This book deals with the interrelationship between society and war seen through the analytical eyes of anthropologists and archaeologists. War is a ghastly thing, which unfortunately thrives almost everywhere in the world today. We need, therefore, to have a better understanding of what war does to people and their societies. War produces change, and archaeologists and anthropologists are analytically equipped to pinpoint its direction, patterning, scale and content. The perspective -- and filter -- of time provides one important tool, while context and comparison provide other tools. Looking at the history of war studies, war is quite often perceived of and treated as something set aside from other practices; almost personified. However, the results published in this book allow us to say that it is never autonomous and self-regulating. War always forms part of something else. Numerous questions arise, and at least some answers -- often tentative and multifaceted -- are provided in the twenty-eight studies included in the book. They certainly add to an ongoing debate, hopefully qualifying it as well.

This short French text, the second in a three volume series, is both a reference source and a tourist guide which introduces the reader to the French Royal Castles built in the age of St Louis.

French Language

Evolutionary ('phylogenetic') trees were first used to infer lost histories nearly two centuries ago by manuscript scholars reconstructing original texts. Today, computer methods are enabling phylogenetic trees to transform genetics, historical linguistics and even the archaeological study of artefact shapes and styles. But which phylogenetic methods are best suited to retracing the evolution of languages? And which types of language data are most informative about deep prehistory? In this book, leading specialists engage with these key questions. Essential reading for linguists, geneticists and archaeologists, these studies demonstrate how phylogenetic tools are illuminating previously intractable questions about language prehistory. This innovative volume arose from a conference of linguists, geneticists and archaeologists held at Cambridge in 2004.

The site at Whitecross Farm, including timber structures located on the edge of the eyot, and a substantial midden and occupation deposit has been securely radiocarbon-dated to the late Bronze Age. The late Bronze Age artefact assemblages are suggestive of a high-status site, with a range of domestic and ritual activities represented. The bank of the Grim's Ditch earthwork was found to have preserved evidence of earlier settlement, dating to the Neolithic and Bronze Age, and a sequence of cultivation, including ard marks and 'cord-rig' cultivation ridges. Pottery and radiocarbon analysis dated the earthwork to the end of the late Iron Age or the early Roman period. A multi-period settlement, consisting of pits, a waterhole, postholes, gullies and field systems, was identified at Bradford's Brook, Cholsey. The main periods represented are late Bronze Age and Romano-British, while a small quantity of Saxon pottery indicates limited Saxon activity. A large pit containing late Bronze Age pottery, a cattle skull, waterlogged wood and plant remains, a complete loomweight and flint flakes has been interpreted as a waterhole. A series of radiocarbon dates were obtained for deposits within this feature. All three sites are discussed individually as well as within their local, regional and national contexts. Chapter 7 provides an overall discussion of later Bronze Age themes that have arisen through the excavation and analysis of these sites.

This book presents a short history of human habitation in East London, based on archaeological findings at gravel sites between 1963 and 1999. To find the beginning of this story we have to go back half a million years, to the time when advancing ice sheets pushed the Thames southwards to its present course, depositing the river gravels that exist across East London today. Archaeological work on the East London gravels began when finds from gravel pits were given to local collectors and museums. Many spectacular discoveries were made in the era when gravel was dug by hand; they include a Roman stone coffin found near Dagenham in 1928 and the rich Early Saxon cemetery with glass drinking horns from Gerpin's Pit, Rainham, uncovered in 1937. The archaeological sites which make up this story have names which speak of a time before London's urban sprawl reached eastwards: Manor Farm, Great Sunnings Farm, Whitehall Wood, Great Arnold's Field and Fairlop Quarry, to name but a few. Discoveries have revealed the ancient landscapes of East London and a history of human occupation from the third millennium BC right up to the 19th century. The finds include evidence of where people lived, and how they made a living and viewed themselves. These settlement patterns, economic systems and cultural identities changed over time and contributed to the form of today's East London.

