Author: Charles French Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1134482337 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 316
Book Description
Geoarchaeology in Action provides much-needed 'hands on' methodologies to assist anyone conducting or studying geoarchaeological investigations on sites and in landscapes, irrespective of date, place and environment. The book sets out the essential features of geoarchaeological practice and geomorphological processes, and is deliberately aimed at the archaeologist as practitioner in the field. It explains the basics - what can be expected, what approaches may be taken, and what outcomes might be forthcoming, and asks what we can reasonably expect a micromorphological approach to archaeological contexts, data and problems to tell us. The twelve case studies are taken from Britain, Europe and the Near East. They illustrate how past landscape change can be discovered and deciphered whether you are primarily a digger, environmentalist or soil micromorphologist. Based on the author's extensive experience of investigating buried and eroded landscapes, the book develops new ways of looking at conventional models of landscape change. With an extensive glossary, bibliography and more than 100 illustrations it will be an essential text and reference tool for students, academics and professionals.
Author: Barry Cunliffe Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1134277237 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 1016
Book Description
Since its first publication in 1971, Barry Cunliffe's monumental survey has established itself as a classic of British archaeology. This fully revised fourth edition maintains the qualities of the earlier editions, whilst taking into account the significant developments that have moulded the discipline in recent years. Barry Cunliffe here incorporates new theoretical approaches, technological advances and a range of new sites and finds, ensuring that Iron Age Communities in Britain remains the definitive guide to the subject.
Author: Jan Harding Publisher: English Heritage ISBN: 1848021747 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 340
Book Description
The Raunds Area Project investigated more than 20 Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in the Nene Valley. From c 5000 BC to the early 1st millennium cal BC a succession of ritual mounds and burial mounds were built as settlement along the valley sides increased and woodland was cleared. Starting as a regular stopping-place for flint knapping and domestic tasks, first the Long Mound, and then Long Barrow, the north part of the Turf Mound and the Avenue were built in the 5th millennium BC. With the addition of the Long Enclosure, the Causewayed Ring Ditch, and the Southern Enclosure, there was a chain of five or six diverse monuments stretched along the river bank by c 3000 cal BC. Later, a timber platform, the Riverside Structure, was built and the focus of ceremonial activity shifted to the Cotton 'Henge', two concentric ditches on the occupied valley side. From c 2200 cal BC monument building accelerated and included the Segmented Ditch Circle and at least 20 round barrows, almost all containing burials, at first inhumations, then cremations down to c 1000 cal BC, by which time two overlapping systems of paddocks and droveways had been laid out. Finally, the terrace began to be settled when these had gone out of use, in the early 1st millennium cal BC.
Author: David T. Yates Publisher: Oxbow Books ISBN: 1782974245 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 470
Book Description
A major phase of economic expansion occurred in southern England during the second and early first millennium BC, accompanied by a fundamental shift in regional power and wealth towards the eastern lowlands. This book offers a synthesis of available data on Bronze Age lowland field systems in England, including a gazetteer of sites. The research demonstrates the importance of large-scale animal husbandry in the mixed farming regimes as evidenced in the design of the field systems which incorporate droveways, stock proof fencing, watering holes, cow pens, sheep races and gateways for stockhandling. It is argued that the field systems represented a form of conspicuous production, an "intensification" of agrarian endeavour or a statement of intent, to be understood in relation to the maintenance, display and promotion of hierarchical social systems involved in exchange with their counterparts across the English Channel.
Author: Sean R. Taylor Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd ISBN: 1803270055 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 372
Book Description
This volume reports on a series of fieldwork projects carried out in the Tregurra Valley, to the east of Truro, Cornwall between 2009-2015. The fieldwork led to the identification of a large number of pits and hearths across the site, the majority of which that have proved dateable spanning the Early Neolithic to the end of the Early Bronze Age.
Author: Francis Pryor Publisher: English Heritage ISBN: 1848021518 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 515
Book Description
The Flag Fen Basin has been the subject of nearly continuous archaeological research since about 1900. This research sheds new light on the Neolithic landscape, on the Iron Age and Roman landscapes, and on the changing environmental conditions since the earlier Neolithic.
Author: Ann Woodward Publisher: Oxbow Books ISBN: 1785705350 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 201
Book Description
Pottery has become one of the major categories of artifact that is used in reconstructing the lives and habits of prehistoric people. In these 14 papers, members of the Prehistoric Ceramics Research Group discuss the many ways in which pottery is used to study chronology, behavioral changes, interrelationships between people and between people and their environment, technology and production, exchange, settlement organization, cultural expression, style and symbolism.
Author: Francis Pryor Publisher: English Heritage Publishing ISBN: 1848021453 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 444
Book Description
The Neolithic causewayed enclosure at Etton, cut into a Pleistocene gravel river terrace, occupied a floodplain 'island' within a relict stream meander in the Welland Valley, Maxey, Cambridgeshire. Regular flooding laid down layers of clay alluvium, mainly in Iron Age and later times, preserving a palaesol and protecting the site from modern plough damage. The causewayed enclosure, small by British standards, comprised a single, 'squashed oval' shaped ditch. Excavations revealed c 80% of the interior and most date the construction and use to the fourth millennium cal BC, that is, early in the tradition of British causewayed enclosures. Most of the excavated features are Early Neolithic; Late Neolithic and earlier Bronze Age features were associated with the ditch of a cursus, which traversed the enclosure diagonally. Causeways entered the enclosure on the north, which featured a substantial timber gateway, east, west, and possibly the south (which could not be examined). Through the life of the site additional features were built and aligned with care: a north-south dividing fence, aligned with the north gateway, in Phase 1 and numerous ritual pits, back-filled with pottery (often deliberately smashed), flint, and animal bones. These pits may have represented individual people and the cntents allude to the person's skills, achievements, or social position. The nearest ditch segment probably represented an individual's family or kin-group. The inhabitants were careful not to damage earlier deposits when digging new pits, and it was thus possible to define an evolving tradition of carefully structured ritual deposits. Objects such as complete pots or skulls were also placed close to causeways, within the buttends of individual ditch segments. In Phase 2 (Late Neolithic) such deposits were more sporadic, but ritual continued to dominate. Most of the pottery from the pits is a regional variant of the Hurst Fen tradition. Fengate-style wares also feature prominently, and flintwork, 'imported' polished stone axes, and other stone objects were also deposited. The western arc of the enclosure ditch produced some 5000 pieces of worked wood, most of which derived from coppice.
Author: Charles French
Author: Barry Cunliffe
Author: Jan Harding
Author: Ian H. Longworth
Author: David T. Yates
Author: Sean R. Taylor
Author: Francis Pryor
Author: Ann Woodward
Author: Francis Pryor
Author: