Iron Age Iron Production In Britain And The Near Continent

Seeks to establish what we now know (and do not know) about Earlier Iron Age communities in Britain and their neighbours on the Continent. The authors look at how communities of the Late Bronze Age transform into those of the Earlier Iron Age, and how we understand the social changes of the later first millennium BC.

The essays in this volume, each written by an acknowledged expert in the field, trace the fortunes of British coal technology as it spread across the European continent, from Sweden and Russia to the Alps and Spain, and supply an authoritative picture of industrial transformation in one of the key industries of the 19th century. In this period iron making in continental Europe was transformed by the take-up of technologies such as coke smelting and iron puddling that had already revolutionised the British iron industry. The transfer of British technologies was fundamental to European industrialisation, but that transfer was not straightforward. The techniques that had proved so successful in Britain had to be adapted to local circumstances elsewhere, for charcoal-fired techniques proved surprisingly durable. More often than not, as these studies show, coal-fired methods were incorporated into traditional production systems, making for the proliferation of technological hybrids. Overall, it is diversity that stands out. Some European regions (southern Belgium) came near to the British model; others (Spain) persisted with charcoal technology into the late 19th century. Some countries (Sweden) adopted British organisational principles but not the reliance on coal; others (Russia) maintained different iron making sectors - one coal-based, the other loyal to charcoal - in parallel.

The Oxford Handbook of the European Iron Age presents a broad overview of current understanding of the archaeology of Europe from 1000 BC through to the early historic periods, exploiting the large quantities of new evidence yielded by the upsurge in archaeological research and excavation on this period over the last thirty years. Three introductory chapters situate the reader in the times and the environments of Iron Age Europe. Fourteen regional chapters provide accessible syntheses of developments in different parts of the continent, from Ireland and Spain in the west to the borders with Asia in the east, from Scandinavia in the north to the Mediterranean shores in the south. Twenty-six thematic chapters examine different aspects of Iron Age archaeology in greater depth, from lifeways, economy, and complexity to identity, ritual, and expression. Among the many topics explored are agricultural systems, settlements, landscape monuments, iron smelting and forging, production of textiles, politics, demography, gender, migration, funerary practices, social and religious rituals, coinage and literacy, and art and design.

This book was written at a time when the older conventional diffusionist view of prehistory, largely associated with the work of V. Gordon Childe, was under rigorous scrutiny from British prehistorians, who still nevertheless regarded the ‘Arras’ culture of eastern Yorkshire and the ‘Belgic’ cemeteries of south-eastern Britain as the product of immigrants from continental Europe. Sympathetic to the idea of population mobility as one mechanism for cultural innovation, as widely recognized historically, it nevertheless attempted a critical re-appraisal of the southern British Iron Age in its continental context. Subsequent fashion in later prehistoric studies has favoured economic, social and cognitive approaches, and the cultural-historical framework has largely been superseded. Routine use of radiocarbon dating and other science-based applications, and new field data resulting from developer-led archaeology have revolutionized understanding of the British Iron Age, and once again raised issues of its relationship to continental Europe.

An enormous collection of new studies on the British Iron Age arising from a 1994 Durham conference. The contributions are marked by innovative approaches and a willingness to cross conceptual boundaries. The papers are: Approaching the Iron Age (Adam Gwilt and Colin Haselgrove); the symbolic meaning of metalworking (Richard Hingley); studying Iron Age production (C D De Roche); an alternative study of I.A. pottery from southern Europe (Ann Woodward); Danebury ware (Elaine L Morris); the Wareham/Poole harbour pottery industry (Lisa Brown); copper metallurgy (David Dungworth); brooch deposition and chronology (Colin Haselgrove); everyday life in Wessex (A P Fitzpatrick); practical and mystic concerns in the orientation of roundhouse doorways (Alastair Oswald); toilet instrumentation and 'Romanization' (J D Hill); hoarding in Scotland and northern England (Fraser Hunter); 'Celtic' ritual wells and shafts (Jane Webster); the shrine at South Cadbury Castle (Jane Downes); popular practices from material culture - the settlement at Wakerley (Adam Gwilt); the ritual framework of excarnation by exposure (Gillian Carr and Christopher Knusel); the structure of late I.A. mortuary ritual (John Pearce); bounding the landscape in the Yorkshire wolds (Bill Bevan); settlement, materiality and landscape in the east midlands (Steven Willis); enclosure in the East Anglian fenlands (Christopher Evans); space and society in north-east England (Gill Ferrel); pollen analysis and the impact of Rome (Richard Tipping);cultural landscapes and identities in Scotland (Ian Armit); why were brochs built (Niall Sharples and Mike Parker Pearson); architecture and the household (Ian Armit); the late I. A. in Hertforshire and the North Chilterns (S R Bryant and R Niblett); Verlamion reconsidered (Colin Haselgrove and Martin Millett); views of a ageing revolutionary (John Collis); I. A. landscapes and cultural biographies (Chris Gosden); ironies (Mathew Johnson).

Between 1700-1850 Britain moved from a situation in which she was unable to supply a large part of her home market to being the world's largest producer and exporter of iron. In this work, Professor Harris sets out to show how earlier views on the economic and technological development of the industry have been revised in the light of further research, and explains the subject for the student approaching it for the first time. Professor Harris is author of "The Copper King" and co-author of "A Merseyside Town in the Industrial Revolution".

The story of the origins of the British and the Irish peoples, from the end of the last Ice Age around 10,000BC to the eve of the Norman Conquest - who they were, where they came from, and how they related to one another.

A Forged Glamour, which takes its title from a poem, is an exploration of the lives and deaths of ironworking communities renowned for their spectacular material culture, who lived in modern-day East and North Yorkshire, between the 4th and 1st centuries BC. It evaluates settlement and funerary evidence, analyses farming and craftwork, and explores what some of their ideas and beliefs might have been. It situates this regional material within the broader context of Iron Age Britain, Ireland and the near Continent, and considers what manner of society this was. In order to do this it makes use of theoretical ideas on personhood, and relationships with material culture and landscape, arguing that the making of identity always takes work. It is the character, scale and extent of this work (revealed through objects as small as a glass bead, or as big as a cemetery; as local as an earthenware pot or as exotic as coral-decoration) which enables archaeologists to investigate the web of relations which made up their lives, and explore the means of power which distinguished their leaders.