British Prehistory (Archaeology)

This part of our work has been released copyright free, provided that original credit is given. The second part of the ebook after the Tocharian section was written by Michael Schmidt and taken from his original writings. Since winter 2017 he has returned to Albania from Utrecht to retire. He has kindly let me re publish his work here to publish as a free e book. It's not possible to date a language using genetics or historical models. These historic models were sometimes biased towards written history, which isn't always accurate. We have searched maps to find consistency between certain types of archaeological sites and the words used to name them. We have found some consistency between Afro Asiatic words and different archaeological site types in Britain. There are other associations between different types of Celtic word and other archaeological sites, but we can't tell if the language used was actually Celtic, or a predecessor to Celtic which was predecessor to Celtic. The first Neolithic culture in England was the Windmill Hill culture, which wasn't connected to the earlier spread of Neolithic technology from Dingle in South West Ireland. The province of Munster provides an important key to understanding the spread of Celtic identity. There was Mesolithic settlement in Munster, and then early Neolithic finds were discovered on the Dingle Peninsula. It is believed that from here, the Neolithic technology went to Connaught, then to the Irish Sea and to Wales and the Isle of Man. This is consistent with the spread of Gaelic, the most archaic Gaelic dialects are spoken in Munster, alongside the most Ogham stones. The Isle of Man also has a lot of Ogham stones, so we can assume an early Irish influence. There are also Ogham stones in Wales, and evidence that West Wales and Anglesey were historically Irish, implying that the Goidelic languages had a lot to do with the founding of Celtic elements in West Britain. The spread of Bronze Age technology also went from the copper mines in Munster, to the gold mines elsewhere in Ireland, and to the copper and gold mines in Wales and parts of England. There is a very clear west to east movement of trade and technology, which is not the same cultural matrix as the east to west spread of the Neolithic via England. The Windmill Hill culture was concentrated in Essex and Norfolk, but this also spread to South West England, an example is Wor Barrow in Dorset. *Wor or *war is a root that can be connected to the Finnish word for mountain, vuori, and the Afro Asiatic word *war-which means to grow or increase. This word has symbolic connotations and seems connected to the Neolithic beliefs about the dead and the way that they nourished the land.

Updated Resource Assessment and Research Agenda 2019 for the Isles of Scilly. Includes results from several recent projects which have made major advances in our understanding of Scilly during prehistory, particularly during the Mesolithic, Neolithic and Early Bronze Age.

http://www.scilly.gov.uk/sites/default/files/planning-apps/SHERF%20Resource%20Assessment%20and%20Research%20Agenda.pdf

R. Madgwick, A. L. Lamb, H. Sloane, A. J. Nederbragt, U. Albarella, M. Parker Pearson, J. A. Evans, Multi-isotope analysis reveals that feasts in the Stonehenge environs and across Wessex drew people and animals from throughout Britain. Sci. Adv. 5, eaau6078 (2019)

The great henge complexes of southern Britain are iconic monuments of the third millennium BCE, representing great feats of engineering and labor mobilization that hosted feasting events on a previously unparalleled scale. The scale of movement and the catchments that the complexes served, however, have thus far eluded understanding. Presenting the largest five-isotope system archeological dataset (87 Sr/ 86 Sr,  34 S,  18 O,  13 C, and  15 N) yet fully published, we analyze 131 pigs, the prime feasting animals, from four Late Neolithic (approximately 2800 to 2400 BCE) complexes to explore the networks that the feasts served. Because archeological evidence excludes continental contact, sources are considered only in the context of the British Isles. This analysis reveals wide-ranging origins across Britain, with few pigs raised locally. This finding demonstrates great investment of effort in transporting pigs raised elsewhere over vast distances to supply feasts and evidences the very first phase of pan-British connectivity.

