bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Monuments and Memories Set in Stone: a Cornish Bronze Age Ceremonial Complex in its Landscape (on Stannon Down)
Authors: Jones Andy M. 
Published: February 2015

Three seasons of archaeological fieldwork were carried out in 1998–2000 by Cornwall Archaeological Un within the Imerys Stannon China Clay Works, Bodmin Moor. The first two seasons involved the excavation of an Early Bronze Age cairn group and Middle Bronze Age and Middle Iron Age settlement activity. The third season on the Northern Downs involved the evaluation a number of cairns, field systems, and palaeoenvironmental sites.The cairn group consisted of three earlier Bronze Age ring-cairns and two ‘tailed’ cairns. One ring-cairn continued to be used as a ceremonial monument in the Middle Bronze Age and was reused during the Iron Age as a dwelling. An artefact assemblage including Bronze and Iron Age pottery and stonework was recovered. Two prehistoric beads one of faience, the other of amber, were also found.Ten Bronze Age radiocarbon determinations spanning 2490–1120 cal BC and two Iron Age determinations (370–40 cal BC) were obtained from three of the cairns. Two pollen columns on the Northern Downs were also dated. Significantly, a series of eight determinations was obtained from a single column, which provided environmental information from the Mesolithic through to the early medieval period. The radiocarbon dating showed that impact on the vegetation of the Down commenced during the Neolithic, with larger-scale clearance during the Bronze Age. Widespread open grassland was established by the Middle Bronze Age.It is suggested here that use of space within the cairn group was structured and that the cairns formed a monument complex which was part of a wider landscape cosmology, involving groupings of particular monument types and the referencing of rocky outcrops and tors.The investigations on Stannon Down were important as an opportunity to study an Early Bronze Age ceremonial landscape and reconsider how later Middle Bronze Age and Iron Age peoples on Bodmin Moor might have engaged with and interpreted the materiality of earlier prehistoric monuments.
Metaphorical Journeys: Landscape, Monuments, and the Body in a Scottish Neolithic
Authors: Fraser Shannon Marguerite 
Published: February 2015

Choosing as its subject the Clyde series of megalithic mortuary monuments on the Isle of Arran, in south-west Scotland, this paper explores the way in which natural and built form interact through the medium of the human body, a dynamic interplay that engendered particular understandings of the world in the 4th millennium BC. Examining one monument in detail at the outset is a device by which a series of physical and intellectual themes may be introduced, which run through the wider grouping of chambered cairns on the island. These are general principles which are worked through and around the characteristics of specific places, rather than regulatory structures which impose a strictly repetitive order upon the relationship between architecture and landscape. The ways in which these themes are expressed across the range of Clyde cairns on Arran are then teased out further in a wider synthetic discussion.The over-arching theme of the study is consideration of the situated nature of archaeological endeavour as a form of engagement with the contemporary world, in which a broad spectrum of textual representation – from the typological to the experiential – may be drawn upon in the production of a unified archaeological narrative.
Early Hominin Activity Traces at FxJj43, a One and a Half Million Year Old Locality in the Koobi Fora Formation, in Northern Kenya: a Field Report
Authors: Stern Nicola 
Published: February 2015

FxJj43 is one of a series of Early Stone Age archaeological sites preserved in the Okote Member of the Koobi Fora Formation, in northern Kenya. It is the focus of a new research project that aims to explore the impact of time-averaging on the composition and characteristics of Early Stone Age archaeological assemblages. FxJj43 lends itself particularly well to this exercise because, unlike other sites in the Okote Member, it preserves a laterally extensive set of interlocking landforms. These include part of a sandy river channel, its southern bank, levee, and adjacent floodplain.Chipped stone artefacts and broken-up animal bones occur in clusters of varying size and density all the way along the 200 m long strip of outcrops containing the remnants of these landforms. Small-scale excavations aimed at investigating the characteristics of archaeological assemblages preserved in different palaeotopographic settings, and in clusters of varying size and density, suggest the existence of archaeological occurrences representing different amounts of overprinting. This underscores the long-term research potential of this locality for exploring the relationship between the material remains of individual behavioural events and agglomerations of debris resulting from many, often unrelated sets of activities.
The Mesolithic Inheritance: Contrasting Neolithic Monumentality in Eastern and Western Scotland
Authors: Telford Denise 
Published: February 2015

