scholarly journals Rural Life, Roman Ways? Examination of Late Iron Age to Late Romano-British Burial Practice and Mobility at Dog Hole Cave, Cumbria

Britannia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 83-116
Author(s):  
Hannah J. O'Regan ◽  
Keith Bland ◽  
Jane Evans ◽  
Matilda Holmes ◽  
Kirsty McLeod ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTThe scarcity of Romano-British human remains from north-west England has hindered understanding of burial practice in this region. Here, we report on the excavation of human and non-human animal remains1 and material culture from Dog Hole Cave, Haverbrack. Foetal and neonatal infants had been interred alongside a horse burial and puppies, lambs, calves and piglets in the very latest Iron Age to early Romano-British period, while the mid- to late Roman period is characterised by burials of older individuals with copper-alloy jewellery and beads. This material culture is more characteristic of urban sites, while isotope analysis indicates that the later individuals were largely from the local area. We discuss these results in terms of burial ritual in Cumbria and rural acculturation. Supplementary material is available online (https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068113X20000136), and contains further information about the site and excavations, small finds, zooarchaeology, human osteology, site taphonomy, the palaeoenvironment, isotope methods and analysis, and finds listed in Benson and Bland 1963.

2003 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theo Spek ◽  
Willy Groenman-van Waateringe ◽  
Maja Kooistra ◽  
Lideweij Bakker

Celtic field research has so far been strongly focused on prospection and mapping. As a result of this there is a serious lack of knowledge of formation and land-use processes of these fields. This article describes a methodological case study in The Netherlands that may be applied to other European Celtic fields in the future. By interdisciplinary use of pedological, palynological and micromorphological research methods the authors were able to discern five development stages in the history of the field, dating from the late Bronze Age to the early Roman Period. There are strong indications that the earthen ridges, very typical for Celtic fields in the sandy landscapes of north-west Europe, were only formed in the later stages of Celtic field agriculture (late Iron Age and early Roman period). They were the result of a determined raising of the surface by large-scale transportation of soil material from the surroundings of the fields. Mainly the ridges were intensively cultivated and manured in the later stages of Celtic field cultivation. In the late Iron Age a remarkable shift in Celtic field agriculture took place from an extensive system with long fallow periods, a low level of manuring and extensive soil tillage to a more intensive system with shorter fallow periods, a more intensive soil tillage and a higher manuring intensity. There are also strong indications that rye (Secale cereale) was the main crop in the final stage of Celtic field agriculture.


2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (6) ◽  
pp. 1149-1160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca C. Redfern ◽  
Christine Hamlin ◽  
Nancy Beavan Athfield

2002 ◽  
Vol 57 (176) ◽  
pp. 55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julius C. C. Pistorius ◽  
Maryna Steyn ◽  
Willem C. Nienaber

2002 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Greg Woolf

AbstractThis paper sets out to examine issues of continuity and change in the social hierarchies of the peoples of the Gallic interior, between the late Iron Age and the early Roman period. This part of the empire is one in which we might reasonably expect to find substantial continuity of social structure. Many scholars have argued that this is indeed the case, notwithstanding the evident changes in material culture. This paper argues that the opposite was true. Apparent similarities, I suggest, reinforced by the ways we have studied provincial cultures, have masked dramatic changes in the basis of social power. That conclusion has implications for other provincial societies, and for Roman imperialism in general.


2005 ◽  
Vol 71 ◽  
pp. 361-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen L. Loney ◽  
Andrew W. Hoaen

Landscape studies offer the archaeologist a way to move towards the holistic integration of disparate aspects of research, such as excavation, survey, and specialist analysis. Because landscape perception is socially constructed, like other forms of material culture, it is possible to approach social behaviour in a way which previously was only argued for portable artefacts. Memory studies have allowed historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists to link observable human behaviour with long-term human thought. Memory is also being used as a way of linking the otherwise invisible mind with the material by-products of society, such as monumental architecture. This paper will investigate how two contemporaneous settlements of Late Iron Age peoples, situated on the northern shores of Lake Ullswater, in the Lake District, Cumbria, manipulated their material landscapes as part of the process of transmitting cultural memories. Further, this information will be used in order to find a way of approaching the similarities of their cultural practices with each other and with the wider Iron Age community of Britain.


