Formation, Use and Chronology of Celtic Fields:New Perspectives from the Groningen Celtic Field Research Programme

Targeted excavations of Dutch Celtic fields (Dutch: raatakkers) have yielded much-needed data on the ways in which Celtic fields developed and were used over time. This type of later prehistoric field system is common to gently undulating upland landscapes consisting of Saalian and Weichselian deposits, which were frequently affected by podzolisation. As direct dating of the use-period of Celtic fields is difficult, the Groningen Celtic field research programme employs combined archaeological, AMS- and OSL-dating of bank sediments. Using such dates, use-histories starting in the Middle Bronze Age and lasting well into the Roman era could be shown. Detailed palaeo-botanical analyses of bank sediments suggest that soil and plants from wetland parts were taken to settlements to be used as byre-bedding, after which they were enriched with household refuse (sherds, ash, charcoal) and carted-off to the fields to be used as manure. The locations of such settlements remain difficult to establish, as the chronological relations between settlement features and locations of banks are often unclear. Moreover, despite the fact that botanical macro-remains and pollen inform us on the types of crops cultivated, details of (changes in) the agricultural cycles still escape us

Donat:Häuser der Bronzezeit und Eisenzeit

This volume on the Bronze Age and Iron Age houses of the Northwest European lowlands and (west)central Europe is the product of Peter Donat’s long-standing interest in contextualising the house-building traditions of southern and central Germany. Following his retirement, he took upon himself the challenging task to inventory and compare house plans from the Bronze and Iron Age in a geographical zone spanning Denmark, the Netherlands, Flanders, Germany and extending eastwards into the Czech Republic and Austria. With the numbers of house plans already known from these areas and the rate in which developer-led archaeology (p. 11) increases this in various nations, this is no small endeavor. In this sense, P. Donat’s inventory is foremost a bold and much-needed overview of West- and Central European housebuilding traditions that will serve as a starting point for the contextualisation of settlement excavations across these regions. Numerous overview plates of house-plans (put to the same scale) and convenient maps (figs 7; 9; 16 and 35) help the reader take in all this information. Peter Donat has managed to collect, digest and present an utmost valuable inventory of West and Central European Bronze and Iron Age house plans, and has done this with tremendous attention to detail and an appropriately critical view (e. g. pp. 33; 131; 137; 184; 190). It will provide a much needed and helpful starting point to many scholars in the areas under study to contextualise their newly found house plans. Moreover, it unlocks a wealth of data on specific house-elements such as sods walls, byre partitions, partitioning walls or hearth locations, for which it is very hard to acquire a supra-regional overview

A Living Landscape

Today, half of the Netherlands is situated below sea level. Because of this, water-management is of key importance when it comes to maintaining present-day habitation of the Dutch low-lands. In prehistory, however, large parts of the Dutch landscape were highly dynamic due to ongoing fluvial sedimentation. Vast deltaic areas with ceaseless river activity formed the backdrop against which prehistoric occupation took place. Although such landscapes may seem inhospitable, the often excellently preserved archaeological evidence indicates that people lived in these lowlands throughout prehistory. This book describes why Bronze Age farmers were keen to settle here and how these prehistoric communities structured the landscape around their house-sites at various scales. Using a vast body of evidence from several large-scale excavations in the Dutch river area, the author, reconstructs the changes in the cultural landscape over time. Starting from the Middle Neolithic, changing preferences for settlement site locations and changes in domestic architecture are traced in detail to the Iron Age. However, for proper understanding of the cultural landscape, not only settlements but also graves and patterns of object deposition - and their landscape characteristics - are discussed. By using evidence of over 50 major excavations, yielding over 300 house plans, this book contains by far the richest data-set on Dutch Bronze Age settlements. Most of these results were not before published in English, making this book of over 500 pages a true academic treasure for an international audience. The in-depth presentation of Bronze Age settlement sites, as well as the critical discussion of models and premises current in later prehistoric settlement archaeology, have an important relevance stretching beyond the Dutch lowland areas on which it is based. The wealth of high-quality Dutch data is presented as a synthesized (yet well-annotated) narrative, that rises above mere site interpretation, even more so due to its landscape-scale focus. Therefore this book is a must-have for those interested in later prehistoric cultural landscapes and settlement archaeology