Generalised socio-economic models have in the past been applied wholesale to Neolithic monuments throughout Scotland without taking the country's diverse physical landscape and cultural histories into account. This paper explores whether regional variations in Neolithic monumentality can be paralleled with earlier Mesolithic disparities, and considers to what extent, with the introduction of agriculture, contemporary social systems and thus the ideology underlying monumental construction was affected by geographical factors.It is suggested that:• Contrasts during the Mesolithic between the Western seaboard and the Eastern lowlands/South-east Scotland continue throughout the Neolithic.• The different functions of monuments during the Early Neolithic are generally dictated by divergent topography in Eastern and Western Scotland.• By the later Neolithic social hierarchies emerged in regions suited to agricultural development.
‘Metropolitan’ and ‘Parochial’/‘Core’ and ‘Periphery’: a Historiography of the Neolithic of Scotland
Authors: Barclay Gordon J. 
Published: February 2015

Error is an occupational hazard of the literary life. As soon as a man sets pen to paper he sets himself open to two sorts of error: one, his own, which is bad enough; and, two, the misunderstanding of those who read him, which is infinite. (Allan 1952, ix)This paper explores some of the ways in which the cultural and political history of the United Kingdom has affected writing about the Neolithic in what is now Scotland. It uses the terms ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ as they have been applied by historiographers writing about the operation of the cultural and political relations within the United Kingdom in the last three centuries. The paper is in two parts. The first part presents a summary of relevant literature generated by 20 years of debate about Scottish and ‘British’ identity, history, literature, and culture. The second part considers the ways in which the general issues have affected the writing of Scottish prehistory, concentrating on the Neolithic of lowland Scotland and examining in particular the writings and influence of Fox, Childe, Piggott, and Atkinson.
Deconstructing ‘The Sense of Place’? Settlement Systems, Field Survey, and the Historic Record: a Case-study from Central Greece
Authors: Bintliff John , Dickinson Oliver , Howard Phil , Snodgrass Anthony 
Published: February 2015

After a generation of intensive regional surface survey in the Mediterranean lands, it is both necessary and enlightening to evaluate the ways in which this new approach has produced results which either support, or demand modifications to, or directly challenge, previous ideas on the evolution of human settlement systems in this macro-region. Given that many regional survey projects have only recently achieved final publication, or are in the final stages of so doing, the implications of these recent discoveries are only now becoming apparent or discussed. The present paper is one attempt to draw wider conclusions from a region of Central Greece – the province of Boeotia, where the author has been conducting intensive survey since 1979. Specifically it compares the state of knowledge regarding the settlement evolution of the region based upon an earlier topographic and extensive survey tradition (Tossey 1988), with the results now available from the author and colleagues' intensive survey in two districts of the province.A radical reinterpretation of the later prehistoric settlement systems is proposed with significant modifications also to the reconstruction of Classical and Hellenistic settlement networks. Closer agreement with prior knowledge is found with the new information for Roman and Late Roman settlement, whilst the further evolution of regional communities in medieval and post-medieval times – left out of Tossey's Gazetteer – can now be set out in some detail. The latter periods, as a result of highly informative historical sources, especially village tax registers, provide a cautionary tale in the complexities of matching archaeological settlement ‘continuities’ or ‘shifts’ with population and ethnic continuity. The overall analysis for the long-term settlement history of the province leads to the suggestion that similarities in settlement patterns have more to do with geography ‘constraining and enabling’ than with continuities of particular population or ethnic groups. This could seriously undermine the currently fashionable emphasis in Landscape Archaeology on the role of ‘memory’ and a ‘sense of place’ in the interpretation of past settlement networks.
The Lower Palaeolithic Site at Red Barns, Portchester, Hampshire: Bifacial Technology, Raw Material Quality, and the Organisation of Archaic Behaviour
Authors: Wenban-Smith Francis , Gamble Clive , Apsimon Arthur 
Published: February 2015

The site at Red Barns was excavated in 1975, but the large lithic collection remained unstudied following preliminary examination. This paper reports on further analysis of the lithic material from the site, together with a reappraisal of the faunal remains and original mineralogical analyses, and the results of processing sediment samples from the 1975 excavation. An abundant molluscan assemblage was recovered from the deposits covering the main archaeological horizon, allowing climatic/environmental reconstruction and amino acid dating. The synthesis of these data indicates the site to be older than previously thought, dating to between 425,000 and 200,000 BP.Analysis of the lithic material has suggested that the site is an undisturbed palimpsest of flint tools and debitage. The poor, severely frost-fractured nature of the raw material used for knapping, together with the location of the site on a Chalk outcrop, have enabled investigation of some assumptions about the influences upon knapping technology of i) poor quality raw material and ii) local availability of flint fresh from Chalk bedrock. The persistent manufacture of finely worked plano-convex handaxes suggests that, even in an area where fresh Chalk flint must have been abundant, the immediately available poor quality flint source was not a bar to formation of an assemblage dominated by handaxe production. Secondly, the emphasis on carefully shaped pointed plano-convex handaxes suggests that this shape was both deliberately imposed and not dictated by a lack of local availability of flint fresh from the Chalk. Behaviour at the site was investigated by analysis of the organisation of the lithic production and it was demonstrated that, while some handaxes and flake-tools were abandoned at the site and some flake core reduction also took place there, the dominant pattern was for handaxes to be made at the site and then removed and abandoned elsewhere.
Glandy Cross: A Later Prehistoric Monumental Complex in Carmarthenshire, Wales
Authors: Kirk Trevor , Williams George , Caseldine A. , Crowther J. , Darke I. , Darvill T. , David A. , Murphy K. , Ward P.A. , Wilkinson J. 
Published: February 2015

