Excavations at the Eton Rowing Course and along the Maidenhead, Windsor and Eton Flood Alleviation Channel revealed extensive evidence for occupation in an evolving landscape of floodplains and gravel terraces set amidst the shifting channels of the Thames.The most significant evidence was a series of early Neolithic midden deposits, preserved in hollows left by infilled palaeochannels. These deposits contained dense concentrations of pottery, worked flint, animal bone and other finds, and are put into context by other artefact scatters from the floodplain, pits on the gravel terrace and waterlogged environmental deposits from palaeochannels. Early Mesolithic lakeside occupation, later Mesolithic flint scatters along a former channel of the Thames, pits from the middle and late Neolithic and activity areas of the Beaker and Early Bronze Age, demonstrate longer term changes in patterns of occupation.The excavations also revealed early, middle and late Neolithic human remains in palaeochannels, middle Neolithic crouched inhumation burials and early Neolithic cremated remains. An oval barrow may have first been cut in the early Neolithic. Other ring ditches date from the late Neolithic/early Bronze Age; one contained a central cremation burial in a Collared Urn together with pyre material and the remains of a bier.

This investigation of the Lower Palaeolithic site at Broom, Devon, highlights the huge potential of old sites and the importance of the archaeological and geological legacy resulting from more than 150 years of field investigations. The site, which has produced large numbers of Palaeolithic artefacts and is located in Middle Pleistocene fluvial sediments approximately 300,000 years old, is generally regarded as the most important open-air archaeological site of earlier Palaeolithic age in south-western Britain. A key source of information is the collection of C. E. Bean during the 1930s and early 1940s, combined with his compilation of an extensive documentary archive. The primary focus of the volume is the Broom site itself, seeking to explain the distinctive character of its Acheulean archaeology, the environmental conditions in which the hominin occupants of the Axe valley flourished, and for how long. The setting of the Palaeolithic archaeology within the unusual terrace deposits of the River Axe is explored and the local and global factors affecting it, including bedrock geology, tectonic uplift, climatic conditions and changing base-level, examined. The findings add significant strands to the growing understanding of Pleistocene fluvial sequences at both a national and a global scale, the nature and technological attributes of Palaeolithic assemblages and highlights the value of the data that can still be extracted from such assemblages across the Acheulean world.

The three large henges found adjacent to the village of Thornborough, near Ripon in North Yorkshire, lie at the heart of one of the most important Neolithic landscapes in the British Isles While the henges were first recorded in the eighteenth century, recent fieldwork has shown them to be part of a much larger ‘sacred landscape’ of the later Neolithic and Bronze Age which includes barrows, pit alignments and a cursus. Surrounding fields have yielded a rich collection of prehistoric flint artefacts. While the henges have all been damaged, either by agriculture or quarrying, they remain major upstanding features in the modern landscape. This volume considers first the history of investigations and changing attitudes towards the monuments before describing the detailed geophysical surveys, excavations and fieldwalking programmes that have been carried out across this landscape in the past twenty years. The author concludes that this was an intensely religious landscape, situated on an important routeway across the Pennines. He considers how people, both those who lived locally and those who travelled long distances to visit the site as a place of pilgrimage, would have experienced and interacted with the monuments

This volume presents the results of two excavations on the gravel terraces of the Lower Kennet Valley, at Green Park (Reading Business Park) Phase 3 and Moores Farm, Burghfield, Berkshire.The Green Park excavations uncovered a field system and occupation features dating to the middle to late Bronze Age. Five waterholes or wells were distributed across the field system, the waterlogged fills of which preserved wooden revetment structures and valuable environmental evidence. The pottery from the waterholes makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the middle to late Bronze Age transition in the region. Later activity included middle to late Iron Age boundaries, a late Iron Age cremation burial, a Romano-British field system and post-medieval trackways.The Moores Farm excavations revealed occupation from the Mesolithic, Neolithic, middle Bronze Age and early Iron Age. The middle Bronze Age settlement included pits, ovens and possible post structures, and was again situated within a contemporaneous field system dotted with waterholes.As well as discussing these two sites, the volume provides an overview of all of the work to date in the Green Park Farm/Reading Business Park area, exploring the development of this important prehistoric landscape.

The early Iron Age settlement at Longbridge Deverill Cow Down, Wiltshire is justly regarded as one of the type sites of the British Iron Age. During four brief seasons of excavation between 1956 and 1960 Sonia Chadwick Hawkes investigated three enclosures and revealed the well-preserved remains of four impressive timber roundhouses. The Longbridge settlement lay within a landscape of contemporary Iron Age communities on the northern periphery of Salisbury Plain, and its particular role and place in this complex of settlements, field systems, routeways and middens remains tantalisingly obscure. A remarkable collection of pottery associated with the fiery destruction of the roundhouses, perhaps immolation in the true sense, offers a wealth of new material to consider in the light of other important collections from the region. The release of Hawkes' archaeological data marks a major contribution to the pursuit of insight into this intriguing phase of British prehistory. 301p, b/w illus,

