Download or read book Huntsman s Quarry Kemerton written by Robin Jackson and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2015-12-31 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeological investigations at Huntsman’s Quarry, Kemerton, south Worcestershire during 1995-6 recorded significant Late Bronze Age occupation areas and field systems spreading across more than 8 hectares. Limited evidence for Upper Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic and Beaker activity was also recovered together with an Early Bronze Age ring-ditch. Waterholes and associated round-houses, structures and pits were set within landscape of fields and droveways radiocarbon dated to the 12th–11th centuries cal BC. Elements of this field system probably predated the settlement. Substantial artifactual and ecofactual assemblages were recovered from the upper fills of the waterholes and larger pits . The settlement had a predominantly pastoral economy supported by some textile and bronze production. Ceramics included a notable proportion of non-local fabrics demonstrating that the local population enjoyed a wide range of regional contacts. Wider ranging, national exchange networks were also indicated by the presence of shale objects as well as the supply of bronze for metalworking, perhaps indicative of a site of some social status. Together the evidence indicates a small settlement within which occupation of individual areas was short-lived with the focus of the settlement shifting on a regular basis. It is proposed that this occurred on a generational basis, with each generation setting up a new ‘homestead’ with an associated waterhole. The settlement can be compared favorably to those known along the Thames Valley but until now not recognized in this part of the country. Cropmark evidence and limited other investigations indicate that the fields and droveways recorded represent a small fragment of a widespread system of boundaries established across the gravel terraces lying between Bredon Hill and the Carrant Brook. This managed and organized landscape appears to have been established for the maintenance of an economy primarily based on relatively intensive livestock farming; the trackways facilitating seasonal movement of stock between meadows alongside the Carrant Brook, the adjacent terraces and the higher land on Bredon Hill.
Download or read book Huntsman s Quarry Kemerton written by Robin Jackson and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2015-12-31 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeological investigations at Huntsman’s Quarry, Kemerton, south Worcestershire during 1995-6 recorded significant Late Bronze Age occupation areas and field systems spreading across more than 8 hectares. Limited evidence for Upper Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic and Beaker activity was also recovered together with an Early Bronze Age ring-ditch. Waterholes and associated round-houses, structures and pits were set within landscape of fields and droveways radiocarbon dated to the 12th–11th centuries cal BC. Elements of this field system probably predated the settlement. Substantial artifactual and ecofactual assemblages were recovered from the upper fills of the waterholes and larger pits . The settlement had a predominantly pastoral economy supported by some textile and bronze production. Ceramics included a notable proportion of non-local fabrics demonstrating that the local population enjoyed a wide range of regional contacts. Wider ranging, national exchange networks were also indicated by the presence of shale objects as well as the supply of bronze for metalworking, perhaps indicative of a site of some social status. Together the evidence indicates a small settlement within which occupation of individual areas was short-lived with the focus of the settlement shifting on a regular basis. It is proposed that this occurred on a generational basis, with each generation setting up a new ‘homestead’ with an associated waterhole. The settlement can be compared favorably to those known along the Thames Valley but until now not recognized in this part of the country. Cropmark evidence and limited other investigations indicate that the fields and droveways recorded represent a small fragment of a widespread system of boundaries established across the gravel terraces lying between Bredon Hill and the Carrant Brook. This managed and organized landscape appears to have been established for the maintenance of an economy primarily based on relatively intensive livestock farming; the trackways facilitating seasonal movement of stock between meadows alongside the Carrant Brook, the adjacent terraces and the higher land on Bredon Hill.
