Pits, Settlement and Deposition During the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age in East Anglia


Book Description

The aim of this study is to consider pits from the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age - not easily classified - in substantial detail, to address questions concerning the kinds of practices and places they represent.




The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe


Book Description

The Neolithic —a period in which the first sedentary agrarian communities were established across much of Europe—has been a key topic of archaeological research for over a century. However, the variety of evidence across Europe, the range of languages in which research is carried out, and the way research traditions in different countries have developed makes it very difficult for both students and specialists to gain an overview of continent-wide trends. The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe provides the first comprehensive, geographically extensive, thematic overview of the European Neolithic —from Iberia to Russia and from Norway to Malta —offering both a general introduction and a clear exploration of key issues and current debates surrounding evidence and interpretation. Chapters written by leading experts in the field examine topics such as the movement of plants, animals, ideas, and people (including recent trends in the application of genetics and isotope analyses); cultural change (from the first appearance of farming to the first metal artefacts); domestic architecture; subsistence; material culture; monuments; and burial and other treatments of the dead. In doing so, the volume also considers the history of research and sets out agendas and themes for future work in the field.




Neolithic and Bronze Age Monuments and Middle Iron Age Settlement at Lodge Farm, St Osyth, Essex


Book Description

A sequence of prehistoric monuments was discovered on a low spur of land in the Tendring peninsula of north-east Essex, including an Early Neolithic causewayed enclosure, an Early Bronze Age pond barrow and a Middle Bronze Age barrow group. Cropmarks indicate an Early Neolithic cursus monument to the south of the causewayed enclosure. The causewayed enclosure was bounded by up to three lines of concentric interrupted ditches; more than 100 Early Neolithic pits lay within its interior. Large groups of worked flint and pottery occurred more frequently in the pits than in the ditches. Radiocarbon dates indicated that the pits were filled over a short period (perhaps only forty years) during the mid 4th millennium BC. Pieces of Beaker and Grooved Ware in some of the latest ditch deposits suggest that some parts of the monument were still visible during the Late Neolithic period. The pond barrow lay within the causewayed enclosure and was a focal point for funerary and ritual activity two cremation burials in Collared Urns, a small Collared Urn in a large pit, scorched ground and a scorched cremation burial pit indicating the site of a pyre; also two post-holes, one scorched by fire and bearing the remains of a post. Radiocarbon dates showed that the barrow had been in use in the first half of the 2nd millennium BC. Its discovery was particularly interesting because few pond barrows have been found outside Wessex and the upper Thames valley. After a hiatus of c.200 years, the pond barrow again becomes a focal point for ritual activity. Cut into the uppermost deposit were maybe four Middle Bronze Age pits containing pottery vessels. Twenty-two ring-ditches from barrows associated with the Ardleigh Group tradition formed an arc to south and east. These were associated with small pits containing cremated bone and Bucket Urns. Rectilinear enclosures and trackways were laid out across the site in the Middle Iron Age, and then an extensive settlement developed across the enclosures. Nineteen round-houses and sixteen or more post-built structures were recorded.




Neolithic Pits, Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age Pit Alignments and Iron Age to Roman Settlements at Wollaston Quarry, Northamptonshire


Book Description

Between 1990 and 1998, MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) undertook a series of archaeological excavations within Wollaston Quarry covering an area of 116ha. Eight excavation areas and a watching brief were undertaken revealing evidence of Neolithic pits, late Bronze Age/early Iron Age pit alignments and Iron Age to Roman settlements.




Bronze Age Landscapes


Book Description

This volume is a collection of essays, which exemplify the range and diversity of work currently being undertaken on the regional landscapes of the British Bronze Age and the progress which has been made in both theoretical and interpretive debate. Together these papers reflect the vibrancy of current research and promote a closer marriage of landscape, site and material culture studies. CONTENTS: Settlement in Scotland during the Second Millennium BC (P Ashmore) ; Place and Space in the Cambridgeshire Bronze Age (T Malim) ; Exploring Bronze Age Norfolk: Longham and Bittering (T Ashwin) ; Ritual Activity at the Foot of the Gog Magog Hills, Cambridge (M Hinman) ; The Bronze Age of Manchester Airport: Runway 2 (D Garner) ; Place and Memory in Bronze Age Wessex (D Field) ; Bronze Age Agricultural Intensification in the Thames Valley and Estuary (D Yates) ; The 'Community of Builders': The Barleycroft Post Alignments (C Evans and M Knight) ; 'Breaking New Ground': Land Tenure and Fieldstone Clearance during the Bronze Age (R Johnston) ; Tenure and Territoriality in the British Bronze Age: A Question of Varying Social and Geographical Scales (W Kitchen) ; A Later Bronze Age Landscape on the Avon Levels: Settlement: Settlement, Shelters and Saltmarsh at Cabot Park (M Locock) ; Reading Business Park: The Results of Phases 1 and 2 (A Brossler) ; Leaving Home in the Cornish Bronze Age: Insights into Planned Abandonment Processes (J A Nowakowski) ; Body Metaphors and Technologies of Transformation in the English Middle and Late Bronze Age (J Bruck) ; A Time and a Place for Bronze (M Barber) ; Firstly, Let's get Rid of Ritual (C Pendleton) ; Mining and Prospection for Metals in Early Bronze Age Britain - Making Claims within the Archaeological Landscape (S Timberlake) ; The Times, They are a Changin': Experiencing Continuity and Development in the Early Bronze Age Funerary Rituals of Southwestern Britain (M A Owoc) ; Round Barrows in a Circular World: Monumentalising Landscapes in Early Bronze Age Wessex (A Watson) ; Enduring Images? Image Production and Memory in Earlier Bronze Age Scotland (A Jones) ; Afterward: Back to the Bronze Age




