The Layout and Internal Development of Celtic Fields: Structural and Relative Chronological Analyses of Three Danish Field Systems NINA HELT NIELSEN 1,2 ,MADS KÄHLER HOLST 1,3 ,ANN CATHERINE GADD 4 AND KLAUS KÄHLER HOLST 5 1 Department of Archaeology, University of Aarhus, Højbjerg, Denmark 2 Museum Silkeborg, Silkeborg, Denmark 3 Moesgaard Museum, Højbjerg, Denmark 4 Museum Midtjylland, Herning, Denmark 5 Department of Biostatistics, Copenhagen University, Denmark The layout and development of field systems may reflect significant aspects of prehistoric societies such as agricultural strategies, use rights and inheritance practices. This article presents a method for analysing the developments of field systems in their entirety, based on a hierarchical sorting of field boundaries whose intersections have been used to define relations of equivalence and subordination. The formalized relational expression of the field system is analysed using a stochastic optimization algorithm. The method was successfully applied to three Danish Celtic fields from the Late Bronze/Early Iron Age, making it possible to identify five principles behind the layout: primary boundaries (probably established at community level), major parcels (administered at a household level), structured subdivisions (presum- ably related to inheritance), irregular subdivisions, and small-scale expansions of the field systems. The initial degree of regularity of the field systems seems to have influenced later modifications. Keywords: field systems, Celtic fields, layout, inheritance, relative chronology, stochastic sorting, Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age INTRODUCTION Field systems constitute a morphologically diverse and geographically—as well as chronologically—widespread type of ‘archi- tectural’ phenomenon, which has played a prominent role in the discussion of a diverse range of cultural aspects. These include agricultural strategies and intensifi- cation (Widgren, 1983; Fokkens, 1998: 121; Lang, 2007; Yates, 2007), develop- ment of communities and co-operative practices (Hansen, 1979; Donat, 1992), land division, land allotment, tenure, prop- erty rights or ownership (Hatt, 1939; Widgren, 1995; Gerritsen, 2003; Johnston, 2005; Wickstead, 2008), the use of stan- dardized measurements (Hannerberg, 1955; Eir, 1982; Wickstead, 2008), and conceptions and inscriptions of landscape (Carlsson, 1979; Fleming, 1987; Brück, 2000; Fallgren, 2006; Chadwick, 2013; Løvschal, 2015). Common to many of these issues is a reference to dynamics of, or within, the field systems in the form of crop and fallow rotation, changing European Journal of Archaeology 2017, page 1 of 26 © European Association of Archaeologists 2017 doi:10.1017/eaa.2017.56 Manuscript received 24 May 2016, accepted 8 August 2017, revised 15 May 2017 available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/eaa.2017.56 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 188.114.180.72, on 13 Sep 2017 at 06:29:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use,