Download or read book Neolithic Scotland written by Gordon Noble and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2006-06-19 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an account of the Neolithic period in Scotland from its earliest traces around 4000 BC to the transformation of Neolithic society in the Early Bronze Age fifteen hundred years later. Gordon Noble inteprets Scottish material in the context of debates and issues in European archaeology, comparing sites and practices identified in Scotland to those found elsewhere in Britain and beyond. He considers the nature and effects of memory, sea and land travel, ritualisation, island identities, mortuary practice, symbolism and environmental impact. He synthesises excavations and research conducted over the last century and more, bringing together the evidence for understanding what happened in Scotland during this long period. His long-term and regionally based analysis suggests new directions for the interpretation of the Neolithic more generally. After outlining the chronology of the Neolithic in Europe Dr Noble considers its origins in Scotland. He investigates why the Earlier Neolithic in Scotland is characterised by regionally-distinct monumental traditions and asks if these reflect different conceptions of the world. He uses a long-term perspective to explain the nature of monumental landscapes in the Later Neolithic and considers whether Neolithic society as a whole might have been created and maintained through interactions at places where large-scale monuments were built. He ends by considering how the Neolithic was transformed in the Early Bronze Age through the manipulation of the material remains of the past. Neolithic Scotland provides a comprehensive, approachable and up-to-date account of the Scottish Neolithic. Such a book has not been available for many years. It will be widely welcomed.
Download or read book Neolithic of Mainland Scotland written by Kenneth Brophy and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-16 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeologists show us how the Neolithic human lived in mainland ScotlandWhat was life like in Scotland between 4000 and 2000BC? Where were people living? How did they treat their dead? Why did they spend so much time building extravagant ritual monuments? What was special about the relationship people had with trees and holes in the ground? What can we say about how people lived in the Neolithic and early Bronze Age of mainland Scotland where much of the evidence we have lies beneath the ploughsoil, or survives as slumped banks and ditches, or ruinous megaliths?Each contribution to this volume presents fresh research and radical new interpretations of the pits, postholes, ditches, rubbish dumps, human remains and broken potsherds left behind by our Neolithic forebears.From the APFWhat was life like in Scotland between 4000 and 2000BC? Where were people living? How did they treat their dead? Why did they spend so much time building extravagant ritual monuments? What was special about the relationship people had with trees? Why was so much time and effort spent digging holes and filling them back up again? What can we say about how people lived in the Neolithic and early Bronze Age of mainland Scotland where much of the evidence we have lies beneath the plough soil, or survives as slumped banks and filled ditches, or ruinous megaliths?This book will draw together leading experts and young researchers to present fresh research and outline radical new interpretations of the pits, postholes, ditches, rubbish dumps, human remains and broken potsherds left behind by our Neolithic forebears. Much of this evidence has come to light in the past few decades, putting the emphasis very much lowland, mainland Scotland as opposed to more famous Orcadian Neolithic sites. Inspired by the work of Gordon Barclay, the leading scholars of Scotland's Neolithic in the last 40 years, the chapters in this book offer a wide-ranging analysis of the evidence we have for the first farmers in Scotland.
Download or read book Neolithic Britain written by Rodney Castleden and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-10-24 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The climax of the Stone Age in Britain, the Neolithic period (4700-2000BC), was a period of startling achievement. The British Isles are rich in Neolithic sites, which give us evidence of a complex and surprisingly developed archaic society. The author surveys 1100 secular and ceremonial sites in Britain, selecting some for detailed explanation; from these a sense of the diversity and dynamism of the living Neolithic communities emerges. He presents a comprehensive, profusely illustrated and up-to-date view of the Neolithic, organised by county. Archaeologists and prehistorians will find this book of interest and it should prove indispensable to students of archaeology as a source of information about the British Neolithic.
Download or read book Reading Between the Lines written by Kenneth Brophy and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-05 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reading Between the Lines: The Neolithic Cursus Monuments of Scotland is the first systematic analysis of Scotland’s cursus monuments and is written by one of the foremost scholars of the Neolithic in Scotland. Drawing on fifteen years of experience of cropmark interpretation, as well as his involvement in several excavations of cursus monuments and contemporary sites, Kenneth Brophy uncovers some of the secrets of the Neolithic landscape. While outlining the physical characteristics of the cursus, this book also addresses the limitations of this kind of typological description when applied to monuments which varied so remarkably in terms of materiality and size. Moving beyond a morphological account, Brophy considers what can be said of this diverse group of sites, and how they were actually built and used in prehistory, in light of several decades of aerial reconnaissance and excavation in Scotland. Through a close study of the differences, as well as the similarities, between these structures, this book offers a nuanced account of cursus monuments, finally allowing this important monument type to be better understood and placed alongside others of the period. Offering exciting new ways of thinking about these enigmatic yet important monuments, Reading Between the Lines: The Neolithic Cursus Monuments of Scotland is an essential resource for students and specialists in British prehistory, providing an introduction to the Early Neolithic archaeology of lowland Scotland as well as a meditation on broader aspects of monumentality and architecture.
