The Oxford Handbook of the European Iron Age

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.


About the Author
Colin Haselgrove, Emeritus Professor of Archaeology, University of Leicester, Katharina Rebay-Salisbury, Group Leader, Austrian Archaeological Institute, Austrian Academy of Science, Peter S. Wells, Professor of Anthropology, University of Minnesota

Colin Haselgrove is Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of Leicester. He lectured at Durham University from 1977-2004 and was Professor at Leicester University from 2005 until he retired in 2021. His main interests are in Iron Age studies, settlement landscapes, early coinage, and Roman impact on indigenous societies. He has conducted fieldwork in France, England and Scotland. He is currently working on developing chronologies for Iron Age sites in Wessex, on rural settlement in northern France in the first millennia BC and AD, and on south-east Britain at the time of Julius Caesar's invasions. He is a Fellow of the British Academy.

Katharina Rebay-Salisbury is an archaeologist with a research focus on the European Bronze and Iron Ages. After completing her PhD in 2005, she was a post-doctoral researcher at the Universities of Cambridge and Leicester in the UK, where she participated in research programmes on the human body and networks. In 2015, she was awarded the ERC Starting Grant for her project 'The value of mothers to society: responses to motherhood and child rearing practices in prehistoric Europe'. She directs the research group 'Prehistoric Identities' at the Austrian Archaeological Institute of the Academy of Sciences and teaches at the University of Vienna.

Peter S. Wells is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota. He has directed excavations at three settlement sites in southern Germany, recovering materials ranging in time from the Early Bronze Age through the Late Iron Age. His principal interests include interactions between communities, art and visuality, and ritual practices. His recent works include The Battle that Stopped Rome (2003) and Beyond Celts, Germans, and Scythians (2001).