Simon Clarke (Shetland College, UHI Millennium Institute, UK)

This paper will examine the false opposition that has been set up by some writers between an indigenous British Iron Age cultural tradition, characterised as living in balance with nature, and an incoming Roman civilisation that wished to demonstrate suppression and control. Central to the debate have been the societies’ dwellings, their material form and the language that defines them. Although the author is broadly in agreement with Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, and its potential accessibility to archaeologists through material culture, the crude characterisation of normative Celtic and Roman worldviews is rejected. Instead a multiplicity of voices is sought from different periods, regions and groups within each society.