Enclosing Space, Opening New Ground: Iron Age Studies from Scotland to Mainland Europe

Enclosing space and opening new ground in Iron Age studies: An introduction

Tanja Romankiewicz, Manuel Fernández-Götz, Gary Lock & Olivier Büchsenschütz

1. Understanding the phenomenon of Iron Age enclosure

Iron Age studies are characterised by a diversity of perspectives based on different research traditions and theoretical approaches (Büchsenschütz, 2015; Fernández-Götz et al., 2014; Hunter & Ralston, 2015; Krausz et al., 2013; Moore & Armada, 2011). The material record of the period testifies some commonalities and broader trends connecting distant regions, but there is also a marked heterogeneity in terms of social configurations and historical trajectories (Thurston, 2009).

Among the most widely distributed features of the period are enclosures, from fortifications to field systems. Although the enclosing of space is a long-term process that goes back at least as far as the Neolithic (Harding et al., 2006), the end of the Iron Age in particular saw an exponential increase in establishing boundaries of all sorts. This dividing of the physical and mental landscape between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ has led some scholars to refer to the period as ‘the age of enclosure’ (Haselgrove, 2007).

This volume explores this phenomenon of enclosure from Scotland to the Eurasian continent and highlights new discoveries as well as recent trends in scholarship, from discussions of individual case studies to grander narratives. At the same time, it has been conceived as a Festschrift for Ian Ralston, Abercromby Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh and one of the leading figures in European Iron Age studies of the last decades. Professor Ralston’s research interests have always pivoted around Scotland and the nearer continent, in particular France, and the contributions in this volume – offered by some of his many friends, colleagues and disciples – try to reflect this geographical focus while also showing his wider personal and professional networks in other regions, such as Iberia or Germany. In terms of content, the papers included in the volume cover many of Ralston’s main research interests, most notably fortifications at hillforts and oppida (cf. Ralston, 2013), which have been a recurrent topic for him, from his PhD thesis on Limousin (Ralston, 1992) to the recently concluded Atlas of Hillforts of Britain and Ireland (Lock & Ralston, 2017a and b; forthcoming).

While designing this book as a celebration of Ian Ralston’s work, we have also tried to go beyond a typical Festschrift collection of essays based only on the contributors’ personal connections to the honorand. Instead, we have tried to produce a volume that has a clear overarching topic with interconnected contributions, and that carries its own academic merit by investigating the concept of Enclosure in Iron Age Europe in an increasing order of scale. This is reflected in the three-fold framework of the book, ranging from specific architectural considerations, to investigations into settlements at the site level, or on a regional scale to broader topics that connected communities across Europe and Asia: 1) Building enclosures; 2) Creating settlement communities; and 3) Marking landscapes through