The majority of humanity have lived out their lives in a ‘rural’ context, and even in our increasingly urbanised world almost half of the global population still live in rural areas. In the European Iron Age, the vast mass of the population clearly lived in small hamlets and farmsteads, and this overarching ‘rurality’ is important for understanding these societies. While there has been a pronounced focus in recent archaeological research on patterns of centralisation and urbanisation, there is a need to reincorporate ‘rural life’ or rurality into these discussions of how people lived. This book is a contribution to the study of rural life in Iron Age Europe, collating case studies extending from southern Spain to northern Scotland and from Denmark to the Balkans. Papers are grouped thematically to open up cross-regional comparisons, ranging across studies of buildings, farms – the basic unit of Iron Age life consisting of its inhabitants, its livestock and associated agricultural lands – to wider settlement patterns and land use strategies. The 29 papers in this volume discuss the disposition, form and organisation of rural settlements, as well as underlying social and economic networks, illustrating both the variability between regions, and also common themes in cultural, economic and social interactions. This volume provides an up-to-date overview of current research, presenting new results for the Iron Age specialist as well as a wider audience interested in the rich tapestry of rural settlement in Europe.

Table of Contents:
Exploring rural settlement in Iron Age Europe – An introduction Dave Cowley, Manuel Fernández-Götz, Tanja Romankiewicz & Holger Wendling   Beyond the site: settlement systems and territories   Regional settlement entities or terroirs in Late Iron Age northern France Alexandra Cony   Regional aspects of landscape exploitation and settlement structure in Denmark in the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Mads Runge   Iron Age settlement in mid-west Ireland Katharina Becker   Recent research on the Arras Culture in its landscape setting Peter Halkon   Settlement and landscape in the Iron Age of eastern Iberia Ignasi Grau Mira   Approaching Late Iron Age rural landscapes: New ways of looking at the archaeological record in the southeast Iberian Peninsula Leticia López-Mondéjar   From hut to factory: models of rural occupation in the Lower Guadalquivir valley during the 1st millennium BC Eduardo Ferrer-Albelda, Francisco José García-Fernández & José Luis Ramos-Soldado   Space and place in the Early Iron Age in eastern Burgundy Régis Labeaune   Settlement units and buildings   The chronology of wetland settlement and its impact on Iron Age settlement dynamics in southwest Scotland Graeme Cavers & Anne Crone   Settlement nucleation and farmstead stabilisation in the Netherlands Karen M. de Vries   Turf worlds: Towards understanding an understudied building material in rural Iron Age architecture – some thoughts in a Scottish context Tanja Romankiewicz   The concept of ‘house’ and ‘settlement’ in the Iron Age of the middle Tisza region Péter F. Kovács   House or workshop? A case study of two pit-houses at the Iron Age settlement site of Michałowice, Kazimierza Wielka county (Poland) Jan Bulas, Michał Kasiński & Gabriela Juźwińska   Late Iron Age settlement in Hungary Károly Tankó & Lőrinc Timár   At the fringes of the La Tène world – The Late Iron Age rural occupation of the Banat region, Romania Andrei Georgescu   Late Iron Age rural settlements in southern Pannonia Ivan Drnić   Meillionydd: a Late Bronze and Iron Age double ringwork enclosure in northwest Wales Katharina Möller & Raimund Karl   The changing patterns of La Tène Farmsteads in Central and Western continental Europe Angelika Mecking   Rural settlement patterns in urbanised Areas: The oppidum of Manching Thimo J. Brestel   Status and settlement hierarchy   Rural residential places? Rethinking the Fürstensitze-elites correlation Manuel Fernández-Götz & Ian Ralston   Middle and Late La Tène rural aristocratic establishments in Gaul: plans and organisation Stephan Fichtl   Scordiscan stronghold: A Late Iron Age multiple fortification at Bačka Palanka in northern Serbia Holger Wendling   The emergence of oppida in Celtiberia: The case study of Los Rodiles (Guadalajara, Spain) Marta Chordá, Álvaro Sánchez-Climent, Emilio Gamo & María Luisa Cerdeño   New tools and perspectives   Microtopographies of Dacian upland settlement strategies and community aggregation trends in the Orăştie Mountains, Romania Ioana A. Oltean & João Fonte   A structured Iron Age landscape in the hinterland of Knežak, Slovenia Boštjan Laharnar, Edisa Lozić & Benjamin Štular   Around the Münsterberg: How online tools help us to rethink our data Loup Bernard   Archaeology, landscapes, and heritage in the southeast Iberian Peninsula: The ALHIS project Leticia López-Mondéjar   Rural domestic patterns in northwest Iberia: An ethnoarchaeological approach to Iron Age household layout Lucía Ruano & Luis Berrocal-Rangel