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. Harding reviews the changing perceptions of hillforts and the future prospects for hillfort research, highlighting aspects of contemporary investigation and interpretation.

In contrast to Continental Europe, where the Iron Age is abundantly represented by funerary remains as well as by hill-forts and major centres, the British Iron Age is mainly represented by its settlement sites, and especially by houses of circular ground-plan, apparently in marked contrast to the Central and Northern European tradition of rectangular houses. In lowland Britain the evidence for timber round-houses comprises the footprint of post-holes or foundation trenches; in the Atlantic north and west, the remains of monumental stone-built houses survive as upstanding ruins, testimony to the building skills of Iron Age engineers and masons. D. W. Harding's fully illustrated study explores not just the architectural aspects of round-houses, but more importantly their role in the social, economic and ritual structure of their communities, and their significance as symbols of Iron Age society in the face of Romanization.

Over the years, there has been a major shift in Iron Age studies. This volume contains thirty-one papers, which covers the Later Iron Age that is taken to be circa 400/300 BC until the Roman Conquest.

The Atlas of Hillforts of Britain and Ireland project (2012-2016) compiled a massive database on hillforts by a team drawn from the Universities of Oxford, Edinburgh and Cork. This volume outlines the history of the project, offers preliminary assessments of the online digital Atlas and presents initial research studies using Atlas data.

Since its first publication in 1971, Barry Cunliffe's monumental survey has established itself as a classic of British archaeology. This fully revised fourth edition maintains the qualities of the earlier editions, whilst taking into account the significant developments that have moulded the discipline in recent years. Barry Cunliffe here incorporates new theoretical approaches, technological advances and a range of new sites and finds, ensuring that Iron Age Communities in Britain remains the definitive guide to the subject.

In this volume, Harding examines the deposition of Iron Age human and animal remains in Britain and challenges the assumption that there should have been any regular form of cemetery in prehistory, arguing that the dead were more commonly integrated into settlements of the living than segregated into dedicated cemeteries.

This report discusses the results of a programme of research in 1985 and 1986 into the history of the hillfort of Maiden Castle.

The hillforts of five countries thoroughly mapped, described and explained This book provides the first comprehensive series of maps of the hillforts of Britain and Ireland, with accompanying commentaries and broader overviews which interpret the survival and detection of this evidence in its later prehistoric and early historic contexts. The authors expertly assess and analyse the available evidence for over 4,000 hillforts from Shetland to Cornwall to County Clare to a single standard and present their findings in both map and descriptive form. Linking to the online appendix where a wealth of detailed information is available to search, the book is an indispensable resource. Gary Lock is Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of Oxford. Ian Ralston is Abercromby Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh and President of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.

The 1970s excavations at Broxmouth represent one of the most comprehensive examinations of any Iron Age hillfort. It was also the place where a whole generation of Scottish archaeologists learned their trade. Like many projects of its time, however, Broxmouth remained unpublished, other than tantalising descriptions contained in various interim reports. This volume sets out the full results of the Broxmouth Project for the first time, tracking the long history of the site from initial settlement in the Early Iron Age to its abandonment during the period of Roman occupation. Important findings include a series of remarkably well-preserved roundhouses with evidence for lengthy occupation, periodic rebuilding and the burial of votive deposits; a richly detailed picture of the evolution of the elaborate hillfort entrances; a remarkable artefactual assemblage including materials such as bone and antler that seldom survive in the region and the first use of steel in the British Isles; an exceptionally rare Iron Age cemetery; evidence for violent death and the taking of human trophies; and a rich faunal assemblage that allows us to reconstruct the economic basis of life at Broxmouth in unusual depth. Understanding of the long-term development of the site is made possible by the development of a new Bayesian chronology, allowing us to detect change at the scale of a human lifetime. What emerges is a richly detailed picture of life at Broxmouth as the site passed from one generation to the next across almost a millennium of continuous occupation.

This booklet is a working paper which lays out an overall framework for the improvement of archaeological research strategies at a regional level in Britain. A key concern is to address the fact that much of the archaeological work which takes place in Britain today is brought about as the result of urban development. The paper is directed primarily at problems related to the study of the pre-Roman Iron Age, but many of the points in the paper are applicable to other periods. The paper identifies five areas which are central to future research on the British Iron Age: chronological frameworks, settlement patterns and landscape history, material culture studies, regionality, and the nature of socio-economic changes during the period.