Excavation by Oxford Archaeology in 2008 at Kingshill North on the north-eastern edge of Cirencester uncovered evidence for occupation that opens a remarkable window into Cirencester's prehistoric past. The earliest inhabitants lived during the late Neolithic. They dug storage pits, which over time were filled with decorated Grooved Ware, bone pins and awls, flint tools, stone axe fragments, animal bones and antler and the burnt remains of cereal, nuts and fruit. The evidence points to the seasonal gathering of people to exchange exotic objects and indulge in communal feasting. Two Beaker burials were also found. Both individuals were females who were born outside the region in the chalkland areas of England. Another burial dated to the middle Bronze Age. More storage pits were dug in the middle Iron Age. In the late Iron Age, a small settlement was set within a pastoral landscape. Three human burials were recorded; all were interred in the settlement's enclosure ditch. The site was abandoned before the town of Corinium Dobunnorum was established. A cremation burial was placed in the former enclosure ditch between the late 1st or early 3rd century AD. The rite was Roman, but the location harked back to earlier burial practices.

A review of the rich and diverse evidence for understanding past climate and environmental change in the Thames Valley, and the effects on plant and animal populations and the challenges and opportunities these presented to early humans. Part 1 of this volume covers the Pleistocene, the epoch of the Ice Ages, in an integrated review of the geological, palaeontological and archaeological data for the last half million years and more. Part 2 takes up the story from the beginning of the Holocene, the warm period in which we are still living, which began around 11,500 years ago. The authors review the evidence for early hunter-gatherer populations in the Mesolithic, the gradually increasing impact of humans in the region in the Neolithic and early Bronze Age and their rich social lives and belief systems. Much of the evidence has been recovered during extensive gravel quarrying. The volume is excellently illustrated with colour and line illustrations and maps.

The Najerilla flows from the mountains of the Sierra de la Demanda to the River Ebro in the western part of the province of La Rioja in northern Spain. Here fieldwork and excavations from 2000-2003 examined the varied landscapes of the valley and focused on the excavation of two Iron Age hilltop settlements, Castillo Antiguo and Cerro Molino. The work on Cerro Molino was the most extensive and exposed close-spaced buildings of mud-brick and timber belonging to the Celtiberian period (fourth-second centuries BC) but both hilltops were occupied in earlier periods from the seventh to the fifth centuries. Full reports are given of the structures, material culture and economy of the settlements together with accounts of extensive field-walking undertaken in the vicinity. The report concludes with a wide-ranging overview of the archaeology and history of this hitherto little known area.

The site at Cotswold Community in the western reaches of the Upper Thames Valley has been a focus for human activity since Neolithic times. Successive Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman settlements developed within an increasingly open grassland landscape, which was heavily exploited for the growing crops and the grazing of animals. The spiritual lives of the inhabitants were glimpsed through a series of structured pit deposits and ritual monuments, including a potential Neolithic timber circle and Bronze Age round barrows. One of the most striking landscape features was a late Bronze Age/early Iron Age pit alignment that extended over 500m, possibly marking one of the earliest attempts at defining territory on a large scale. It was still a visible feature for some time as it partly dictated the position of the boundaries of a Roman farmstead, which occupied the site from the 1st to 4th centuries AD. The farm lay in the shadow of Roman Cirencester less than 5km to the north and may even have been involved in the recycling of refuse from this important urban centre. Following abandonment of the Roman farmstead there was no further occupation on site, although a small number of Saxon agricultural structures indicate continuing use of the land, which may now have been part of a locally-centred Saxon estate.

