• January 9, 2026 | 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM
• Continental 7, Ballroom Level

6G: Iron Age Hillforts and the Emergence of Indigenous Black Sea Kingdoms (Colloquium)

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Sponsored by:
AIA East Europe and Eurasia Interest Group

Organizers:
Owen Doonan, California State University Northridge

Overview Statement:
The Iron Age in western Eurasia is often imagined as a fragmented patchwork of localized ethnic entities defined by subtle differences in material culture forms rather than an expansive tapestry of communities undergoing broadly similar changes. The early Iron Age (ca. 1000–600 B.C.E.) in the lands around the Black Sea is characterized by the appearance of larger fortified settlements (hillforts) that signal a regional scale phenomenon. Hillforts of the early Iron Age exhibit impressive evidence of community mobilization in the apparent absence of strong hierarchical organization. Ritual practices associated with this cultural horizon appear consistent with the idea of communal participation, while funerary monuments highlight some individuals without the exaggerated investment that might be associated with strong intergenerational hierarchies.

Recent work on the early Iron Age in western Europe has noted a broadly distributed pattern of relatively egalitarian communities capable of ambitious collaboration but with a tendency toward dispersed intergenerational power (see papers in Currás and Sastre, eds., 2019). Egalitarian systems like the Iron Age castros of northwest Iberia persisted for nearly a millennium until the military and economic disruptions associated with the Roman encroachment promoted more hierarchical communities (Currás and Sastre 2019). In the Black Sea the introduction of trade with motivated outsiders, and exposure to novel political and cultural formations (especially Greek and Persian), power came to be amassed and passed on intergenerationally. By the late fifth and early fourth centuries B.C.E. large political entities (kingdoms) emerged across the Black Sea zone.

Case studies from all major culture zones around the Black Sea are presented in this colloquium in the interest of examining the formation of hillfort communities and the transition from more egalitarian to more hierarchical social systems. By highlighting changes in community formation, the “ethnicity” of cultural forms and the agency of civilizing outsiders is downplayed and the social stimulus of cross-cultural contact illuminated.