The 24th Iron Age Research Student Symposium
2nd to 4th June 2021
Conference Programme
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This year’s logo features an illustration of the Bronze Bull’s Head Escutcheon from Dinorben 1 Hillfort by Helen Houghton Foster.
Welcome to IARSS 2021!
The IARSS 2021 committee would like to say thank-you to all our chairs and speakers for taking part in this event.
We would also like to express our gratitude to the following organisations for sponsoring this event:
And a special thanks to Dr Mel Giles for donating a copy of her book!
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Registration
This year’s IARSS will held virtually via ZOOM.
Attendance to the conference is free but you will need to register to receive and access the ZOOM meeting links.
If you wish to take part, please email: [email protected] with the subject line ‘Registration’.
You will be added to our mailing list and we shall send out the ZOOM details on Tuesday 1st June 2021.
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IARSS 2021 Programme
Wednesday 2nd June
17:30-19:00 Evening Keynote Lecture
Alex Fitzpatrick (University of Bradford) & Dr Rachel Pope (University of Liverpool)
An Agenda for Action: 10 Years On
Thursday 3rd June
09:30-10:00 Welcome
Session 1: Continuity and Change across Later Prehistory
Chair: Dr James O’Driscoll (University of Aberdeen)
10:00-10:25 Lorrae Campbell (University of Liverpool)
The Origins of British Hillforts: A comparative study of Late Bronze Age hillfort origins in the Atlantic west
10:25-10:50 Eleanor de Spretter Yates (University of Liverpool)
Personal Appearance and Identity in Later Prehistory: Bronze Age and Iron Age Razor Blades
10:50-11:15 Beverley Still (Durham University)
Death is Not the End: Reassessing the treatment of the human body and associated funerary practices in Britain and Ireland from 1200 – 400 BC
11:15-11:40 Misha Enayat (University of Southampton)
Good Taste: Food and Dining Across the Socioeconomic Spectrum in Late Iron Age England
11:40-12:00 Session Discussion
12:00-13:00 Lunch
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Session 2: Plants, Production and People
Chair: Dr Katharina Becker (University College Cork)
13:00-13:25 Frija Schmidt (University of Cambridge)
Feeding the Etruscans
13:25-13:50 Erin Crowley-Champoux (University of Minnesota)
Agricultural Specialization and Resilience in Late Iron Age Ireland
13:50-14:15 Molly Masterson (University of Oxford)
Constructing ‘Plantiness’ in Iron Age Wessex
14:15-14:40 Jennifer Beamer (University of Leicester)
Textile Production Organization in the Danebury Landscape
14:40-15:00 Session Discussion
15:00-15:30 Break
Lightning Talks (Cutting-edge Research Projects)
15:30-15:45 Mark Knight (CAU)
Must Farm
15:45-16:00 Nebu George (Bangor University)
Multi-Element Roundhouse Analysis
16:00-16:15 Trevor Creighton (Butser Ancient Farm)
Butser Ancient Farm Showcase
16:15-16:30 General Discussion
16:30 End of Day
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Friday 4th June
09:30-10:00 Welcome
Session 3: Mortuary Behaviour
Chair: Dr Mel Giles (University of Manchester)
10:00-10:25 Faye Shearman (University of Cardiff)
The concept of partibility; patterns of fragmentation in Iron Age Wessex. An investigation into the conscious dismantling of humans and animals.
10:25-10:50 Adelle Bricking (University of Cardiff)
Life and Death in Iron Age Wales: results from a multi-scalar analysis from Dinorben and RAF St Athan.
10:50-11:15 Emma Tollefsen (University of Manchester)
To Decay or Not to Decay? That is the Question: Understanding the Complexities and Nuances of Different Mortuary Treatments in Iron Age Britain (c. 800 BC – AD 100)
11:15-11:40 Tiffany Treadway (University of Cardiff)
If Stab Wounds Could Talk: Experimental Study of Lesions Observed in Bog Body Funerary Performances
11:40-12:00 Session Discussion
12:00-13:00 Lunch
Session 4: Objects and Art
Chair: Dr Julia Farley (British Museum)
13:00-13:25 Reb Ellis (University of Hull)
Animals and Humans in La Tène Art in England and Wales: Results of a Data Driven Approach
13:25-13:50 Jane Barker (University of Manchester)
Straight from the Horse’s Mouth and other Anatomical Tales
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13:50-14:15 Matt Hitchcock (University of Manchester)
Shields, Materials and Form.
