Pottery was at the heart of the ‘Neolithic package’ appearing in Britain with the first farmers around 4000 BC. It arrived as a mature technology and was essential to the new, largely sedentary, lifestyle and economy. It transformed storage and cooking practices, and the earliest ceramics seem to have been essential equipment in the new practice of dairying. The pottery changed over time and, as a result, ceramics have been fundamental to the construction of relative chronologies since the early days of modern archaeology. Even with the development of absolute dating techniques, the role of pottery as a dating tool has not diminished but instead has become refined and more accurate.But pottery is not just a tool to dating the past – it also represents a facet of prehistoric art and expression. Starting simply, ceramics became arguably the main medium for display with designs often of great complexity. Simple techniques, motifs and panels are combined to create highly decorated vessels often of great individuality. The use of inlays, pastes and slips added contrasting colors to these vibrant designs.By the end of the Neolithic, ceramics became one of the major grave goods of British Prehistory, acting as accompaniments to those that warranted formal burial whether by inhumation or cremation. This practice continued throughout the Early Bronze Age to the extents that, lacking contemporary domestic sites, most of the corpora of Early Bronze Age ceramics are largely sepulchral in context. As we increasingly realize that burial rituals may have been varied and complex, so the roles of these ceramics are becoming increasingly questioned.This book traces the 3000 years of ceramic use and development in Britain, charting the changing forms and decorative techniques and the differing and changing roles that pottery played within its contemporary society.

Frontiers were an integral feature of every medieval polity, and their spaces were defined by opposing spheres of influence, contact and connectivity. As these polities expanded and contracted, often as a result of military conquest and territorial annexation, their permeable edges became defined by transformative cultural landscapes. Here, the encounters between native or resident and incoming populations, from small elite groups through to larger numbers of migrants from diverse social backgrounds, resulted in varying degrees of cultural hybridity. This came to define frontier societies, and left an enduring impact even as borderlands continued to move. They also saw the reconfiguration of political, economic and religious landscapes as frontier authorities invested in both old and new centers, with varying degrees of continuity. Today, the remains of their fortified residences represent the most striking monuments associated with former frontiers. They remain at the center of public narratives regarding state formation and cultural conflict.Adopting the definition of frontiers as both the spaces at the edges of polities and the composite societies resulting from their territorial expansion, this book presents a multi-disciplinary study of their dynamics. Focusing on the western Mediterranean, it draws on case studies of cultural landscapes shaped by two contrasting periods of conquest, regime change and state formation: the Castilian and Aragonese conquests of al-Andalus (Islamic Iberia) and the French annexation of Occitania following the Albigensian Crusade. Integrating perspectives from settlement and landscape archaeology, geoarchaeology, zooarchaeology, archaeobotany, archaeometallurgy and isotopic analyses, this book provides a new framework for the study of the transformative spaces of medieval frontier societies.

The valley of the western Rother lies within the South Downs National Park but has a special character based on its Cretaceous geology of sandstones and clays. These give rise to soils that are ideal for agriculture but are extremely erodible. Over the centuries the area has been exploited by humans and partially cleared of forest. In this book, the archaeological history of the Rother Valley is summarized, with particular emphasis on the evidence for Mesolithic, Bronze Age and Roman occupation. Analysis of sediments in ponds adds to the evidence for changes that have happened over the last few hundred years. A notable feature of the cultural landscape is the network of sunken lanes.The Rother Valley contains unique chalk-aquifer fed streams with rare and protected species, such as sea trout and otter. Heathland, floodplain, wet meadows and woodlands are interspersed with agriculture, linked together by hedgerows and ditches. The health of the river is threatened by polluting inputs from farming and sewage. Past weather and hydrological records show the potential impact of climate change on the functioning of the river. The impact of recent changes on water availability for irrigation and human consumption are explored in relation to ecosystem requirements. Soil erosion is a significant problem, with the resulting high river sediment concentrations requiring expensive cleaning for the water to be fit for human consumption and the runoff often causes flooding of roads and properties. Mitigation measures aim to reduce the loss of soil on fields and interrupt connectivity between fields and the river system. We identify sediment sources contributing eroded soil to the river, the function of field-edge sediment traps, in-stream weirs and major reservoirs on sediment storage and connectivity.Finally, the book considers the future of the unique landscape that is the Rother Valley, including plans for restoration of the flood plain. Contributors include planners, researchers and managers of the large estates that are an integral part of the Rother landscape.

