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Britain BC > Later Iron Age > Flashcards

Later Iron Age Flashcards

1
Q

Cunliffe’s 1984 model of Iron Age society

A
  • Chieftain, followed by Nobles and Druids, then skilled Craftsmen, and mostly Peasant farmers
  • Models are mostly large men with large swords
  • Model superimposes early medieval kingship and social structures onto IA communities
  • Lack of women or passive role only in representations
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2
Q

Does Cunliffe’s model work?

A

-Model - storage, processing and redistribution centres, especially for winter
-Centre of specialist craft production, and local/regional exchange and redistribution
-Large settlements with presence of more high status people than other settlements
Yes- for Danebury, Maiden Castle and Ham Hill
-No - for upland hillforts, and livestock
-Many excavated hillforts not rich in material culture - not lived in, and little evidence for high status dwellings

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3
Q

Hillforts for Defense?

A
  • Not necessarily - some have no internal water sources and in upland areas would not be habitable in winter
  • Palaeoenvironmental evidence for seasonality
  • Some too large to be effectively defended without thousands of warriors
  • May have been about competitive status but also communal projects that bound people together
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4
Q

Decline of Hillforts

A

-In decline from 200 BC onwards

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5
Q

Metalwork Typologies

A
  • Well established and based in part on continental trends but hampered by 14C dating plateau
  • Some iron turned into traded ‘currency bars’ though unclear if these had a set economic value
  • Metalworkers tools, agricultural implements and currency bars often featured in placed deposits in ditches or pits
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6
Q

Wool production?

A
  • S England - fired clay and stone loomweights, spinning whorls, bone weaving combs all indicate wool production on many settlement sites
  • Sheep bone assemblages support idea that flocks kept for wool, milk and manure
  • Can be devalued as simple craft production but decorated weaving combs and placed deposits of loomweights suggest greater social meanings
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7
Q

LIA Ceramics

A
  • Some good, relatively well-dated regional sequences for later Iron Age Ceramics but the largest and best-dated assemblages are from E Yorks, Wessex, Mids and SE England
  • Other areas (Cornwall, Wales, N England) had less pottery, & styles remained same – mostly coarse jars
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8
Q

Fibula Event Horizon

A
  • From mid Iron Age (400 BC) and especially 1st century BC, brooches become more frequent
  • May reflect growing emphasis on personal identity and appearance
  • Majority of IA bow brooches were bronze, but between La Tene B and C (3rd-1st c BC) there was a preference for Iron
  • Increased frequency of cosmetic pestles and mortars, bracelets and glass beads was linked to these trends but beads only known from 34 inhumations
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9
Q

Querns

A
  • SAddle querns continued in use, but over much of Britain rotary querns were adopted during the LIA, especially the beehive type
  • Querns reused as postpads or anvils
  • Some deposited in pits when worn, others when new and deliberately smashed
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10
Q

La Tene Metalwork

A

-Fluid and dynamic style - are curvilinear motifs abstract design or faces? Entopic, playful, art, designed to confuse?

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11
Q

Iron Age Roundhouses

A
  • Many reconstructed roundhouses based on one type site in one publication, which is a particularly large, early Iron Age roundhouse
  • Division of domestic space for sleeping and living, north (darker)/south (lighter) respectively
  • passage of sun around roundhouse as important to social life, with threshold & sunwards orientation having particular symbolic significance
  • SE and E doorway alignments - orientation independent of prevailing wind or slope, suggesting symbolic meaning - but originally orientated towards the equinox or midwinter sunrise
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12
Q

Parker Pearson

A
  • Parker Pearson was interested in underlying structural ‘rules’ of Iron Age societies.
  • With Sharples, & using additional data from brochs & wheelhouses, he expanded Fitzpatrick’s ideas into ‘sunwise’ model of Iron Age domestic, social & symbolic life suggested people’s movements around roundhouses took place in deseal or sunwards manner (rather than widdershins or anti-sunwards).
  • Marked passage of day & year, but also symbolised human life cycle. Hearth was social centre, whose axis also reflected seniority.
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13
Q

Pope’s response

A
  • Basically bollocks
  • They had disgarded many examples which didn’t fit their narrative, and ignored RH ethnographic example where symbolic divisions are not recorded
  • Pope suggested pragmatic concerns of light - compromise to maximise daylight while avoiding prevailing winds
  • Considered presence of upper floors
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14
Q

Lowland rural settlements

A
  • by LIA, most people living in small-scale farmsteads, dispersed across lowlands every 1-3km with blocks of fields and trackways
  • Move towards enclosure by LIA linked to growing emphasis on family/lineage identities and emphasising boundaries
  • Farmstead enclosures differ in shape and size
  • Trend over time from subcircular to subrectangular structures
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15
Q

