INTRODUCTION

This chapter discusses an important complex of dredge finds retrieved by dredging personnel and amateur archaeologists during large-scale sand and gravel extraction at Kessel/Lith in recent decades. As is often the case with dredge finds, we have scant information about the specific archaeological contexts and we know only a very small part of the find complex. As a result, the finds have received little attention in the literature to date. Nevertheless, I propose to discuss the Kessel/Lith finds at some length in this chapter because their quantity and richness lends them considerable scientific importance. The Kessel/Lith site compels us to reconsider the prevailing image of Late Iron Age societies and their material culture in the Lower Rhineland.

As already stated in chapter 2, reference texts on Northwestern Europe in the later Iron Age present a stereotypical geographical division into a northern and a southern world, with the boundary usually running through southeast England, northern France and central Germany. The northern world is characterised by somewhat egalitarian and static societies with a barely differentiated settlement pattern consisting solely of dispersed hamlets and farmsteads. The southern world comprises the more dynamic, hierarchical, and complex societies of Gaul and Central Europe, characterised by the presence of oppida. These are viewed as the central places of tribal groups and are often assigned proto-urban characteristics. This spatial division is further reinforced by links to an ethnic dichotomy. The northern world is described as ‘Germanic’ and the southern as ‘Celtic’.

Textbooks usually include the Lower Rhineland in the northern, ‘Germanic’ world. Provincial Roman archaeologists point out that the process of Roman urbanisation proceeded much more slowly in this region because of the complete absence of a tradition of native centre settlements. Nijmegen is considered the oldest central place in the Rhine delta, fully initiated by the Roman authorities – the army in particular – and thus constituting an implantation from outside by a superpower.

This stereotypical picture has been questioned in recent years. The image of egalitarian, barely differentiated societies in the Lower Rhineland was largely prompted by the absence of a tradition of depositing weapons and personal ornaments in graves. But there is evidence to suggest that the dynamic and internal differentiation in the settlement pattern in the region has been underestimated for the pre- Roman period.