The Oxford Handbook of the European Iron Age

Abstract

Abstract The Oxford Handbook of the European Iron Age presents to students, scholars, and interested general readers a broad overview of current understanding of the archaeology of Europe from 1000 bc to the early historic period. During this period, new technologies, agricultural innovation, and demographic growth saw much of the landscape opened up to near modern limits, accompanied in many areas by greater social and economic complexity. Three introductory chapters situate the reader in the times and the environments of Iron Age Europe. Fourteen regional chapters provide overviews of developments in different parts of the continent, from Ireland and Spain in the west to the borders with Asia in the east, and from Scandinavia in the north to the Mediterranean shores in the south, exploiting the large quantities of new evidence yielded by the upsurge in archaeological research and excavation on this period over the last thirty years in many areas. Twenty-six thematic chapters then examine different aspects of Iron Age archaeology in more depth, from lifeways, economy, and complexity to identity, ritual, and expression. Among the many topics explored are agricultural systems, settlements ranging from villages to cities, landscape monuments, iron smelting and forging, production of textiles, politics, demography, gender, migration, funerary practices, social and religious rituals, coinage, literacy, and art and design. This volume is the only publication currently available that explores all aspects of the European Iron Age in all parts of the continent, along with consideration of regions beyond Europe with which European communities maintained commercial and diplomatic relations.

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