14:15-14:40 Jake Morley-Stone (University of Liverpool)
Developing a Methodology: Refocusing the Study of Pellet Mould Technology from the Late Pre-Roman Iron Age in Britain
14:40-15:00 Session Discussion
15:00-15:30 Break
Lightning Talks (Cutting-edge Research Projects)
15.30-15.45 Dr Alan Williams (University of Liverpool)
Ancient Tin Project
15.45-16.00 Dr Lindsey Büster (University of York)
COMMIOS Project
16.00-16.15 Dr Courtney Nimura (University of Oxford) & Ethan Grüber (American Numismatic Society)
Celtic Coin Index Database
16.15-16.30 General Discussion
16.30 Prizes, IARSS 2022 & Closing Remarks
ePosters
viewable from Wednesday 2nd June at: www.iarss2021.wordpress.com/eposter-gallery
Michelle La Berge (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)
The Wild Colors Of Iron Age Textiles
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Speaker Abstracts Session 1: Late Bronze Age and Continuity
Lorrae Campbell (University of Liverpool)
The Origins of British Hillforts: A comparative study of Late Bronze Age hillfort origins in the Atlantic west
The Late Bronze Age in Britain (c. 1250-750 BC) was a period of economic and social reorganisation. This presentation examines the evidence for the occupation and enclosure of hilltops in the Atlantic west of Britain during this formative period: focussing on the reasons why communities started to come together at this time to construct these impressive monuments and providing information about how these communities were organising the landscape during a time when the first effects of climatic deterioration was beginning to be felt. Hilltop enclosures, rather than being marginal locations away from population centres, instead played an important role for communities navigating their way from the safe and settled world of the Middle Bronze Age to the emerging realities of life in a more unpredictable environment.
Hilltop sites are examined in terms of landscape location, settlement evidence and material culture, allowing the social drivers behind the development of these magnificent monuments to be reconstructed. Whilst settlement evidence of sparse, the act of enclosing the space seems to have been the main driver. This, alongside the availability of water sources, suggests that they acted as hubs supporting seasonal transhumance activities associated with pastoral agriculture. Together with evidence for personal items, tools and weapons found on these hilltop sites, it suggests that they provided a location for communal gatherings and feasting designed to support community cohesion for a society in a state of flux. Maritime links across the Irish Sea to the LBA hillforts off Ireland are also explored to see whether they are both part of a wider region with a westward focus. This presentation seeks to contextualise these hilltop sites place in society, furthering our understanding of the LBA as a transitional time when people were attempting to create stability in a changing world.
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Eleanor de Spretter-Yates (University of Liverpool)
Personal Appearance and Identity in Later Prehistory: Bronze Age and Iron Age Razor Blades
The previous two decades have witnessed the growth of a body of archaeological scholarship focused on ancient identity (e.g., Chapman 2000; Fowler 2004; Brück 2006; Croucher 2012; Giles 2012; Harrison-Buck and Hendon 2018; Bruck 2019). Archaeologists, finding Western notions of identity unsatisfactory for the interpretation of ancient - especially prehistoric - lifeways, increasingly argue in favour of various forms of relational identity (that is, identity formed through relationships with other people, and both material and immaterial units) (ibid). This identity-centric approach to archaeology has highlighted the need to build varied, evidence-based approaches to construct nuanced interpretations of ancient lifeways.
