Defining Spaces in Iron Age Northumberland

Defining Spaces in Iron Age Northumberland
Author: Josh Gaunt
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2023-01-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1789258588

The Iron Age settlements excavated by Headland Archaeology (UK) Ltd at Morley Hill and Lower Callerton lie within the rich later prehistoric landscape of the Northumberland coastal plain. This monograph presents the results of the excavation, specialist analyses and provides a key dataset upon which to discuss regionally and nationally important later prehistoric research themes. The excavations at Morley Hill and Lower Callerton offer two large-scale new datasets to compare within the corpus of enclosed Iron Age settlement sites across the region, allowing for an increased understanding of settlement patterns, architectural forms and farming practices. These include settlement development, longevity and tempo; the relationship between lowland and upland sites; settlement organization and identity; roundhouse architecture and the impact of contact with the Roman world. At Morley Hill, work revealed two later Iron Age settlements defined by rectilinear enclosures surrounding groups of roundhouses with evidence for earlier phases of activity. The settlements at Morley Hill are comparable to many such distinctive settlements identified across the region and explored in recent years largely through developer-funded excavations. Lower Callerton represents a less explored form of extensive settlement with the excavation revealing evidence of earlier prehistoric activity overlain by a large Iron Age enclosure with over 53 structures, multiple sub-enclosures and boundaries. Comprehensive Bayesian modeling at Lower Callerton has provided a robust chronological framework indicating complex and continual settlement development from the middle Iron Age. The implications of this in terms of wider settlement development, tempo and longevity are explored. While the monograph focuses on the Iron Age, the identification and influence of earlier prehistoric activity is also explored. The discussion is again enhanced by the program of radiocarbon dating and isotopic analysis of cereal grains from Neolithic pits at Lower Callerton.

The Later Prehistory of North-West Europe

The Later Prehistory of North-West Europe
Author: Richard Bradley
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 477
Release: 2016
Genre: History
ISBN: 019965977X

The Later Prehistory of North-West Europe provides a unique, up-to-date, and easily accessible synthesis of the later prehistoric archaeology of north-west Europe, transcending political and language barriers that can hinder understanding. By surveying changes in social forms, landscape organization, monument types, and ritual practices over six millennia, the volume reassesses the prehistory of north-west Europe from the late Mesolithic to the end of the pre-Roman Iron Age. It explores how far common patterns of social development are apparent across north-west Europe, and whether there were periods when local differences were emphasized instead. In relation to this, it also examines changes through time in the main axes of contact between the various regions of continental Europe, Britain, and Ireland. Key to the volume's broad scope is its focus on the vast mass of new evidence provided by recent development-led excavations. The authors collate data that has been gathered on thousands of sites across Britain, Ireland, northern France, the Low Countries, western Germany, and Denmark, using sources including unpublished 'grey literature' reports. The results challenge many aspects of previous narratives of later prehistory, allowing the volume to present a distinctively fresh perspective.

Prehistoric Pottery for the Archaeologist

Prehistoric Pottery for the Archaeologist
Author: Alex M. Gibson
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 326
Release: 1997-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780718519544

The first general handbook and reference guide for the study of British prehistoric pottery has now been revised and updated for a second edition. The work contains a thorough survey of the chronological development of pottery throughout prehistory and into the Roman period, as well as chapters on the development of pottery studies (from both typological and scientific viewpoints) and on the materials and methods used for the manufacture of pottery. The main part of the book is an extensively illustrated glossary in which pottery styles and types, materials and technology are explained in detail. Much of the data contained has been yielded by the authors' personal research projects, including microscopy and experimental studies and fieldwork with contemporary traditional potters.

The Emergent Past

The Emergent Past
Author: Chris Fowler
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2013-10-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 019163039X

The Emergent Past approaches archaeological research as an engagement within an assemblage - a particular configuration of materials, things, places, humans, animals, plants, techniques, technologies, forces, and ideas. Fowler develops a new interpretative method for that engagement, exploring how archaeological research can, and does, reconfigure each assemblage. Recognising the successive relationships that give rise to and reshaped assemblages over time, he proposes a relational realist understanding of archaeological evidence based on a reading of relational and non-representational theories, such as those presented by Karen Barad, Tim Ingold, and Bruno Latour. The volume explores this new approach through the first ever synthesis of Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age mortuary practices in Northeast England (c.2500-1500 BC), taking into account how different concepts and practices have changed the assemblage of Early Bronze Age mortuary practices in the past 200 years. Fowler argues that it is vital to retain the most valuable archaeological tools, such as typology, while developing an approach that focuses on the contingent, specific, and historical emergence of past phenomena. His study moves from analyses of changing types of mortuary practices and associated things and places, to a vivid discussion of how past relationships unfolded over time and gave rise to specific patterns in the material remains we have today.

New Light on the Neolithic of Northern England

New Light on the Neolithic of Northern England
Author: Gill Hey
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Total Pages: 561
Release: 2021-01-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1789252679

These papers highlight recent archaeological work in Northern England, in the commercial, academic and community archaeology sectors, which have fundamentally changed our perspective on the Neolithic of the area. Much of this was new work (and much is still not published) has been overlooked in the national discourse. The papers cover a wide geographical area, from Lancashire north into the Scottish Lowlands, recognising the irrelevance of the England/Scotland Border. They also take abroad chronological sweep, from the Mesolithic/Neolithic transition to the introduction of Beakers into the area. The key themes are: the nature of transition; the need for a much-improved chronological framework; regional variation linked to landscape character; links within northern England and with distant places; the implications of new dating for our understanding ‘the axe trade; the changing nature of settlement and agriculture; the character early Neolithic enclosures; the need to integrate rock art into wider discourse.