Widely regarded as major visible field monuments of the Iron Age, hillforts are central to an understanding of later prehistoric communities in Britain and Europe from the later Bronze Age. With such a range of variants represented, no single explanation of their function or social significance could satisfy all possible interpretations of their role. While they are conventionally viewed as defence settlements or regional centres controlled by a social elite, this role has been challenged in recent years, and instead hillforts are being considered primarily as expressions of social identity...
Widely regarded as major visible field monuments of the Iron Age, hillforts are central to an understanding of later prehistoric communities in Britai...
Archaeologists have long acknowledged the absence of a regular and recurrent burial rite in the British Iron Age, and have looked to rites such as cremation and scattering of remains to explain the minimal impact of funerary practices on the archaeological record. Pit-burials or the deposit of disarticulated bones in settlements have been dismissed as casual disposal or the remains of social outcasts. In Death and Burial in Iron Age Britain, Harding examines the deposition of human and animal remains from the period - from whole skeletons to disarticulated fragments - and...
Archaeologists have long acknowledged the absence of a regular and recurrent burial rite in the British Iron Age, and have looked to rites such as cre...