Welsh Settlements

A
  • Majority of Iron Age people lived in enclosures known from cropmarks or earthworks
  • Usually defined by single banks and ditches or sometimes stone banks
  • Single farmsteads for 1 or 2 extended families
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16
Q

Ladder Settlements

A
  • a feature of mid to late IA Yorks Wolds and Holderness
  • Consist of series of enclosures aligned alongside double ditched trackways and along valleys
  • Some enclosures farmsteads with roundhouses, others livestock pens, or garden plots
17
Q

Banjo enclosures

A
  • Found mostly in Southern England
  • May be associated with livestock herding
  • Many linked to trackways
18
Q

Oppida

A
  • LIA, 1st c BC, series of large lowland settlements developed
  • Mostly in S England
  • Surrounded by networks of large banks and ditches, but not really defensible sites
  • Associated with coin production and perhaps were tribal bases for emerging rulers, but mostly lacked central features
  • Several had later Roman settlement within them
  • Very variable and different from continental oppida
19
Q

Colchester

A
  • partly delineated by earthworks but these do not really form a defensive circuit
  • Cropmarks reveal many features within, only some investigated
  • Roman Colchester later established over part of it
20
Q

Silchester

A
  • Had lengthy earthwork banks and ditches leading to it
  • Prob established 50 BC
  • Below Roman levels, there was a LIA grid system with metalled streets and rectangular timber buildings as well as roundhouses
  • LIA features included deep wells and pits that produced large finds assemblages including Gallo-Belgic and Roman ceramics and evidence for Roman foods, even small lapdogs
  • Leader was a pro-Roman client king
21
Q

Hengistbury Head

A
  • Not really an oppidum, but it was a port of trade with strong connections to continental gaul, but also the expanding Roman world
  • Goods such as furs, slaves may have been exported, whilst Gallo-Belgic and Roman pottery, metalwork, win amphorae, foodstsuffs and other items were important
  • Many IA and RB coin hoards found in immediate area
22
Q

LBA onwards burials

A
  • Lack of formal burials after LBA
  • By MIA and LIA there are some regional visible ihumations and cremations but mostly isolated burials occur in single graves, pits and ditches, usually in crouched positions
  • Disarticulated and/or fragmentary human bones also found on many IA settlements
  • Most Iron Age people possibly either exposed after death on ground or on platforms
  • Some remains then circularing amongst living or buried in pits or in ditches
23
Q

MIA-LIA square barrow cemeteries in East Yorkshire

A

-In East Yorkshire,
cemeteries of small
square barrows
appeared by c. 350 BC.
Cemeteries often
followed the line of
seasonal streams such
as the Gypsey Race, or
linear earthworks &/or
trackways.
-Some square barrows survive in earthworks
-Many square barrow burials are crouched inhumations in central pit, sometimes accompanied by pottery vessels and or other artefacts such as brooches and beads
-Until recently, few of the ditches surrounding the central pit were totally
excavated, but these have often produced deposits of animal bone. Sometimes
bodies just placed on original ground surface under a barrow

24
Q

Garton Station ‘speared bodies’

A
  • Several bodies had spears thrust through them after death

- Foul play, ritual humiliation or the accepted send-off for honoured warriors?

25
Q

Wetwang Slack

A

-At Wetwang Slack, one double burial was of a
male & female individual, apparently staked
together after death. Remains of a foetus may
have been ejected after death.
-Male and female cart burials - buried between two wheels
-Warrior queen - buried with jewellery, elaborate metal goods and chariot wheels - face distorted and abnormal bone growth

26
Q

Weapons burials

A

-Across S England from Kent to Dorset there are a small number of weapons or ‘warrior’ inhumation burials.
-All biologically male individuals. But were all really ‘warriors’, or
could this sometimes be an
honourary status?

27
Q

Hayling Island

A 
-The late Iron Age shrine on
Hayling Island consisted of
a large circular timber
building within a square
enclosure or temonos, both
with E-facing entrances.
There were deposits of
coins, brooches & other
metalwork, especially by
entrance & SE corner.
As with similar sites on the
Continent, it was later
rebuilt in stone as a larger
Romano-British temple.
28
Q

Shrines?

A

-Rectangular structures on some Iron Age sites, because they are not roundhouses or storage structures/granaries, & because of ‘odd’ deposits, have been interpreted as shrines. These include buildings at Cadbury Castle hillfort, Danebury hillfort

29
Q

Hallaton, Leicestershire

A

-

30
Q

Wheelhouses

A

-

31
Q

Brochs

A

-

32
Q

Old Scatness, Scotland

A

-

Britain BC (10 decks)

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