The Bronze Age Landscape of the Northern English Midlands
The Bronze Age Landscape of the Northern English Midlands

Author: David Mullin

Publisher: British Archaeological Reports Oxford Limited

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 154

ISBN-13:

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Wet, wooded and largely unattractive is how some have characterised the northern Midlands in the Bronze Age. In this thesis, David Mullin undertakes an archaeological investigation of the ill-studied regions of Cheshire, northern Shropshire and northern Staffordshire. Despite the paucity of work carried out to investigate the prehistory of the area, Mullin pieces together evidence for Bronze Age burials, lithics, settlements, the exploitation of the landscape, metalwork and metal production. He argues for the importance of social networks, memory and attachments to the landscape in the Bronze Age and highlights the potential of the area for more thorough archaeological research.

A Neolithic and Bronze Age Landscape in Northamptonshire
A Neolithic and Bronze Age Landscape in Northamptonshire

Author: Jan Harding

Publisher: English Heritage

Published: 2013-01-15

Total Pages: 976

ISBN-13: 1848021755

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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. This second volume of the Raunds Area Project, published as a CD, comprises the detailed reports on the environmental archaeology, artefact studies, geophysics and chronology.

Bronze Age Worlds
Bronze Age Worlds

Author: Robert Johnston

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-10-26

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 1351710982

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Bronze Age Worlds brings a new way of thinking about kinship to the task of explaining the formation of social life in Bronze Age Britain and Ireland. Britain and Ireland’s diverse landscapes and societies experienced varied and profound transformations during the twenty-fifth to eighth centuries BC. People’s lives were shaped by migrations, changing beliefs about death, making and thinking with metals, and living in houses and field systems. This book offers accounts of how these processes emerged from social life, from events, places and landscapes, informed by a novel theory of kinship. Kinship was a rich and inventive sphere of culture that incorporated biological relations but was not determined by them. Kinship formed personhood and collective belonging, and associated people with nonhuman beings, things and places. The differences in kinship and kinwork across Ireland and Britain brought textures to social life and the formation of Bronze Age worlds. Bronze Age Worlds offers new perspectives to archaeologists and anthropologists interested in the place of kinship in Bronze Age societies and cultural development.

The Earlier Iron Age in Britain and the Near Continent
The Earlier Iron Age in Britain and the Near Continent

Author: Rachel Pope

Publisher: Oxbow Books Limited

Published: 2017-09-08

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781785709098

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The Earlier Iron Age (c. 800-400 BC) has often eluded attention in British Iron Age studies. Traditionally, we have been enticed by the wealth of material from the later part of the millennium and by developments in southern England in particular, culminating in the arrival of the Romans. The result has been a chronological and geographical imbalance, with the Earlier Iron Age often characterised more by what it lacks than what it comprises: for Bronze Age studies it lacks large quantities of bronze, whilst from the perspective of the Later Iron Age it lacks elaborate enclosure. In contrast, the same period on mainland Europe yields a wealth of burial evidence with links to Mediterranean communities and so has not suffered in quite the same way. Gradual acceptance of this problem over the past decade, along with the corpus of new discoveries produced by developer-funded archaeology, now provides us with an opportunity to create a more balanced picture of the Iron Age in Britain as a whole. The twenty-six papers in the book seek to establish what we now know (and do not know) about Earlier Iron Age communities in Britain and their neighbours on the Continent. The authors engage with a variety of current research themes, seeking to characterise the Earlier Iron Age via the topics of landscape, environment, and agriculture; material culture and everyday life; architecture, settlement, and social organisation; and with the issue of transition - looking at how communities of the Late Bronze Age transform into those of the Earlier Iron Age, and how we understand the social changes of the later first millennium BC. Geographically, the book brings together recent research from regional studies covering the full length of Britain, as well as taking us over to Ireland, across the Channel to France, and then over the North Sea to Denmark, the Low Countries, and beyond.

Excavations at King's Low and Queen's Low
Excavations at King's Low and Queen's Low

Author: Gary Lock

Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd

Published: 2014-03-15

Total Pages: 122

ISBN-13: 1784910716

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Two barrows in the parish of Tixall, north of Stafford, were excavated between 1986-1994. The results are important because little excavation of round barrows has been carried out in this area of North Staffordshire and these add considerably to the local corpus of knowledge concerning Early Bronze Age burial practices.

Warfare in Bronze Age Society
Warfare in Bronze Age Society

Author: Christian Horn

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-04-26

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1107185564

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The Bronze Age represents the global emergence of a militarized society with a martial culture that constructed the warrior as a 'Hero' and warfare as 'Heroic'. The book takes a fresh look at warfare and its role in reshaping Bronze Age society from the Mediterranean to northern Europe.

Neolithic Scotland
Neolithic Scotland

Author: Gordon Noble

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2006-06-19

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0748626980

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This is an account of the Neolithic period in Scotland from its earliest traces around 4000 BC to the transformation of Neolithic society in the Early Bronze Age fifteen hundred years later. Gordon Noble inteprets Scottish material in the context of debates and issues in European archaeology, comparing sites and practices identified in Scotland to those found elsewhere in Britain and beyond. He considers the nature and effects of memory, sea and land travel, ritualisation, island identities, mortuary practice, symbolism and environmental impact. He synthesises excavations and research conducted over the last century and more, bringing together the evidence for understanding what happened in Scotland during this long period. His long-term and regionally based analysis suggests new directions for the interpretation of the Neolithic more generally. After outlining the chronology of the Neolithic in Europe Dr Noble considers its origins in Scotland. He investigates why the Earlier Neolithic in Scotland is characterised by regionally-distinct monumental traditions and asks if these reflect different conceptions of the world. He uses a long-term perspective to explain the nature of monumental landscapes in the Later Neolithic and considers whether Neolithic society as a whole might have been created and maintained through interactions at places where large-scale monuments were built. He ends by considering how the Neolithic was transformed in the Early Bronze Age through the manipulation of the material remains of the past. Neolithic Scotland provides a comprehensive, approachable and up-to-date account of the Scottish Neolithic. Such a book has not been available for many years. It will be widely welcomed.

Ritual in Early Bronze Age Grave Goods
Ritual in Early Bronze Age Grave Goods

Author: John Hunter

Publisher: Oxbow Books

Published: 2014-10-31

Total Pages: 593

ISBN-13: 1782976957

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The exotic and impressive grave goods from burials of the ‘Wessex Culture’ in Early Bronze Age Britain are well known and have inspired influential social and economic hypotheses, invoking the former existence of chiefs, warriors and merchants and high-ranking pastoralists. Alternative theories have sought to explain the how display of such objects was related to religious and ritual activity rather than to economic status, and that groups of artefacts found in certain graves may have belonged to religious specialists. This volume is the result of a major research that aimed to investigate Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age grave goods in relation to their possible use as special dress accessories or as equipment employed within ritual activities and ceremonies. Many items of adornment can be shown to have formed elements of elaborate costumes, probably worn by individuals, both male and female, who held important ritual roles within society. Furthermore, the analysis has shown that various categories of object long interpreted as mundane types of tool were in fact items of bodily adornment or implements used in ritual contexts, or in the special embellishment of the human body. Although never intended to form a complete catalogue of all the relevant artefacts from England the volume provides an extensive, and intensively illustrated, overview of a large proportion of the grave goods from English burial sites.