Conclusions: Identifying resilience in the past is a very challenging prospect. This chapter offers one potentially fruitful approach based on the use of stable carbon and nitrogen isotope data to argue for the persistence of livelihood strategies and identities in south Wales across the 8.2 kya cal BP event, the largest climatic downturn known in the Holocene record of the northern hemisphere. The persistence of this lifestyle was facilitated by a broad-spectrum economy that allowed flexibility during periods of environmental turmoil. That the west coast of Scotland appears, on present evidence, to have been largely depopulated at this time presents an interesting contrast, one that requires explanation. It is possible that these populations abandoned the basin of attraction and experienced complete transformation of the SES due to excessive rigidity. However, few pieces of this complicated puzzle are available, suggesting that this question is unlikely to be resolved in the near future. The second example draws upon the marked changes observed in stable isotope results across the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in northwest Europe, focusing on Denmark and Britain. The previously proposed sharp shift is re-affirmed, and it is argued that this is a potential candidate for the loss of hunter-gatherer resilience and the instigation of a new adaptive cycle focused on mixed farming. The interesting question – possibly one on the verge of being at least partly answered through ancient DNA – is whether this occurred largely within an indigenous context, or whether it was primarily due to a substantial (however defined) incoming population of farmers.

Scientific dating of burials from the excavated Bronze Age barrows at Sproxton and Eaton has been undertaken as part of a wider study of the log coffin burial tradition in England and Wales. The results have provided a more precise and reliable chronology for the interments at both sites. The log coffin burials at the sites lie within the temporal boundaries for that tradition established elsewhere in Britain, with the examples at Sproxton occurring about a century after the Eaton ones.

This study presents the results of an anthropological and taphonomic analysis of commingled and disarticulated human skeletal remains recovered from 15 caves in the Peak District, dating to the Neolithic period. Prior to this analysis, the skeletal remains had received only minimal anthropological attention, as they were considered to be of little interpretative value. The material consisted of 1643 cranial and postcranial specimens representing a minimum of 109 individuals of various ages and both sexes. The consideration of a number of taphonomic variables (weathering, cutmarks, perimortem fractures and breakage, and animal modifications), facilitated the construction of meaningful osteological profiles for these sites and has allowed for inferences to be made concerning the mode of deposition and the natural and cultural agents involved in the assemblages formation. The overall archaeological picture from these subterranean sites suggests that the remains had been subject to a series of manipulative processes by natural and human agents. The observed mortuary treatment witnessed in the osteological profiles from these sites seems to represent actions within the normal range of corpse manipulation during the Neolithic. Certainly some caves formed the primary focus of activities and were used as the primary resting place of the dead, with later disturbance or partial clearance or secondary removal of selective body elements, with an emphasis on cranial and long bones, while others for the secondary placement of selective disarticulated bones. Activities witnessed in these assemblages are discussed within their temporal context and compared with evidence derived from other natural places and contemporary built monuments, with an emphasis to long barrows and chambered tombs.

When the discovery of an Iron Settlement site on the University of Warwick campus in 2002 hit the region’s media, it gathered extensive interest from scholars and public alike. As a former lecturer in archaeology at the university, I was as keen as anyone – and drove up from Oxford to take a tour of the excavations in progress. The remains of at least 14 roundhouses had been uncovered during ground preparation for a new all-weather football and rugby pitch. I recalled the site location from a desk-based study of 1996 which had flagged up the likelihood of Iron Age or Romano-British enclosures from a murky post-war RAF aerial photograph.
The excavated findings were of particularly note. I recall being handed a small crucible by the site director. Two roundhouse gully terminals under excavation each contained the complete head of a pony, while other segments dug through the gullies unearthed charcoal-rich fills with quantities of pottery.
The pottery, and the site, had already been assigned to the Late Iron Age –somewhere between 500 BC and AD 50. Without the application of scientific dating and method it is hard to  narrow down the date on many sites, but it was clear to me that the excavation  at Westwood campus site was in the process of producing the potential to break new ground as a (pottery) dating mechanism for so many other LIA sites across the Midlands.
In 2018, myself and colleague Di Budd (an archaeologist of the 2002 excavation) decided to find out what had happened to the project’s post-excavation analysis and report. To our surprise: nothing.
We thus set out to examine the archive (in three separate repositories) and to compile a comprehensive assessment, in order to get the project back on track. Not such a straightforward task.
The assessment report is to be uploaded to this academia page in due course. In the meantime, a couple of short articles on the progress of the project have been produced – one for West Midlands Archaeology, the other for the Coventry & District Archaeological Society Bulletin, the latter appears here…

The Beaker phenomenon in Britain has traditionally been strongly associated with a highly standardised crouched articulated inhumation rite. In this paper I argue that the enduring focus on these ‘classic’ Beaker burials has led to the evidence for a variety of other contemporary funerary practices being largely overlooked.

