Over the last two decades, understanding of the European Iron Age has changed significantly. Although the renewed interest in this period that has swept the entire continent has touched many aspects of Iron Age studies, it is around the theme of settlement organisation that the interests of scholars from East and West—and of both the Early and Late Iron Ages—have most often intersected. The editors of the present volume have undertaken the laudable task of gathering some of the prominent figures in this field, including some of their own, younger generation, in order to present the current state of research.
The scholarly ferment noted above has already produced several multi-author volumes dealing with urbanisation. The present volume, nevertheless, boasts several traits that put it ahead of the rest: first, it successfully covers all of the most significant new developments in both Eastern and Western Europe, during both the Early and Late Iron Ages. Secondly, written entirely in English, it has the merit of rendering accessible to the English-speaking scholarly community the latest news on continental research. Although some of the papers are—as their authors confess—English translations of studies published elsewhere in French, German or Czech, hopefully few readers will feel short-changed.
In the introductory study, the editors set the basic framework, including an inevitably painstaking discussion of urban definitions, in which they opt for a context-dependent approach. At the same time, they argue that the Early and Late Iron Age urbanisations should not be regarded as separate phenomena but rather as two manifestations of a single long-term process. In his outline of urbanisation in Temperate Europe in the sixth to first centuries BC, Collis puts great stress on the specific social and political structure of the Transalpine world based on tribal states, as opposed to the Mediterranean city-state model.
A section dedicated to the Early Iron Age is introduced by Fernández-Götz's contribution on the Heuneburg. The ‘biographical approach’ promised in the title is, in reality, a detailed presentation of the site's history with natural stress on its Late Halstatt phase, and with no further theoretical or methodological explication (although this is no problem). The old excavations and the new research in the lower town are well integrated and set into a broader territorial context with a discussion of burial mounds in the site's vicinity. The diversity of Early Iron Age central places in France is clearly outlined by Milcent in his comparison of Mt Lassois and Bourges. The author deconstructs the once sacred term of ‘princely seat’, demonstrating that, in reality, these sites vary enormously in terms of morphology and function.
Golosetti touches (as other papers do) upon the role played in urbanisation processes by factors other than the strictly functional. Observing the reuse of Bronze Age stelae in Early Iron Age southern France, he argues for a strong role for ideological factors such as places of memory in centralisation processes.
For Salač, opening the section on modelling settlement complexity, Iron Age settlement dynamics are manifestations of cyclical processes of urbanisation; within this model, oppida are seen as dead ends rather than the only, and final, outcome. This model derived from modern sociology is proposed as a (provisionally) universal replacement for earlier linear schemes. Time will show how well it stands up when tested in various different contexts, the diversity and specificity of which Salač is fully aware. In contrast, Danielisová builds her model ‘bottom-up’, setting late La Tène society into the context of (food) production controlled by the elite. von Nicolai's analysis of hoards in association with hillforts and ramparts reminds us again that there is more to settlement walls than their defensive functions.
The inspiring contribution of Lukas stands out in that it analyses the term ‘oppidum’ from a historical-semantic perspective, including its usage, context and (significant) transformation among the earliest scholars excavating and studying Bibracte. Also concentrating on this key site, Rieckhoff's contribution examines ‘Space, architecture and identity’; she deploys a complex theoretical approach—that is not completely convincing—to examine issues such as the significance of communal building as a means of social cohesion.
In a series of case-studies, Holzer presents the Austrian site of Roseldorf, or rather its sanctuaries—the settlement agglomeration itself remains largely unexplored. Sanctuaries also play a significant role in the contribution by Wendling and Winger, concerning the general development of Manching; sanctuaries are the focal points at the moment of the site's foundation and they maintain their significance despite the constant transformations of the settlement that followed. The noteworthy paper by Moore and Ponroy not only provides a fine overview of the non-fortified settlements in pre-Roman Gaul but also propounds an explanation for the settlement shifts, so variable from region to region and so difficult to fit into a single scheme. According to the authors’ daring but attractive interpretation, this constant flow is a reflection of extremely individual and localised political competition resulting in haphazard trajectories.
The particular settlement model developed by Poux on the grounds of the situation observed in Auvergne supposes contemporaneity of three functionally diverse urban settlements in proximity, constituting a kind of polycentric urban landscape. This proposed system is centred once again around a sanctuary.
Key concepts that recur in a number of the papers include urban definition and status (although most of the contributors accept that these sites are urban), the significance of sanctuaries and other social factors in the urbanisation process, and the ever greater variability of the evidence on local and regional levels. In sum, even though the reader well acquainted with the main themes might occasionally be tempted to skip a few pages with which they are already familiar, the volume as a whole samples the essential developments of recent European Iron Age research; it is rich in information and clearly presented.
