The Earlier Iron Age (c. 800-400 BC) has often eluded attention in British Iron Age studies. Traditionally, we have been enticed by the wealth of material from the later part of the millennium and by developments in southern England in particular, culminating in the arrival of the Romans. The result has been a chronological and geographical imbalance, with the Earlier Iron Age often characterised more by what it lacks than what it comprises: for Bronze Age studies it lacks large quantities of bronze, whilst from the perspective of the Later Iron Age it lacks elaborate enclosure. In contrast, the same period on mainland Europe yields a wealth of burial evidence with links to Mediterranean communities and so has not suffered in quite the same way. Gradual acceptance of this problem over the past decade, along with the corpus of new discoveries produced by developer-funded archaeology, now provides us with an opportunity to create a more balanced picture of the Iron Age in Britain as a whole. The twenty-six papers in the book seek to establish what we now know (and do not know) about Earlier Iron Age communities in Britain and their neighbours on the Continent. The authors engage with a variety of current research themes, seeking to characterise the Earlier Iron Age via the topics of landscape, environment, and agriculture; material culture and everyday life; architecture, settlement, and social organisation; and with the issue of transition - looking at how communities of the Late Bronze Age transform into those of the Earlier Iron Age, and how we understand the social changes of the later first millennium BC. Geographically, the book brings together recent research from regional studies covering the full length of Britain, as well as taking us over to Ireland, across the Channel to France, and then over the North Sea to Denmark, the Low Countries, and beyond.

The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean offers new insights into the material and social practices of many different Mediterranean peoples during the Bronze and Iron Ages, presenting in particular those features that both connect and distinguish them. Contributors discuss in depth a range of topics that motivate and structure Mediterranean archaeology today, including insularity and connectivity; mobility, migration, and colonization; hybridization and cultural encounters; materiality, memory, and identity; community and household; life and death; and ritual and ideology. The volume's broad coverage of different approaches and contemporary archaeological practices will help practitioners of Mediterranean archaeology to move the subject forward in new and dynamic ways. Together, the essays in this volume shed new light on the people, ideas, and materials that make up the world of Mediterranean archaeology today, beyond the borders that separate Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

The Late Bronze Age in the Levant is a period of much interest to archaeologists, historians and biblical scholars. This is a period with intense international relations, rich in ancient sources, which provide historical data for the period, and is a crucial formative period for the peoples and cultures who play central roles in the Hebrew Bible. Recent archaeological research in Israel and surrounding countries has provided new, exciting, and in some cases, groundbreaking finds, interpretations and understanding of this period. The fourteen papers in this volume represent the proceedings of a conference held at Bar-Ilan University in 2014 (with the additional of several invited papers not presented at the conference), which provide both overviews of Late Bronze Age finds from several important sites in Israel and surrounding countries, as well as several synthetic studies on the various issues relating to the period. These papers, by and large, represent a broad view of cuttting edge research in the archaeology of the ancient Levant in general, and on the Late Bronze Age specifically.

This volume, the first of two dealing with the Early Iron Age deposits from the Athenian Agora, publishes the tombs from the end of the Bronze Age through the transition from the Middle Geometric to Late Geometric period. An introduction deals with the layout of the four cemeteries of the period, the topographical ramifications, periodization, and a synthesis of Athens in the Early Iron Age. Individual chapters offer a complete catalogue of the tombs and their contents, a full analysis of the burial customs and funerary rites, and analyses of the pottery and other small finds. Maria A. Liston presents the human skeletal material, Deborah Ruscillo presents the faunal remains, and Sara Strack contributes to the pottery typology and catalogue. In an appendix, Eirini Dimitriadou provides an overview of the locations of burial activity in the wider city.

Numerous metallic artefacts, deposited in a hoard in ancient times, came to light by chance on the campus of the Sultan Qaboos University in Al Khawd, Sultanate of Oman. Mostly fashioned from copper, these objects compare well with numerous documented artefact classes from south-eastern Arabia assigned to the Early Iron Age (1200–300 BCE).

