Review American Journal of Archaeology - Paths to Complexity: Centralisation and Urbanisation in Iron Age Europe Manuel Fernández-Götz, Bettina Arnold, Holger Wendling, Katja Winger

https://www.academia.edu/40028645/Review_American_Journal_of_Archaeology_Paths_to_Complexity_Centralisation_and_Urbanisation_in_Iron_Age_Europe?rhid=41949585054&swp=rr-rw-wc-21794939&nav_from=27e0f6cd-4c5a-415e-834c-f019108c6778 The definition of urbanism is a topic long debated by scholars in numerous historical disciplines, but almost all of these discussions are derived from textual sources and are based on examples that postdate the introduction of writing. This volume, edited by Fernández-Götz et al., extends that analytical perspective into a context where primary written sources are not available and the archaeological record is the only key to determining the level of social complexity. The European Association of Archaeologists session organized by the three editors in Helsinki in 2012 focused on revisiting the emergence of urban lifeways in archaeological contexts in Europe, with case studies drawn from recent research projects carried out in Germany (the Early Iron Age Heuneburg hillfort and the Late Iron Age oppida of Manching, Schnippenburg, and the Hunnenring at Otzenhausen, among other sites), France (Early Iron Age contexts in central, eastern, and southeastern Gaul, including recent work at Bourges, Corent, and Mont Lassois/Vix, and the Late Iron Age oppida of Bibracte, Gergovia, Entremont, and Le Castellan), Switzerland (Basel-Gasfabrik and the late La Tène settlement landscape of the upper Rhine), the Czech Republic (Němčice, Staré Hradisko, Stradonice, and Závist), Austria (Braunsberg and Roseldorf), Spain (the Early Iron Age Meseta [Álvarez-Sanchís and Ruiz Zapatero] and the Celtiberian oppidum of Segeda [Burillo-Mozota]), and Britain (Late Iron Age hillforts of southern England [Sharples]). Several papers present recent research, much of it the result of rescue archaeological projects as well as geophysical and topographic prospection (Armit et al., Blöck et al., Hornung, and Wendling and Winger); others provide theoretically, linguistically, and historically oriented overviews of urbanization and the oppidum in Iron Age Europe (Collis, Fernández-Götz et al., Lukas, Rieckhoff, von Nicolai).