The date of the Cerne Giant has long been a matter for debate, as exemplified by a public and televised debate of March 1996, published as The Cerne Giant: An Antiquity on Trial (1999, Oxbow Books). Excavations were conducted in 2020 by the National Trust in the centenary year of its ownership of the Giant. The excavations were limited and targeted in extent and scope, the aim was to date the actual construction of the iconic figure by absolute dating methods (OSL). As the 1999 publication explained, the jury was still out – with advocates for a prehistoric origin, one connected to the period of the Civil War or a more modern one. In the event, the dates were a complete surprise, falling within the Anglo-Saxon period.The research has provided an accurate, scientifically verified date for the Cerne Giant. These unexpected results, together with the land-use history and ominous ‘disappearance’ of the Giant for six centuries, provide the platform for reconsideration and new discussion and debate.Part 1 deals with new research: the historical background and aims, the excavation results, stratigraphic finds, geoarchaeological interpretation, land-use history (environmental/land snails), and discussion. Part 2 is the wider discussion and implications derived from the results and places the Giant in his local and Saxon context. Part 3 begins with summaries of the other two excavated hill figures (the Long Man of Wilmington and the Uffington White Horse) followed by a series of essays from leading archaeologists, historians and experts in early medieval iconography.

Forsaken Relics examines the intricate mechanisms of ritualistic appropriation of ruined and/or abandoned assets and artifacts. It explores how this process occurs in situations where there is legislation to regulate the appropriation of ownerless property, as well as in cases where such rules are either absent or contested, leading to disputes and conflicts.Every society has developed its unique ways of managing the re-appropriation of ‘ownerless things’, such as places and houses abandoned after conflicts, crises, or natural disasters, forsaken cemeteries, tombs, and forgotten goods. These practices often involve the use of ritualistic methods to mask the intent to appropriate abandoned artifacts. The book aims to stimulate comparative analysis of this topic in both ancient and modern societies, profiling the identity of the ‘actors’ of appropriation, examining the definition of abandonment, and exploring the ritual aspects such as inventorying material, dedication to ancestors, and prayers to gods that legitimize the re-appropriation of places and goods classified as abandoned.

The end of the 3rd millennium was a time of significant transformation in south-east Arabia (the United Arab Emirates and northern Oman). The cultural homogeneity of the preceding Early Bronze Age, Umm an-Nar period (c. 2700–2000 BC) came to an end and gave way to the Middle Bronze Age, Wadi Suq period (2000–1600 BC). Settlements changed, and possibly began to decline in size and number, the economy changed for many and the important trade in copper ore seems to have declined. In addition, there was a marked change in funerary practices as new types of tombs appeared – both collective and individual burials.All of this took place within the context of a climatic shift that led to a decline in rainfall across many parts of the region. Much of the countryside of south-eastern Iran was abandoned and the urban period of the Indus Valley was weakening. In the midst of this turmoil, the limited agricultural plains of northern Ras al-Khaimah appear to have developed into an island where there was greater continuity than elsewhere.This book reports on the excavation of a number of monumental collective tombs that were built there and used through the early part of the 2nd millennium. The way that they were constructed and used as well as the burial goods that they contain throw light on the population of this area, and give some indication of how and why it was that life continued in this small pocket in a way that was different to surrounding regions.