Download or read book The Mystery of Skara Brae written by Laird Scranton and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-11-15 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An investigation of the origins of the Neolithic farming village on Orkney Island • Reveals the striking similarities between Skara Brae and the traditions of pre-dynastic ancient Egypt as preserved by the Dogon people of Mali • Explains how megalithic stone sites near Skara Brae conform to Dogon cosmology • Examines the similarities between Skara Brae and Gobekli Tepe and how Skara Brae may have been a secondary center of learning for the ancient world In 3200 BC, Orkney Island off the coast of Northern Scotland was home to a small farming village called Skara Brae. For reasons unknown, after nearly six centuries of continuous habitation, the village was abandoned around 2600 BC and its stone structures covered over--perhaps deliberately, like the structures at Gobekli Tepe. Although now well-excavated, very little is known about the peaceful people who lived at Skara Brae or their origins. Who were they and where did they go? Drawing on his in-depth knowledge of the connections between the cosmology and linguistics of Egyptian, Dogon, Chinese, and Vedic traditions, Laird Scranton reveals the striking similarities between Skara Brae and the Dogon of Mali, who still practice the same cosmology and traditions they once shared with pre-dynastic Egypt. He shows how the earliest Skara Brae houses match the typical Dogon stone house as well as Schwaller de Lubicz’s intrepretation of the Egyptian Temple of Man at Luxor. He explains how megalithic stone sites near Skara Brae conform to Dogon cosmology, each representing sequential stages of creation as described by Dogon priests, and he details how the houses at Skara Brae also represent a concept of creation. Citing a linguistic phenomenon known as “ultraconserved words,” the author compares words of the Faroese language at Skara Brae, a language with no known origin, with important cosmological words from Dogon and ancient Egyptian traditions, finding obvious connections and similarities. Scranton shows how the cultivated field alongside the village of Skara Brae corresponds to the “heavenly field” symbolism pervasive throughout many ancient cultures, such as the Field of Reeds of the ancient Egyptians and the Elysian Fields of ancient Greece. He demonstrates how Greek and Egyptian geographic descriptions of these fields are a consistent match with Orkney Island. Examining the similarities between Skara Brae and Gobekli Tepe, Scranton reveals that Skara Brae may have been a secondary center of initiation and civilizing knowledge, a long-lost Egyptian mystery school set up millennia after Gobekli Tepe was ritually buried, and given the timing of the site, is possibly the source of the first pharaohs and priests of ancient Egypt.
Download or read book Ancient Lives written by Fraser Hunter and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancient Lives provides new perspectives on objects, people and place in early Scotland and beyond.This scholarly and accessible volume provides a show-case of new information and new perspectives on material culture linked, but not limited to, Scotland.
Download or read book Neolithic Scotland written by Gordon Noble and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing an account of the Neolithic period in Scotland from its earliest traces to the transformation of Neolithic society in the Early Bronze Age 1500 years later, this book synthesizes and interprets excavations and research and brings together the evidence essential to understanding the first farming communities of Scotland.
Download or read book Stone Age Farmers Beside the Sea written by Caroline Arnold and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1997 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the Stone Age settlement preserved in the sand dunes on one of Scotland's Orkney Islands, telling how it was discovered and what it reveals about life in prehistoric times.
Download or read book Skara Brae written by V. gordon Childe and published by . This book was released on 1955 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Prehistoric Peoples of Scotland written by Stuart Piggott and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-10-30 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on lectures given at the Conference of the British Summer School of Archaeology at Edinburgh in 1954, this book, published in 1962, surveys the general field of pre-historic Scotland, five archaeologists each contributing chapters discussing the main aspects and problems that have presented themselves in specialised research areas. From the first peopling of the area by human communities with hunting and food-gathering economies, to field antiquities and the introduction of copper and bronze metallurgy and on to the first settlement by Celtic speakers and the links to the first historically documented Scotland. Contributors: R.J.C. Atkinson, G.E. Daniel, T.G.E. Powell and C.A.R. Radford.
Download or read book Roots of Nationhood The Archaeology and History of Scotland written by Louisa Campbell and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2018-10-31 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 12 papers from specialists covering a wide array of time periods and subject areas, this volume explores the links between identity and nationhood throughout the history of Scotland from the prehistory of northern Britain to the more recent heralding of Scottish identity as a multi-ethnic construction and the possibility of Scottish independence.