Razor blades are an especially interesting phenomenon of material culture because their relationship to identity is twofold. First, razors have the potential to act as symbols or metaphors for particular identity constructs, perhaps as items that form relational links among groups, playing the role of mnemonic device, or even developing life histories, agencies and personhoods of their own. Second, razors have the power to impact directly on a person’s physiognomic identity. They are essential to behaviours and practices that can quite literally alter the way in which a person appears to the rest of the world, whether through the dramatic removal of head and facial hair, the less obvious removal of underarm, leg and body hair, or even through the use of blades for scarification and tattooing practices. This link between razors and personal appearance adds another dimension to their association with personhood – in this case as an object that connects intimately with the construction of the living body and of physical identities through personal appearance. In this paper I will explore the deposition of Bronze Age and Iron Age razor blades, to discuss how their placement in contexts such as graves, hoards, and settlements can contribute to a wider understanding of ancient identity.
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Beverley Still (Durham University)
Death is Not the End: Reassessing the treatment of the human body and associated funerary practices in Britain and Ireland from 1200 – 400 BC
The aim of my PhD research and the subject of this paper is to establish a funerary context for the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age in Britain and Ireland to produce a clearer understanding of mortuary practices that took place at this time. It is currently accepted that a major shift in burial methods occurred in the late Bronze Age in Britain, from a cremation rite to a largely invisible one, which continued into the Early Iron Age. I will look at the mortuary evidence from 1200 – 400 BC and will challenge the accepted norm that the dead were primarily disposed of in an archaeologically invisible way.
It has been over twenty-five years since the seminal paper by Joanna Brück (1995), the first overview of human remains from this period. More recently an explosion of developer funded excavations taking place in both Britain and Ireland, have resulted in the discovery of many mortuary sites, that are both Radiocarbon dated and osteologically analysed, ultimately resulting in this re-evaluation, reinforcing a need to be as systematic and thorough in the collation of the evidence as possible. The data will be analysed to determine variations in demographic and regional changes both spatially and temporally.
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Misha Enyat
Good Taste: Food and Dining Across the Socioeconomic Spectrum in Late Iron Age England
The material culture record from south east England reveals a host of emerging trends in the high- status consumption of food and drink during the Late Iron Age. Elite indigenous palates were warming to continental flavours, as attested to by the import of luxuries like wine, olive oil and fish- based products along with an increase in pork consumption, a distinctly Roman trait. New dining practices manifested as a growing emphasis on conspicuous consumption and a concern for presentation, reflected in the diversification of serving vessels designed to showcase food as well as in wine amphorae and feasting paraphernalia interred in rich burials.
Recent research on the social use of food in Late Iron Age Britain has largely focused upon evidence from high-status settlements and burials in its characterisation of the period’s cuisine and culinary culture. But in fact, multiple smaller-scale culinary cultures were establishing themselves during this period, with non-elite communities engaging with and experiencing food and culinary practices in a multitude of ways. In some instances, elite tastes were emulated by the lower classes, a phenomenon recognised in the filtering down of certain commodities and practices to the masses. Conversely, other products and practices apparently never reached the lower strata of society, and their distributions remain limited to high-status settlements and burials. In other cases, products were used in distinct ways by different groups.
Through a consideration of burial and settlement evidence from sites across the south east of England, this paper will examine how communities of differing socioeconomic status experienced a rapidly changing food culture in the pre-Roman Iron Age through the lens of imported foods and new forms of culinary accoutrements.
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Session 2: Production and Consumption
Frija Schmidt (University of Cambridge)
Feeding the Etruscans
Food production and consumption, especially relating to agriculture, is central to cultural development of all societies. Food, as well as being a biological necessity, plays a significant role in the social and cultural identity of a society. In the case of the Etruscans, however, especially crop- food production has yet received little archaeological attention and is mainly relying on secondary sources.
To gain a better understanding of crop-foods during the central Italian urbanization processes in the 1. Millennium BC this study will consider the archaeobotanical macroremains from the urban centres Tarquinia and Gabii and the rural village Col di Marzo. All three sites have been extensively sampled for botanical remains and will hopefully offer social and economically diverse insights into the past human-plant interaction.
Central research objectives will amongst others comprise the reconstruction of major staples and the organization of labour and distribution, and the contextual variability and developments of these aspects throughout the area and period in question.
Ultimately, the aim is to gain a comprehensive understanding of the development and functioning of one of Europe’s earliest urban societies through one of the most important aspects of both the daily life and a given economic and political system, namely the production, distribution, and consumption of food.
