This is the first volume charting the CAU’s on-going Barleycroft Farm/Over investigations, which now encompasses almost twenty years of fieldwork across both banks of the River Great Ouse at its junction with the Fen. Amongst the project’s main directives is the status of a major river in prehistory – when a communication corridor and when a divide? Accordingly, a key component throughout has been the documentation of the lower Ouse’s complex palaeoenvironmental history, and a delta-like wet landscape dotted with mid-stream islands has been mapped. This book is specifically concerned with the length of The Over Narrows, whose naming alludes to an extraordinary series of mid-channel ‘river race’ ridges. With their excavation generating vast artefact sets and unique palaeo-economic data, these ridges saw intense settlement sequences, ranging from Mesolithic camps, Grooved Ware, Beaker and Collared Urn pit clusters (plus field plots) to Middle Bronze fieldsystems and their attendant settlements, a massive Late Bronze Age midden complex and, finally, an Iron Age shrine. The latter involved extensive human bone or body-part deposition and bird sacrifice. Four upstanding turf barrows and two accompanying waterlogged pond barrows feature among the main excavations reported here. With more than 40 cremations (including in situ pyres), the resultant detailing of Early Bronze Age mortuary practices and the insights into the period’s monument construction are ground-breaking. This is an important book, for the scale of The Narrows’ excavations and palaeoenvironmental studies, its comprehensive dating programmes and, particularly, the innovative methodologies and analyses undertaken. Indeed, a commitment to experiment has lain at the project’s core.

Archaeological surveys and excavations were carried out between 2006 and 2010 in advance of the construction of a gas pipeline in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds. They resulted in the discovery of many new sites and the investigation of eighteen of them dating from the prehistoric to medieval periods.Early Neolithic and Beaker/Early Bronze Age pits in the southern part of the route near Winstone, suggest transitory occupation in early prehistoric times. Early Bronze Age cremation graves on lower ground near Stanway were associated with two slightly later ring-ditches, and another Bronze Age ring-ditch was excavated at Foxcote Hill. A segmented boundary ditch near Winstone was also the location of Iron Age and Roman activity. An Iron Age settlement on Salter’s Hill, Winchcombe, included an Early Iron Age roundhouse, while Middle Iron Age grain-storage pits here and elsewhere indicated other farming settlements. Late Iron Age and Roman occupations in the high Wolds showed a range of remains, including unusual deposits of artefacts, animal bones and burials.A fragmentary sequence of Anglo-Saxon boundary burials was found at the southern end of the route near Sapperton. In the same area, two 12th- to 13th-century buildings near Overley Wood may have been part of the medieval settlement of Pinbury. Trackways revealed near Coberley, Foxcote and Hailes linked rural settlements in historical times.The range of sites and finds from these investigations provide important new information on the human past across parts of a landscape in many respects considered to be marginal.

A Bronze Age barrow, one of several in the Rhee valley, was encircled by two concentric rings of posts in the early to middle Iron Age, and a single crouched inhumation was buried nearby. A small group of roundhouses and granaries was built on the clays c.100m from the river, and nearly 200 possible grain storage pits were dug on chalk deposits next to the river. Some of the pits contained human burials and animal bone groups of the pit burial tradition common in central southern and south-eastern England Significant assemblages of Chinnor-Wandlebury pottery and animal bone, including examples of rarely-found wild species, were also found. The site was unoccupied in the late Iron Age and Roman periods but still farmed, as evidenced by animal pens, field ditches and sparse domestic debris probably spread by manuring. During the later 6th century AD, a small open farming settlement of six sunken-featured buildings was established, akin to many similar settlements investigated in South Cambridgeshire. A substantial ditch enclosed the settlement in the 8th or 9th century, and occupation had shifted to Harston village by the 10th century.

Volume II describes the excavation and finds from the Special Deposits at Kavos at the sanctuary on Keros lying opposite the settlement on the islet of Dhaskalio (described in Volume I). The finds of marble from the Special Deposit South are described in Volume III, and the pottery in Volume V. The sanctuary at Kavos, dating from c. 2700 BC to 2400 BC has yielded the richest ritual deposits of the early bronze age Cyclades. The finds are presented here in their excavation contexts, and the significance of the Special Deposit South as a ritual deposit is examined in the context of Aegean prehistory.

The investigations have produced evidence for 6,000 years of landscape and settlement evolution. Perhaps the most striking result is the evidence for continuity, rather than discontinuity, in the development of the landscape. The act of defining chronological periods, while essential in describing past human society, does tend to accentuate discontinuity. This applies both to individual monuments — some on the Biddenham Loop played a major part in people’s lives for many generations — and to the wider landscape itself. The Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments were incorporated into the middle Bronze Age field systems and some were still used for the burial of the dead. Continued use of these fields into the middle Iron Age and even the Romano-British period is clearly evidenced by the way in which later farmsteads were set up on their periphery. The positioning of the main early Iron Age pit alignment across the Biddenham Loop has elements of both discontinuity and continuity. It does ‘cut’ a number of ditched boundaries but does so at the corners of fields, so that over the majority of its course it crosses unenclosed land between two separate middle Bronze Age field systems. For the Roman–Saxon transition it is significant that the majority of the evidence for early Saxon settlement occurs in the vicinity of Romano-British settlements.

