Later prehistoric Britain and Europe

Full excavation of this small hillfort produced remarkable evidence for ironworking, both smelting and refining, in the late Iron Age, with a second phase of activity in the 2nd/3rd century AD. At the time the 1200kg of slag was the largest quantity recovered from any early site in Britain. The chronology is based on radio-carbon dates and a suite of archaeomagnetic determinations

I recently had the opportunity to review Alex Gibson’s thought provoking volume, 'Enclosing the Neolithic: Recent studies in Britain and Europe'. That review, to which the reader is directed for further commentary, identified as a weakness the uneven spread of regional case studies, and in particular the omission of studies from the West Country, Wales and North West England, which are so important in understanding the Irish Sea Zone. The aim of this paper is to address this with regard to the material from the North West of England, and in particular Cumbria. This paper is therefore meant to be read in conjunction with Gibson’s edited volume.

Later Prehistoric Settlement in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly reports on the excavation between 1996 and 2014 of five later prehistoric and Roman period settlements. Three of the mainland sites – Killigrew, Nancemere and Higher Besore – are located in central Cornwall, near Truro, with the fourth, at Porthleven, situated on the south coast in west Cornwall. The fifth settlement, Porth Killier, is on the island of St Agnes on the Isles of Scilly. All the sites were multi-phased, revealing both similar and contrasting patterns of occupation stretching from the Bronze Age into the Iron Age and beyond. Despite having broadly comparable chronological sequences, there are considerable differences in both the tempo and intensity of occupation, and significant contrasts in practices associated with them. Significantly, all four mainland sequences culminate with an enclosed settlement in the Late Iron Age and especially during the Roman period, a time of significant economic and social change following the conquest. During this period there continued to be differences in the character of occupation. Notably two of the enclosures seem to have been strongly associated with industrial activities, including metalworking at Killigrew, suggesting that the working of iron may have been a controlled or ritualized activity undertaken within a dedicated space. The volume presents the results from each of the five settlement sites, before reviewing the key themes which have emerged from the investigations.

This final volume of my PhD thesis (Appendix G) is the Gazetteer, divided up into a few Iron Age and Romano-British sites from North Yorkshire; but with the majority from West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. Many of these sites have never been published before; and are so-called 'grey literature' - the client or archive reports produced by commercial archaeological units and held in the relevant Historic Environment Records office for each county. In a few instances not even reports exist, just archive records.

Radiocarbon dates for the Early Bronze Age of Northern England are presented, these provide an independent chronology for the Collared Urns of the region together with associated Accessory Vessels and grave goods. The results indicate that Collared Urns were in use in Northern England between 2000/1950 BC and 1600/1550 BC. Comparison of the dates obtained for Northern England show that they are broadly correspondent with those obtained for Ireland, Scotland and Wales in previous studies. This rebuts the idea that Collared Urns radiated from southern England, reaching northern and western Britain after a passage of time, instead the pattern is one of parallel development in all the regions considered here.

KEYWORDS
EARLY BRONZE AGE, COLLARED URNS, DATING, BRITISH PREHISTORY, IRISH PREHISTORY, SCOTTISH PREHISTORY, BURIAL BARROW, CHRONOLOGY, RADIOCARBON DATING, LANCASHIRE, NORTH WEST ENGLAND

Following an archaeological evaluation at 1 Park Town, Oxford in August 2012, John Moore Heritage Services undertook the excavation of the area of the footprint of the proposed new dwelling in September 2012. The site had previously functioned as
a laboratory for D’Overbroeks School and before that as gardens for the house.

Consequently, the site had been heavily truncated in places.
Nevertheless, the remains of five Middle Iron Age pits and a contemporary surface were recovered in addition to a further five undated pits, which were probably also of Middle Iron Age date.

This indicates the presence of later prehistoric activity complementing that on Port Meadow and at Grandpont, locating the Park Town site within the characteristic Upper Thames Valley Middle Iron Age tradition.

During the 19th century the site was redeveloped. The land where Park Town now stands, which had been owned by New College and sold to the Oxford Local Board, or Board of Guardians, was to be used for the St Giles’ workhouse. When the workhouse was built in Cowley, the New College land was redeveloped for the Board by Samuel Lipscomb Seckham. Although not a part of Norham Manor, owned by St John’s, Park Town provided the template for the redevelopment of North Oxford.

