Fingerprinting the Iron Age: Approaches to identity in the European Iron Age: Integrating South-Eastern Europe into the debate

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Cătălin Nicolae Popa, Simon Stoddart
Oxbow Books, Sep 30, 2014 - Social Science - 336 pages
Archaeology has long dealt with issues of identity, and especially with ethnicity, with modern approaches emphasising dynamic and fluid social construction. The archaeology of the Iron Age in particular has engendered much debate on the topic of ethnicity, fuelled by the first availability of written sources alongside the archaeological evidence which has led many researchers to associate the features they excavate with populations named by Greek or Latin writers. Some archaeological traditions have had their entire structure built around notions of ethnicity, around the relationships existing between large groups of people conceived together as forming unitary ethnic units. On the other hand, partly influenced by anthropological studies, other scholars have written forcefully against Iron Age ethnic constructions, such as the Celts.

The 24 contributions to this volume focus on the south east Europe, where the Iron Age has, until recently, been populated with numerous ethnic groups with which specific material culture forms have been associated. The first section is devoted to the core geographical area of south east Europe: Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia, as well as Albania and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The following three sections allow comparison with regions further to the west and the south west with contributions on central and western Europe, the British Isles and the Italian peninsula. The volume concludes with four papers which provide more synthetic statements that cut across geographical boundaries, the final contributions bringing together some of the key themes of the volume.

The wide array of approaches to identity presented here reflects the continuing debate on how to integrate material culture, protohistoric evidence (largely classical authors looking in on first millennium BC societies) and the impact of recent nationalistic agendas.

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Contents

Fingerprinting Iron Age Communities in SouthWest Germany and an Integrative Theory of Culture
187
Iron Age Identities in Central Europe Some Initial Approaches
200
Perspectives from the Far West
209
Negotiating Identity on the Edge of Empire
211
Personal Adornment in Iron Age Britain The Case of the Missing Glass Beads
223
Perspectives from the South West
239
Spoiling for a Fight Using Spear Typologies to Identify Aspects of Warrior Identity and Fighting Style in Iron Age South Italy
241
Communal vs Individual the Role of Identity in the Burials of Peucetia
254

The Ethnic Construction of Early Iron Age Burials in Transylvania Scythians Agathyrsi or Thracians?
76
Negotiating Identities at the Edge of the Roman Empire
89
Tracing Ethnicity Backwards the Case of the Central Balkan Tribes
97
The Quest for Group Identity in Late Iron Age Romania Statistical Reconstruction of Groups based on Funerary Evidence
108
Changing Identities of the Iron Age Communities of Southern Pannonia
123
Indigenous and Colonist Communities in the Eastern Carpathian Basin at the Beginning of the Late Iron Age The Genesis of an Eastern Celtic World
142
Ancient Thrace Between the East and the West
157
Hellenisation and Ethnicity in the Continental Balkan Iron Age
161
Perspectives from the West
173
Central Places and the Construction of Collective Identities in the Middle RhineMoselle Region
175
A View from the South West Identity in Tyrrhenian Central Italy
266
Synthesis
281
Identity Integration Power Relations and the Study of the European Iron Age Implications from Serbia
283
The Celts More Myths and Inventions
291
Material Culture and Identity The Problem of Identifying Celts Germans and Romans in Late Iron Age Europe
306
Fingerprinting the European Iron Age Historical Cultural and Intellectual Perspectives on Identity and Ethnicity
323
Bibliography
332
Index
415
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About the author (2014)

Simon Stoddart is Reader in Prehistory at the University of Cambridge. His many research interests include Iron Age Europe, island societies encompassing his work on Malta with the Gozo Project, and landscape archaeology. His publications include Landscape, Ethnicity and Identity (2012, ed with G. Cifani and S. Neil), and Historical Dictionary of the Etruscans (2009). He was editor of Antiquity from 2001-2002.

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