British Iron Age swords and scabbards are here catalogued in detail for the first time. They are grouped on the basis of typologies of components and are discussed with special reference to their decoration, context and chronology. Artefact studies have been neglected for many years, and this subject was last tackled in a paper published in 1950. Since then, the material available for study has tripled, from 93 to 274 items, and new archaeological discoveries include several elaborately decorated scabbards. Illustrations include 71 full pages of line drawings, while additional contributions examine the technology of some of the swords and provide a discussion of their enamelled decoration. Contents: Introduction; Typology and terminology; Group A: Swords of medium length and scabbards with open chape ends; Group B: Swords of medium length and scabbards with closed chape ends; Group C: Long swords and scabbards with campanulate mouths; Group D: Long swords and scabbards with straight mouths; Group E: Earlier swords and scabbards in the north; Group F: Later swords and scabbards in the north; Group G: Short swords in the south and the north; Group H: Swords and scabbards of mixed traditions; Discussion; Appendices; The technology of some of the swords; Weapons and fittings with enamelled decoration; The Isleworth sword: a note on the brass foils; A technical report on the Orton Meadows scabbard; The scientific examination of the Asby Scar sword and scabbard; The extraction of swords from their scabbards; Catalogue; Bibliography.

Le Yaudet (in Brittany, France) is a promontory of granite commanding the estuary of the river Léguer down-river from the modern town of Lannion (Côtes d'Armor). It has long been known as the 'Old Town' ( Civitas vetus in Latin documents and Coz Yaudet in Breton) and Iron Age, Roman and medieval finds have been made from time to time over the last two centuries. A programme of research excavations began in 1991 and continued annually until 2002. The results of the work show the site to have been in use almost continuously from the early prehistoric period. This is the second volume and deals with the Prehistoric period, continuing up until the end of the Gallic Empire.

A long-term, low-cost rescue project was undertaken in response to gravel quarrying at Maxey between 1983 and 1990. Throughout, the archaeological focus was the more or less concurrent excavation taking place at the Etton causewayed enclosure, a site which was effectively a central point within this part of the lower Welland valley. The Etton Landscape consists of the relict river systems, former floodplain and lowermost parts of the Welland First Terrace gravels between the modern villages of Maxey, Etton and Northborough. Situated on the fringe of this seasonally wet landscape was a series of later Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments and more enigmatic areas of occupation. The principal monuments, other than the Etton causewayed enclosure, were three small henges which exhibited several phases of re-modelling, a C-shaped enclosure, the Etton Woodgate contour ditched enclosure and associated settlement, and four barrows (out of many more that are in the vicinity). The occupation areas were relatively few and ephemeral, often only consisting of a spread of occupation or midden material within the buried soil, a few post-holes and/or pits in no apparent pattern or structure. There is also evidence of field demarcation on the floodplain edge in the later Neolithic. All of these sites straddled the period of later use of the causewayed enclosure, in the third millennium and early second millennium BC. There seems to have been at this time a mosaic of old and new environments, ranging from old woodland to pasture and small zones of scrubby, fen-like carr, with the stream zones being affected by seasonal freshwater flooding and the minor deposition of silty clay alluvium. By the middle part of the second millennium BC, field systems laid out at right angles to the contemporary streams were in use, with successive versions of the same general layout continuing on into the Roman period. Throughout the last two millennia BC there was a gradual opening up of the landscape, on the face of it largely pasture, but probably with some arable cultivation on the higher and better drained ground. By the later Roman period, it appears that the area was more and more affected by the seasonal deposition of alluvium and overbank flooding, which led to the establishment of a loose and scattered layout of farmsteads and associated field systems on the higher parts of the first terrace. By medieval times, the higher parts of the terrace were completely given over to ridge and furrow cultivation, with villages established to the north and south, and the lowest zones occupied by infilled stream courses still remaining seasonally wet and possibly used as seasonal, unenclosed pasture. This more or less remained the case until 1953, when the enlargement of the Maxey Cut effectively drained the lowest parts of the terrace and permitted an expansion of arable agriculture onto the most thickly alluviated parts of the lower Welland valley between Maxey and the fen-edge.

