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

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.

The Origin of Romano-British Glass Bangles: Forgotten Artefacts from the Late Pre-Roman Iron Age

Britannia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 7-52
Author(s):  
Tatiana Ivleva
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
First Century ◽  
Visual Elements ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
Cultural Processes

AbstractThis article reviews the emergence and development of Romano-British glass bangles in southern Britain by providing a fresh analysis of finds that also considers recent theoretical and historical advances in interpreting the transition from the late Iron Age to the Roman period. By analysing the emergence of bangles in terms of technological and stylistic transfer, it suggests that the technology used in their production and their visual elements have continental lineage. It also situates bangles amid indigenous developments in bodily adornments in southern Britain before a.d. 43. By reconnecting British bangles with their continental European counterparts and contextualising them within political, social and cultural processes in south-western England during the late pre-Roman Iron Age, the article argues that the emergence of bangles in Britain did not occur in a vacuum after the Claudian invasion in a.d. 43 but formed an integral part of globalising networks of cross-Channel trade and connections with the European mainland in the early first century a.d.

An Unusual Imported Bronze Jug Handle from Late Iron Age Easton, Suffolk

Britannia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 336-347
Author(s):  
Ruth Beveridge ◽  
Tom Woolhouse
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Rural Settlement ◽  
First Century ◽  
Late Iron Age

ABSTRACTDeveloper-funded excavation in Easton, Suffolk, investigated part of a long-lived Iron Age settlement and Roman farmstead. One late Iron Age pit contained an unusual bronze handle, most likely from a jug, the form of which appears to be unique in Britain. The closest parallels are products of Italian workshops in the late first century b.c. This paper describes the likely form of the vessel and discusses the significance of its presence at a rural settlement on the ‘border’ of the Iceni and Trinovantes/Catuvellauni.

The Introduction of Roman Ceramic Styles and Techniques into Roman Britain: A Case Study from the King Harry Lane Cemetery, St. Albans, Hertfordshire

1988 ◽  
Vol 123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian C. Freestone ◽  
Val Rigby
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Surface Coating ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
Firing Techniques

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.

scholarly journals The Odal and its Manifestation in the Landscape

1994 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 219-238
Author(s):  
Torun Zachrisson
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Viking Age ◽  
Wide Sense ◽  
Narrow Sense ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
Time Period ◽  
The Individual

The concept odal can be regarded in a narrow sense, i.e. as the inherited landed property of a family. But here it is argued that odal should be viewed in a wide sense - as a mentality that is of great importance to the understanding of Late Iron Age society in Sweden. The article focuses on the material expressions which belonging to a family and possessing a farm could take in the individual farmstead in the Mälar Valley. The Viking Age is interpreted as a time period in which there was a need to make the odal visible. The acts of burying dead relatives on top of the graves of early ancestors, erecting runestones, and possibly also erecting mounds are regarded as ways of guarding, marking, and confirming the possession of the odal in the odal man's own eyes and in his neighbours' and consequently also the odal man's position in society.

Cemeteries and Funerary Practice

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.

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

Britannia ◽  
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.

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

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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