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Erin Crowley-Champoux (University of Minnesota)
Agricultural Specialization and Resilience in Late Iron Age Ireland
Once thought of as an ‘enigma’ recent excavation and scholarship has provided a much richer view of the Irish Iron Age. It was at the end of the Developed Iron Age (~450-1 BC), that the large regional centers that had come to significance, such as Dun Ailinne and Navan Fort, were closed and communities that had coalesced during this period, dispersed. Once considered ‘royal’ sites, these seats of regional civic society had embodied social power through reiterative construction processes of large timber structures (possibly the physical representation of dynastic houses) and the exploitation of exotic materials. The period that followed, the late Iron Age (~1-500 AD), lacked the hallmarks of a highly stratified society, including the decline of monumentalization and lack of rich graves or large houses and civic structures. One possibility that has been raised is the shift to a dispersed and more mobile society that specialized in cattle husbandry. This would account for ephemeral habitation evidence and lack of pottery production but falls short of providing a framework for understanding social and political relationships during this time. This paper will explore the role of social networks and diversified agricultural practices developed to support a society focused on cattle husbandry. To approach this question, I use zooarchaeological methods to understand shifting agricultural practices and resilience in Late Iron Age Irish society. Comparing unpublished faunal reports, I will demonstrate the variety of agricultural strategies practiced during this period and how these strategies laid the foundation for a social and political system that limited the social distance between elites and non-elites. Further, this paper will consider the social and economic implications of the development of more complex local networks and later political consequences of such systems.
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Molly Masterson (University of Oxford)
Constructing ‘Plantiness’ in Iron Age Wessex
Out of the ‘material turn’, new theories regarding materiality and ‘thingness’ have emerged and caused archaeologists to reconsider how we interpret cultural material. Important contributions have extended this thinking into the landscape and the natural world. Curiously, plants are left within the background of this developing narrative. Expanded from previous work, the concept of plantiness questions plant passivity and seeks to understand how plants, across extensive timescales, have influenced and shaped human becoming, and have thus been influenced themselves. Plants should be viewed not as people, animals, or things, but as plants; they should be interpreted both for what they are and what they represent. We are thus able to consider how plantiness can add to discussions of materiality and agency. In my research, I argue for a more-than- human approach to understanding past peoples’ relationships with plants, considering a range of plants from cereal grains to trees. Plantiness highlights the reciprocal nature of plant-human relationships, suggesting that plants and people have worked together and influenced each other in order to form negotiated relationships across extensive time-scales. I reject the view that past peoples wished solely to exploit plants, and further, that plants have held passive roles in both human and plant becoming. I question plant passivity and consider the idea of plant cognition, highlighting the importance of plant characteristics and plant-human negotiations. To contextualise plantiness, I will consider the plant-human relationships at the Iron Age hillfort of Danebury and consider how features such as storage pits can demonstrate the complex and entangled plant- human relationships that occurred during this time. On a small scale, my aim is to provide a new means of considering past plant-human relationships and in a larger sense, I aim to re-evaluate the ways in which we engage with plants and perceive both plants and nature.
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Jennifer Beamer (University of Leicester)
Textile Production Organization in the Danebury Landscape
The organization of textile craft production has become an emergent topic among researchers in Europe and the UK in the 21st Century, though it has been more than twenty years since textile production organization was assessed for the Danebury landscape. The Danebury excavators used the distribution ratio of spindle whorls to loomweights to confirm the notion that the hillfort was a weaving centre. However, not long after the first set of publications, dissention of this assessment arose. Marchant (1989) critiqued the assertion that spinning and weaving specialization was as visibly distinct in the Danebury landscape as proposed by the excavators and focused on the quantification of tool finds to demonstrate an important weakness in the original argument. Similarly, Ryder (1993) suggested that the ratio of spindle whorls to loomweights found at Danebury reflected household textile production, not specialized production. These criticisms have exposed a discrepancy in the textile production narrative for the Danebury landscape.
