Overview
The majority of humanity have lived out their lives in a ‘rural’ context, and even in our increasingly urbanised world almost half of the global population still live in rural areas. In the European Iron Age, the vast mass of the population clearly lived in small hamlets and farmsteads, and this overarching ‘rurality’ is important for understanding these societies. While there has been a pronounced focus in recent archaeological research on patterns of centralisation and urbanisation, there is a need to reincorporate ‘rural life’ or rurality into these discussions of how people lived. This book is a contribution to the study of rural life in Iron Age Europe, collating case studies extending from southern Spain to northern Scotland and from Denmark to the Balkans. Papers are grouped thematically to open up cross-regional comparisons, ranging across studies of buildings, farms – the basic unit of Iron Age life consisting of its inhabitants, its livestock and associated agricultural lands – to wider settlement patterns and land use strategies. The 29 papers in this volume discuss the disposition, form and organisation of rural settlements, as well as underlying social and economic networks, illustrating both the variability between regions, and also common themes in cultural, economic and social interactions. This volume provides an up-to-date overview of current research, presenting new results for the Iron Age specialist as well as a wider audience interested in the rich tapestry of rural settlement in Europe.
Full Product Details
Author: Dave Cowley ,
Manuel Fernández-Götz ,
Tanja Romankiewicz ,
Holger Wendling
Publisher: Sidestone Press
Imprint: Sidestone Press
ISBN: 9789088908187
ISBN 10: 9088908184
Pages: 240
Publication Date: 27 November 2019
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Author Information
Dave Cowley is an archaeologist in the Survey & Recording Group at Historic Environment Scotland, where he manages a programme of archaeological mapping. His research is focused on survey methodology and the development of the landscape, with a specific interest in Iron Age settlement patterns. He is undertaking part-time doctoral research at Ghent University on population in southeast Scotland in the period 1000 BC to AD 1000. Manuel Fernández-Götz is Reader in European Archaeology and Head of the Archaeology Department at the University of Edinburgh. He has authored ca. 200 publications and held visiting scholar positions at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Brown, among others. His main research interests are Iron Age societies in Central and Western Europe, the archaeology of identities, and conflict archaeology. He has directed fieldwork projects in Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Croatia. Tanja Romankiewicz is a Research Fellow at the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh. Developing from her PhD on the complex roundhouses of the Scottish Iron Age, supervised by Ian Ralston, she currently investigates prehistoric and Roman architectures more widely across northwest Europe, funded by the Leverhulme Trust. Dr. Holger Wendling is Head of the Department of Archaeology at the Salzburg Museum and the Dürrnberg Research Department at the Keltenmuseum Hallein. He studied at the University of Tübingen and at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, developing a strong interest in the Iron Age of temperate Europe. His current research focuses on settlement structures and burials at the Iron Age site of Dürrnberg in Austria, also integrating the Bronze and Iron Age evidence in the wider Salzburg area.
