Cultural landscapes of the Iron Age

This course introduces the cultural landscape and societies of the Iron Age. The course presents an overview of the archaeological record, including different types of fossilised agricultural landscapes from the Iron Age and the different agricultural ecosystems they reflect. Main topics are agricultural landscapes, settlements, burial customs, demography, subsistance economy and trade, metal craft, contact network and the ideologies of Iron Age societies. The course introduces methods from the field of natural science and discuss how the recent scientific revolution has shaped the focus of the Iron Age research. The course includes an excursion to an Iron Age environment in western Sweden with well preserved fossil arable land and integrated burial environments.