Download or read book The Social Context of Technology written by Leo Webley and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 571 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Social Context of Technology explores non-ferrous metalworking in Britain and Ireland during the Bronze and Iron Ages (c. 2500 BC to 1st century AD). Bronze-working dominates the evidence, though the crafting of other non-ferrous metals – including gold, silver, tin and lead – is also considered. Metalwork has long played a central role in accounts of European later prehistory. Metals were important for making functional tools, and elaborate decorated objects that were symbols of prestige. Metalwork could be treated in special or ritualised ways, by being accumulated in large hoards or placed in rivers or bogs. But who made these objects? Prehistoric smiths have been portrayed by some as prosaic technicians, and by others as mystical figures akin to magicians. They have been seen both as independent, travelling ‘entrepreneurs’, and as the dependents of elite patrons. Hitherto, these competing models have not been tested through a comprehensive assessment of the archaeological evidence for metalworking. This volume fills that gap, with analysis focused on metalworking tools and waste, such as crucibles, moulds, casting debris and smithing implements. The find contexts of these objects are examined, both to identify places where metalworking occurred, and to investigate the cultural practices behind the deposition of metalworking debris. The key questions are: what was the social context of this craft, and what was its ideological significance? How did this vary regionally and change over time? As well as elucidating a key aspect of later prehistoric life in Britain and Ireland, this important examination by leading scholars contributes to broader debates on material culture and the social role of craft.
Download or read book Westward on the High Hilled Plains written by Derek Hurst and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2017-03-31 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The West Midlands has struggled archaeologically to project a distinct regional identity, having largely been defined by reference to other areas with a stronger cultural identity and history, such as Wessex the South-West, and the North. Only occasionally has the West Midlands come to prominence, for instance in the middle Saxon period (viz. the kingdom of Mercia), or, much later, with rural south Shropshire being the birthplace of the Industrial rRevolution. Yet it is a region rich in natural mineral resources, set amidst readily productive farmland, and with major rivers, such as the Severn, facilitating transportation. The scale of its later prehistoric monuments, notably the hillforts, proclaims the centralisation of some functions, whether for security, exchange or emulation, while society supported the production and widespread distribution of specialised craft goods. Finally, towards the close of prehistory, localised kingdoms can be seen to emerge into view. In the course of reviewing the evidence for later prehistory from the Middle Bronze Age to Late Iron Age, the papers presented here adopt a variety of approaches, being either regional, county-wide, or thematic (eg. by site type, or artefactual typology), and they also encompass the wider landscape as reconstructed from environmental evidence. This is the second volume in a series – The Making of the West Midlands – that explores the archaeology of the English West Midlands region from the Lower Palaeolithic onwards. These volumes, based on a series of West Midlands Research Framework seminars, aim to transform perceptions of the nature and significance of the archaeological evidence across a large part of central Britain.
Download or read book Land Power and Prestige written by David T. Yates and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2007-08-01 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major phase of economic expansion occurred in southern England during the second and early first millennium BC, accompanied by a fundamental shift in regional power and wealth towards the eastern lowlands. This book offers a synthesis of available data on Bronze Age lowland field systems in England, including a gazetteer of sites. The research demonstrates the importance of large-scale animal husbandry in the mixed farming regimes as evidenced in the design of the field systems which incorporate droveways, stock proof fencing, watering holes, cow pens, sheep races and gateways for stockhandling. It is argued that the field systems represented a form of conspicuous production, an "intensification" of agrarian endeavour or a statement of intent, to be understood in relation to the maintenance, display and promotion of hierarchical social systems involved in exchange with their counterparts across the English Channel.
Download or read book Waterlands Prehistoric Life at Bar Pasture Pode Hole Quarry Peterborough written by Andy Richmond and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2022-06-30 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presenting the results of a decade-long archaeological investigation at Bar Pasture Farm, Pode Hole Quarry, Peterborough, this book represents one of the most significant landscape excavations carried out in recent years. The 55-hectare site was the scene of human activity on the fenland edge from the Mesolithic through to the Late Iron Age.
