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Book The Chambered Tombs of the Isle of Man

Download or read book The Chambered Tombs of the Isle of Man written by Audrey Henshall and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2017-11-17 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book ever devoted to the chambered tombs of the Isle of Man and, though there are no more than nine surviving monuments, they are of considerable interest and importance because of the central location of the island in the north Irish Sea where cultural influences and traditions of tomb building are mixed.

Book The Significance of Monuments

Download or read book The Significance of Monuments written by Richard Bradley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Neolithic period, when agriculture began and many monuments - including Stonehenge - were constructed, is an era fraught with paradoxes and ambiguities. Starting in the Mesolithic and carrying his analysis through to the Late Bronze Age, Richard Bradley sheds light on this complex period and the changing consciousness of these prehistoric peoples. The Significance of Monuments studies the importance of monuments tracing their history from their first creation over six thousand years later. Part One discusses how monuments first developed and their role in developing a new sense of time and space among the inhabitants of prehistoric Europe. Other features of the prehistoric landscape - such as mounds and enclosures - across Continental Europe are also examined. Part Two studies how such monuments were modified and reinterpreted to suit the changing needs of society through a series of detailed case studies. The Significance of Monuments is an indispensable text for all students of European prehistory. It is also an enlightening read for professional archaeologists and all those interested in this fascinating period.

Book The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe written by Chris Fowler and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2015-03-26 with total page 1303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Neolithic --a period in which the first sedentary agrarian communities were established across much of Europe--has been a key topic of archaeological research for over a century. However, the variety of evidence across Europe, the range of languages in which research is carried out, and the way research traditions in different countries have developed makes it very difficult for both students and specialists to gain an overview of continent-wide trends. The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe provides the first comprehensive, geographically extensive, thematic overview of the European Neolithic --from Iberia to Russia and from Norway to Malta --offering both a general introduction and a clear exploration of key issues and current debates surrounding evidence and interpretation. Chapters written by leading experts in the field examine topics such as the movement of plants, animals, ideas, and people (including recent trends in the application of genetics and isotope analyses); cultural change (from the first appearance of farming to the first metal artefacts); domestic architecture; subsistence; material culture; monuments; and burial and other treatments of the dead. In doing so, the volume also considers the history of research and sets out agendas and themes for future work in the field.

Book The Neolithic of the Irish Sea

Download or read book The Neolithic of the Irish Sea written by Vicki Cummings and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2015-03-31 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of 24 papers aims to reconsider the nature and significance of the Irish Sea as an area of cultural interaction during the Neolithic period. The traditional character of work across this region has emphasised the existence of prehistoric contact, with sea routes criss-crossing between Ireland, the Isle of Man, Anglesey and the British mainland. A parallel course of investigation, however, has demonstrated that the British and Irish Neolithics were in many ways different, with distinct indigenous patterns of activity and social practices. The recent emphasis on regional studies has further produced evidence for parallel yet different processes of cultural change taking place throughout the British Isles as a whole. This volume brings together some of these regional perspectives and compares them across the Irish Sea area. The authors consider new ways to explain regional patterning in the use of material objects and relate them to past practices and social strategies. Were there practices that were shared across the Irish Sea area linking different styles of monuments and material culture, or were the media intrinsic to the message? The volume is based on papers presented at a conference held at the University of Manchester in 2002.