When 1 Park Town was erected a stables was also built to the rear of the property, with some garden features present, which were evidenced archaeologically and cartographically.

A lovely Bronze Age burial and settlement site in West Sussex, with interesting evidence for Neolithic and Anglo-Saxon inhabitation too. I directed the evaluation and one phase of excavation for Wessex Archaeology, and subsequently wrote it up. It was particularly interesting how the stake-built palisade did not surround the settlement, but seemed to partly screen it from the barrows, though the entrance through this fence faced directly towards them.
There was originally more in-depth discussion of the depositional practices and spatial patterning by myself and Lorraine Mepham, but unfortunately this was edited out of the final publication....

Detailed scrutiny of the Iron Age settlement archaeology of the Atlantic coastal regions, from Shetland in the north to Brittany in the south, highlights the close connections made possible by the Western Seaways. From the Later Prehistoric to Early Historic periods these lands have been drawn towards similar expressions of identity and sequences of settlement development of varying intensity and duration. Discussions of individual site chronologies and taphonomic problems combined with analysis of architecture, site layout and, to a lesser extent, material assemblages across the area has allowed the definition of settlement development in each area across almost two thousand years. The Atlantic west offers a unique environment for the investigation of complex issues relating to settlement patterning as a result of its often remarkable archaeological preservation.

These frameworks provide the opportunity to examine the extent of contacts along the Western Seaways in greater detail and over a longer timespan than has previously been attempted. Some site-types have always been used to infer connections between western areas as distant as Brittany and Shetland including 'promontory forts' and 'souterrains'. By putting these into their local settlement and chronological context it becomes possible to interrogate their significance from particular economic, political and social perspectives, both as indicators of external contact and their place in local settlement patterns.

Conclusions range from the definition of new local settlement sequences and discussions of their social significance, to a greater understanding of the importance of the Atlantic Seaways as conduits of trade, information and cultural contact. The Atlantic façade is perceived, not as a peripheral backwater, but as a zone characterised by a dynamic society with powerful and wide reaching influences. Dramatic and important settlement developments in this area could shed light on the processes of social 'construction' that lead ultimately to the incipient kingdoms and states visible even today.

In traditional archaeological considerations of Iron Age and Romano-British landscapes, trackways are usually interpreted in largely normative terms, merely as means of getting from one settlement to another, or as purely functional features to assist with the herding of animals. In these somewhat static expositions, the role of trackways as places in themselves, and their long-term importance in constructions of social identity and memory, are often overlooked. So too are the complex relationships between people and animals enacted within trackways, field systems, and the wider landscape.

Recent theoretical ideas concerning relational agency and identity, materiality and movement have much to offer in terms of our archaeological understandings of these features. This paper explores the interpretative potential of such approaches using case studies of Iron Age and Romano-British trackways from Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. Integrating theories of identity, embodiment, materiality, relationality and practice highlights the sedentarism of previous explanations, and allows for much more nuanced accounts of highly dynamic, mobile meshworks, where agency resided in complex constraints and affordances between people, animals and the materiality of the lived-in landscape.

Iron Age swords are remarkable in terms of their short length compared to their contemporaries in La Tène Britain and Continental Europe, a feature that has led to speculation that they were primarily stabbing weapons or a ceremonial object not intended for fighting. This research incorporates previously published swords with new material from a survey of Irish museum databases to examine the swords in terms of blade morphology and dimension to infer their possible use in battle. The study shows that the majority of swords from the period (c. 700 BC – c. 400 AD), both La Tène and sub-Roman, have features of stabbing weapons used for fighting on foot. This is at odds with the nature of weaponry found elsewhere in La Tène Europe, and highlights an insular development in Ireland during the period. Through two case studies, this analysis also shows that in interacting with the outside world, conscious choices may have been made when it came to importing weapons and ideas. By clarifying the suggestions made in other works about the uses of these swords, this article looks at the swords from a new dimension, one that also relates these weapons to the nature of warfare and society in Iron Age Ireland.