Groups of burial mounds may be among the most tangible and visible remains of Europe's prehistoric past. Yet, not much is known on how "barrow landscapes" came into being . This book deals with that topic, by presenting the results of archaeological research carried out on a group of just two barrows that crown a small hilltop near the Echoput ("echo-well") in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands. In 2007, archaeologists of the Ancestral Mounds project of Leiden University carried out an excavation of parts of these mounds and their immediate environment. They discovered that these mounds are rare examples of monumental barrows from the later part of the Iron Age. They were probably built at the same time, and their similarities are so conspicuous that one might speak of "twin barrows". The research team was able to reconstruct the long-term history of this hilltop. We can follow how the hilltop that is now deep in the forests of the natural reserve of the Kroondomein Het Loo, once was an open place in the landscape. With pragmatism not unlike our own, we see how our prehistoric predecessors carefully managed and maintained the open area for a long time, before it was transformed into a funerary site. The excavation yielded many details on how people built the barrows by cutting and arranging heather sods, and how the mounds were used for burial rituals in the Iron Age.

The years c. 1250 to 1150 BC in Greece and the Aegean are often characterised as a time of crisis and collapse. A critical period in the long history of the region and its people and culture, they witnessed the end of the Mycenaean kingdoms, with their palaces and Linear B records, and, through the Postpalatial period, the transition into the Early Iron Age. But, on closer examination, it has become increasingly clear that the period as a whole, across the region, defies simple characterisation – there was success and splendour, resilience and continuity, and novelty and innovation, actively driven by the people of these lands through this transformative century. The story of the Aegean at this time has frequently been incorporated into narratives focused on the wider eastern Mediterranean, and most infamously the ‘Sea Peoples’ of the Egyptian texts. In twenty-five chapters written by 25 specialists, Collapse and Transformation instead offers a tight focus on the Aegean itself, providing an up-to date picture of the archaeology ‘before’ and ‘after’ ‘the collapse’ of c. 1200 BC. It will be essential reading for students and scholars of the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean regions, as well as providing data and a range of interpretations to those studying collapse and resilience more widely and engaging in comparative studies. Introductory chapters discuss notions of collapse, and provide overviews of the Minoan and Mycenaean collapses. These are followed by twelve chapters, which review the evidence from the major regions of the Aegean, including the Argolid, Messenia, and Boeotia, Crete, and the Aegean islands. Six chapters then address key themes: the economy, funerary practices, the Mycenaean pottery of the mainland and the wider Aegean and eastern Mediterranean region, religion, and the extent to which later Greek myth can be drawn upon as evidence or taken to reflect any historical reality. The final four chapters provide a wider context for the Aegean story, surveying the eastern Mediterranean, including Cyprus and the Levant, and the themes of subsistence and warfare.

A textbook providing the only comprehensive and up-to-date account of African history between 500 B.C. and 1400 A.D. Also useful to students of archaeology.

The Oxford Handbook of the European Iron Age presents a broad overview of current understanding of the archaeology of Europe from 1000 BC through to the early historic periods, exploiting the large quantities of new evidence yielded by the upsurge in archaeological research and excavation on this period over the last thirty years. Three introductory chapters situate the reader in the times and the environments of Iron Age Europe. Fourteen regional chapters provide accessible syntheses of developments in different parts of the continent, from Ireland and Spain in the west to the borders with Asia in the east, from Scandinavia in the north to the Mediterranean shores in the south. Twenty-six thematic chapters examine different aspects of Iron Age archaeology in greater depth, from lifeways, economy, and complexity to identity, ritual, and expression. Among the many topics explored are agricultural systems, settlements, landscape monuments, iron smelting and forging, production of textiles, politics, demography, gender, migration, funerary practices, social and religious rituals, coinage and literacy, and art and design.

This book analyses social, economic, and cultural processes during the Bronze and Early Iron Ages (18th century BC - 5th century AD) in what is today Estonia. The above period between the Stone Age (ca. 9000-1800 BC) and the Middle Iron Age (AD 450-800) was an era of significant and crucial developmental processes. The final transition from a foraging to a farming economy occurred during that time and resulted in an extensive settlement shift from suitable hunting and fishing places to agricultural lands. In relation to the above processes, the general settlement pattern changed, and the agricultural household as the main settlement unit became prevalent. Social relations also changed, which contributed to the development of stratified societies, at first mainly in coastal Estonia and later throughout continental Estonia. Significant developments took place both in material and intellectual culture. By the end of the period the Estonian areas had changed beyond recognition compared to what they had been at the beginning of the period.