Re-interpreting the Danebury Assemblage: Houses, Households, and Community

Abstract

Cunliffe's excavations at Danebury have revealed an Iron Age settlement in extraordinary detail. Its inhabitants have come to represent, in the popular literature at least, the idealised hillfort community of warriors, craftsmen, farmers, and their families in a hierarchically ordered settlement system. This model has been vigorously challenged, although largely from a theoretical perspective, and there has been little contextual re-analysis of the dataset. This paper seeks to re-examine the Danebury structural assemblage and question why Iron Age people came together in this place, and how those that did come perceived their place within wider group identities. By examining patterns of activity within the interior of Danebury this paper demonstrates that the nature of the community that resided in the hillfort changed considerably over the course of the Early and Middle Iron Age. In particular, it is argued that Danebury was occupied by a permanent population. The organisation of domestic space, however, was tightly managed. In the early period occupation was characterised by single round-houses of individual household units emphasising their distinctiveness by spatial isolation and variability in round-house design. A dramatic change in the nature and intensity of occupation came in the late period. A large number of ‘identikit’ round-houses were tightly packed into the quarry hollows in the lee of the ramparts. This probably represents households from the surrounding settlements moving into the hillfort. It is also argued that the communal construction and maintenance of Danebury's defences would have been a way for a dispersed population to have reproduced a sense of community. Participation may also have been a mechanism of maintaining networks and relationships with other households in the long term

Beyond Iron Age ‘towns’: Examining oppida as examples of low‐density urbanism

“…Fichtl ), also sometimes have a tendency towards low density: Ulaca (70–80 ha), for example, contains a widely spread scatter of c. 250 dwellings, with an estimated population of c. 1400 (Álvarez‐Sanchís ), giving a population density of c. 18 per hectare. Even among more densely occupied hillforts, the best examined, Danebury in southern England, had a potential population of c. 250 at its peak (Davis ), indicating a density of c. 50 people per hectare. The reasons for this emphasis on low density are likely to be diverse, but all stress that social and economic factors led to a rejection of high‐density nucleation.…”

Danebury and the Heuneburg: Creating Communities in Early Iron Age Europe

“…Each cluster probably represented an individual household who had moved into the hillfort after its construction perhaps from those settlements situated closest to the hill. The resident population at this time was probably relatively small, numbering fewer than 100 individuals (Davis, 2013: 367).…”

“…The arrangement is suggestive of significant planning, presumably by whatever authority controlled the hillforts and implies that the spatial order was manipulated to emphasize a new ideology. At Danebury this spatial arrangement has been argued to have been a strategy to blur the distinctions between individual households and strengthen the importance of the larger community (Davis, 2013). Can we envisage a similar scenario at the Heuneburg?…”

Engajamento Comunal E Complexidade Social: Uma Nova Fronteira?

“…Para uma reflexão acerca do desenvolvimento da reflexão sobre a etnogênese celta, ver Karl (2010). Como aponta Davis (2013), em grandes assentamentos fortificados (como o hillfort de Danebury), passou-se de uma visão de comunidade restrita a uma elite residente a uma noção de comunidade alargada, regional, que visitava o assentamento, tomando parte em festivais, em trocas comerciais e também participando de atividades ocasionais de monumentalização e reelaboração das muralhas do assentamento -atividades que de fato contribuiriam para criar o sentimento de comunidade entre os habitantes da região. 4 Do ponto de vista do trabalho de campo e dos desenvolvimentos da arqueologia pública, a comunidade em si -aquela do local onde se implementa a pesquisa de campo -, se tornou parte da prática arqueológica.…”