CONTENTS
Obit: Mary Desborough Cra’ster, 1928–2008, John Pickles, Peter Gathercole, and Alison Taylor
A Fen Island in the Neolithic and Bronze Age: Excavations at North Fen, Sutton, Cambridgeshire, Leo Webley and Jonathan Hiller
A fen island burial: excavation of an Early Bronze Age round barrow at North Fen, Sutton, Aileen Connor
The Bartlow Hills in context, Hella Eckardt with Amanda Clarke, Sophie Hay, Stephen Macaulay, Pat Ryan, David Thornley and Jane Timby
Senuna, goddess of the river Rhee or Henney, Stephen Yeates
A Reappraisal of the Evidence for the ‘northern arm’ of the Fleam Dyke at Fen Ditton, Scott Kenney
An excavation at Station Quarry, Steeple Morden, Cambridgeshire, Laura Piper and Andrew Norton
Excavations at Scotland Road/Union Lane, Chesterton, Duncan Mackay
A Curious Object from Firs Farm, Caxton, Aileen Connor
A morphological analysis of Ickleton, Cambridgeshire: An admission of defeat, Christopher Taylor
Funerals, the final consumer choice? Ken Sneath
The ‘Age of the Windmill’ in the Haddenham Level, N James
Upware and Bottisham Sluices, K S G Hinde
Changes in the landscape of west Cambridge, Part V: 1945 to 2000, Philomena Guillebaud
The C.A.S. Collection of Cambridgeshire ‘Sketches’ J.D. Pickles
Fieldwork in Cambridgeshire 2007, Elizabeth Shepherd Popescu and Sarah Poppy
Reviews, Tim Malim and Sue Oosthuizen

Feasting equipment, copper‐alloy cauldrons and flesh‐hooks, are a distinctive feature of the later Atlantic Bronze Age suggesting elements of a shared ideology whose ultimate origin may lie in the eastern Mediterranean. The easterly distribution of the earliest British cauldrons previously identified is further confirmed by the recent discovery of a Type Colchester example at Salle, Norfolk, which brings to three the number of cauldrons of this type found in the region. Similarities between them suggest their origin lies in a single workshop, if not individual craftsman. The appearance of the cauldrons found at Feltwell, Norfolk, and Salle is so close as to suggest a new ‘Feltwell’ Variant. Analysis of the contents of the Feltwell cauldron hint at the function of these intriguing objects as high status cooking vessels, most likely reserved for the chiefly class and deployed in the hosting of feasts which, along with flesh‐hooks, served to build and cement political alliances.

KEYWORDS
CAULDRON, FLESH‐HOOK, FEASTING, LATER BRONZE AGE, IDEOLOGY, BRONZE AGE CHRONOLOGY, METAL DETECTING

Several regions in Britain saw the construction of large, linear earthworks of banks and ditches during the later Bronze Age and in the Iron Age, often extending for many tens of kilometres. In the light of recent theoretical discussions of materiality and relational agency within archaeology and other social sciences, and through an avowedly discursive poetics of place, examples of these earthworks are re-assessed as actants, material constructions capable of affecting and directing the lives of people, animals, and plants. These linear earthworks were not static monuments, but rather were active assemblages or meshworks of materiality, movement, and memory. They later influenced the deposition of several Romano-British coin hoards.

This study proposes that archaeology should adopt an integrated approach combining archaeology and folklore. As a case study, the legend of “The Devil‘s Footprints on pendle and the stones dropped by him on Apronful Hill” is considered in the context of both the folklore of Lancashire and also the archaeological evidence for rock cut footprints from calderstones and elsewhere in Northern Europe. A possible ancient connection between the two is proposed based upon a close reading of the evidence.

This edited volume featured 22 papers by landscape archaeologists and historians - Oscar Aldred, John Barnatt, Bill Bevan, Eleanor Breen, Adrian Chadwick, Lee Elliott, Helen Evans, Chris Fenton-Thomas, Peter Herring, Bob Johnston, Jon Kissock, David Knight, Helen Lewis, Richard Muir, Susan Oosthuizen, Maria Petersson, Ian Roberts, Hannah Sackett, John Thomas, Helen Wickstead and Tom Williamson. It investigated land allotment and land division in British archaeological periods from later prehistory through to the early modern period; along with Iron Age and early medieval Sweden and early medieval and medieval Iceland. 

