The lecture discusses newly published work by the author that provides an enhanced framework for our understanding of the European Iron Age on the Continent, via the development of new contextual method that works to combine archaeology (primarily status burial data) with Classical textual references, whilst also focusing on the distinctly regional nature of Iron Age social organisation.

Rachel Pope is Reader in European Prehistory (University of Liverpool). Specialist in Bronze Age and Iron Age roundhouses and hillfort architecture, she has directed three major survey and excavation projects into British prehistoric settlement landscapes. Her work is developing new method, towards increasingly nuanced understandings of social organisation in Europe before Rome. She is Vice President of the Prehistoric Society, special advisor to Butser Ancient Farm, and Hands-Off Old Oswestry Hillfort, and Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and Scotland.