Consumption, deposition and social practice: a ceramic approach to intra-site analysis in late Iron Age to Roman Britain

AbstractSpecialised ceramics from Gaul were imported into late Iron Age Britain, and their forms copied in native techniques. Roman technology was introduced after the Conquest, and involved changes in paste preparation, surface coating and firing techniques that allowed increases in the scale, standardisation and quality of the production.

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REGES, REGULI, DUCES: SOME REMARKS ON THE INDIVIDUAL AND POWER IN LATE IRON AGE PRE-ROMAN BRITAIN

ISTRAŽIVANJA Јournal of Historical Researches ◽

10.19090/i.2020.31.78-92 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 78-92

Author(s):

ANTON BARYSHNIKOV

Keyword(s):

Iron Age ◽

Significant Role ◽

Comparative Studies ◽

First Century ◽

Political Leaders ◽

Theoretical Frameworks ◽

Roman Britain ◽

Late Iron Age ◽

Material Sources ◽

The Individual

The paper considers one of the most significant changes in late pre-Roman Iron Age in Britain—the emergence of individual power, usually labeled as kingship. The modern perception of this sociopolitical phenomenon has been largely determined according to texts from Greek and Roman authors. This paper argues that this image is distorted and says more about the ancient writers than it does about ancient political leaders, their status, or the essence of their power. Avoiding terms like king to prevent a general misunderstanding of the phenomenon is reasonable; nevertheless, coins from so-called dynasties and tribes as well as other material sources show the emergence of individual power from the first century B.C.E. to the first century C.E. This new phenomenon should be analyzed with new (and re-worked) theoretical frameworks. Additionally, comparative studies can play a significant role in exploring the nature of what is referred to as Iron Age kingship in Britain.

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Cemeteries and Funerary Practice

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199697731.013.025 ◽

2014 ◽

Author(s):

Jake Weekes

Keyword(s):

Iron Age ◽

Spatial Separation ◽

Roman Period ◽

Roman Britain ◽

Mortuary Ritual ◽

Late Iron Age ◽

The Dead ◽

Process Method

This chapter applies and attempts to contribute to the funerary process method of investigating late Iron Age and Roman period mortuary ritual in Britain. In this approach, evidence derived from archaeological contexts including tombstones and monuments, possible cemetery surfaces, cemetery boundaries, burials, pyre sites, and other features is reconsidered diachronically in relation to funerary schema. We therefore try to consider objects and actions in their correct funerary contexts, from the selectivity of death itself, through laying-out procedures, modification of the remains and other objects, degrees of spatial separation of the living and the dead, and types of deposition and commemorative acts. The development of tradition and diversity in funerary practice in Roman Britain is considered throughout, and the chapter concludes with a brief reconsideration of the multi-vocality of funerary symbolism.

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The Movement of Ideas in Late Iron Age and Early Roman Britain: An Imported Rotary Quern Design in South-Western England

Britannia ◽

10.1017/s0068113x19000114 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 50 ◽

pp. 393-402

Author(s):

Ruth Shaffrey

Keyword(s):

Thin Section ◽

Iron Age ◽

Roman Period ◽

Roman Britain ◽

Isle Of Man ◽

Late Iron Age ◽

North Eastern ◽

Thin Section Analysis ◽

Section Analysis ◽

Made In

ABSTRACTIn 2012, a complete upper stone of a rotary quern with a projecting lug for a vertical handle was found at Hinkley Point in Somerset, south-western England. It is the first late Iron Age to early Roman period quern of this form to be found in England. This note describes its form in detail and discusses its closest parallels in north-eastern Ireland, south-western Scotland, Wales, Isle of Man and Spain. It shows how thin-section analysis demonstrates the quern to have been locally made in Somerset and discusses the movement of ideas about quern design during the late Iron Age to early Roman period.

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Cosmetic sets peculiar to Britain - RALPH JACKSON, COSMETIC SETS OF LATE IRON AGE AND ROMAN BRITAIN (British Museum Research Publications no. 181; London2010). Pp. vi + 224, pls. 11, figs. 23, maps 15, tables 20, many drawings. ISSN 1747-3640; ISBN 978-086149-181-7.

Journal of Roman Archaeology ◽

10.1017/s1047759400003834 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 24 ◽

pp. 677-678

Author(s):

Hella Eckardt

Keyword(s):

Iron Age ◽

British Museum ◽

Roman Britain ◽

Late Iron Age ◽

Research Publications

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Making Space for Past Futures: Rural Landscape Temporalities in Roman Britain

Cambridge Archaeological Journal ◽

10.1017/s0959774319000647 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 30 (2) ◽

pp. 327-342

Author(s):

Andrew Gardner ◽

Lacey Wallace

Keyword(s):

Iron Age ◽

Rural Landscape ◽

Power Dynamics ◽

Alternative Futures ◽

Roman Britain ◽

The Past ◽

Late Iron Age ◽

Imperial Power ◽

The Future ◽

Material Record

In this paper, we seek to explore the ways in which landscapes become venues not only for manipulations of the past in a present, but also for shaping possible futures. Considerations of temporality and being in the landscape have been more strongly focused on the past and social memory than the future, anticipation and projectivity, but these are vital considerations if we are to preserve the possibility that past people imagined alternative futures. A fruitful archaeological context for an exploration of past futures can be found in the choices people made during the late Iron Age and Roman period in Britain, which has an increasingly rich and high-resolution material record for complex changes and continuities during a period of cultural interactions and imperial power dynamics. More specifically, recent research into the architectural and material practices evident on rural settlement sites and across landscapes forces us to challenge preconceptions about the reactive/reactionary culture of rural societies. Case-studies from Kent and the West Country will be deployed to develop the argument that in the materializing of time, the future has a very significant part to play.

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