My introduction to the book is reproduced here - I would like to thank David Davison and Rajka Makjanić at Archaeopress for supplying me with the pdf of this.

My PhD thesis was an interpretative study of rural landscapes and communities of Nottinghamshire and South and West Yorkshire during the Iron Age and Romano-British periods. It challenged dominant narratives of the Iron Age and Romano-British periods by focusing on the regional evidence for inhabitation, evidence that was relatively unknown until the late 1970s and that consisted mainly of cropmarks of field systems and enclosures. Whilst additional aerial photography and developer-funded survey and excavation work have now significantly expanded the data available, this evidence had not been interpreted from a social perspective, and these landscapes and their inhabitants had been rarely discussed outside of the region, especially in wider syntheses of the Iron Age and Romano-British periods in Britain. This thesis was therefore a rather different account of people and places in northern England during the study period.
My PhD thesis assesses the current known extent of these enclosures and field systems within the region, and suggests reasons for their physical layout and purpose. I discuss the ways in which changing patterns of fields and enclosures affected movement through the landscape, and traditions of tenure, land use, animal husbandry and human-animal relations. This thesis explores the materiality of land divisions and settlements, the social practices involved in their construction and their possible symbolic connotations; through theoretical approaches to identity and relational agency informed by ethnographic analogies and a poetics of landscape.
This thesis also discusses changes in identity, production and consumption practices amongst these small-scale rural communities preceding and following the Roman invasion of the north; and issues concerning Roman imperialism and acculturation or ‘Romanisation’ within the region.

Castle-an-Dinas is one of the largest and most impressive hillforts in Cornwall, situated on a visually distinctive hill with extensive views over the surrounding countryside. Excavations were undertaken over three seasons by Bernard Wailes in the 1960s but the results were never fully published. Since the 1990s the hillfort has been managed by the Cornwall Heritage Trust and following the return of the excavation archives to Cornwall the Trust commissioned work on the archive and preparation of a publication. As part of the project a selection of the archive drawings have been redrawn for publication and the surviving finds and samples analysed. Six radiocarbon determinations were obtained, of which two are medieval or later. Three fall in the Middle Iron Age, one of which could extend back into the Early Iron Age, and a fourth indicates the Late Iron Age. These dates are significant because they provide the first scientific dating from the hillfort and, aside from Killibury, are the only secure radiocarbon dates associated with a Cornish hillfort.

Aerial  survey  during  the  1970s  identified  two
plough-levelled enclosures, 300m apart, on Winnall
Down,  Winchester.  One  of  these,  Winnall  Down  I,
was  excavated  by  Fasham  (1985)  in  advance  of
the M3 motorway extension, and revealed evidence
for intensive Bronze Age and Iron Age occupation.
The adjacent enclosure, Winnall Down II, was not
examined by Fasham however, and its date and relationship to Winnall Down I was not known. This
paper  details  the  results  of  a  small-scale  research
excavation on Winnall Down II. It established that
some occupation within both enclosures was contemporaneous  and  this  arrangement  implies  complex
agreements  over  land  apportionment  and  agricultural activities.

This paper, co-authored with Dr Joshua Pollard of the University of Bristol, was another interim report on the Gray Hill Landscape Research Project intended for Archaeology in Wales 44. It followed on from interim accounts of previous years' investigations that had been published in Past and Archaeology in Wales (Chadwick et al. 2002, 2003).

Unfortunately, the editor demanded a series of additional illustrations, including a detailed long section across the ring cairn that we had excavated, and how it fitted into typological schemes (something Josh and I were actually keen to avoid). By this time I had already lost my job with the University of Wales Newport and was having to concentrate on my PhD research whilst my other UWN colleagues were having to cope with the winding down and closure of the archaeology department at UWN; and Josh was extremely busy with his new post at the University of Bristol. There was therefore no time to make produce any additional publication quality illustrations from our field drawings, and so this interim was abandoned.