Download or read book Personifying Prehistory written by Joanna Brück and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-31 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bronze Age is frequently framed in social evolutionary terms. Viewed as the period which saw the emergence of social differentiation, the development of long-distance trade, and the intensification of agricultural production, it is seen as the precursor and origin-point for significant aspects of the modern world. This book presents a very different image of Bronze Age Britain and Ireland. Drawing on the wealth of material from recent excavations, as well as a long history of research, it explores the impact of the post-Enlightenment 'othering' of the non-human on our understanding of Bronze Age society. There is much to suggest that the conceptual boundary between the active human subject and the passive world of objects, so familiar from our own cultural context, was not drawn in this categorical way in the Bronze Age; the self was constructed in relational rather than individualistic terms, and aspects of the non-human world such as pots, houses, and mountains were considered animate entities with their own spirit or soul. In a series of thematic chapters on the human body, artefacts, settlements, and landscapes, this book considers the character of Bronze Age personhood, the relationship between individual and society, and ideas around agency and social power. The treatment and deposition of things such as querns, axes, and human remains provides insights into the meanings and values ascribed to objects and places, and the ways in which such items acted as social agents in the Bronze Age world.
Download or read book Worcestershire written by Alan Brooks and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 940 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Previous ed.: Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968, by Nikolaus Pevsner.
Download or read book Prehistoric and Medieval Occupation at Moreton in Marsh and Bishop s Cleeve Gloucestershire written by Martin Watts and published by Cotswold Archaeological Trust. This book was released on 2007 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two reports are published in this volume: excavations in 2003 at Blenheim Farm, Moreton-in-Marsh (by Jonathan Hart and Mary Alexander) and excavations in 2004 at 21 Church Road, Bishop's Cleeve (by Kate Cullen and Annette Hancocks). Significant remains recorded at Moreton-in-Marsh include a Middle Bronze Age settlement of four post-built circular structures partly enclosed by a segmented ditch, and a series of medieval fields and paddocks with a possible sheepcote structure. A Middle Palaeolithic handaxe was also recovered. The Iron Age and medieval remains recorded at Bishop's Cleeve add to our understanding of past settlement in and around the village, where extensive development has resulted in a number of significant excavations in recent years.
Download or read book A Biography of Power Research and Excavations at the Iron Age oppidum of Bagendon Gloucestershire 1979 2017 written by Tom Moore and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2020-07-30 with total page 626 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the changing nature of power and identity from the Iron Age to the Roman period in Britain. It provides fresh insights into the origins and nature of one of the lesser-known, but perhaps most significant, Late Iron Age 'oppida' in Britain: Bagendon in Gloucestershire.
Download or read book The Undiscovered Country written by Paul Garwood and published by Oxbow Books Limited. This book was released on 2007 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first volume in a series - The Making of the West Midlands - that explores the archaeology of the English West Midlands region from the Lower Palaeolithic to the Industrial Revolution. These books, based on the West Midlands Research Framework seminars held in 2002-3, aim to transform perceptions of the nature and significance of the archaeological evidence across a large part of central Britain, in an area extending from the plains of eastern England to the Cambrian Mountains and from the Cotswolds to the southern Pennines. The earlier prehistory of the region, in particular, has been neglected at a national level and deserves far wider recognition in research terms. This first volume reveals the scale, richness and diversity of the evidence from all earlier prehistoric periods in the West Midlands, from the Lower Palaeolithic to the Bronze Age, and considers its research significance and potential. The book is copiously illustrated, and includes a large number of colour maps and plans.
Download or read book Manure Matters written by Richard Jones and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-13 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In pre-industrial societies, in which the majority of the population lived directly off the land, few issues were more important than the maintenance of soil fertility. Without access to biodegradable wastes from production processes or to synthetic agrochemicals, early farmers continuously developed strategies aimed at adding nutritional value to their fields using locally available natural materials. Manure really mattered, its collection/creation, storage, and spreading becoming major preoccupations for all agriculturalists no matter what environment they worked or at what period. This book brings together the work of a group of international scholars working on social, cultural, and economic issues relating to past manure and manuring. Contributors use textual, linguistic, archaeological, scientific and ethnographic evidence as the basis for their analyses. The scope of the papers is temporally and geographically broad; they span the Neolithic through to the modern period and cover studies from the Middle East, Britain and Atlantic Europe, and India. Together they allow us to explore the signatures that manure and manuring have left behind, and the vast range of attitudes that have surrounded both substance and activity in the past and present.
