This thesis examines the whole range of archaeological material available for the period, from burials, votive hoards and settlements, to reconstruct the long-term social development of that area. The first section deals with the representativity of the material from the three contexts to establish the biases in retrieval of information from the potential for social inferences. The second section elaborates the chronological, spatial and arftefactual relationships among the depositional contexts, to provide a basis for an integrated analysis of contexts. The third section documents the long-term social changes observable in burial practices, votive deposits and settlements. It is concluded from the changing relations within and between contexts that these societies evolved in a series of social and economic cycles of growth and decline in production and consumption. This has implications for the study of pre-capitalist forms of growth and wealth accumulation and also for our understanding of the fall of the western Roman Empire and the Germanic migrations to Britain.