Northwold Manor is a multi-period listed building (grade II*), about which almost nothing was known. Uninhabited since 1955, it had fallen into a state of extreme dereliction, and was beyond economic repair when the author purchased the property in 2014. He and his wife, Diane Gibbs, embarked on a major restoration that ran for nine years. The restoration was carried out as a quasi-archaeological operation, revealing that the building complex had Tudor origins, followed by the construction of a Stuart house, with Georgian improvements, and a new entertaining suite added in 1814. The Manor, with its fine drawing room, ballroom and orangery, was the grandest house in Northwold, and research into the families that occupied it revealed unexpected connections to the French Bourbon Court. From the 17th to the 20th century, the Carters were the principal owners, and a local branch of the family included Howard Carter, discoverer of Tutankhamen’s tomb.This account begins with a topographical study of Northwold and its three medieval manors, followed by an exploration of the decline of the Carter family in the late 19th century. That triggered the break-up of the Northwold Estate in 1919. Passing through several ownerships, the Manor was earmarked for demolition in 1961; reprieved, it became a furniture store in the 1970s, and every room was solidly packed. As the roofs failed and water poured in, ceilings and floors collapsed, carrying with them the stacks of rotting furniture. By the late 1990s, walls and gables were collapsing too, and the local authority attempted to intervene. A long struggle to save the Manor ensued, finally ending with compulsory purchase in 2013.Although manor houses occur in most English parishes, they have received surprisingly little archaeological study. Every year, hundreds are restored or altered, but rarely accompanied by detailed recording or scholarly research; and popular television programs reveal the shameful level of destruction that takes place in the name of ‘restoration’. This is a book like no other: the holistic approach to the rehabilitation of Northwold’s derelict manor house – involving history, archaeology, architecture and genealogy – demonstrates how much can be learned about a building that had never before been studied. The project has received several awards.

In the second millennium BC, mining for copper ore on the Great Orme, Wales, created one of Europe’s largest surviving prehistoric copper mines. The ore from the mine was smelted into metal that was cast and worked into the rich variety of copper and bronze objects synonymous with the Bronze Age in Britain and Europe.This book presents an original synthesis and reinterpretation of the complex prehistoric archaeology of the Great Orme mine. It uses previously unpublished data in a novel and comprehensive analysis to determine where, when and how mining took place at this landmark site during the Bronze Age.The author draws on a wealth of information on the archaeology of the contemporary landscape and practices of metal production and working to examine the social nature of prehistoric mining. Observations are offered and conclusions drawn about who participated in mining; the character of social relations at the mine; the relationship between mining and identity; and how mining for copper ore shaped the miners’ worldview.Well supported by the evidence and embedded in contemporary theoretical discussions of Bronze Age social life, this significant study establishes an important research agenda for ongoing work at the Great Orme mine and makes a substantial contribution to broader debates about the nature of Bronze Age society. It offers for the first time a fully contextualised interpretation of Bronze Age mining in Britain from the perspective that it was a fundamentally social activity. Community, Technology and Tradition is for anyone interested in prehistoric mining and metallurgy, the British Bronze Age and the archaeology of past lives.

In 1979, a pipe trench at the military airbase RAF Lakenheath in the historic parish of Eriswell, Suffolk, revealed the presence of possible inhumation graves of the Early Anglo-Saxon period not far from the group of 33 burials excavated in the 1950s and published as the cemetery of Little Eriswell. Extensive redevelopment starting in the late 1990s led to the excavation of what appears to be a remarkable group of three discrete but contemporary burial grounds in close proximity, here labelled the West, Central and East sites — the latter including the Little Eriswell graves. While it is not certain that the Central and East burial grounds are fully separate, these two areas do differ markedly in layout and focus and in aspects of grave furnishing. Burial began in the West site with cremation around the middle of the 5th century. All three burial grounds were used for inhumation from the second half of the 5th to the late 6th century. For a further century, only the West site remained in use; this site was abandoned in the late 7th century when burial commenced at a ‘Middle Anglo-Saxon’ cemetery 300m to the south at Lord’s Walk. By the late 6th century the size of the burying population had apparently fallen by as much as 80%, from a hundred or more to maybe only twenty. The quality of the archaeological evidence allows for detailed examination and reconstruction of burial practice in terms of grave structure and how the bodies were laid in them. Soil conditions create some variance in skeletal preservation, but generally good survival reveals a naturally structured community, and allows for observation of its pathologies. Isotope and pioneering aDNA analyses identify an essentially local population but with one early female grave that is credibly that of a 5th-century immigrant from across the North Sea, and also demonstrating cross-generational descent within the community. The grave goods illustrate social differentiation, primarily by sex and age although exceptionally richly furnished and elaborately constructed graves such as the horse and ‘warrior’ burial embody additional status differentials. A series of expert scientific analyses have been targeted at revealing how this community made use of the principal resources available to it; how it could live and function in this topographical niche at this period. It is clearly demonstrated that there is a very solid foundation in all of the evidence from this site for continuing specialised research, not least as new techniques of analysis and research perspectives develop.

