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

The Iron Age
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archaeological horizons. Instead, he pointed to long-term cultural continuities that distinguished
the British Iron Age from that of continental Europe, notably the preference for circular
buildings and the lack of burials. With few exceptions, cross-Channel trade provided sufficient
explanation for those changes of artefact style that occurred. Support came from radiocarbon
dating, which freed northern and western Britain from chronological dependence on sequences
developed in areas nearer the Continent. Scottish and Welsh dates showed that Highland zone
developments could be as early as in lowland Britain, if not more precocious. These included
the occupation of defended hilltop settlements, now shown to have Late Bronze Age origins
(Ralston 1979).
Subsequent surveys of the period by Cunliffe (1991; 1995) and others (e.g. Hill 1995a; James
and Rigby 1997) have tended to downplay externally induced cultural change, apart from the
Late Iron Age, for which intensive contact between south-east England and the Roman world
after 50 BC has taken over the role once accorded to Caesar’s Belgic settlers. The emphasis has
shifted to economic and social questions, prompted in part by Peacock’s (1968) use of thinsectioning
to investigate pottery production. This revealed an unexpected degree of centralization
in the manufacture of various styles of fine decorated pottery from south-west England, implying
that their distributions owed more to regional exchange networks than to cultural factors. Scientific
analysis has also provided valuable information on the composition and source of metal artefacts.
As a result of widespread application of flotation techniques, cereal cultivation is now attested
widely in the Highland zone, undermining the simple environmental dichotomy advanced by
Fox. Mixed agriculture was evidently the preferred subsistence strategy for most communities,
but local factors, such as altitude and soil type, were crucial in determining the balance between
crops and livestock. Pollen diagrams show significant regional and chronological variations in the
nature of the human impact on the landscape during the Iron Age.
Radiocarbon dating was vitally important in liberating Iron Age chronology from its dependence
on diffusionist dating principles. Its routine use is gradually providing a satisfactory chronology
for different site types, although problems remain. Due to the plateau in the calibration curve
c.800–400 cal. BC, dates are very imprecise over the period when iron was coming into wider use.
The advent of accelerator dating, however, means that tiny samples of short-lived material like
grain—which are more likely to be contemporary with their depositional context than the charcoal
needed for conventional determinations—can now be dated. Radiocarbon now underpins the
dating of the Wessex ceramic sequence, while archaeomagnetism, dendrochronology and
luminescence are also coming into wider use.
AGRICULTURE AND SETTLEMENT
Systematic investigation of farming settlements began with Bersu’s (1940) excavations at Little
Woodbury near Salisbury. His report was a model for its time, putting forward a convincing
reconstruction of the agricultural role of such sites. As well as showing that the inhabitants lived
in large, circular, timber buildings, he identified a range of ancillary structures such as grain
storage pits, working hollows, and two- or four-post settings, interpreted as drying racks and
raised storage buildings. The sequence of palisaded enclosure later replaced by a banked and
ditched compound has turned out to be common, although by no means universal, at Iron Age
sites.
Cattle and sheep were the principal livestock, their relative importance varying with the local
environment. Pig played a subsidiary role and dog, small horses and domestic fowl were kept.
Wild species were of negligible dietary importance, although fish may be under-represented,