Volviendo a pensar la Edad del Hierro

This paper argues there is an urgent need to critically evaluate the basic assumptions used by Iron Age archaeologists across Europe. It suggests that the existing frameworks of explanation and interpretation are at best inadequate to understand the actual archaeological evidence for the period. At worst they are still unconsciously reproducing nineteenth century nationalist and racist ideologies (e. g. the preoccupations with the «Celts≫ or «Iberians≫, etc.). Drawing on examples from Britain, and the Czech and Slovak republics. We will argue that archaeological evidence Iron the Iron Age does not neatly fit our modernist and Eurocentric assumptions about what the period ought to have been like. It suggests Iron Age archaeology must recognise the difference of the past, that prehistoric societies in Europe may have had very different forms of social organisations, world views and economies than those in later European history. This means critically questioning archaeological evidence and being open to the possibility that existing interpretations are wrong (e. g. stressing the impact of the Mediterranean World Economy, that Oppidas were urban centres, or that settlement and subsistence data can be adequately understood in modern capitalist/functionalist terms, etc.). As such Iron Age studies can on/y be a «Contextual Archaeology≫.<br><br>Este artículo defiende la urgente necesidad de evaluar críticamente las asunciones básicas manejadas por los arqueólogos de la Edad del Hierro en toda Europa. Sugiere que los marcos explicativos e interpretativos existentes son, en el mejor de los casos, inadecuados para comprender la evidencia arqueológica real sobre el período. En el peor, están reproduciendo todavía las ideologías nacionalistas y racistas decimonónicas (p. e. las preocupaciones por los “Celtas”, los “Iberos”, etc.). A partir de ejemplos de Gran Bretaña, y las Repúblicas Checa y Eslovaca, sostenemos que la evidencia arqueológica sobre la Edad del Hierro claramente no encaja con nuestras suposiciones modernas y eurocéntricas sobre lo que el período debería haber sido. Se sugiere que la arqueología de la Edad del Hierro tiene que reconocer la diferencia del pasado, el hecho de que las sociedades prehistóricas en Europa pudieron haber tenido formas de organización social, visiones del mundo y economías muy diferentes a las de la Historia europea posterior. Esto significa la puesta en cuestión crítica de la evidencia arqueológica y estar abierto a la posibilidad de que las interpretaciones existentes sean erróneas (p. e. recalcando el impacto de la Economía Mundial Mediterránea, el que los <em>Oppida</em> eran centros urbanos, o que los datos del poblamiento y subsistencia puede ser comprendidos de manera adecuada en términos capitalistas/funcionalistas modernos, etc.). Los estudios de la Edad del Hierro, en cuanto tales, sólo pueden ser una “Arqueología Contextual”

Iron Age enclosures and prehistoric landscape of Sutton Common, south Yorkshire.

The Early Iron Age enclosures and associated sites on Sutton Common on the western edge of the Humberhead Levels contain an exceptional variety of archaeological data of importance not only to the region but for the study of later prehistory in the British Isles. Few other later prehistoric British sites outside the East Anglian fens and the Somerset Levels have thus far produced the quantity and quality of organically preserved archaeological materials that have been found, despite the small scale of the investigations to date. The excavations have provided an opportunity to integrate a variety of environmental analyses, of wood, pollen, beetles, waterlogged and carbonised plant remains, and of soil micromorphology, to address archaeological questions about the character, use, and environment of this Early Iron Age marsh fort. The site is comprised of a timber palisaded enclosure and a succeeding multivallate enclosure linked to a smaller enclosure by a timber alignment across a palaeochannel, with associated finds ranging in date from the Middle Bronze Age to the Roman and medieval periods. Among the four adjacent archaeological sites is an Early Mesolithic occupation site, also with organic preservation, and there is a Late Neolithic site beneath the large enclosure. Desiccation throughout the common is leading to the damage and loss of wooden and organic remains. It is hoped that the publication of these results, of investigations between 1987 and 1993, will lead to a fuller investigation taking place