In 1999 a collection of documents were found in the archives of the Italian Institute of Human Palaeontology belonging to Luigi Cardini, one of the founders of the Institute. These documents included site notebooks, photographs, drawings and maps relating to work carried out in Albania from 1930-39 where he was sent on a governmental mission to `reinforce Italian supremacy in Albania through archaeological research'. This monograph publishes extracts from these notebooks within a historical, political and archaeological context. The work he carried out is synthesised and a report is included on survey work carried out in 2000 and 2001 to attempt to relocate many of Cardini's cave sites described in his notebooks.

This volume describes the two seasons of excavation at Segsbury Camp which form a part of Oxford University's Hillforts of the Ridgeway Project . It contains background material and a series of interpretations of the site at different scales finishing with a discussion of the Lambourn Downs landscape in later prehistoric and Romano-British times. The evidence suggests that the large hillfort of Segsbury was used during the period 6th to 2nd century BC but was not densely and permanently occupied. It also seems that Segsbury was constructed in a new and previously unused area of the Downs. Alternative interpretations are explored within a framework of trying to understand what is meant by 'community' and how Segsbury interacted with other hillforts in the area. The detail provided by the excavation of several hillforts on the Lambourn Downs suggests that they were different forms of monument and argues against trying to understand hillforts as a single category.

Excavations conducted between 1981 and 1986 in advance of gravel extraction in Gravelly Guy field, Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire, revealed archaeological evidence spanning from the Neolithic through to the Saxon period. Neolithic and early Bronze Age activity is represented by pit scatters and a series of ring ditches with associated burials. The Iron Age and early Roman periods witnessed the continuous development of a linear settlement, consisting of a dense area of pits, gullies, circular structures, four-posters and boundary ditches in the mid to late Iron Age phase and a series of rectilinear enclosures and unusual 'ramped hollows' and wells in the late Iron Age/early Roman period. Excavation of a section at the junction of the floodplain and the gravel terrace has also provided information regarding the changing land use and contemporary environment in the vicinity of the site. Gravelly Guy remains one of the most thoroughly excavated sites of this period in the Thames Valley. As well as the vast amount of structural evidence, the considerable quantities of artefacts and environmental information recovered, together with a series of ten radiocarbon dates, have resulted in a detailed study of the site, its position in the landscape and relationship to the contemporary archaeology of the surrounding area.

As Peacock and Williams have noted, amphorae provide us "not with an index of the transportation of goods, but with direct witness of the movement of certain foodstuffs which were of considerable economic importance ..

This catalogue presents 225 pieces of jewellery, predominantly Etruscan, but also including some Classical Greek and Roman artefacts. Objects include hairpins, hair ornaments, wreaths and diadems, earrings, necklaces, pendants, fibulae, bracelets, rings and gems, whilst appendices detail production techniques and materials.

This paper reports on the excavation of a Bronze Age burnt mound discovered in a woodland clearing in the Fens. A number of waterlogged features were also found in association with it, including a pit containing wooden planks and Beaker pottery. Much of the paper focuses on the finds and environmental remains with specialist reports on the worked flint, pottery, faunal remains, plant remains, molluscs, soil and the tight sequence of radiocarbon dates. The book also reports on the Neolithic features beneath the mound.

Excavations in 1999 at Brandon in Suffolk uncovered the remains of a sequence of middle to late Bronze Age enclosure ditches associated with a number of post-built structures, pits, hearths and three unurned cremations. Some late Neolithic activity was also detected. Of particular interest were an unusual Bronze Age square-ditched enclosure and evidence of `activity surfaces'. Specialist finds reports examine the flint, the Neolithic and Bronze Age pottery, the small finds, human remains, animal bone, soils, waterlogged remains, pollen and charcoal. A final synthesis discusses the nature of this occupation landscape and the place in it of the funerary deposits.