Pilgrims in Place, Pilgrims in Motion: Sacred Travel in the Ancient Mediterranean brings together exciting interdisciplinary scholarship on the connected poles of pilgrimage: the sanctuaries being visited, and the journeys to get there. Contributions investigate different concepts of place, community, social tensions and expectations of pilgrim behaviour; long-term meanings of place as embodied in memory and topography; mobility, migration and place-making; connectivity and its relationship to pilgrimage. Individual chapters discuss shrines, sanctuaries and sacred places as well as journeys and mobility across Greek, Roman and late antique contexts, framed as part of a key debate within the study of pilgrimage, the central tension between place and motion.

The research presented in this book results from an international interdisciplinary research program in Hayonim cave (Israel) from 1992 to 2000, directed by Prof O. Bar-Yosef (Harvard University) and L. Meignen (CNRS, France), and focusing on a long archaeological sequence dated to circa 300-140 000 years ago. The intensive fieldwork and research following it allowed us to document an essential period of human history in the Levant: the end of the Lower Palaeolithic and Early Middle Palaeolithic, during which recent discoveries showed that the early H. sapiens, expanding out of Africa, reached SW Asia around 180-190 000 y ago.This book brings together the impressive findings of nine years of excavations and analysis by an interdisciplinary team of well-known scholars from US universities (Harvard, Boston, University of Arizona), Weizmann Institute (Israel) as well as from the French CNRS.Several complementary approaches are implemented to understand early human economic, cultural and behavioral changes observed at this crucial period. It is based on detailed studies of lithic artifact technology, the remains of systematic fire use and cave occupation by early humans, and foraging strategies that include the early development of human adaptations for hunting large prey. In the context of the highly debated cultural break observed at the end of the Lower Palaeolithic, we propose new interpretations based on these innovative results.This volume will provide a cornerstone for the history of humankind in a critical geographic region, at the crossroads between Africa and Eurasia.

As central places of human interaction, cities influence the reality of our lives like no other phenomenon. They are in a highly complex, reciprocal relationship with changing environmental, social, political, economic and religious constellations. Accordingly, the demands placed on cities and the ideas associated with them are often subject to highly dynamic change. Especially against the backdrop of increasingly rapid urbanisation, shaping this change is one of today’s central challenges and it deserves a prominent position in public discourse.The booklet “Urban Design” aims to show the complexity of this discourse. It invites reflection on the possibilities of designing cities and their impact on the present and the future. To this end, it brings together contributions from very different disciplines, each of which provides their own perspectives on the phenomenon of the city.A basic idea here is that contemporary cities cannot be designed without a deeper understanding of their historical dimension. On a practical level, this entails the (selective) visualisation of the archaeological cultural heritage, with its implications for identity politics. But its is also concerned with the dependence of historical city images on contemporary discourses, for example, religious ideas and their political utilisation or literary imaginations of the urban.Moreover, the booklet also wants to inquire about the direct effects of material urban design on the residents. For instance, design characteristics influence orientation and movement in urban space and thus determine the movement options of handicapped and elderly people. The urban environment also has a direct impact on human health.The extent to which current discourses on environmental problems and climate change are changing the requirements for urban design is exemplified by contributions on the topics of transport and climate-neutral construction. It is to be expected that innovative ideas in these areas, in particular, will change the appearance of the cities of the future in the long term.