2002 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Greg Woolf

AbstractThis paper sets out to examine issues of continuity and change in the social hierarchies of the peoples of the Gallic interior, between the late Iron Age and the early Roman period. This part of the empire is one in which we might reasonably expect to find substantial continuity of social structure. Many scholars have argued that this is indeed the case, notwithstanding the evident changes in material culture. This paper argues that the opposite was true. Apparent similarities, I suggest, reinforced by the ways we have studied provincial cultures, have masked dramatic changes in the basis of social power. That conclusion has implications for other provincial societies, and for Roman imperialism in general.


2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 63-75
Author(s):  
E. A. Kravchenko

North-West side of Forrest-Steppe zone had no high activity in historical events of the beginning of Iron Age, so the material culture of sites of these territories have had no sharp chronological rappers. They took places in aristocratic complexes just with appearance of Scythian in Middle Dnieper region. The article deals with two brilliant sites dating to the Early Scythian time — hillford of Khotiv and Perepiatikha burial mound. How is traditional and innovative on these sits divided? The antiquities of the previous period in Central and Eastern Europe became a conservative feature in the local material culture. This is a way of building and building materials, bi-ritual burial ceremony, hand-made pottery, prestigious personal metal things of the Thracian-Illyrian type, bronze details of a traditional costume, metal and stone tools, stone dishes and crackers. Innovation is divided into several categories. The first is the technology of fortification, which was appeared in placement of defense from the cavalry, and not only from the archers, and the emergence of new types of arrows — so called Scythian, which in fact became a forced import. In other words, innovation in technology relates to the sphere of warfare. The second category is import. Early imports are associated with the antiquities of the North Caucasus, the Middle East and Asia Minor (Khotiv’s predator, griffins from Perepiatikha, bronze mirrors, geshire and paste beads), which can be called jewelry and toilet items on the whole, that is, luxury items. Late imports connected with Greek policies. These are amphorae — containers of wine or other products, willing fineware and cooking pottery, which in general can be called consumer goods. Both types of innovation are generally associated with adoption or inventing, as well as getting through trade of new things or technologies that are not associated with the massive migration of carriers of innovation features. At the same time, traditional features show that the ethnic characteristics of the population of the region are not unchanged at the time of being of both sits — hillfort of Khotiv and the funeral complex of Perepiatikha.


Author(s):  
Richard Bradley ◽  
Colin Haselgrove ◽  
Marc Vander Linden ◽  
Leo Webley

By the late first century BC, most of north-west Europe had been incorporated into the Roman Empire or had fallen under its shadow. This has profoundly affected how the late Iron Age is perceived and studied. Being able to view peoples and places through written sources and coin inscriptions means that the archaeology of the period is often approached very differently to those discussed in previous chapters, with greater emphasis on historical events and causality. The chronology encourages this. Late La Tène sites on the Continent can now be dated to within a generation or so, anchored by a growing number of dendrochronological fixed points (Kaenel 2006; Durost and Lambert 2007), although similar precision is rarely attainable in northern Europe or in Ireland and northern Britain, which rely largely on radiocarbon dating. The prevailing narrative for the late Iron Age in central Europe, Gaul, and southern Britain—essentially the areas that later became part of the Roman empire—is one of increasing hierarchy, social complexity, political centralization, urbanization, and economic development. These changes are seen as bound up with increasing contact with the Mediterranean world, leading up to the Roman conquests of the first centuries BC and AD. This is contrasted with the situation in northern Britain, Ireland, and ‘Germanic’ northern Europe, which are assumed to have been more tradition-bound and resistant to change. As we shall see, recent excavations do not necessarily contradict this narrative, but they do suggest that the picture is far more complex. Not all developments can be fitted into the story of growing social complexity, whilst to assume that Roman expansion was the most important factor at work at this period is to see events through the eyes of Classical writers (Bradley 2007). It is important to understand late Iron Age societies in their own terms, rather than just as precursors to provincial Roman societies. Many influential approaches to the period—from core–periphery models to the current emphasis on the agency of client rulers (Creighton 2000)—suffer from teleology as a result of having been constructed with half an eye to explaining the pattern of Roman expansion.


Britannia ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 397-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Rogers

All three well-produced reports, two excavation and one fieldwalking and magnetometry, deal with rural settlement in Iron Age and Roman Britain. They demonstrate the huge amount of information that can be gathered from such work with implications not only for our understanding of their local area but also many themes relevant to Iron Age and Roman Britain as a whole, as well as beyond. It is useful to review these reports not just in relation to the immense value that each site brings but also in terms of current knowledge and approaches taken to studying rural settlement.


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