My doctoral study re-evaluated textile tools to assess their utilitarian function through an anthropological view of production and incorporated a depositional study to disambiguate those tools which represent production discard from other discard purposes. This paper presents a new narrative for textile production organization in the Danebury landscape, which was made possible through the modelling of complete loomweight data, and by incorporating insights garnered from the depositional contexts of these tools. Rather than consider one single type of production mode, domestic, it is posited that textile needs varied depending on the type of cloth desired and the approach to production reflected that variance of need.
Marchant, T. (1989) ‘The Evidence for Textile Production in the Iron Age’, Scottish Archaeological Review, 6, pp. 5-12.
Ryder, M.L. (1993) ‘Wool at Danebury: A Speculation Using Evidence from Elsewhere’, Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 12(3), pp. 305-320.
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Session 3: Mortuary Behaviour
Faye Shearman (University of Cardiff)
The concept of partibility; patterns of fragmentation in Iron Age Wessex. An investigation into the conscious dismantling of humans and animals.
Broken artefacts and fragmentary remains are a common phenomenon in archaeology. However, the recovery of evidenced examples of deliberate fragmentation, breakage and manipulation can be reflective of societal beliefs of the people responsible. The Iron Age in Britain (c. 700 BC-AD 43) has produced many occurrences of anthropogenic fragmentation. From broken artefacts in metal hoards, to the recovery of partial, disarticulated and fragmentary osteoarchaeological remains. Previous bioarchaeological research has focused primarily on the lack of Iron Age burials in Britain (e.g. Madgwick 2008; Booth and Madgwick 2016) rather than a consideration of the significance behind the conscious fragmentation of skeletal material. This research explores the completeness of human and animal remains excavated from Wessex to ascertain patterns and paucities of fragmentation in the region. A total of 188 human deposits were investigated from site reports for Danebury Hillfort, Suddern Farm, Winnall Down I, Battlesbury Bowl and Glastonbury Lake Village. The zooarchaeological reports were also consulted to provide an integrated assessment of the treatment of both human and faunal remains. After a consideration of the distribution and completeness of the remains, the methods employed to fragment the bodies/carcasses and an in- depth analysis of cranial partibility, it appeared that fragmentation practices in Iron Age Wessex were not homogenous. The diversity of the evidence indicated a variation in human mortuary practices at a site level, whereas the treatment of animals seemed to have occurred more equally across the region. Despite the heterogeneity of the human evidence however, the continuity of ideological perceptions surrounding the removal of the flesh from corpses, and the breaking or separating of the skeletal elements, suggested shared regional procedures for the dead.
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Adelle Bricking (University of Cardiff)
Life and Death in Iron Age Wales: results from a multi-scalar analysis from Dinorben and RAF St Athan.
The study of human remains provides us with our most direct window onto the Iron Age population in Wales. However, burial evidence from Wales has been understudied compared to areas such as Yorkshire and Wiltshire. This is due in part to poor preservation as acidic soils destroy much of the osteological material—for example, Rowan Whimster (1981) identified only eight records of Iron Age burial in the whole country. This led to the popular assumption that the lack of human bone means that the majority of burial rites were “archaeologically invisible”, particularly excarnation within hillforts. However, a more recent reappraisal of the published and unpublished literature on excavations of Iron Age sites by Oliver Davis (2017) has shown that the corpus of burial material in Wales is much larger than previously recognised. This provides an opportunity to asses funerary rites and treatment of the dead, mortality profiles, health, diets and origins of the Iron Age population in Wales.
This presentation will show the results from radiocarbon dating, histological and multi-isotope analyses from two sites with the largest assemblages – RAF St Athan in the Vale of Glamorgan and Dinorben in Conwy. By combining these analyses with contextual study of the material, this project directly addresses how we understand mortuary practices, but also reveals new insights into the demographics of later prehistoric populations in Wales.
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Emma Tollefsen (University of Manchester)
To Decay or Not to Decay? That is the Question: Understanding the Complexities and Nuances of Different Mortuary Treatments in Iron Age Britain (c. 800 BC – AD 100)
The Iron Age is a fascinating time in British prehistory, especially when it comes to the myriad of ways people interacted with and treated the dead.