The author, an archaeologist, is now directing the restoration of a Viking ship in Normandy. In this book, he traces the evolution of this type of clinker-built ship, from the most ancient prototypes (Hjortspring), to the later models (Roskilde), with many detailed plans. He then explains their construction and modes of navigation used, as well as the religious concepts linked to the fantastic figureheads. Finally, he displays several modern replicas of these ships. TEXT IN FRENCH

The excavations led by Margaret and Tom Jones on the Thames gravel terraces at Mucking, Essex, undertaken between 1965 and 1978 are legendary. The largest area excavation ever undertaken in the British Isles, involving around 5000 participants, recorded around 44,000 archaeological features dating from the Beaker to Anglo-Saxon periods and recovered something in the region of 1.7 million finds of Mesolithic to post-medieval date. While various publications have emerged over the intervening years, the death of both directors, insufficient funding, many organisational complications and the sheer volume of material evidence have severely delayed full publication of this extraordinary palimpsest landscape.Lives in Land is the first of two major volumes which bring together all the evidence from Mucking, presenting both the detail of many important structures and assemblages and a comprehensive synthesis of landscape development through the ages: settlement histories, changing land-use, death and burial, industry and craft activities. The long time-gap since completion of the excavations has allowed the authors the unprecedented opportunity to stand back from the density of site data and place the vast sum of Mucking evidence in the wider context of the archaeology of southern England throughout the major periods of occupation and activity.Lives in Land begins with a thorough evaluation of the methods, philosophy and archival status of the Mucking project against the organisational and funding background of its time, and discusses its fascinating and complex history through a period of fundamental change in archaeological practice, legislation, finance, research priorities and theoretical paradigms in British Archaeology. Subsequent chapters deal with the prehistoric landscape, each focusing on the major themes that emerge by major period from analysis and synthesis of the data. The authors draw on archival material including site notebooks and personal accounts from key participants to provide a detailed but lively account of this iconic landscape investigation.

The present publication attempts to make the collection of Prehistoric Aegean and Near Eastern bronzes in the National Museum of Denmark known to scholars in the field. The catalogue contains all Aegean metals kept in the Department of Ancient Cultures of Denmark and the Mediterrenean. In the section on the Near Eastern metals, bronzes from Hama, however, are not included. Except for that, all metal objects from the Near East dated before 1000 BC are found in the catalogue.

This book, aimed at a general audience, presents the results of all archeological research performed in the Dutch city of Helmond during several decades. Starting in the early prehistory the authors present the earliest evidence of people living in the current region of Helmond, the rise of the city up until recent times.

Woven textiles are produced by nearly all human societies. This volume investigates evidence for patterned textiles (that is, textiles woven with elaborate designs) that were produced by two early Mediterranean civilisations: the Minoans of Crete and the Mycenaeans of mainland Greece, that prospered during the Aegean Bronze Age, c. 3000-1200 BC, contemporary with pharaonic Egypt. Both could boast of specialists in textile production. Together with their wine, oil, and art, Minoan and Mycenaean textiles were much desired as trade goods. Artistic images of their fabrics preserved both in the Aegean and in other parts of the Mediterranean show elaborate patterns woven with rich decorative detail and colour. Only a few small scraps of textiles survive but evidence for their production is abundant and frescoes supply detailed information about a wide variety of now-lost textile goods from luxurious costumes and beautifully patterned wall hangings and carpets, to more utilitarian decorated fabrics. A review of surviving artistic and archaeological evidence indicates that textiles played essential practical and social roles in both Minoan and Mycenaean societies.

This book is part of an annual series containing papers on Bronze Age and Iron Age archaeology in the Netherlands. The series mostly contains Dutch-language articles but on occasion also English language articles are included.