Joshua Pollard has recently organised post-excavation analyses of soil and charcoal samples at Bristol and after years of moving around the country working full-time in commercial archaeology I may finally have some time to contribute to post-excavation work myself, so hopefully work can resume on the archive and we can publish the results of the Gray Hill project in the next few years.

During the 80’s and 90’s a number of discoveries highlighted the occurrence of a number of large midden sites in and around the Vale of Pewsey consistently dated to the Late Bronze Age / Earliest Iron Age transition. Consisting of 1-2m deep dark humic deposits, rich in animal bone and ceramics, the dramatic nature of the midden sites is highlighted by the huge numbers of animals slaughtered on an annual basis and its implication on the population that such sites could support. Initial explanations for these sites have focused on the manipulation of social relations through cycles of competitive feasting (McOmish 1996).
This paper reviews recent work by the University of Sheffield on the faunal data from the middens at All Cannings Cross and Stanton St. Bernard. Whilst these sites were the scene of large seasonal congregations that augmented a full time population during the year, it argues against feasting as the primary driver of midden creation. It suggests that changes to the landscape on the downs during the Late Bronze Age represent a rise in transhumance and dispersal of communal elements. Evidence suggests that the midden sites were located at pivotal points in the landscape where large groups of people would be drawn together at certain times during the agricultural calendar. As such, in contrast to the socially divisive results of competitive feasting, it suggests the sites were integral to a process reincorporating community ethos for disparate groups and may over time have become symbolically associated with what it meant to belong to a community.

Studies of Iron Age artefacts from Britain tend to be dominated either by the study of metalwork, or pottery. This thesis presents a study not only of a different material, but also a different type of object: glass beads. These are found in a range of different sizes, shapes, colours, and employ a variety of different decorative motifs. Thus far, glass beads have been studied through typology (Guido 1978a) and compositional analysis (Bertini 2012; Henderson 1982), yet a thorough analysis of the social context of glass beads remains absent.

Through an analysis of glass beads from four key study regions in Britain, this thesis aims not only to address regional differences in appearance and chronology, but also to explore the role that this object played within the networks and relationships that constructed Iron Age society. It seeks to understand how they were used during their lives and how they came to be deposited within the archaeological record, in order to establish the social processes that glass beads were bound within.

The results indicate that glass beads were a strongly regionalised artefact, potentially reflecting differing local preferences for colour and motif. In addition, glass beads, in combination with several other types of object, were integral to Middle Iron Age dress. Given that the first century BC is often seen as a turning point in terms of settlements and material culture, this supports the possibility of strong continental exchange during an earlier period for either glass beads or raw materials. However, by the Late Iron Age in the first century BC and early first century AD, their use had severely diminished.

During the late Bronze and Early Iron Age, significant social changes seem to be affecting the communities inhabiting Wales. While in the millennia before, the archaeological record seems to be showing a mostly egalitarian social organisation, things seem to change dramatically in the first half of the first millennium BC. Before this change, social difference seems to have hardly been expressed and conspicuous consumption of human labour mostly been focussed on communal, inclusive projects. During the first half of the first millennium BC, expression of social difference becomes the norm, especially in the
context of the conspicuous consumption of human labour: particularly some, but by no means all, settlements and their boundaries are monumentalised. This creates ‘private’ spaces which apparently were accessible only to some members of the community to the exclusion of a majority of ‘others’; at the same time creating and expressing social
difference.
It is argued in this paper that these changes allow to date the beginning of a ‘Celtic’ Wales in a sociological sense: it is at this point in time that the kinds of societies emerge that characterise Wales for the next two millennia; that is, the kinds of ‘Celtic’ societies described in later historical sources, both classical and indigenous. It is such archaeologically traceable, local changes, which provide a considerably better starting points for our discipline and its historical narratives than idle speculations about the introduction of particular languages from abroad in prehistory; that is, in periods characterised by definition by the absence of any linguistic sources.