Book The Megalithic Architectures of Europe

Download or read book The Megalithic Architectures of Europe written by Luc Laporte and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2015-12-31 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Megalithic monuments are among the most striking remains of the Neolithic period of northern and western Europe and are scattered across landscapes from Pomerania to Portugal. Antiquarians and archaeologists early recognized the family resemblance of the different groups of tombs, attributing them to maritime peoples moving along the western seaways. More recent research sees them rather as the product of established early farming communities in their individual regions. Yet the diversity of the tombs, their chronologies and their varied cultural contexts complicates any straightforward understanding of their origins and distribution. Megalithic Architectures provides new insight by focusing on the construction and design of European megalithic tombs – on the tomb as an architectural project. It shows how much is to be learned from detailed attention to the stages and the techniques through which tombs were built, modified and enlarged, and often intentionally dismantled or decommissioned. The large slabs that were employed, often unshaped, may suggest an opportunistic approach by the Neolithic builders, but this was clearly far from the case. Each building project was unique, and detailed study of individual sites exposes the way in which tombs were built as architectural, social and symbolic undertakings. Alongside the manner in which the materials were used, it reveals a store of knowledge that sometimes differed considerably from one structure to another, even between contemporary monuments within a single region. The volume brings together regional specialists from Scandinavia, Germany, Britain, France, Belgium and Iberia to offer a series of uniquely authoritative studies. Results of recent fieldwork are fully incorporated and much of the material is published here for the first time in English. It provides an invaluable overview of the current state of research on European megalithic tombs.

Book Professor Challenger and his Lost Neolithic World  The Compelling Story of Alexander Thom and British Archaeoastronomy

Download or read book Professor Challenger and his Lost Neolithic World The Compelling Story of Alexander Thom and British Archaeoastronomy written by Euan W. MacKie and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2021-02-04 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book combines the two great passions of the author’s life: reconstructing the Neolithic mind and constructively challenging consensus in his professional domain. Semi-autobiographical, it charts his investigation of Alexander Thom’s theories regarding the alignment of prehistoric monuments in the landscape across several key Neolithic sites.

Book Britain Begins

    Book Details:
  • Author : Barry Cunliffe
  • Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
  • Release : 2013
  • ISBN : 0199609330
  • Pages : 567 pages

Download or read book Britain Begins written by Barry Cunliffe and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2013 with total page 567 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the origins of the British and the Irish peoples, from the end of the last Ice Age around 10,000BC to the eve of the Norman Conquest - who they were, where they came from, and how they related to one another.

Book    The    Archaeological Journal

Download or read book The Archaeological Journal written by and published by . This book was released on 1866 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Decoding Neolithic Atlantic and Mediterranean Island Ritual

Download or read book Decoding Neolithic Atlantic and Mediterranean Island Ritual written by George Nash and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2016-03-31 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What constitutes an island and the archaeology contained within? Is it the physicality of its boundary (between shoreline and sea)? Does this physical barrier extend further into a watery zone? Archaeologically, can islands be defined by cultural heritage and influence? Clearly, and based on these few probing questions, islands are more than just lumps of rock and earth sitting in the middle of a sea or ocean. An island is a space which, when described in terms of topography, landscape form and resources, becomes a place. A place can sometimes be delineated with barriers and boundaries; it may also have a perimeter and can be distinguished from the space that surrounds it. The 16 papers presented here explore the physicality, and levels of insularity of individual islands and island groups during prehistory through a series of case studies on Neolithic island archaeology in the Atlantic and Mediterranean regions. For the eastern Atlantic (the Atlantic Archipelago) papers discuss the sacred geographies and material culture of Neolithic Gotland, Orkney, and Anglesey and the architecture of and ritual behavior associated with megalithic monuments in the Channel Islands and the Scilly Isles. The Mediterranean region is represented by a different type of Neolithic, both in terms of architecture and material culture. Papers discuss theoretical constructs and ritual deposition, cave sites, ritualized and religious aspects of Neolithic death and burial; metaphysical journeys associated with the underworld in Late Neolithic Malta and the possible role of its Temple Period art in ritual activities; and palaeoenvironmental evidence from the Neolithic monuments of Corsica. The cases examined illustrate the diversity of the evidence available that affords a better understanding of the European-Mediterranean Neolithic 'island society', not least the effects of interaction/contact and/or geographical insularity/isolation, all factors that are considered to have consequences for the establishment and modification of cultures in island settings.