Silchester (Calleva) experienced major disruption in the late first century A.D. as the Iron Age oppidum was transformed into the Roman city responsible for the administration of the civitas of the Atrebates. Aligned on the cardinal points, a rectilinear street grid was laid across the settlement replacing the late Iron Age network of streets and lanes oriented north-west/south-east and north-east/south-west. While the pre-existing property boundaries within Insula IX were retained there was a total re-build within them. The excavated area contained one complete property and fragments of three of its neighbours. Rather than conform to the new grid all the buildings were constructed at 45 degrees to it, reasserting the late Iron Age orientations. The timber-framed buildings within the complete property consisted of a row of three — a rectangular kitchen, a town-house and a roundhouse — separated by a yard from a re-built taberna, also diagonal to the street on which it fronted. The surgical and writing instruments associated with the circular building suggested it functioned as a healer’s and/or teacher’s house. This volume completes the publication of the excavations in Insula IX, 1997–2014.

Hala Ghellali was eighteen years old when her father first took her to the market to buy her first silver bracelets. They visited traditional jewelers in the madina al-qadima, the old walled city of Tripoli. This single event in 1975, ignited her lifelong passion for traditional jewelry and costume items and she has been collecting objects and stories ever since. Her unique stories, personal observations, research and firsthand information about jewelry design and silversmithing fill this book. ‘Jewelry and adornment of Libya' aims to share with its readers a lifetime passion for the jewelry made in Tripoli and other areas of Libya. It includes a section dedicated solely to the role of jewelry and costume in Tripoli with narratives of traditional weddings, and traditions linked to jewelry gifting in the city. The book is dedicated to the local jewelers and masters of weaving and embroidery who have almost all disappeared, their art and skills not being passed on to the present generation.

A prequel to his ‘World’s end’: British military outposts in the ‘ring fence’ around Australia 1824–1849, this book by prize-winning historian and keen sailor Alan Powell celebrates the small ships of Australia’s colonial navy. Brigs, cutters, schooners and sloops were pressed into service in a rag-tag assembly of ‘seagoing maids of all work’, cramped and overloaded with provisions, building materials, livestock and even convicts. The crews of these ‘doughty little craft’ sailed with courage and often blind faith in their ultimate survival as they toiled through some of the world’s most treacherous seas to deliver life-preserving supplies to the military outposts that ringed Australia in the early nineteenth century.

The Beaker People: isotopes, mobility and diet in prehistoric Britain presents the results of a major project that sought to address a century-old question about the people who were buried with Beakers a – the distinctive pottery of Continental origin that was current, predominantly in equally distinctive burials, in Britain from around 2450 BC. Who were these people? Were they immigrants and how far did they move around? What did they eat? What was their lifestyle? How do they compare with Britain’s earlier inhabitants and with contemporaries who did not use Beaker pottery? An international team of leading archaeologists and scientists, led by Professor Mike Parker Pearson, was assembled to address these questions.Around 300 skeletons were subjected to isotope analysis to explore patterns of mobility and diet, and 150 new radiocarbon dates were obtained. Dental microwear was examined for 64 individuals to provide further information about the food they had eaten, and new information on the sex and age of 201 people obtained. A comparative study was undertaken of the shape and size of Beaker users’ skulls and those of Neolithic people in the Peak District of England, to examine the long-held claim that there was a switch from long-headed to round-headed people with the appearance of Beakers. Tantalizing evidence for head-binding among Neolithic people was found. The range of objects found in Beaker graves was reviewed.In addition, the Beaker People Project was able to incorporate the results of another project, focusing on Beaker users in north-east Scotland (The Beakers and Bodies Project) along with other recently obtained data, including ancient DNA results. Overall, new light has been shed on 369 people: 333 Beaker and non-Beaker users from the core 2500–1500 BC period, along with 17 from the Neolithic and 19 from after 1500 BC. While the genetic data provide convincing evidence for immigration by Continental Beaker users, the isotopic data indicate a more detailed picture of movements, mostly of fairly short distances within Britain, by the descendants of the first Beaker users. This lavishly illustrated book presents a body of data that will be vital to studies of Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age Britain for decades to come.