Welcome to the winter edition of the LPFG newsletter. In this issue, we introduce new research on the intentional destruction and deposition of
Bronze Age metalwork in South West England, as well as an investigation into British Early Iron Age horse-bits and associated harness fittings.
We present several new finds: a beautiful Iron Age linch pin from Suffolk (pictured to the left), and several mysterious objects from the Thames foreshore (interpretations are invited!).  We also review the British Museum’s new exhibition Celts: Art and Identity, which will move to the National Museum of Scotland in the spring of 2016.

Season’s greetings to all our readers!

This study provides the earliest unambiguous evidence for the extraction of lead in Northern Europe. Previous studies of early metal extraction have focused on copper ores in Ireland, with an increasing number of mines identified in western Britain, particularly in mid‐ and north‐Wales, in recent years. The evidence presented here focuses on the extraction of lead in the north‐west of England, extending our understanding of metal extraction beyond copper ores. Radiocarbon dating of sample sites to c.1800 cal.BC places anthropogenic activity in the British Early Bronze Age, challenging assumptions that lead was first utilised in the Middle Bronze Age period in Britain. Excavation of two Early Bronze Age burials, of contemporaneous date, found Collared Urn cremations with associated crystals of galena, placed as apparent grave offerings, inviting the possibility that they are the graves of putative mine workers.
KEYWORDS
EARLY BRONZE AGE, LEAD, MINING, MINERAL EXTRACTION, MAGNETIC MEASUREMENT, SATURATION ISOTHERMAL
REMANENT MAGNETISATION ASSAY, HEAVY METAL (LEAD) ASSAY, PREHISTORIC METALLURGY, COLLARED URN BURIAL,
UPLAND, PEAT, LANCASHIRE, ARCHAEOLOGY, ARCHAEOLOGICAL METHOD, EUROPEAN BRONZE AGE, BRITISH BRONZE AGE

General habitation models based on well-researched regions tend to be applied to other, less intensively studied regions, usually implicitly. However, whether they lend themselves to do that is hardly ever tested. It may even be that such general models prevent us from obtaining a clear view of patterns of supra-regional, regional, and local diversity. As a test case, this paper focuses on the development of landscape and habitation in the eastern part of the Netherlands from the Late Neolithic period until the start of the Middle Roman period (c. 2850 BC–AD 100). Special attention is given to site location, settlement development, and landscape organisation. The research area until now has hardly entered the archaeological debate on the habitation history of the Low Countries. It is demonstrated that even though some habitation characteristics are well-known from other parts of the Low Countries, and sometimes beyond, the organisation of later prehistoric societies in the research area also deviates in interesting ways. The case-study makes clear that leaning too heavily on research results from other regions brings the risk that specific characteristics of a region will be overlooked or that regional diversity will be ignored in order to make the data fit the expected pattern. One size does not fit all. The only way to prevent this is to build new, solid interpretative frameworks for regions that have so far received little attention, and to create an awareness that existing models should not be applied uncritically.

In British archaeology, there are apparent tensions between macro-level, landscape-wide analyses, and micro-level, site-based approaches. Macro-level analyses are based on techniques and technologies such as aerial photograph transcriptions, LiDAR data and GIS-based mapping, as exemplified in many excellent National Mapping Programme studies and several large-scale research projects. These studies have proved invaluable in mapping extensive areas of archaeology, and GIS-based data can be interrogated through many forms of spatial analysis. At the same time, developer-funded fieldwork has provided opportunities to excavate and record large-scale areas. Sampling and recording methodologies have improved tremendously in recent years, in conjunction with the emergence of contextual approaches to the evidence. Such investigations are contributing a significant amount of new and exciting information to field system studies, though often at a detailed, localised level. This disparity in the scales of landscape analysis and interpretation is explored through a series of case studies focusing on later prehistoric and Romano-British field systems. Different approaches and methodological, temporal and interpretative scales are examined, and the creative rather than negative aspects of such tensions explored.

