron came to be applied to many economically important tasks, populations increased, and interactions between communities grew. Larger settlements of the period are thought to indicate the beginnings of urbanism. Settlement sites, cemeteries, and deposits of different kinds are abundantly represented, their material remains generating a rich picture of lifeways, social organization, economic activities, and ritual practices across the continent.

Regions, groups, and identity

Archaeologists once viewed super-individual identity as primordial and tied to territorial boundaries, useful for describing an orderly past and creating national or ethnic genealogies. Current research ties identities not to regions, but to groups: complex cultural constructions, expressed in varied yet simultaneous manifestations of bonds with family, lineage, clan, or polity, each with multiple shifting markers. These can involve kinship, status, gender, age, occupation, shared experience, and social memory, in turn impacted by wider sociopolitical, religious, and economic concerns. Between Iron Age groups, cooperation, détente, and conflict were equally likely; trade, travel, and familiarity resulted in material and ideological co-mingling, while still preserving difference, and involved symbolic and practical novelty, as well as continuity with the past. Once, such complexities caused archaeologists to label identity research impossible or unnecessary, but its exclusion often leads to misinterpretation. Fortunately, thoughtful considerations of method, materiality, and scale have resulted in productive new approaches.

Textiles and perishable materials

This chapter challenges traditional views on Iron Age dress. Recent research has greatly enhanced our understanding of how textiles were manufactured in Iron Age Europe. The variety of qualities, textures, techniques, raw materials, colours, and cuts give insights into the detailed knowledge of the craftspeople involved. Textiles used for dress, blankets, or furniture fittings were appreciated not only for their appearance, but also for the quality of the work. In everyday life, their optical qualities were used to express and signal gender, social roles and status, while the labour expended on textiles found in wealthy burials underlines both the status of the deceased and the extent of conspicuous consumption in funerary rituals—for instance, for wrapping grave furniture and goods. The chapter also looks at experimental data showing how labour-intensive textile production was, and the types of clothing and accessories found in different archaeological contexts or depicted in visual representations.

Wealth, status, and occupation groups

Exploring the nature of status and the role of individuals in society is central to understanding social organization. This chapter critically examines current models of how wealth and status were expressed and maintained in Iron Age Europe, and considers evidence for the existence of occupation groups, classes, and specialists. Topics examined include links between status and display of wealth in votive deposition and richly adorned burials, the roles of feasting, conspicuous consumption, and monumentality, and how these may reflect hierarchical or heterarchical forms of social organization. The period saw increasing evidence for specialist roles in spheres such as craftworking, production, mining, and exchange, as well as in ritual and warfare. Some Iron Age communities, however, lacked obvious social specialism and the archaeological evidence points to small-scale modes of household production. Links between gender, age, status, and social roles are also explored.

Gender and society

This chapter examines the relationship between Iron Age gender and society, viewed from the mortuary evidence. It distinguishes an early Iron Age masculine west, an increasingly female-authored salt trade, and a generation of mobility (620–580 BC) ushering in new social forms. Discussing recent work on gender identities, the relationship between daggers and swords is examined. Linked, gendered lineages are identified—increasingly male-authored, and opulent, with Greek connections, in south-west Germany; alongside female authority in eastern France. Beginning in Germany, male-authored violence is attested (550–450 BC, aligning with Livy), followed by radical social change (400–350 BC), as disproportionate deposition signifies the ritual end to Hallstatt traditions; alongside development of martial, ‘egalitarian’ La Tène communities. Sex was a common, divergent, structuring principle in regional Hallstatt C–D societies. Further, a reading for gender in the texts reveals differences between western European Iron Age and late classical Mediterranean gender norms.

Feasting and commensal rituals

Feasting was an important means of social communication in Iron Age Europe and has been described as a kind of social glue—creating and recreating society by bringing people together to mark important events and ceremonies, through the communal consumption of large quantities of food and drink. This chapter examines the archaeological and literary evidence for Iron Age feasting, focusing in particular on the various social roles of the feast and the often elaborate material culture involved. A picture is built up of the varied types of feast that took place, and the types of food and drink that were consumed at them.

Indigenous communities under Rome

This chapter focuses on a number of specific themes that can help us understand the nature of continuities of traditional Iron Age practices following Roman conquest, the development of complex mixed identities, discrepant experiences, and life after Roman rule. The chapter looks first at the historiographical context and complexities of studies of Europe under Rome, including previous models of ‘Romanization’, and the contribution of figures such as Theodor Mommsen, Camille Jullian, and Francis Haverfield. Examples of archaeological material from provinces across Europe are then explored in detail, including settlement, buildings, and social space; geography and landscape; religion and ritual; death and burial; and industry, craft activity, and material culture.

Monuments

During the European Iron Age, human impact on the environment was considerable. Far from the impenetrable forests once envisaged, there had been extensive woodland clearance. A wide range of settlement types existed in intensively exploited landscapes. Sites and their hinterlands were often structured around older monuments, intentionally incorporated and integrated into local belief systems. Ancestral cemeteries, natural features, and places of resource procurement all acted as foci of collective identity, playing major roles in the mental construction of the landscape, intertwining sacred and profane. Structured settlement environs indicate an increasing importance of property rights and delimitation of social units. Social hierarchies were reproduced by architectural variability in settlements using monumental buildings as social markers, both in urban and rural contexts. The chapter also considers Iron Age exploitation of forests, which like other landscapes were heavily managed, their resources vital for constructing buildings, fortifications, and supplying the charcoal crucial for ironworking.