Dissertation by Jake Rowland
The British Middle Neolithic (c.3500-2900 BC) is now recognised as a time of significant social a... more The British Middle Neolithic (c.3500-2900 BC) is now recognised as a time of significant social and cultural change. In lowland Britain at least, the period sees striking changes in subsistence (likely a move from mixed agriculture to pastoralism), the cessation of activity at flint mines and axe quarries (c. 3500 BC), alongside the appearance of new mortuary practices, and new monument forms. Coincident is the appearance of a range of novel artefact forms. Of these, the ceramics – Peterborough and Impressed Wares – are relatively well-studied. However, that is not the case with a number of elaborate artefact forms without indigenous precedent such as jet sliders, antler and stone maceheads, boar’s tusk implements, transverse arrowheads, lozenge arrowheads, waisted adzeheads and axeheads, fully-ground rectangular knives, edge-ground blade knives and lozenge points, many of which are marked out by their highly skilled and/or time-consuming manufacture. These objects occur in a restricted range of contexts, most notably as personal grave goods within burials, which raise critical questions about their role. This research presents the first integrated, multi-scalar study of the life histories of a number of these elaborate objects which appear in Britain during the Middle Neolithic. It explores their creation, distribution and life-histories through studies of their context, materiality, technologies of production and use-wear analysis, alongside experimental replication, to generate detailed understandings of the varied roles these objects played in life and death in Middle Neolithic Britain.
Papers by Jake Rowland
Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2024
The majority of excavated human remains from Neolithic Britain emanate from monumental sites. How... more The majority of excavated human remains from Neolithic Britain emanate from monumental sites. However, it is increasingly recognized that multiple funerary practices are often attested within these monuments, and that diverse treatment of the dead is evident contemporaneously at non-monumental sites. In this paper, we highlight such variation in non-monumental funerary practices in Neolithic Britain (c. 4000–2500 BC) through the biographical study of an assemblage from a large post-hole at Bridlington Boulevard, Yorkshire. Through osteological and taphonomic analysis of the human bones and technological and microwear analysis of the accompanying axehead, we infer complex funerary processes, with the expediently manufactured axehead potentially featuring in the funerary rites and subsequent post-raising before being deposited in the feature. Bridlington Boulevard represents one element of a varied funerary complex—cremations in pits and post-holes—at a time when most individuals were not deposited in monuments, or indeed were not deposited at all. Compiling these non-monumental cremations across Britain causes us to look beyond categorizing these assemblages as funerary contexts, and instead suggests important cosmological associations and forces were brought together in pit and post-and-human cremation deposits.
Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, 2022
This paper presents microwear analysis of an edge-ground blade knife and antler macehead from the... more This paper presents microwear analysis of an edge-ground blade knife and antler macehead from the Wiltshire Museum collections. The paper will provide a brief background to the broader PhD research within which this study is set, alongside more detailed results of the microwear analysis. This will highlight the breadth or information which can gained from the detailed studies of this kind.
Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeology Society, 2023
Recent reanalysis of the cremation burials from the Flagstones enclosure, Dorchester has revealed... more Recent reanalysis of the cremation burials from the Flagstones enclosure, Dorchester has revealed one deposit, from ditch segment 16, was associated with a single small limestone bead. Although beads have been associated with a small number of Neolithic inhumation burials, this find presents the first Neolithic cremation burial in Britain to be accompanied by an artefact of this type. This paper presents a biographical analysis of this object and discusses the find within its broader Middle Neolithic context. Use-wear analysis has revealed the bead had a long use-life prior to deposition and provides the earliest, securely dated evidence for the adornment of textiles and leatherwork in Neolithic Britain.
Plos One, 2020
The retouching and resharpening of lithic tools during their production and maintenance leads to ... more The retouching and resharpening of lithic tools during their production and maintenance leads to the production of large numbers of small flakes and chips known as microdebitage. Standard analytical approaches to this material involves the mapping of microartefact densities to identify activity areas, and the creation of techno-typologies to characterise the form of retouch flakes from different types of tools. Whilst use-wear analysis is a common approach to the analysis of tools, it has been applied much less commonly to microdebitage. This paper contends that the use-wear analysis of microdebitage holds great potential for identifying activity areas on archaeological sites, representing a relatively unexplored analytical resource within microartefact assemblages. In order to test the range of factors that affect the identification of use-wear traces on small retouch flakes, a blind test consisting of 40 retouch flakes was conducted. The results show that wear traces can be identified with comparable levels of accuracy to those reported for historic blind tests of standard lithic tools suggesting that the use-wear analysis of retouch flakes can be a useful analytical tool in understanding site function, and in increasing sample sizes in cases where assemblages contain few tools.
Articles by Jake Rowland
Rowland, J.T. 2024. Wollaston Polissoir. In R. Atkins & I. Meadows (eds.), Neolithic Pits, Late B... more Rowland, J.T. 2024. Wollaston Polissoir. In R. Atkins & I. Meadows (eds.), Neolithic Pits, Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age Pit Alignments and Iron Age to Roman Settlements at Wollaston Quarry, Northamptonshire, pp.61. Oxford: Archaeopress
Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society Magazine, 2021
The presence of microdebitage in the archaeological record is often indicative of the location of... more The presence of microdebitage in the archaeological record is often indicative of the location of past knapping activity. As a result, the material presents the potential to provide a unique insight into the activities and practices undertaken at prehistoric sites. However, beyond basic quantification in lithic reports, microdebitage has received little attention from the academic discourse. Here a new methodology will be presented for the analysis this material based on the technological analysis of flake attributes from archaeological and experimental assemblages. This will be applied alongside use-wear analysis to an assemblage of 2117 microdebitage flakes from the West Kennet Avenue occupation site to provide windows into site formation processes and artefact biographies during the middle Neolithic.
This study aims to understand how Mesolithic stone technology could have been used to produce the... more This study aims to understand how Mesolithic stone technology could have been used to produce the Holmegaard bow and the effectiveness of different types of stone technology in each stage of the production of the bow.
Unpublished Reports/Grey Literature by Jake Rowland
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Dissertation by Jake Rowland
Papers by Jake Rowland
Articles by Jake Rowland
Unpublished Reports/Grey Literature by Jake Rowland
This paper presents the preliminary results from the analysis of a surface-collected assemblage of finished and unfinished polished rectangular knives and polishing tools from the site of North Dale, East Yorkshire.
Through the combination of microwear and technological analysis, the complex life histories of these enigmatic artefacts can begin to be reconstructed. This will provide a more refined understanding of their reduction stages and grinding sequences. Furthermore, the incidence of burning, intentional breakage and reworking of the knives within the assemblage is high. This suggests the site of North Dale was highly significant during both the beginning and end of the lives of these artefacts. This will enable further light to be shed on the life, death and role of polished rectangular knives within middle Neolithic society.
This paper will explore the relationship between people and things during the late 4th and early 3rd millennium BC and present preliminary results from analysis. It will demonstrate how the application of use-wear and technological analysis, experimental replication as well as understandings of contextual association and distribution can begin to unravel the life histories of these artefacts.