Enclosures are among the most widely distributed features of the European Iron Age. From fortifications to field systems, they demarcate territories and settlements, sanctuaries and central places, burials and ancestral grounds. This dividing of the physical and the mental landscape between an ‘inside’ and an ‘outside’ is investigated anew in a series of essays by some of the leading scholars on the topic. The contributions cover new ground, from Scotland to Spain, between France and the Eurasian steppe, on how concepts and communities were created as well as exploring specific aspects and broader notions of how humans marked, bounded and guarded landscapes in order to connect across space and time. A recurring theme considers how Iron Age enclosures created, curated, formed or deconstructed memory and identity, and how by enclosing space, these communities opened links to an earlier past in order to understand or express their Iron Age presence. In this way, the contributions examine perspectives that are of wider relevance for related themes in different periods.

Taking a broad geographical, temporal, and cross-disciplinary approach, this volume explores new and innovative research which focuses on rivers and waterways from across the Roman world. Rivers and Waterways in the Roman World brings together cross-disciplinary chapters focussing on theoretical approaches, new digital and scientific methods and analytical techniques, and related surveying and excavation case studies to examine the Romans' extensive use of rivers and inland waterways around the Empire. Roman seafaring is well studied, but this book expands our knowledge of Roman transport, communication, and trade networks inland. The book highlights the challenges of archaeological work in the dynamic environments of rivers and waterways and showcases the use of new methodologies, including the increasing availability and accessibility of digital technologies that have led to a growth in the development and application of new archaeological and analytical techniques, as well as the discovery of new archaeological sites, many of which were previously inaccessible. This book is for archaeologists, historians, classicists, and geographers with an interest in the history and archaeology of the Roman Empire. Chapter 15 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license. Chapter 4 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution(CC-BY) 4.0 license.

Excavated plans of roundhouses may compound multiple episodes of activity, design, construction, occupation, repair, and closure, reflecting successive stages of a building's biography. What does not survive archaeologically, through use of materials or methods that leave no tangible trace, may be as important for reconstruction as what does survive, and can only be inferred from context or comparative evidence. The great diversity in structural components suggests a greater diversity of superstructure than was implied by the classic Wessex roundhouses, including split-level roofs and penannular ridge roofs. Among the stone-built houses of the Atlantic north and west there likewise appears to have been a range of regional and chronological variants in the radial roundhouse series, and probably within the monumental Atlantic roundhouses too. Important though recognition of structural variants may be, morphological classification should not be allowed to override the social use of space for which the buildings were designed, whether their structural footprint was round or rectangular. Atlantic roundhouses reveal an important division between central space and peripheral space, and a similar division may be inferred for lowland timber roundhouses, where the surviving evidence is more ephemeral. Some larger houses were evidently byre-houses or barn houses, some with upper or mezzanine floor levels, in which livestock might be brought in or agricultural produce stored. Such 'great houses' doubtless served community needs beyond those of the resident extended family. The massively-increased scale of development-led excavations of recent years has resulted in an increased database that enables evaluation of individual sites in a wider landscape environment than was previously possible. Circumstances of recovery and recording in commercially-driven excavations, however, are not always compatible with research objectives, and the undoubted improvements in standards of environmental investigation are sometimes offset by shortcomings in the publication of basic structural or stratigraphic detail.

Alternative Iron Ages examines Iron Age social formations that sit outside traditional paradigms, developing methods for archaeological characterisation of alternative models of society. In so doing it contributes to the debates concerning the construction and resistance of inequality taking place in archaeology, anthropology and sociology. In recent years, Iron Age research on Western Europe has moved towards new forms of understanding social structures. Yet these alternative social organisations continue to be considered as basic human social formations, which frequently imply marginality and primitivism. In this context, the grand narrative of the European Iron Age continues to be defined by cultural foci, which hide the great regional variety in an artificially homogenous area. This book challenges the traditional classical evolutionist narratives by exploring concepts such as non-triangular societies, heterarchy and segmentarity across regional case studies to test and propose alternative social models for Iron Age social formations. Constructing new social theory both archaeologically based and supported by sociological and anthropological theory, the book is perfect for those looking to examine and understand life in the European Iron Age. We are so grateful to the research project titled "Paisajes rurales antiguos del Noroeste peninsular: formas de dominacion romana y explotacion de recursos" [Ancient rural landscapes in Northwestern Iberia: Roman dominion and resource exploitation] (HAR2015-64632-P; MINECO/FEDER), directed from the Instituto de Historia (CSIC) and also to the Fundaçao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia [Foundation for Science and Technology] postdoctoral project: SFRH-BPD-102407-2014.

This volume challenges previous views of social organization focused on elites by offering innovative perspectives on 'power from below.' Using a variety of archaeological, anthropological, and historical data to question traditional narratives of complexity as inextricably linked to top-down power structures, it exemplifies how commoners have developed strategies to sustain non-hierarchical networks and contest the rise of inequalities. Through case studies from around the world – ranging from Europe to New Guinea, and from Mesoamerica to China – an international team of contributors explores the diverse and dynamic nature of power relations in premodern societies. The theoretical models discussed throughout the volume include a reassessment of key concepts such as heterarchy, collective action, and resistance. Thus, the book adds considerable nuance to our understanding of power in the past, and also opens new avenues of reflection that can help inform discussions about our collective present and future.

Archaeology in the past century has seen a major shift from theoretical frameworks that treat the remains of past societies as static snapshots of particular moments in time to interpretations that prioritize change and variability. Though established analytical concepts, such as typology, remain key parts of the archaeologist’s investigative toolkit, data-gathering strategies and interpretative frameworks have become infused progressively with the concept that archaeology is living, in the sense of both the objects of study and the discipline as a whole. The significance for the field is that researchers across the world are integrating ideas informed by relational epistemologies and mutually constructive ontologies into their work from the initial stage of project design all the way down to post-excavation interpretation. This volume showcases examples of such work, highlighting the utility of these ideas to exploring material both old and new. The illuminating research and novel explanations presented contribute to resolving long-standing problems in regional archaeologies across Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and Oceania. In this way, this volume reinvigorates approaches taken towards older material but also acts as a springboard for future innovative discussions of theory in archaeology and related disciplines.

This book explores the changing nature of power and identity from the Iron Age to the Roman period in Britain. It provides fresh insights into the origins and nature of one of the lesser-known, but perhaps most significant, Late Iron Age 'oppida' in Britain: Bagendon in Gloucestershire.

This volume studies high and late medieval material culture in a Pan-European context. The idea of ‘unity of culture’ in Medieval Latin Europe is well known in historical texts, especially when it concerns the so-called ‘Europe North of the Alps’. This book investigates the similarities and differences in material culture between areas, regions and political entities and opens the dialogue for a more interregional discussion. The editors acknowledge that there are numerous challenges in understanding the phenomenon the volume addresses, the fundamental one being defining (or even redefining) a common material culture of Europe. Important in determining this is greater appreciation of how objects reflect interactions between peoples, both local and foreign, which can be driven by a variety of factors, including trade, conflict and diplomacy etc. But just as important is observing the differences between ‘things’ across Europe, reflecting developments and transformations its cultural, social and economic history. These works are traditionally presented in isolation or at the local level, maybe even in very specialized tomes, as often it is thought their observation are not relevant to wider discourses. Conversely, what is clear, however, is that by interconnecting these seemingly introvert studies of specific artefact types or sites etc., readers can better appreciate the similarities and differences in material culture across Europe. This book is of interest to researchers in archaeology and material culture.