Settlement in the Irish Neolithic


Book Description

The Irish Neolithic has been dominated by the study of megalithic tombs, but the defining element of Irish settlement evidence is the rectangular timber Early Neolithic house, the numbers of which have more than quadrupled in the last ten years. The substantial Early Neolithic timber house was a short-lived architectural phenomenon of as little as 90 years, perhaps like short-lived Early Neolithic long barrows and causewayed enclosures. This book explores the wealth of evidence for settlement and houses throughout the Irish Neolithic, in relation to Britain and continental Europe. More importantly it incorporates the wealth of new, and often unpublished, evidence from developer-led archaeological excavations and large grey-literature resources. The settlement evidence scattered across the landscape, and found as a result of developer-funded work, provides the social context for the more famous stone monuments that have traditionally shaped our views of the Neolithic in Ireland. It provides the first comprehensive review of the Neolithic settlement of Ireland, which enables a more holistic and meaningful understanding of the Irish Neolithic.




The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe


Book Description

The Neolithic —a period in which the first sedentary agrarian communities were established across much of Europe—has been a key topic of archaeological research for over a century. However, the variety of evidence across Europe, the range of languages in which research is carried out, and the way research traditions in different countries have developed makes it very difficult for both students and specialists to gain an overview of continent-wide trends. The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe provides the first comprehensive, geographically extensive, thematic overview of the European Neolithic —from Iberia to Russia and from Norway to Malta —offering both a general introduction and a clear exploration of key issues and current debates surrounding evidence and interpretation. Chapters written by leading experts in the field examine topics such as the movement of plants, animals, ideas, and people (including recent trends in the application of genetics and isotope analyses); cultural change (from the first appearance of farming to the first metal artefacts); domestic architecture; subsistence; material culture; monuments; and burial and other treatments of the dead. In doing so, the volume also considers the history of research and sets out agendas and themes for future work in the field.




The Prehistoric Settlement of Britain


Book Description

This study, first published in 1978, explores the evidence for pre-Roman settlement in Britain. Four aspects of the prehistoric economy are described by the author – colonisation and clearance; arable and pastoral farming; transhumance and nomadism; and hunting, gathering and fishing. These aspects have been brought together to formulate a structure which contains the evidence more naturally than chronological schemes that depend on assumed changes in population or technology. The book draws upon environmental evidence and recent developments in archaeological fieldwork. It also provides an extensive exploration of the published literature on the subject and the scope of the evidence. Originally conceived as an ‘ideas book’ rather than a final synthesis, the author’s intention throughout is to stimulate argument and research, and not to replace one dogma with another.







Marking Place


Book Description

Latest in the Neolithic Studies Group Seminar Papers series arising from the NSG conference of November 2019. This collection showcases and explores the wide range of current work on causewayed enclosures and related sites, and assesses what we still want to know about these sites in light of the monumental achievement of the seminal publication Gathering Time (2011). Papers comprise reports on recent development-led fieldwork, academic research and community projects, and the volume concludes with a reflection by the authors of Gathering Time. Much archaeological work is concerned with identifying gaps in our knowledge and developing strategies for addressing them; we perhaps spend less time thinking about how research should proceed when we already know, relatively speaking, quite a lot. The programme of dating causewayed enclosures in southern Britain that was published in 2011 as Gathering Time (Oxbow Books) gave us a new, more precise chronology for many individual sites as well as for enclosures as a whole, and as a consequence a far better sense of their significance and place in the story of the British Early Neolithic. Arguably causewayed enclosures are now the best understood type of Neolithic monument. Yet work continues, and in the last few years new discoveries have been made, older excavations published and further work undertaken on well-known sites. Viewing this research within the new framework for these monuments allows us to assess where our understanding of enclosures has got to and where the focus of future research should lie.