The aim of this session was to explore the nature and impact of cultural encounters in Iron Age Europe. In particular, our focus was on those regions occupying the boundaries between the urbanising centres of Mediterranean Europe and the ‘barbarian’ societies to the north. The session drew on a core of papers from the current ENTRANS Project, funded by HERA and the European Commission, which is examining Iron Age cultural encounters in the East Alpine region from the perspectives of art, landscape and the body: these presentations outlined some of the new approaches and techniques being applied by the ENTRANS Project team, and discussed preliminary results.

Who are the Celts? Where did they come from? Did the tribes of Iron Age Scotland really belong to a 'European Community' of Celts? What did it mean to be Celtic? In this fascinating book, the results of modern archaeology are used, alongside earlier finds and the historical sources, to illuminate this important but surprisingly neglected period of Scottish history. In this new edition of a classic work, Ian Armit explores the prehistoric world of the Celts, from around 1000 BC to AD 500. Fully illustrated with colour photographs, maps and diagrams, the book covers ethnicity and identity, daily life, Celtic art, the Druids, brochs, hillforts and Celtic warfare and the clash with Rome.

The Iron Age in Europe was a period of tremendous cultural dynamism, during which the values and constructs of urbanised Mediterranean civilisations clashed with alternative webs of identity in ‘barbarian’ temperate Europe. Until recently archaeologists and ancient historians have tended to view the cultural identities of Iron Age Europeans as essentially monolithic (Romans, Greeks, Celts, Illyrians etc). Dominant narratives have been concerned with the supposed origins and spread of peoples, like ‘the Celts’ (e.g. COLLIS 2003), and their subsequent ‘Hellenisation’ or ‘Romanisation’ through encounters with neighbouring societies. Yet there is little to suggest that collective identity in this period was exclusively or predominantly ethnic, national or even tribal. Instead we need to examine the impact of cultural encounters at the more local level of the individual, kin-group or lineage, exploring identity as a more dynamic, layered construct.

Cultural encounters form a dominant theme in the study of Iron Age Europe. This was particularly acute in regions where urbanising Mediterranean civilisations came into contact with ‘barbarian’ worlds. This volume presents preliminary work from the ENTRANS Project, which explores the nature and impact of such encounters in south-east Europe, alongside a series of papers on analogous European regions. A range of theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches are offered in an effort to promote dialogue around these central issues in European protohistory.