While some researchers have highlighted individual examples of Beaker-period burials that fail to match the stereotype, until now there has been no systematic review of the available evidence for the full range of burial practices across Britain during this period. Having carried out this study as part of my doctoral project, I provide an overview of my findings and argue that a high degree of funerary diversity continued throughout the British Beaker period (c.2450-1950 BC). I adopt a multidisciplinary approach drawing on archaeology, osteology, and probabilistic radiocarbon modelling, and present new osteological and radiocarbon analyses to support my findings.

Focusing on the cremation burials, I explore the implications of these results for our understanding of the nature of the Beaker phenomenon in Britain as well as its relationship to both pre-existing and subsequent insular cultural forms and their funerary practices. I consider my findings in relation to the evidence from Continental Europe and explore how my work fits into the growing evidence for local and regional variability across the Beaker phenomenon more widely.

England is an island nation and archaeology in the coastal and intertidal zone is fundamental to understanding our coastal and maritime past. However this is an extremely dynamic environment under threat from wind, waves, and scour, effects which can be amplified by climate change with increased rain fall and ferocity of winter storms. However there is no statutorily informed intervention for coastal and intertidal heritage outside of the national planning framework for this at-risk archaeology and so no infrastructure in place to systematically record these freshly exposed sites before the next storm potentially washes them away. CITiZAN (the Coastal and Intertidal Zone Archaeological Network) is a community archaeology and citizen science project which raises awareness of this at-risk archaeology across England and works with local volunteers to identify, survey and monitor the long-term fate of their local coastal sites. This paper will discuss the importance of strong engagement with the public but also of translating this into collaborative work with communities. Lectures, outreach stalls, digital outputs, use of local and national media coverage and guided walks on sites around the country provide an opportunity for local communities to rediscover this hidden archaeology on their doorstep and to see the effects of climate change, erosion and flooding on a local level. Though the increased awareness of at-risk heritage in coastal communities is a CITiZAN project aim in itself, for this or any project to be sustainable this interest must be successfully converted into participation, to encourage community involvement to adopt their own coastlines and monitor any changes that occur over time. Collaborative site interventions and community-led monitoring work make the global issue of climate change relevant at a local level.

Black Horse Farm is situated on the Cambridgeshire fen-edge. During the Iron Age and early Romano-British period it occupied a low promontory reaching out into the surrounding wetland. This volume describes the archaeological excavation of the site and the Iron Age settlement and Romano-British activity that was recorded there. The wetland of the fen would have been a prominent part of everyday life at Black Horse Farm and the book examines the way in which the site's inhabitants utilised and exploited it. Fluctuations between dry and damp conditions were also a prominent aspect of life at this marginal location and the later sections examine how the population responded to these conditions. The book examines themes including the organisation of space within the roundhouse, the role of ditches and banks as flood defences versus their social and defensive function, and offers alternative interpretations for some commonly observed features at contemporary sites.

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Lecturer; Conference - Scuola di Archeoastronomia (Museo Nazionale Etrusco, Villa Giulia, Roma) - 21/07/2018

Presentazione su temi legati allo studio del paesaggio britannico e la loro correlazione con la visione degl'astri in periodo preistorico. Temi principali:
Il Sole e la Luna dei cacciatori-raccoglitori del Regno Unito; Funzioni, simboli e significati astronomici nei paesaggi preistorici della Gran Bretagna; I siti megalitici con allineamenti astronomici.

Patrocinio del: Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Università e della Ricerca (MIUR); Società Italiana di Archeoastronomia (UAI).

In 2016 an archaeological watching brief was undertaken by Cornwall Archaeological Unit at Penans Farm, Grampound. The fieldwork led to the discovery of a pit which was notable because it contained charcoal and pieces of quartz. In the absence of artefacts, it was anticipated that the pit would probably prove to be of Neolithic or Bronze Age date.
However, the resulting radiocarbon determination, 6563–6428 cal BC, fell in the later Mesolithic period. Securely dated Mesolithic sites are extremely rare in Cornwall, and this paper considers the wider context of the pit and its significance.