Few books address the Iron Age of temperate Europe from an explicitly theoretical perspective, so the publication of Fernández-Götz's doctoral dissertation represents a distinctive and welcome contribution. It is primarily concerned with the construction of identities and, although focused on the Middle Rhine-Moselle area of north-western Germany as a case study, it considers adjoining areas and addresses issues that are relevant in a wider European context.
Fernández-Götz's starting premise is that identity and power are inextricably linked at intra- and inter-group levels, and the careful exposition of the theory and methods behind this approach provides the central theme of the book. Having introduced this premise, the second chapter carefully and thoroughly reviews forms of identities such as ethnicity, gender, age and status. Based on an extensive reading of anthropological and sociological literature, this chapter provides a balanced overview that will be useful to students not only of the Iron Age but of other periods too.
Chapter 3 examines ‘Political organisation and ethnic identities in pre-Roman Gaul: levels and networks’. Here, the works of modern anthropologists and classical authors are deployed to examine identities at different scales of socio-political organisation: ethnic communities and macro-categories (e.g. Celts and Germans), sub-ethnic communities and extended families. Although critical, Fernández-Götz generally accepts the testimonies of the ancient commentators, and they form an important source for the following chapters.
The chronologically themed case study starts with the Late Hallstatt and Early La Tène periods (sixth to fifth centuries BC) and examines ‘Constructing communities’, putting into practice his theoretical model. The Iron Age of the region is one of the best studied in Europe and in this period it is best known for the well-furnished burials of the Hunsrück-Eifel Culture. They are the focus of the chapter, supported by comparative material from the Lower Rhine, Champagne and Ardennes. Contemporary settlement sites are less well known and the review of recent work on hillforts, well studied by Krausse, will introduce this evidence to many readers.
The increasing hierarchisation evident in the burials, and suggested by the forts, is argued to be related to population increase. Conversely, population decline is argued to be the key factor in the reduction in the number of burials and hillforts in the Middle La Tène period (fourth to third centuries BC) considered in Chapter 5 on ‘From centralisation to decentralisation’. Changes in archaeological visibility are considered but rejected in favour of climate change as the cause of the decline in cultivation visible in pollen diagrams. It is suggested that this caused long-distance migration away from the region.
The Late La Tène period saw the re-emergence of central places, in the form of oppida rather than hillforts, and Chapter 6—the longest in the book—examines their role in the construction of collective identities in the second to first centuries BC. The interpretative framework shifts from a generic ‘Hunsrück-Eifel Culture’ to the civitas of the Treveri. Rather than emphasise the economic role of oppida, Fernández-Götz highlights their importance as places of collective assembly for integrating the households and extended families of a now-increasing population into wider identity groups.
This return to hierarchisation is clearly evidenced by the Late La Tène burials reviewed in Chapter 7 on ‘Negotiating power: aristocratic burials and local communities in the Late La Tène period’. The extensive funerary evidence provides valuable demographic data and the excellent work on elite burials by Metzler and his collaborators is summarised, showing that the elite of the Treveran early state lived on country estates, not in oppida.
A wider context for the oppida and burials is provided by two case studies in Chapter 8 on ‘Revisiting diversity: identity, landscape and social complexity between Rhine and Meuse’. The civitas of the Mediomatrici to the south in Lorraine and Alsace, which has oppida but few burials, is examined briefly, while the complex chiefdom of the Eburones on the Lower Rhine, part of Caesar's Germani cisrheni, is considered in more detail. Drawing on Royman's work, sanctuaries, coinage and female jewellery are highlighted as indicators of ethnicity and the emergence of armed retinues, or the comitatus. The impact of ‘Romanisation’ on identity transformation is considered briefly in Chapter 9, which follows the effects of the army and military service, particularly amongst the elite, until the Batavian revolt of AD 70. Chapter 10 recapitulates the principal conclusions in ‘Identity and power: summary and concluding remarks’. The book is neatly produced in the Amsterdam Archaeological Studies house style. It is well edited, though many part-page diagrams would have been better smaller and the colours have flared in several scans of artists’ impressions.
Fernández-Götz firmly nails his theoretical colours to the mast of the good ship ‘Foucault-Bourdieu-de Certeau’. He endorses writing a history of culture using narrative and, while not a ‘Celtosceptic’, he considers himself to be part of the ‘new Celticism’. These positions are deployed to build interpretations from the bottom-up rather than the top-down ascription of groups to tribes or peoples that are often used in syntheses of the European Iron Age.
The strength of this work is undoubtedly its careful examination of identities and social groupings in the context of a rich and varied dataset. The origin of the book as a thesis (a bi-national PhD at Kiel and Madrid) is sometimes evident in slightly overstated claims to originality and a compartmentalisation of topics. As there are several key sites in the region, something might have been said on Frey's work on the ideologies symbolised in Early Celtic art rather than simply critiquing the ‘Celtic-art-equals-Celts’ model. Some of the key drivers for the cycles of hierarchisation—population growth and climate change—could also have been explored further, while the discussion of migration largely concentrates on the migrants rather than how this changed the parent communities.
Most books on the European Iron Age would not invite such critical engagement and it is a compliment to Fernández-Götz's careful and stimulating research that these challenges arise. The theory and arguments clearly set out in this important work deserve to be widely read.
