Iron Age Communities in Britain: An Account of England, Scotland and Wales from the Seventh Century BC until the Roman Conquest

by Barry Cunliffe

Since its first publication in 1971, Barry Cunliffe's monumental survey has established itself as a classic of British archaeology. This fully revised fourth edition maintains the qualities of the earlier editions, whilst taking into account the significant developments that have moulded the discipline in recent years. Barry Cunliffe here incorporates new theoretical approaches, technological advances and a range of new sites and finds, ensuring that Iron Age Communities in Britain remains the definitive guide to the subject.

Genres: History, Archaeology, Nonfiction, Prehistory, British Literature, Scotland

708 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Sir Barrington Windsor Cunliffe taught archaeology in the Universities of Bristol and Southampton and was Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford from 1972 to 2008, thereafter becoming Emeritus Professor. He has excavated widely in Britain (Fishbourne, Bath, Danebury, Hengistbury Head, Brading) and in the Channel Islands, Brittany, and Spain, and has been President of the Council for British Archaeology and of the Society of Antiquaries, Governor of the Museum of London, and a Trustee of the British Museum. He is currently a Commissioner of English Heritage.

Reviews

[Timons Esaias · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this edition (and yes, you should probably read the 4th edition, not this one) in the early 1990s when it was fairly new, and read the first seven chapters. I learned so much from those chapters that I stopped to do some parallel reading; and, well, you know how that goes. In the meantime, this volume has surely gone out of date -- even the 4th edition is a dozen years old now, for crying out loud -- but I recently decided to press through to the end, even though this isn't the latest information.

The value of reading an old text like this isn't the freshness of the information, it's the discipline of studying how a broad summary of a field is done. My amateur's exposure to archeology is single-site report by report, or paper by paper, and that makes the Big Picture elusive. A book like this (and they are all too rare in any science) takes on the task of saying: This is what we know, and how we know it; this is why we know more about stuff over here, and almost nothing over there; this is what we don't know, but might figure out if we looked for it; and this is what we've been doing right, and this is what we've been doing wrong. I noted Cunliffe taking his senior position in the field to chide his colleagues for failing to publish their dig results. [That is a HUGE problem in archeology and paleontology. Folks do digs for a season or more, then spend their entire remaining years sitting on the data. Only a small fraction of the "information" that archeologists have acquired has been systematically published -- which pretty much means it might as well still be in the ground.]

So, for me, this volume will have as much impact on my fiction writing as on my understanding of the subject matter. Cunliffe is excellent at drawing the line between what we suspect may be true, and what we can actually accept. I particularly admire his awareness that radio-carbon dating for the Iron Age is essentially useless, except to define which millennium a site is from. He has an appendix listing every single date they've got, but he doesn't cheat and use it in his discussions as crucial data, because it isn't.

The historically illuminating information in this volume is the revelation of the effect of the Roman civilization well beyond its borders. You can see the approach of the Roman economic system into Southern Gaul in the artifacts and settlement pattern changes in Britain, which is several hundred miles and the English Channel away. Then you can see the dramatic changes when Caesar brings all of Gaul into the Roman sphere, and again when Claudius takes over Britain.

My favorite detail from the whole exercise is his observation that, "At the beginning of the eighth century (he means BC) the Eastern zone was experiencing an intensification of the belief systems which led to the deposition of bronze. Bronze was taken out of circulation and either buried in hoards or thrown into rivers." I love that sharp connection between a belief system and a change in artifacts.

This is one of those magisterial works that remain relevant in the history of science, long after the science itself has moved on. I'm glad I bought it when I did, started it when I did, and finally finished it.

[Aithne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I lack words to describe what this book is. I shudder to think how long and heavy it'd be if the author published a 5th edition. I'm not surprised at all that having updated it three times in the timespan of some 30 years, he apparently has no intention of going through it all again - though of course, as a reader, I'd welcome such an updated version with open arms. It's been 20 years, after all, and birds keep tweeting that those years have been rich in archaeological excavations/finds/new scientific methods/whatever.

Anyway, this book. This book is everything. It's heavy in every possible way. It'll make your arms hurt from carrying it, your tights bruised from the corners digging into your flesh, your brain melt from the sheer amount of information, your eyes strained from trying to find any differences between pots and defences as different from each other as the blue belts from the infamous scene in The Devil Wears Prada. It'll make you cry at the mere sight of pottery and faint at the very thought of ditches and ramparts. It's meticulous, it's terrible, it's... wonderful. Awful in the 'commanding awe' way. It's everything I dared to hope for, everything I could have hoped for - more, actually. There's so much detail. So much information. It's a freaking Bible. The One Book to Rule Them All. Feels like now I know everything about the British Iron Age; the only supplementary reading I need to do is some articles published in the last 20 years, which could shed some light on things which weren't known yet at the time this masterpiece was published. (Don't worry, Cornovii, I've got you. We'll catch up on you soon.)

Special bonus points for the fact that the chapters about beliefs, arts & crafts, farming etc. each take some 30-50 pages, while warfare takes 10. Those are the proportions me likes to see.

Definitely going to read some more Cunliffe in the future. This was spectacular. Even if I don't share the author's apparent belief that the Romans were 'forced' to conquer the majority of the isle because those stubborn natives wouldn't leave them in peace (yup, I'm firmly on the 'Romani ite domum' side) ;)

[Maya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Please see my review at Celtic Scholar

[David H. Millar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good reference book.