Book Archaeologies of Remembrance

Download or read book Archaeologies of Remembrance written by Howard Williams and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did past communities and individuals remember through social and ritual practices? How important were mortuary practices in processes of remembering and forgetting the past? This innovative new research work focuses upon identifying strategies of remembrance. Evidence can be found in a range of archaeological remains including the adornment and alteration of the body in life and death, the production, exchange, consumption and destruction of material culture, the construction, use and reuse of monuments, and the social ordering of architectural space and the landscape. This book shows how in the past, as today, shared memories are important and defining aspects of social and ritual traditions, and the practical actions of dealing with and disposing of the dead can form a central focus for the definition of social memory.

Book A Place to Believe in

    Book Details:
  • Author : Clare A. Lees
  • Publisher : Penn State Press
  • Release : 2010-11
  • ISBN : 0271046287
  • Pages : 284 pages

Download or read book A Place to Believe in written by Clare A. Lees and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medievalists have much to gain from a thoroughgoing contemplation of place. If landscapes are windows onto human activity, they connect us with medieval people, enabling us to ask questions about their senses of space and place. In A Place to Believe In Clare Lees and Gillian Overing bring together scholars of medieval literature, archaeology, history, religion, art history, and environmental studies to explore the idea of place in medieval religious culture. The essays in A Place to Believe In reveal places real and imagined, ancient and modern: Anglo-Saxon Northumbria (home of Whitby and Bede&’s monastery of Jarrow), Cistercian monasteries of late medieval Britain, pilgrimages of mind and soul in Margery Kempe, the ruins of Coventry Cathedral in 1940, and representations of the sacred landscape in today&’s Pacific Northwest. A strength of the collection is its awareness of the fact that medieval and modern viewpoints converge in an experience of place and frame a newly created space where the literary, the historical, and the cultural are in ongoing negotiation with the geographical, the personal, and the material. Featuring a distinguished array of scholars, A Place to Believe In will be of great interest to scholars across medieval fields interested in the interplay between medieval and modern ideas of place. Contributors are Kenneth Addison, Sarah Beckwith, Stephanie Hollis, Stacy S. Klein, Fred Orton, Ann Marie Rasmussen, Diane Watt, Kelley M. Wickham-Crowley, Ulrike Wiethaus, and Ian Wood.

Book The Neolithic of Europe

Download or read book The Neolithic of Europe written by Penny Bickle and published by Oxbow Books Limited. This book was released on 2017-05-31 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Neolithic of Europe comprises eighteen specially commissioned papers on prehistoric archaeology, written by leading international scholars. The coverage is broad, ranging geographically from southeast Europe to Britain and Ireland and chronologically from the Neolithic to the Iron Age, but with a decided focus on the former. Several papers discuss new scientific approaches to key questions in Neolithic research, while others offer interpretive accounts of aspects of the archaeological record. Thematically, the main foci are on Neolithisation; the archaeology of Neolithic daily life, settlements and subsistence; as well as monuments and aspects of world view. A number of contributions highlight the recent impact of techniques such as isotopic analysis and statistically modeled radiocarbon dates on our understanding of mobility, diet, lifestyles, events and historical processes. The volume is presented to celebrate the enormous impact that Alasdair Whittle has had on the study of prehistory, especially the European and British Neolithic, and his rich career in archaeology.

Book Art and Architecture in Neolithic Orkney

Download or read book Art and Architecture in Neolithic Orkney written by Antonia Thomas and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2016-09-26 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a groundbreaking analysis of Neolithic art and architecture in Orkney, focussing upon the incredible collection of hundreds of decorated stones being revealed by the current excavations at the Ness of Brodgar.

Book Building the Great Stone Circles of the North

Download or read book Building the Great Stone Circles of the North written by Colin Richards and published by Windgather Press. This book was released on 2013-11-30 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of all prehistoric monuments, few are more emotive than the great stone circles that were built throughout Britain and Ireland. From the tall, elegant, pointed monoliths of the Stones of Stenness to the grandeur of Stonehenge and the sarsen blocks at Avebury, circles of stone exert a magnetic fascination to those who venture into their sphere. In Britain today, more people visit these structures than any other form of prehistoric monument and visitors stand in awe at their scale and question how and why they were erected. Building the Great Stone Circles of the North looks at the enigmatic stone structures of Scotland and investigates the background of their construction and their cultural significance.

