Looking for books on Ancient Britain.

[The Romulan Republic]

I am looking for recomendations of good non-fiction books on Ancient Britain, before and during the Roman occupation. I've been thinking for a while of writing a screeplay for a historical drama set in this period, but I acutally know fairly little about it and I need good sources for up-to-date information. The books I've tried so far merely touch on this location and time briefly while focussing on other places or periods of British or Roman history.

[Seydlitz_k]

Hey, I can't recommend anything yet, but I just started an archaeology course on pre-historic Britain from the paleolithic to the pre-Roman Iron Age, and if you want I can post the reading list they gave us for it.

As a taster, here is the "Getting started" books they gave us for Iron Age Britain:

Essential overviews of the Iron Age
Cunliffe, B. 1995. Iron Age Britain. London: Batsford/English Heritage. (This is the place to start (its in the English Heritage series and is an easy, accessible read). Broadly speaking, Chapters 2-4 cover the Early IA and 5 -6 cover the Later IA. Chapter 7-9 are more thematic: society, religion, a long-term overview.
Cunliffe, B. (1995/2005) Iron Age Communities in Britain London: Routledge.
(Iron Age Communities is rightly seen as a classic study, and several editions have been produced over the years– try to look at the most recent ones - 1991 (3rd ed) or 2005 (4th ed) It is quite difficult to find your way around this book at first – key sections are highlighted in the sections below.)
Harding, DW. 2004. The Iron Age in Northern Britain London: Routledge.
The starting-point for the north.
Haselgrove, C. 1998. ‘The Iron Age’, in I.B.M. Ralston and J. Hunter (eds), The Archaeology of Britain, 113-134. London: Routledge.


Getting started – the Internet
Start with the fantastic Iron Age pages on the British Museum’s Compass website at http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/compass/index.html
Type ‘Iron Age Britain’ into the Search Collections box for information (and beautiful images) on finds, and the period in general. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page you will find many overviews (these have a little ‘open book’ symbol) of aspects of the Iron Age. Another way into Compass is to take the Iron Age tour - http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/compa ... 6&tour=int
The BBC have some excellent Iron Age pages too – start at http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/prehistory/

Getting started - the Early Iron Age
Bradley, R. 2007. The Prehistory of Britain and Ireland. Cambridge University Press. [Chapter 4: ‘The End of Prehistory’].
Cunliffe, B. 1995. Iron Age Britain (London: Batsford/EH) Chs 2-4
Cunliffe, B (1995/2005) Iron Age Communities in Britain (London: Routledge) Chs 3-5, 12-13, 20-21


Getting started – the Later Iron Age
Bradley, R. 2007. The Prehistory of Britain and Ireland. Cambridge University Press. [Chapter 4: ‘The End of Prehistory’].
Cunliffe, B. 1995. Iron Age Britain (London: Batsford/EH) Chs 5-6
Cunliffe, B (1995/2005) Iron Age Communities in Britain (London: Routledge) Chs 4-9, 12-14, 20-21

There are also lists for stuff such as Celtic ethnicity, settlment forms, Cosmology and Ritual, Bog bodies and human sacrifice, the modelling of the Iron Age-Roman transition, Diplomatic and trade interactions, and what classical sources have to say about Ancient Britain, along with a ton of other stuff about stone age and bronze age Britain. Could any of it be of use to you?

[Duckie]

The Vindolanda tablets are pretty neat to look at and have a lot of primary source documents for romans soldiers in northern Britannia, although most of them aren't too useful there's some definite gems in there. They're also available to look at free online, at least some of them.

[The Romulan Republic]

Thanks, I'll check these all out.