Recent excavations at Taplow Court have revealed a long sequence of activity stretching from the Mesolithic to the Anglo-Saxon period. Mesolithic struck flints and charred hazelnuts, and early Neolithic flints, were found in a small number of tree-throw holes. A group of inter-cutting hollows or shallow pits of Early Bronze Age date included sherds of Collared Urn and worked flint, rare evidence of domestic activity of this period. There were also finds of the middle Bronze Age, although no features of that phase were confirmed. In the late Bronze Age, a defensible hilltop enclosure about 1.2 ha was constructed on the site. The enclosure, probably first established in the 11th century cal BC, had a complex sequence of defences including a pair of post-rows possibly indicating a timber palisade backed by a raised walkway, a trench-built palisade, a ditch and rampart and further posthole-lines outside the ditch. Only a limited area of the interior was examined, but includes a series of parallel fence lines, one probable roundhouse and up to five possible four-post structures, with occupation extending into the 9th century cal BC. Following a probable hiatus in activity represented by a standstill deposit in the upper part of the ditch, a larger U-profiled hillfort ditch was constructed in the Early Iron Age, probably in the 5th century cal BC, the spoil being dumped over the previous ditch to form a timber-laced rampart, which was soon after destroyed in places by fire. The remains of the charred timbers within the rampart have revealed some details of its construction. The ditch however remained open into the Saxon period, and another internal roundhouse may be Middle Iron Age. A third and even larger V-profiled ditch was found outside the second ditch. Although the date of construction of this outer ditch is uncertain, it too remained open into the Saxon period, suggesting that the hillfort had many ditches its later stages. Price is approximate.

The aim of this volume is to explore Anglo-Saxon perceptions of form and order in their different manifestations, through two main strands texts of all kinds, and art, architecture and archaeology. Contributors come from many different specialisms, enabling wide-ranging discussion, as well contributions from other Insular cultures and a continental European perspective.

In common with other volumes in the Thames Through Time series, this account of the Thames Valley in the millennium and a half before the Roman conquest seeks to examine change in human society from a thematic point of view. The geographical and chronological framework for this volume is established in Chapters 1 and 2, but thereafter we have tried to get away from the traditional, somewhat artificial pigeon-holes of 'periods' 'ages' 'eras' and 'phases' to look much harder at how change in human society actually works. In a period when the 20th century has come to dominate secondary school history and much popular TV, the notion that the first foundations of modern society can be traced back more than 3000 years may seem a rather surprising proposition. But some fundamental patterns of settlement and landuse, political boundaries, human impact on the environment, and even the specific use and form of a few places can be traced back to late prehistoric times despite millennia of subsequent change - even though otherwise we may now have very little in common with those remote ancestors. Exploring these issues on a thematic basis should help us to gain a better understanding of how human society evolves and also of how people have altered their natural environment, providing a better long term perspective on what we are doing to the planet.

The aim of this monograph is to bring together in a single volume the results of many years of research into production technology of early vitreous materials. The vitreous materials considered are glazed steatite, faience, Egyptian blue and green frits, and glazed pottery and bricks from Egypt, the Near East, the Indus Valley and Europe spanning the period from their beginnings in the 5th millennium BC through to the Roman period. For each group of material, the emphasis is on presenting the available analytical and microstructural data which are then interpreted to provide information on the raw materials and methods of fabrication employed in their production. Where appropriate, the raw materials used in the production of these materials are compared with those used in the production of contemporary glass. By bringing together data for such a wide range of materials, geographical regions and chronological periods, similarities and differences in production technology are identified, and the pattern of technological discovery, adoption, choice and transfer is thus revealed.

Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History is an annual series concerned with the archaeology and history of England and its neighbours during the Anglo-Saxon period. ASSAH offers researchers an opportunity to publish new work in an interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary forum which allows for a diversity of approaches and subject matter. Contributions focus not just on Anglo-Saxon England but also its international context.