Scandinavia is home to prolific and varied rock art images among which the ship motif is prominent. Because of this, the rock art of Scandinavia has often been interpreted in terms of social ritual, cosmology, and religion associated with the maritime sphere. This comprehensive review is based on the creation of a Scandinavia-wide GIS database for prehistoric rock art and re-examines theoretical approaches and interpretations, in particular with regard to the significance of the ship and its relationship to a maritime landscape Discussion focuses on material agency as a means to understanding the role of rock art within society. Two main theories are developed. The first is that the sea was fundamental to the purpose and meaning of rock art, especially in the Bronze Age and, therefore, that sea-level/shoreline changes would have inspired a renegotiation of the relationship between the rock art sites and their intended purpose. The fundamental question posed is: would such changes to the landscape have affected the purpose and meaning of rock art for the communities that made and used these sites? Various theories from within and outside of archaeology are drawn on to examine environmental change and analyse the rock art, led to second theory: that the purpose of rock art might have been altered to have an effect on the disappearing sea. The general theory that rock art would have been affected by environmental change was discussed in tandem with existing interpretations of the meaning and purpose of rock art. Imbuing rock art with agency means that it could be intertwined in an active web of relations involving maritime landscapes, shoreline displacement and communities. Though created in stone and fixed in time and place, rock art images have propagated belief systems that would have changed over time as they were re-carved, abandoned and used by different groups of inhabitants. In the thousands of years rock art was created, it is likely that shoreline displacement would have inspired a renegotiation of the purpose and meaning of the imagery situated alongside the Scandinavian seas. This journey through a prehistoric Scandinavian landscape will lead us into a world of ancient beliefs and traditions revolving around this extraordinary art form.

After a difficult minority, the young Duke managed to make Normandy one of the greatest provinces in the kingdom of France. The power he acquired enabled him to fit out a fleet and land it in England, and then to defeat and kill King Harold. Crowned King of England at Christmas 1066, he would go down in history as William the Conqueror. This glorious epic is reflected in so many military and religious buildings in Normandy. The authors of this work aimed simply to walk in the tracks of William the Conqueror, his ancestors, family and contemporaries (whether friends of foes). Making use of recent research, they have tried to make his troubled life and times accessible and to arouse in the more curious a desire to wander the four corners of the province to discover its past. And so they offer 22 walks following in William's footsteps.

This is the first biography devoted to the life of a remarkable young man who, in the words of Civil War historian Ezra Warner, “embarked upon a combat career which has few parallels in the annals of the army for gallantry, wounds sustained, and the obscurity into which he had lapsed a generation before his death.” But the story of General Martin Hardin provides more than a combat record—in fact comprises a walking tour through 1800s America, with its most costly war only a centerpiece. From his childhood in Illinois, where a slave girl implanted in him a fear of ghosts, to his attendance at West Point, along with other future luminaries, to his service on the frontier (where he took particular note of the bearing of the Cheyenne), Hardin’s life reveals the progress of a century. Abraham Lincoln was a close friend and political ally of Martin’s father, who died a hero in the Mexican War. The family were also relatives of Mary Todd. Made Brigadier General at age 27, Hardin fought with distinction at Malvern Hill, Second Manassas, Gettysburg, Grant’s Overland Campaign, and the July 1864 Rebel raid on Washington. He was wounded four times, nearly died on two occasions, and lost an arm during the war. On one occasion he was ambushed on a road by Mosby’s men, one of whom may have been Lincoln conspirator Lewis Paine. Hardin himself took part in the hunt for John Wilkes Booth after Lincoln’s assassination. In these pages we also learn the prominent role of General Hardin’s mother, who acted as her son’s lobbyist in the heady social world of wartime Washington. Over four years, she skillfully played upon her friendship with the President and the First Lady to advance her son‘s career. Although, as we see in these pages, his gallantry and leadership in combat sufficed enough to earn him renown, and in this book the under-sung exploits of a true 19th-century hero are finally revealed.

Textile production is one of the most important crafts in Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age societies and recent interdisciplinary and collaborative work offers crucial new perspectives into this field. The new and updated catalogue of archaeological textile finds presented here clearly demonstrates, even from the few extant finds, that knowledge of the use of fibres and of elaborate textile techniques that were used to produce textiles of different qualities was well developed. The functional analysis of spindle whorls and loom weights can be explored through experimental archaeology employing newly developed methodologies. The results bring new insights into the types of textile that may potentially have been made by such tools. This is highly pertinent as textile tools often constitute the single most important and plentiful type of evidence for the various stages of textile production in the archaeological record. The combination of experimental archaeology, analyses of textile tools and find contexts allows for a discussion of the nature of textile production at different sites, regions and time periods. A collaboration between archaeologists specialised in their site and textile tool specialists has produced data sets of a large number of textile tools from several Bronze Age settlements, including Khania, Malia, Midea, Tiryns, Troia and Tel Kabri. The results of these analyses provide unique insights into both the production processes and, significantly, into the range of types of textiles that could have been produced at specific sites. These results illustrate the central, social and economic impact of textile production in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age societies.

This beautiful book combines archaeological documents, paintings and photos of a reconstruction of the first wooden amphitheatre at the Coliseum. It is a complete documentation with all categories of gladiators with their particular equipment up their fighting methods and ways of dying. This excellent reference guide is a must-have for all fans of archaeology and the Romans. - TEXT IN FRENCH -