Iron Age ‘Predatory Landscapes’: A Bioarchaeological and Funerary Exploration of Captivity and Enslavement in Britain

Abstract

This paper proposes a multi-disciplinary approach which can be used to identify captives and the enslaved of Iron Age Britain (seventh centurybc–adfirst century). It uses a ‘poetics of violence’ perspective which recognizes that violence and warfare are created and enacted through social relations, and encompasses violence for which there is often no archaeological trace. Roman primary sources, bog-bodies and other archaeological evidence from Iron Age Britain and Europe suggest that people in these states of ‘social death’ were used to acquire material goods, employed in the agricultural economy, and their deaths played an important role in episodes of ritual violence. Drawing on research from North America, a series of funerary, isotope, archaeothantology and osteological variables have been identified for this period, and when integrated into an osteobiography, allows for the re-interpretation of many burials and structured deposits encountered in Iron Age settlements and hillforts.