Download or read book Gazetteer of Archaeological Investigations in England written by and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 982 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Information about the nature and extent of archaeological investigations carried out in England," compiled and abstracted from journals, reviews, annual reports, grant reports, and archaeologists' summaries of current work, many otherwise unpublished or intended for limited circulation.
Download or read book Iron Age and Romano British Agriculture in the North Gloucestershire Severn Vale written by Jonathan Hart and published by Cotswold Archaeological Trust. This book was released on 2008 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two reports are published in this volume: Prehistoric and Early Historic Activity, Settlement and Burial at Walton Cardiff, near Tewkesbury: Excavations at Rudgeway Lane 2004-2005 (by Jonathan Hart and E.R. McSloy), and Romano-British Agriculture at the former St James's Railway Station, Cheltenham: Excavations in 2000-2001 (by Laurent Coleman and Martin Watts). Significant remains from Rudgeway Lane include two Middle Bronze Age parallel ditches (the remains of an enclosure, or possibly a long barrow), and a Middle Iron Age enclosure superseded by 1st century AD unenclosed settlement, that was in turn replaced by a 2nd to late 3rd-century AD enclosed rectilinear settlement featuring a roundhouse, a well, several burials and an associated trackway. Two 6th-century burials, one with grave goods, were later made within the abandoned farmstead. At the St James's site in Cheltenham, excavation revealed a field system that was used and developed throughout the Roman period, together with a number of pits and postholes, with two late 4th century AD burials.
Download or read book Cladh Hallan Roundhouses and the dead in the Hebridean Bronze Age and Iron Age written by Mike Parker Pearson and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2021-10-31 with total page 1196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first of two volumes presents the archaeological evidence of a long sequence of settlement and funerary activity from the Beaker period (Early Bronze Age c. 2000 BC) to the Early Iron Age (c. 500 BC) at the unusually long-occupied site of Cladh Hallan on South Uist in the Western Isles of Scotland. Particular highlights of its sequence are a cremation burial ground and pyre site of the 18th–16th centuries BC and a row of three Late Bronze Age sunken-floored roundhouses constructed in the 10th century BC. Beneath these roundhouses, four inhumation graves contained skeletons, two of which were remains of composite collections of body parts with evidence for post-mortem soft tissue preservation prior to burial. They have proved to be the first evidence for mummification in Bronze Age Britain. Cladh Hallan’s remarkable stratigraphic sequence, preserved in the machair sand of South Uist, includes a unique 500-year sequence of roundhouse life in Late Bronze Age and Iron Age Britain. One of the most important results of the excavation has come from intensive environmental and micro-debris sampling of house floors and outdoor areas to recover patterns of discard and to interpret the spatial use of 15 domestic interiors from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age. From Cladh Hallan’s roundhouse floors we gain intimate insights into how daily life was organized within the house – where people cooked, ate, worked and slept. Such evidence rarely survives from prehistoric houses in Britain or Europe, and the results make a profound contribution to long-running debates about the sunwise organisation of roundhouse activities. Activity at Cladh Hallan ended with the construction and abandonment of two unusual double-roundhouses in the Early Iron Age. One appears to have been a smokery and steam room, and the other was used for metalworking.
Download or read book Transactions and Proceedings written by Birmingham and Warwickshire Archaeological Society and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 626 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Prehistory of Britain and Ireland written by Richard Bradley and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-16 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Highlights the achievements of prehistoric people in Britain and Ireland over a 5,000 year period.