Cultural Grouping within the British pre-Roman Iron Age

In a previous article in these ProceedingsI raised some doubts about the current system of classifying the British pre-Roman Iron Age (Hodson 1962). My main criticisms were that the first stage of this classification into three divisions A, B and C did not reflect a clear threefold division within the material to be classified and also that this system did not deal satisfactorily with the British Iron Age as part of a wider European phenomenon. The purpose of this article is to look for steps towards a modified first classification that may overcome these objections. Following the four principles of classification suggested (Hodson 1962, p. 153) an attempt will be made to pick out the most distinctive characteristics or type-fossils within the pre-Roman Iron Age and to see whether these features recur together in definite groups in Europe as a whole. These groups should represent cultures in the archaeological sense and afterwards their interpretation should provide a general archaeological account of the early Iron Age in Britain.Although attempting to put forward for discussion a provisional classification of some sort, the real purpose of this paper is to emphasize serious gaps in the available evidence. Until these gaps are filled, no classification can hope to be in any way definitive.It is first necessary to establish some simple chronological system by which to inter-relate any cultures that may be established. A direct reference to absolute dates (or periods of, say, a hundred years) would be most convenient.