The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

Chapter Seven
The Iron Age
Colin Haselgrove
INTRODUCTION
The Iron Age is usually taken as spanning the period from the later eighth century BC until the
first century AD. No single archaeological horizon clearly marks the transition from the Late
Bronze Age, however, while the Roman conquest took three generations to complete and affected
only part of the island. Many attributes once used to define the Iron Age—including the
construction of hillforts and the development of a new repertoire of domestic pottery—can
now be traced back into the Late Bronze Age. The adoption of iron technology was itself a
lengthy process, difficult to follow in its earlier stages due to a lack of relevant evidence. Although
the new metal was certainly worked from early in the first millennium BC, it initially seems to
have had only limited impact, and it was not until the Later Iron Age that major social and
economic changes occurred.
The period is characterized above all by its plentiful and diverse settlement evidence. Over
3,000 dwelling sites survive as upstanding monuments, while almost as many again are recorded
as cropmarks. They range from individual farmsteads occupied by a single household to hillforts
holding communities of several hundred. The imposing drystone towers (brochs) of Atlantic
Scotland are architecturally amongst the most sophisticated structures in Iron Age Europe, while
the linear earthwork complexes (‘territorial oppida’) of south-east England are among the largest.
Significant spatial and temporal variations exist: open settlements of village size are characteristic
of eastern England, while large hillforts occur primarily in Wessex, the Welsh Marches and eastern
Scotland. Many settlement types in western coastal regions are extremely long-lived and so cannot
be considered characteristic solely of the Iron Age; these include small defended enclosures
called raths and duns and the artificial lake dwellings known as crannogs.
Iron Age landscapes also included field systems, trackways and linear boundaries. Unless directly
associated with settlements, these are difficult to distinguish from their Bronze Age and Roman
counterparts. An important recent advance has been the recognition in the English-Scottish borders
of extensive traces of upland cultivation, termed cord rig. Non-habitation sites are rare, but
include Later Iron Age religious sites, as well as production sites for salt, shale and quernstones.
Throughout the Iron Age, most of the dead were disposed of in ways that leave no archaeological
traces; visible burial rites are restricted to a few regions.
The lack of burials, coupled with the sudden decline in hoarding from the eighth century BC,
has significantly affected the nature of surviving Iron Age material culture, most of which comes
from settlements, where diagnostic metalwork is relatively rare. Most such objects are isolated