From 1997 to 2006 the Danebury Trust, under the direction of Barry Cunliffe, excavated seven sites on the chalk downland of eastern Hampshire to explore the rural settlement of the region in the Roman period. The project was designed to build upon our knowledge of the area following the excavation of the Iron Age hillfort of Danebury and of eight Iron Age settlements in the region. The results of the present project are published in two volumes. Volume 1 offers an overview of the programme together with a series of studies exploring the results in their wider contexts. Volume 2 is presented in seven separate parts each dealing with the results of one specific excavation. The sites covered include the Early Iron Age settlement of Flint Farm, the Early Iron Age and Roman site of Rowbury Farm and the Roman villa establishments at Houghton Down, Grateley South, Fullerton, Thruxton and Dunkirt Barn. Together the sites enliven our understanding of the development of the Iron Age and Roman rural landscape especially corn production and processing, the use of water power for milling, status and Romanness, ancestor cults, lineages and land-holding, and the social implications of the great aisled halls which dominated the Hampshire landscape. The volumes make a major contribution to our understanding of Iron Age and Roman Britain.

Excavations at Spring Road Municipal Cemetery, Abingdon, Oxfordshire have revealed activity extending from the Mesolithic to the Saxon period. The most significant discovery was an arc of substantial postholes which formed part of one of very few middle Bronze timber circles known in southern Britain. The most important earlier evidence was a Beaker burial containing a copper awl which is amongst the earliest metal artefacts from Britain. Mesolithic flint, an oval Peterborough Ware bowl and a Grooved Ware pit were also found. A group of three middle Iron Age crouched inhumation burials are amongst the most interesting later finds, which included also an early-middle Iron Age roundhouse, a Roman field system and Anglo-Saxon sunken-featured buildings.

These seventeen papers reflect John Lloyd's wide ranging interests in Ancient History, new technologies and methods, geomorphology and anthropology and how they can all be combined in the study of past landscapes. Scholars from Italy, the UK, the USA and Germany write about various projects based mainly in central Italy with seven of the papers describing aspects of John's major fieldwork project in the Sangro Valley, Abruzzo.

The Mycenaean Linear B tablets include numerous references to religion, such as details of offerings, banqueting foodstuffs or land-tenure relating to cult personnel. While contributing significantly to our understanding of early Greek religion, the documents are exclusively economic and administrative records and the limitations of such sources have long been recognised. Few attempts have been made, however, to analyse the purely economic information about religion we do have in Linear B. Such analysis is essential to understanding the place of religion in Mycenaean palace society. This book asks a simple but important question: What proportion of the resources available to the palaces was directed towards support for religion?

It is difficult to imagine modern archaeology without radio-carbon dating, geophysics, analytical chemistry, or the input of the social and historical sources. Archaeology is inevitably an interdisciplinary enterprise, perhaps more so than any other field. But with the ever-increasing specialisation of modern research in general, it becomes more and more difficult to communicate across disciplinary doundaries; this is one of the major challenges modern archaeology faces today. This volume is the outcome of a two-day conference held at the University of Oxford that focused on the opportunities and challenges of interdisciplinary approaches to archaeology.

Excavation between 1983-5 at Barrow Hills, Radley, Oxfordshire recorded three distinct phases of activity: a prehistoric monument complex (already published in Volume 1), a Romano-British cemetery and an early Anglo-Saxon settlement. The Romano-British cemetery consisted of 69 burials dating to the 3rd and 4th centuries and occurring as distinct burial groups and isolated graves; both inhumations and cremations were found. The report considers the evidence for the organisation of the cemetery, orientation, age and sex, body position, decapitation, coffins, inhumation versus cremation, grave goods, chronology and location. The Anglo-Saxon settlement was composed of post-built structures, sunken-featured buildings, two inhumations, pits, debris dumped into the prehistoric barrow ditches and various other features. The settlement is dated by finds evidence to the 4th - early 7th centuries. The Anglo-Saxon features at the nearby site of Barton Court Farm may have been part of the same settlement. The finds and archaeological deposits are described in a series of gazetteers.

The third volume of the Le Yaudet excavation reports details the history and archaeology of the site from AD 300 until the present day. The promontory overlooking the estuary of the river Léguer was reoccupied in the late fourth century, possibly by a military detachment from Britain, and thereafter developed as an ecclesiastical site in the fifth to eighth centuries. In the later medieval period it became a village clustered around the chapel. The report presents the archaeological and material evidence for these periods in detail.