A number of large midden sites, dating from the Late Bronze to Early Iron Age transition, have been discovered in the Vale of Pewsey, Wiltshire, over the last 30 years. These middens are characterised by deep deposits (up to 2m thick) of dark humic material, rich in animal bone and ceramics. This paper outlines some of the early findings from a recent programme of research undertaken by the University of Sheffield at All Cannings Cross and Stanton St. Bernard. The two sites appear to have several similarities such as midden structure, but also distinct differences in terms of the artefacts and the taphonomic processes at work. This paper theorises how the construction of the linear earthwork systems on the downs during the Late Bronze Age facilitated an increase in mobility and allowed a burgeoning in the size of the local communities. Whilst this made possible the management of large herds, it meant that larger proportions of the community were dispersed during the agricultural year. Evidence suggests that the sites were involved within a sheep dairying regime and were located at pivotal points in the landscape where large groups of people would be drawn together at certain times during the agricultural calendar. As such the sites were integral to a process reincorporating community ethos for the dsiparate groups and may over time have become symbolically associated with what it meant to belong to a community.

Ely, Cambridgeshire, is known to tourists as an incredible city steeped in myth and legend and dominated by the Norman Cathedral, a masterpiece of medieval architecture. There have been many popular books written about the Isle, but in 'Ely: A Hidden History' the approach is to look at the longue duree of life on the isle focusing on continuity and change in cultural practices.  The work combines the latest archaeological discoveries to tell the story of the settlement of the Isle from its earliest beginnings through to the seventeenth century. With vivid illustrations, the authors trace the origins of life in Ely, and bring the most recent archaeological excavations alive.

Topics covered include: the geological origins of the Isle of Ely, the first prehistoric settlement, including important archaeological sites at Haddenham, Wilburton and Barway. The foundation of the monastic centre by St Etheldreda, and the archaeological evidence for the Anglo Saxon foundations of the city, together with current thoughts on the site of St Etheldreda's first settlement. The story of Hereward the Wake, and his resistance against the Norman invaders. The Norman foundation of the cathedral and castle.

Key features of the book are discussion and synthesis of the latest research on the nationally important later Bronze Age hoard from Wilburton, and the Iron Age bog body from Soham, which highlight the importance of the Isle of Ely to British archaeology. The findings from Channel 4’s Time Team excavation of the medieval Broad Street are included, with illustrations, as are the stories of Hereward the Wake. Richly illustrated and extensively researched, this is a fascinating look at the early history of an amazing city.

This joint paper, with Dr Catriona Gibson of the University of Wales, was presented at the European Association of Archaeology conference, University of Glasgow, 5th September 2015; in a session entitled Lost in Space, or the Inbetweeners: Theorising Movement, Meshworks and Materialities in the Past.

Archaeological, historical, and ethnographic research has demonstrated how mountainous environments influence the socio-cultural dynamics of the communities that live in them and in their neighbouring areas. The development of these communities tends to occur at the margins, often far away from centres of political power.

This marginality is also extended to movement in these regions, where mountain ranges regularly constitute mighty obstacles on account of their natural configuration which plays a central role in strategy, commerce and travelling. In the case of western Sierra Morena in Spain, its constitution shaped both, the ways of transit through the mountains during Late Prehistory and the historical
routes of communication that traverse Andalucía.

Using a GIS methodology developed specifically to identify particular characteristics of the landscape relevant to human movement, such as passageways, crossing points, and natural areas of transit, we examine the role that natural accessibility had for the late prehistoric societies of this region. We conclude that the location of their habitats and symbolic places are strongly related to corridors, possibly due to an increasing importance of herding activities.

During the later Bronze Age several parts of northwest Europe saw accelerated deforestation and expansion of agricultural land. In densely populated areas the first (man-made) open landscapes came into being. Simultaneously in the Netherlands and elsewhere more stable settlement patterns appeared as well as extensive and planned allotment. Within a relatively short period of time the landscape became much more ‘cultural’ and planned. The dominance of straight lines and rectangles in this open, parcelled-out and compartmentalised landscape markedly contrasts with the ‘natural’ curved lines and ‘organic’ shapes of the preceding half-open and spatially dynamic ‘wood-pasture’ type landscapes. The new landscape had a distinctly different morphology and this may have influenced the way humans perceived their environment. This altered landscape perception then may explain the shift van curvilinearity to rectilinearity in the shaping of ritual enclosures and burial monuments. The sole ambition of this short paper is to argue the case within available evidence, rather than claiming to be the last word on the topic.