At the iconic Wessex site of Danebury Hillfort, we witness a diverse and intriguing burial assemblage ranging from whole bodies deposited in storage pits to groups of disarticulated skulls, and discrete scatters of individual skeletal elements and burnt bone fragments. From the smaller Wessex settlement of Winnall Down we have found equally interesting burial deposits of fairly complete human remains in quarry pits and some bodies in the post holes of old buildings. In contrast, the sites of Wetwang and Garton Slack in East Yorkshire – two of only a handful of formal cemeteries found during this time in Britain – offer a very different mortuary record where burial in square barrows with grave goods is typical.
A common occurrence, however, within all these sites, are instances of unusual and non-normative burials; where the body of the dead strongly implies that active anthropogenic manipulation has taken place prior to interment. Traditional archaeological and osteological methods do not always shine the best light on the complexities and nuances of past mortuary processes and practices, and the majority of these peculiarly arranged remains have been poorly contextualised in previous reports.
This paper will present the results of the first cross-regional study of these puzzling remains and grave contexts. It will demonstrate the merits of histo-taphonomic and diagenetic data in piecing together the post-mortem treatment of the dead and in exploring instances of curation in later prehistory more generally.
These findings will build on new and fascinating research into elusive burial rites in Iron Age Britain (e.g. Booth 2015, 2017; Booth and Madgwick 2016; Tollefsen 2016). This paper will propose a contrastive range of practices through which differential curation can be contextualise and how we might attempt to understand the motivations behind such instances of curation in the first millennium BC.
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Tiffany Treadway
If Stab Wounds Could Talk: Experimental Study of Lesions Observed in Bog Body Funerary Performances
Bog bodies throughout north-western Europe have evidence of both sharp and blunt force trauma. While not all bog bodies exhibit traumatic and violent ends, they provide a knowledge source of an alternative Iron Age funerary practice. However, analysis of prehistoric sharp force trauma has been limited in archaeology because it has only extended in most cases to osteological remains. Nevertheless, bog individuals’ retention of soft tissue has allowed for further analysis of mortuary remains that would not be present on skeletons.
Therefore, this experimental study performed for my Masters in 2016, aimed to compare lesions observed on prehistoric bog bodies with those on a human proxy – pig carcases, and create an assailant profile through correlating weapon type and volunteer body mass index (BMI). The project found positive correlations with certain Iron Age weapon types, a spear and a dagger, with known bog victims (i.e. Lindow man and Huldremose woman). Perhaps, with additional experimental studies such as this, further identification of sharp force trauma – specified weapon – and assailant may become more discernible.
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Session 4: Objects and Art
Reb Ellis (University of Hull)
Animals and Humans in La Tène Art in England and Wales: Results of a Data Driven Approach
Animals have long since been thought to imbue mystical and otherworldly symbolism in Iron Age society, but research has often illustrated a distinct imbalance between theory and data. In response, this study has used a strict data-driven approach to explore artefacts decorated with genuinely figurative animals and humans in La Tène art, exploring relations between object type, species and geographical distribution, and then combined this with faunal remains narrative data.
This presentation will provide a quick-fire summary of the results of this research, which has identified over 750 animal and human forms, many of which were found on the Portable Antiquities Scheme. These items have not only produced over 22 new artefact classes (with 45-sub- classifications) but have also provided unexpected results pertaining to distinct evidence of Iron Age communities, challenged long held assumptions on animal species used to represent warrior ideals, and provided new evidence for challenging the perception as to how La Tène period art was used and developed in England and Wales.
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Jane Barker (University of Manchester)
Straight from the Horse’s Mouth and other Anatomical Tales
The bond between humans and ponies is a special one. Horses and ponies have had far reaching impacts on the human past, particularly in the development of transport, power and warfare. The two species have a lot in common with each other. Both form strong social bonds within their own species, but they can also form strong bonds across the species divide, with friendships forming between people and ponies. Ponies live in family groups, just like humans, and their teenage ‘children’ leave home and form families of their own.
Horse gear is an important communication link between the two species, particularly bridle-bits. The style and use of bits can reveal much about the nature of the relationship between human and ponies in Iron Age Britain, whether it is one of care and kindness, or a harsher, less caring relationship.
