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Mobility is a regular feature of human behaviour. During late prehistoric times, people in Europe moved from place to place a great deal, sometimes to raid or trade, sometimes to settle in a new environment. To develop a better understanding of the effects of such mobility on the communities and individuals involved, it is important to assess the scale of movements – how many persons were moving in any given situation. Using three examples of mobility for which both textual and archaeological information are available, this paper proposes a model, based upon five conditions that need to be investigated in every case, for estimating the numbers of people that are likely to have been moving. To demonstrate the application of this model, the paper considers the archaeological evidence pertaining to Livy’s description of the migration of Gauls into Italy around 400 BC.

This chapter begins by examining how understandings of the duration of the European Iron Age vary and the factors shaping these perceptions, from the date at which iron was adopted, to the divergent trajectories of different regions consequent on the rise of Greece and Rome. An array of chronological schemes and terminologies have developed across Europe, not always compatible with one another. Many periodizations, including the Hallstatt–La Tène system of western and central Europe, are grounded in cultural historical models elaborated over a century ago from basic typological and stratigraphic principles. The chapter examines the methods used to construct relative and absolute chronologies for the Iron Age, from historical cross-dating to modern scientific techniques, and reviews their strengths and weaknesses. Finally it explores how the chronological precision made possible by the increasingly widespread adoption of Bayesian approaches is fast transforming how we study the period.

Humans have been producing ‘art’ for at least 75,000 years. But the word ‘art’ is problematic when applied to archaeology. This paper explores the use of the concept of ‘visually complex object’ to designate a very specific kind of what is generally known as ‘art’. I argue for the application of this concept to the analysis of both the design of objects and their arrangement in cultural spaces, to gain new perspectives on social and political change in a prehistoric complex society. The focus here is on visually enchanting objects and changes in the ways that such objects were used and arranged in relation to larger changes in cultural circumstances. I contrast two visual orders in Iron Age Europe—the mid final millennium bc, when the visual order of ‘princely graves’ and the eye-fixing qualities of objects focused attention on the persons of individuals competing for leadership positions; and the second and final centuries bc, when a new visual order emerged to focus attention on large, publicly deployed objects that directed attention in open spaces to create collective experiences. The principles developed from these examples from late prehistoric Europe can be applied to changes in other complex societies worldwide.

This chapter introduces the regional framework within which the archaeology of Iron Age Europe is presented in Chapters 4–17 of the book, and examines some key aspects of climate, environment, and population during the period. It outlines the main features of European physical geography—including landscapes, mountain ranges, river systems, and coastlines—discussing their roles as barriers to and facilitators of human connectivity during the Iron Age. Topography, soil types, and natural resources all had a major impact on subsistence practices and lifeways across the continent; climate changes presented specific challenges to the people at the end of the Bronze Age and in several phases during the Iron Age. Biological anthropology informs us about Iron Age health and nutrition, while isotope and DNA analyses of human remains are increasingly shedding new light on individual mobility and population histories through the period.

This chapter provides an overview of the origins and development of Iron Age studies in Europe and outlines the main research themes explored in this book. The period is understood to begin when iron first came into general use, between 1000 and 600 BC in different regions. It is the final recognized period of prehistory, continuing in lands outside the Roman Empire until the arrival of Christianity in the later first millennium AD. The archaeology of the Iron Age shows intensification of subsistence production, manufacturing, and trading, as iron came to be applied to many economically important tasks, populations increased, and interactions between communities grew. Larger settlements of the period are thought to indicate the beginnings of urbanism. Settlement sites, cemeteries, and deposits of different kinds are abundantly represented, their material remains generating a rich picture of lifeways, social organization, economic activities, and ritual practices across the continent.

Iron Age Europe, once studied as a relatively closed, coherent continent, is being seen increasingly as a dynamic part of the much larger, interconnected world. Interactions, direct and indirect, with communities in Asia, Africa, and, by the end of the first millennium AD, North America, had significant effects on the peoples of Iron Age Europe. In the Near East and Egypt, and much later in the North Atlantic, the interactions can be linked directly to historically documented peoples and their rulers, while in temperate Europe the evidence is exclusively archaeological until the very end of the prehistoric Iron Age. The evidence attests to often long-distance interactions and their effects in regard to the movement of peoples, and the introduction into Europe of raw materials, crafted objects, styles, motifs, and cultural practices, as well as the ideas that accompanied them.

Following the Roman conquests in Europe west of the Rhine River in the 50s BC and south of the Danube in 15 BC, a frontier zone was established that was to endure for 500 years. Written sources yield limited information about interaction through merchant ventures and diplomatic missions. But archaeological evidence provides a vast amount of data about the geography, character, scale, and chronology of interactions between individuals and communities on the two sides of the border. Using the Cross-Cultural Interaction Model, this paper explores the evidence for interaction in four identifiable zones ranging from Roman bases on the edge of the empire through a frontier region and an outer rim to new centers established far beyond the imperial boundaries.

On most late prehistoric and early historic settlement sites all over the world, pottery is the most abundant material recovered by archaeologists. Analysis of pottery provides information about the chronological position and cultural affiliation of a site, as well as about techniques of manufacture, organization of production, trade relations, and patterns in the social structure of the community. Here, a new approach is presented that focuses on pottery as a principal factor in the visual world of the people who made and used it. Pottery from the Early Iron Age settlement of Hascherkeller in southern Germany is examined in the context of the physical and social world of which the community was a part. It is argued that the shapes, textures, and decoration of the pottery refer to other elements of the physical world. This approach offers a new way to understand how prehistoric people responded to economic and political changes through the purposeful fashioning of their material culture.

For investigating the formation of frontier zones, study of changes in small communities that constituted the majority of earlier populations provides a different perspective from a focus on major centers. A network model applied to settlement and cemetery sites on Rome’s Danube River frontier in Bavaria, Germany, shows that many communities, through participation in regional and long-distance circulation systems, played significant roles in creating the dynamic and culturally heterogeneous character of that landscape. This approach offers a model applicable to analysis of the formation and functioning of frontier regions in all cultural contexts.