Book Space  Place and Religious Landscapes

Download or read book Space Place and Religious Landscapes written by Darrelyn Gunzburg and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-10-01 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring sacred mountains around the world, this book examines whether bonding and reverence to a mountain is intrinsic to the mountain, constructed by people, or a mutual encounter. Chapters explore mountains in England, Scotland, Wales, Italy, Ireland, the Himalaya, Japan, Greece, USA, Asia and South America, and embrace the union of sky, landscape and people to examine the religious dynamics between human and non-human entities. This book takes as its starting point the fact that mountains physically mediate between land and sky and act as metaphors for bridges from one realm to another, recognising that mountains are relational and that landscapes form personal and group cosmologies. The book fuses ideas of space, place and material religion with cultural environmentalism and takes an interconnected approach to material religio-landscapes. In this way it fills the gap between lived religious traditions, personal reflection, phenomenology, historical context, environmental philosophy, myths and performativity. In defining material religion as active engagement with mountain-forming and humanshaping landscapes, the research and ideas presented here provide theories that are widely applicable to other forms of material religion.

Book Orientation of Prehistoric Monuments in Britain  A Reassessment

Download or read book Orientation of Prehistoric Monuments in Britain A Reassessment written by Alistair Marshall and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2021-07-08 with total page 704 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reassesses major axial alignment at many megalithic ritual and funerary monuments (Neolithic to Bronze Age) in Britain and Ireland, not in terms of abstract astronomical concerns, but as an expression of repeated seasonal propitiation involving community, agrarian economy and ancestry in an attempt to mitigate variable environmental conditions.

Book The Mystery of Doggerland

Download or read book The Mystery of Doggerland written by Graham Phillips and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-07-25 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A scientific exploration of the advanced ancient civilization known as Doggerland or Fairland that disappeared 5,000 years ago • Looks at the latest archaeological and scientific evidence preserved beneath the North Sea and on the tiny island of Fair Isle • Examines Doggerland’s sophisticated technology, including how its people were able to melt solid rock to create vitrified structures far stronger than concrete • Shows how the survivors of the destruction of Doggerland sailed to the British Isles and established the megalithic culture that built Stonehenge New marine archaeological evidence has revealed the remains of a large landmass to the north of Britain that hosted an advanced civilization 1,000 years before the recognized “first” civilizations of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, or India. Remembered in Celtic legends as Tu-lay, and referred to by geologists as Doggerland or Fairland, this civilization began at least as early as 4000 BCE but was ultimately destroyed by rising sea levels, huge tsunamis, and a terrible viral epidemic released from melting permafrost during a cataclysmic period of global warming. Exploring the latest archaeological findings and recent scientific analysis of Doggerland’s underwater remains, Graham Phillips shows that this ancient culture had sophisticated technology and advanced medical knowledge. He looks at evidence detected with remote sensing and seismic profiling of many artificial structures, complex settlements, gigantic earthworks, epic monoliths, and huge stone circles dated to more than 5,500 years ago preserved beneath the ground and on the ocean floor. He also looks at the small part of the Fairland landmass that still exists: Fair Isle, a tiny island some 45 miles north of the Orkney Islands of Scotland. Phillips shows how, when Fairland sank beneath the waves around 3100 BCE, its last survivors traveled by boat to settle in the British Isles, where they established the megalithic culture that built Stonehenge. Revealing the vast archaeological evidence in support of the existence of Doggerland, as well as its threads of influence in early cultures around the world, Phillips also shows how the fate of this sophisticated ancient culture is a warning from history: the cataclysmic events that happened to the first civilizations could happen again as the world heats up.