In humans, our daily activities and the way we live our lives leaves markers on our bones. It is the same with ponies. Their bones can tell stories of the way that they have lived their lives too, sometimes in quite unexpected ways. Chariotry and equitation leave markers on the body, either as a result of constant repetitive actions or from injuries sustained from those actions.
Combining an analysis of bridles and bridle-bits with an osteobiographical approach, this research explores the way in which the stories of how ponies and humans lived and died can be told, whilst reflecting on important research questions such as how the development of chariotry and equitation unfolded in Iron Age Britain.
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Matt Hitchcock (University of Manchester)
Shields, Materials and Form.
In contrast to last year’s focus on art and decoration, this talk will centre on materials and form in relation to shields from my PhD study area of England and Wales. I will begin by presenting new research on the historical typological development of the Iron Age shield over time. British Iron Age shields are generally quite diverse and so difficult to categorise in terms of form, but I will present an updated typology that highlights some of the distinctive regional styles that begin to solidify from around the third century BC onwards. This will be informed in part by newer discoveries and unpublished museum objects.
There has been a historic tendency in archaeological research for the importance of materials in technical processes to be underplayed in favour of an overemphasis on ‘culture’. Taking a more democratic, assemblage-based approach, I will demonstrate how a reintegration of the significance of the properties and qualities of materials can help to create a deeper and more nuanced understanding of this particular class of object, and others.
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Jake Morley-Stone (University of Liverpool)
Developing a Methodology: Refocusing the Study of Pellet Mould Technology from the Late Pre- Roman Iron Age in Britain
Pellet mould artefacts from the late Pre-Roman Iron Age period in Britain (and on the continent) have often been associated with coin making practices at the time, though the links developed through research and analysis remain tenuous and riddled with presumption before the fact. It is clear the material is involved in a process to produce metal pellets of precious composition (gold, silver and copper alloys), the purpose of such pellet is left uncertain. Coinage remains a likely candidate for pellet function, however the data cannot take us there yet. This uncertainty in part stems from a lack of synthesis and comparability in previous studies of these artefacts. Often treated as a by-product of coin production the mould fragments are routinely undervalued as artefacts worthy of study. Properly studied, these moulds contain a wealth of untapped data concerning Late Iron Age industrial technology.
This project seeks to devise a rigid methodology with which to develop an understanding of these moulds and how they functioned within late Iron Age society, ahead of discussing their pre- established role in the narrative of coin production. This paper will explore the analytical routes I have undertaken (Chemical, Petrographic and Experimental analysis) as well as highlighting the methodological considerations that have presented themselves.
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ePoster Abstracts
Michelle La Berge (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)
The Wild Colors Of Iron Age Textiles
The European Iron Age saw a marked change in textile technologies, as both weaving methods and dyeing techniques developed in complexity. Several textile finds, such as the Hallstatt textiles in Austria and finds from elite burials in Germany and the Netherlands, have provided evidence for increasing sophistication in textile patterns and colors. Previous ideas that Iron Age textiles were gray or drab have been put in question as this evidence has revealed an already well-established textile technology accompanied by sophisticated use of color from plant dyes, all by the advent of the Early Iron Age. Recent chemical analyses of archaeological textiles have begun to amass a body of data on the source for the colors in these Iron Age artifacts. It now appears that locally grown or indigenous wild plants were regularly used as sources of dye across Europe, with varieties of plant dyes changing depending on the environmental availability of dye plant species.
Many of these wild plant species have been known anecdotally as potential sources of dyes, but few have been studied for their botanical characteristics or their chemical components in any real detail. My doctoral research centers on these plants, and incorporates several methods already intrinsic to textile archaeology: utilizing archaeological data, chemical analyses, written sources, experimental archaeology, and incorporating an attention to both modern and ethnographic accounts of textile craft. This research is still in its early stages, but a part of the experimental component of this project has been the cultivation of these wild plants for subsequent dye bath experiments and chemical analyses. This has required a commitment to several years of collecting and growing wild dye plants and harvesting them for later experiments. This poster represents my research at this early stage.
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