Atlantic Europe in the First Millennium BC Crossing the Divide

European first millennium BC studies have witnessed an increasing theoretical divide between the approaches adopted in different countries. Whilst topics such as ethnicity, identity, and agency have dominated many British studies, such themes have had less resonance in continental approaches. At the same time, British and Iberian first millennium BC studies have become increasingly divorced from research elsewhere in Europe. While such divergence reflects deep historical divisions in theory and methodology between European perspectives, it is an issue that has been largely ignored by scholars of the period. This volume addresses these issues by bringing together 33 papers by leading Bronze Age and Iron Age scholars from France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Ireland, North America, and the United Kingdom. Initial chapters from leading specialists introduce major themes (landscape studies, social organisation, historiography, dynamics of change, and identity), providing overviews on the history of approaches to these areas, personal perspectives on current problems, and possible future research directions. Subsequent chapters by key researchers develop these topics, presenting case studies and in-depth discussions of particular issues relating to the first millennium BC in the Atlantic realm of Western Europe.

1 - Crossing the Divide: opening a dialogue on approaches to Western European first millennium BC studies
2 - Settlement and landscape in Iron Age Europe: archaeological mainstreams and minorities
3 - Historical ecology: using what works to cross the divide
4 - Stelae iconography and landscape in south-west Iberia
5 - Landscape dynamics, political processes and social strategies in the eastern Iberian Iron Age
6 - A re-examination of three Wessex type sites: Little Woodbury, Gussage All Saints and Winnall Down
7 - Landscape in the Late Iron Age of north-western Portugal
8 - La Tène and early Gallo-Roman settlement in central Gaul. An examination of the boundary between the Aedui, Lingoni and Senoni (Northern Burgundy, France)
9 - Reconstructing Iron Age Society revisited
10 - How did British Middle and Late Pre-Roman Iron Age societies work (if they did)a
11 - Social inequality during the Iron Age: interpretation models
12 - Iron Age societies against the state. An account on the emergence of the Iron Age in north-western Iberia
13 - Shifting centres of power and changing elite symbolism in the Scheldt fluvial basin during the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age
14 - Examples of social modelling in the Seine valley during the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age
15 - Becoming Welsh. Modelling first millennium BC societies in Wales and the Celtic context
16 - Person, family and community: the social structure of Iron Age societies seen through the organization of their housing in north-western Europe
17 - Approaching sex and status in Iron Age Britain with reference to the nearer continent
18 - Approaches to metalwork - the role of technology in tradition, innovation and cultural change
19 - The problem of continuity: re-assessing the shape of the British Iron Age sequence
20 - Iron Age Ireland: continuity, change and identity
21 - Exploring status and identity in Later Iron Age Britain: reinterpreting mirror burials
22 - Discovering San Chuis hillfort (northern Spain): archaeometry, craft technologies and social interpretation
23 - Changing to remain the same. The southern Iberian Peninsula between the third and the first centuries BC
24 - Crossing the divide in the first millennium BC: a study into the cultural biographies of boats
25 - The warrior stelae of the Iberian south-west. Symbols of power in ancestral landscapes
26 - Funerary expression and ideology in the Cogotas culture settlements in the northern Meseta of the Iberian Peninsula
27 - Warriors and heroes from the northeast of Iberia: a view from the funerary contexts
28 - Headhunting and social power in Iron Age Europe
29 - The ritual representation of the body during the Late Iron Age in northern France
30 - Iron Age knowledge: Pre-Roman peoples and myths of origin
31 - Exploring Late Iron Age settlement in Britain and the near Continent: Reading Edward Gibbon s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and examining the significance of landscape, place, and water in settlement studies
32 - The introduction to ethnicity-syndrome in protohistorical archaeology
33 - Boundaries, status and conflict: An exploration of Iron Age research in the 20th century

Tom Moore is Lecturer in Archaeology at Durham University. His research focuses on the Iron Age in western Europe, particularly the Late Iron Age-Roman transition. Xosé-Lois Armada is a Post-doctoral Researcher in The Heritage Laboratory (LaPa) at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). His research focuses on the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age in western Europe, dealing with issues such as metallurgy, rituals of feasting, and the history of archaeology.