Excavations along the new road line have revealed nearly 6000 years of human activity, from a massive marker post erected by early Neolithic farmers at the head of a dry valley to a bizarre burial of several different animals dating to the sixteenth century AD. Prehistoric discoveries include two enclosures of the middle Bronze Age, both associated with some of the earliest cobbled roads in Kent, a collection of Iron Age storage pits rich in diverse deliberate offerings, and the emergence of a nucleated hamlet in the middle Iron Age. Most exciting were rich cremation burials of the late Iron Age and early Roman periods, probably successive generations of a local family, whose rise to prominence coincides with the growth of the cult centre at Springhead nearby. The metal vessels include types new to Britain, the pottery stamps suggest the movement of continental potters to Kent, and one grave has the clearest evidence of furniture yet found from early Roman Britain. Medieval settlements of the late 11th-14th centuries mirror the renewed importance of Watling Street after the Norman conquest, and its eventual return to obscurity due to competition from the ferry from London to Gravesend.

This volume describes the results of a series of archaeological excavations undertaken in advance of the construction of a new dual carriageway, some 32 km long, across Anglesey. Five main sites and a series of prehistoric burnt mounds are discussed. The route encountered remains of Neolithic pit groups and a possible Late Neolithic ring-ditch; Bronze Age and Iron Age settlement features and a Bronze Age cremation cemetery; Romano-British settlements and a farmstead; an early medieval inhumation cemetery, medieval agricultural features and a corn-drying kiln.

Prehistoric imagery is enigmatic and has been largely overlooked by archaeologists; it is only in the last two decades that it has garnered serious academic attention. This volume addresses this lacuna and discusses visual expression across Neolithic Europe. The papers in this volume result from a meeting of the Neolithic Studies Group on the topic of 'Neolithic visual culture' at the British Museum in November 2010. The intention of the meeting was to assess new studies of rock art from across Britain and Ireland, and to compare these with studies of Neolithic visuality from continental Europe. Here, the scope of the original meeting is widened, and includes further papers to provide a broader context and more coherent analysis of prehistoric expressionism. The volume is organised so that the rock art and passage tomb art traditions of the Neolithic in Britain and Ireland are compared for the first time to the rock art traditions of Northern and Southern Europe, with the mortuary costumes and figurines of South-eastern Europe.

The excavation of an area within the grounds of the Prebendal, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, adjacent to the parish church of St Mary's, showed that the town, which lies on a slight spur, is sited within a univallate Iron Age hillfort. Early-Middle Iron Age activity included the creation of a notable ritual area contaning the burials of four children and a young woman, most accompanied by animals; and a 'bone mass' containing animal bone, mostly disarticulated. Within a generation or so of the deposit's creation, within the first half of the 4th century BC, a univallate hillfort was constructed which did not continue into the later Iron Age. Early in the Middle Saxon period a palisade trench was dug into the hillfort's ditch, which was replaced by a ditch in the 8th century. Both palisade and ditch were almost certainly the boundaries of an early minster church and it is very likely that the former existence of the hillfort influenced its siting here. An unusual piece of Merovingian glass with a moulded cross on its base is likely to have been one of the minster's possessions. The extensive minster cemetery and later Saxon development of the town is briefly noted. A significant Saxo-Norman grain deposit which has been radiocarbon dated to the 11th-12th centuries is described.

The settlement at Bornais consists of a complex of mounds which protrude from the relatively flat machair plain in the township of Bornais on the island of South Uist. This sandy plain has proved an attractive settlement from the Beaker period onwards; it appears to have been intensively occupied from the Late Bronze Age to the end of the Norse period. Mound 1 was the original location for settlement in this part of the machair plain; pre-Viking activity of some complexity is present and it is likely that the settlement activity started in the Middle Iron Age, if not earlier. The examination of the mound 1 deposits provides an important contribution to our understanding of the Iron Age sequence in the Atlantic province. The principal contribution comprises the large quantities of mammal, fish and bird bones, carbonised plant remains and pottery, which can be accurately dated to a fairly precise and narrow period in the 1st millennium AD. These are augmented by a substantial collection of small finds which included distinctive bone artefacts. The contextual significance of the site is based on the survival of floor deposits and a burnt-down roof; the floor deposits can be compared with abandonment and adjacent midden deposits providing contrasting contextual environments that help to clarify depositional processes. The burning down of the house and the excellent preservation of the deposits within it provide an unparalleled opportunity to examine the timber superstructure of the building and the layout of the material used by the inhabitants.

Leading scholars in these 29 commissioned papers in honour of Richard Bradley discuss key themes in prehistoric archaeology that have defined his career, such as monumentality, memory, rock art, landscape, material worlds and field practice. The scope is broad, covering both Britain and Europe, and while the focus is very much on the archaeology of later prehistory, papers also address the interconnection between prehistory and historic and contemporary archaeology. The result is a rich and varied tribute to Richard's energy and intellectual inspiration.