Download or read book The Development of Neolithic House Societies in Orkney written by Colin Richards and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2016-04-30 with total page 802 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considering that Orkney is a group of relatively small islands lying off the northeast coast of the Scottish mainland, its wealth of Neolithic archaeology is truly extraordinary. An assortment of houses, chambered cairns, stone circles, standing stones and passage graves provides an unusually comprehensive range of archaeological and architectural contexts. Yet, in the early 1990s, there was a noticeable imbalance between 4th and 3rd millennium cal BC evidence, with house structures, and ‘villages’ being well represented in the latter but minimally in the former. As elsewhere in the British Isles, the archaeological visibility of the 4th millennium cal BC in Orkney tends to be dominated by the monumental presence of chambered cairns or tombs. In the 1970s Claude Lévi-Strauss conceived of a form of social organization based upon the ‘house’ – sociétés à maisons – in order to provide a classification for social groups that appeared not to conform to established anthropological kinship structures. In this approach, the anchor point is the ‘house’, understood as a conceptual resource that is a consequence of a strategy of constructing and legitimizing identities under ever shifting social conditions. Drawing on the results of an extensive program of fieldwork in the Bay of Firth, Mainland Orkney, the text explores the idea that the physical appearance of the house is a potent resource for materializing the dichotomous alliance and descent principles apparent in the archaeological evidence for the early and later Neolithic of Orkney. It argues that some of the insights made by Lévi-Strauss in his basic formulation of sociétés à maisons are extremely relevant to interpreting the archaeological evidence and providing the parameters for a ‘social’ narrative of the material changes occurring in Orkney between the 4th and 2nd millennia cal BC. The major excavations undertaken during the Cuween-Wideford Landscape Project provided an unprecedented depth and variety of evidence for Neolithic occupation, bridging the gap between domestic and ceremonial architecture and form, exploring the transition from wood to stone and relationships between the living and the dead and the role of material culture. The results are described and discussed in detail here, enabling tracing of the development and fragmentation of sociétés à maisons over a 1500 year period of Northern Isles prehistory.
Download or read book The Circular Archetype in Microcosm The Carved Stone Balls of Late Neolithic Scotland written by Chris L. Stewart-Moffitt and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2022-07-14 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study is the culmination of seven years research into the Carved Stone Balls of Late Neolithic Scotland. It is the first study of these enigmatic artefacts since that undertaken by Dorothy Marshall in 1977 and includes all currently known examples in both museums and private hands, described and analysed in considerable detail.
Download or read book The Prehistory Of Scotland written by V. Gordon Childe and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-10-24 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume, originally published in 1935, sought to reveal the significance of Scottish prehistory for the development of understanding of European prehistory. Written at a time of rapid accumulation of new relics and monuments and the insights from them, Professor Childe presented some important new data and made tentative conclusions for the future results from these finds. After an introduction to the geography of Scotland the book looks at evidence from cairns, tombs and stone circles and then addresses chronologically the evidence from Early Bronze Age to Late and onto the Iron Age, with a chapter devoted to forts, towns and castles. It ends with a discussion of what happened in the Dark Ages and addresses questions about the Celts and the Picts and the diversity of the peoples in Scotland.
Download or read book Farmers Temples and Tombs written by Gordon Barclay and published by Birlinn Publishers. This book was released on 2005 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For too long the story of this exciting period has been told using the same stone-built suites, mainly in the North and on Orkney. It tells the story using evidence from all over Scotland, from simple settlements as well as the great monuments, tombs and mysterious standing stones that are still such a notable feature of today's landscape. Designed throughout with colourful and detailed illustrations, "Farmers, Temples and Tombs" outlines in a clear and understandable way the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age in Scotland. It contains in-depth features on important Neolithic sites and emphasizes that what are now archaeological sites were once places where normal people lived. Included in the book are specially commissioned illustrations which show how different sites might have looked, as well as a list of Neolithic sites that can be visited across Scotland. This book is part of a newly updated edition of the acclaimed Making of Scotland series produced by Historic Scotland and Birlinn which provides lively, accessible and up-to-date introductions to key themes and periods in Scottish history and prehistory.
Download or read book Little Explorers Skara Brae Push Pull and Slide written by and published by Kelpies. This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the secrets of the Stone Age and travel back in time to see what life was like for the villagers of Skara Brae on Orkney. This book introduces little explorers to Neolithic life through Scotland's most famous prehistoric village. Moving parts let them catch a fish for dinner, cook over an open fire, travel through tunnels to visit friends, raise a standing stone at Stenness, and even uncover the village thousands of years later! Published in partnership with Historic Environment Scotland, custodians of Skara Brae, the bright and exciting illustrations are packed full of historical detail helping young children to learn as they play. An ideal gift for visitors to Scotland, this large board book is chunky but lightweight with sturdy moving parts that are just the right size for little hands.
Download or read book Land of the Ilich written by Steven Mithen and published by Birlinn Ltd. This book was released on 2021-11-04 with total page 598 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As an archaeologist, Steven Mithen has worked on the Hebridean island of Islay over a period of many years. In this book he introduces the sites and monuments and tells the story of the island's people from the earliest stone age hunter-gatherers to those who lived in townships and in the grandeur of Islay House. He visits the tombs of Neolithic farmers, forts of Iron Age chiefs and castles of medieval warlords, discovers where Bronze Age gold was found, treacherous plots were made against the Scottish crown, and explores the island of today, which was forged more recently by those who mined for lead, grew flax, fished for herring and distilled whisky – the industry for which the island is best known today. Although an island history, this is far from an insular story: Islay has always been at a cultural crossroads, receiving a constant influx of new people and new ideas, making it a microcosm for the story of Scotland, Britain and beyond.
