REDEFINING THE NORTHERN BRITISH IRON AGE

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Summary. Unlike Southern Britain, the Iron Age in Northern Britain spans two millennia from the introduction of iron technology to the Norse settlements. Northern Britain is divided into a series of geographical and archaeological regions, including for the pre-Roman Earlier Iron Age the whole of aceramic and non-coin-using northern England. Despite a wealth of settlement evidence, the Earlier Iron Age lacks diagnostic material assemblages, even in the ceramic Atlantic regions, where radiocarbon dating is now confirming the origins of Atlantic Roundhouses in the mid-first millennium BC. External connections may have been long-distance, reflecting a complex variety of selective connections. For the Later Iron Age, interpretation based upon historical sources has inhibited a proper archaeological evaluation of the ‘Picts’ and of the traditional view of Dalriadic settlement in Argyll, both of which are now under review.