Archaeological investigations carried out during improvements to five key junctions along a stretch of the A13 trunk road through the East London Boroughs of Tower Hamlets, Newham and Barking and Dagenham have revealed evidence for activity spanning the Mesolithic through to the post-Roman period. Regionally important evidence of Neolithic activity included artefact assemblages of pottery and worked flint. A rare cache of charred emmer wheat provides definitive evidence of early Neolithic cereal cultivation in the vicinity and a fragment of belt slider made from Whitby jet attests the long distance exchange networks. The greatest concentration of activity, however, dates to the 2nd Millenium BC and includes several waterlogged wooden structures and trackways, burnt mounds and other evidence associated with wetland edge occupation. Extensive geoarchaeological and palaeoenvironmental sampling provides an important record of landscape evolution and periods of major change can be detected, both natural and anthropogenically induced. As well as providing a context for the archaeology along the A13, this raises a number of issues regarding the interaction of local communities with the natural environment, how they responded to change and to a certain extent exploited it. Ultimately this is of relevance not only to understanding the past but also to current concerns regarding environmental management along the Thames estuary.

The Chalcolithic, the phase in prehistory when the important technical development of adding tin to copper to produce bronze had not yet taken place, is not a term generally used by British prehistorians and whether there is even a definable phase is debated. Is there a British Chalcolithic? brings together many leading authorities in 20 papers that address this question. Papers are grouped under several headings. Definitions, Issues and Debate considers whether appropriate criteria apply that define a distinctive period (c. 2450 - 2150 cal BC) in cultural, social, and temporal terms with particular emphasis on the role and status of metal artefacts and Beaker pottery. Continental Perspectives addresses various aspects of comparative regions of Europe where a Chalcolithic has been defined. Around Britain and Ireland presents a series of large-scale regional case studies where authors argue for and against the adoption of the term. The final section Economy, Landscapes and Monuments , looks at aspects of economy, land-use and burial tradition and provides a detailed consideration of the Stonehenge and Avebury landscapes during the period in question. The volume contains much detailed information on sites and artefacts, and comprehensive radiocarbon datasets that will be invaluable to scholars and students studying this enigmatic but pivotal episode of British Prehistory.

In 2008, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Council for British Archaeologys Wessex group, archaeologists gathered in Southampton to review what we have learnt from the huge amount of research carried out in the region during the past 50 years and to identify the challenges for the next half-century. The conference was also a chance for those involved to tell the exciting story of discovery from their own, personal angle. The contributors to this volume include many of the UKs most influential archaeologists of the later 20th century, making this book an overview not only of the history of Wessex, but of the development of archaeological thinking and techniques during this period. Interspersed amongst these papers are profiles of the regions most influential sites and the memories of some of its leading characters.

This volume present a detailed study of the thin, usually rectangular, pieces of pierced fine stone that occur in inhumation graves of Beaker date mainly of the second half of the third millennium cal BC. These objects are considered to be archer's bracers or wristguards. The study forms part of a more wide-ranging research project to identify more accurately the significance of burial assemblages from Beaker and Early Bronze Age contexts in England and Wales. The key objective is to produce a detailed analysis of the nature and function of these grave goods, beginning with the bracers, and to test the hypothesis that many of the artefacts were originally designed for use as components of ritual costume or as equipment for use in religious acts and ceremonies. The volume includes an illustrated database of all recorded bracers.

Corrstown in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, is a highly important Bronze Age site. This came to light during excavations carried out by Archaeological Consultancy Services Ltd on behalf of the Northern Ireland Environment Agency in 2002-2003, the results of which are detailed here. A total of 74 Middle Bronze Age roundhouse platforms was identified and organised into pairs or short rows, the majority of which appeared to be contemporary. The Corrstown village represents a site type hitherto unknown in Britain and Ireland, where the standard settlement pattern consists of roundhouses occurring in relative isolation or in small conglomerations. A two-tier network of roads and pathways also serviced the village: one large cobbled roadway and a second probable roadway (perhaps left un-surfaced) were identified along with a multitude of smaller paths leading from the entrances of the houses onto the roadways. The large cobbled road extended beyond the village perimeter, indicating connectivity with the wider landscape. The artefact assemblage from the site was dominated by domestic pottery (over 9,000 sherds) and lithics over 165,000 pieces). A small assemblage of stone axes and moulds was also retrieved. Radiocarbon analysis indicated that the village had three phases, an initial growth phase (commencing after c.1550 BC), followed by a considerable occupation phase (lasting up to 200 years) and a decline phase (commencing c.1150 BC). Early medieval occupation was also observed at Corrstown and the results are included as an appendix. Another Bronze Age settlement site, also excavated by Archaeological Consultancy Services, is also included as an appendix. It is hoped that this volume represents a beginning of the study of the Corrstown village, a site of national and international significance that urges archaeologists to reconfigure the settlement structure and associated social patterns of the Bronze Age.