Excavations at the Glandy Cross monumental complex during 1991 and 1992 formed part of an integrated programme of evaluation, rescue, and research by Dyfed Archaeological Trust (DAT). Enclosures, pit circles, standing stones, and cairns were excavated and their environs systematically surveyed. Radiocarbon dates show the monumental complex to have been constructed between c. 2190–1530 cal BC. However, the earliest activity at the site may date to c. 4470–4230 cal BC. A defended enclosure was constructed on the peripheries of the complex c. 830–510 cal BC.The 1991–92 excavation results are presented along with a summary of survey, salvage, and research spanning the period 1981 to 1992. This new data set is tentatively interpreted in terms of historical process and the social practice of monumental construction. A brief commentary on heritage management at Glandy Cross is also presented.A note on authorship: one of the authors (George Williams) directed the Glandy Cross excavations during 1991–92 and prepared an initial draft of the project report. Following his retirement from DAT a project editor (Trevor Kirk) was commissioned by Cadw: Welsh Historic Monuments to guide the project towards publication. This paper was largely penned by the project editor, though the excavation and survey data were produced by George Williams and his fieldwork team. The excavation and survey archives are held at the offices of DAT.
Some Results of New Investigations at the Kapova Cave in the Southern Urals
Authors: Shchelinsky V. E. 
Published: February 2015

In 1982 investigations were resumed at the Kapova Cave in the Urals, which was already widely known for its rock paintings dating from the Upper Palaeolithic period. It is, to date, the only authentic site of its kind in Eastern Europe.The cave is situated on the western slopes of the southern Urals in the valley of the Belaya River 200 km south of the city of Ufa (fig. 1). It is a cave of a karst type that evolved in limestones of the Devonian and Carboniferous periods. The enormous entrance to the cave facing south-east is in the narrow gorge of the canyon of a U-shaped valley at a distance of 150 m from the Belaya River at a height of 7–8 m above its low-water level (pl. 31). The total length of the cave's passages investigated is 2 km (fig. 2).
A New Survey of Ingleborough Hillfort, North Yorkshire
Authors: Bowden M. C. B. , Mackay D. A. , Blood N. K. 
Published: February 2015

A survey of Ingleborough was undertaken by RCHME in the summer of 1988 at the request of the Yorkshire Dales National Park who are concerned by the considerable erosion and damage occurring on the Peak as a result of the popularity of the Three Peaks footpath. This is affecting not only the natural surface of the hill but also the archaeological remains.The summit of Ingleborough, one of the Three Peaks of the Yorkshire Dales, is a gritstone cap overlying the sandstone, shale and limestone beds of the Yoredale Series which, in turn, overlie the Great Scar Limestone. This formation gives Ingleborough its distinctive stepped profile, created by differential weathering, except where glacial drift forms smoother slopes on the flanks (Crutchley 1981, 41–44). The coarse gritstone forms a roughly triangular, plateau-like summit with only a slight rise from the rim to the highest point, at 723 m OD, now occupied by a triangulation pillar and cruciform walkers's shelter.
The Pressure of the Past: Presidential Address.
Authors: Wainwright G. J. 
Published: February 2015

Fifty years ago on 17 February 1934 the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia held its annual business meeting in Norwich. Professor Breuil was elected President for that year, Professor Miles Burkitt as Vice-President and Dr J. G. D. Clark as Honorary Editor. Other elections at that meeting included Mr Stuart Piggott to Council and O. G. S. Crawford to membership of the Society. It had been founded in 1908 when on 17 October a circular had been issued by W. G. Clarke of Norwich and W. D. Dutt of Lowestoft to over 100 interested people inviting them to form an East Anglian Society of Prehistorians. That circular and a selection of replies to it still exist in the records of the Society that have recently been rediscovered. Dr W. A. Sturge of Icklingham Hall agreed to become the first President and, having received 72 favourable replies, an inaugural meeting was held on Monday 26 October 1908 at Norwich.For the better part of three decades the Society maintained an active, if somewhat parochial, role in the development of British Prehistory. Its interests were East Anglian in orientation and with little exception directed to the study of palaeolithic man and the flint implements that might (or might not) be ascribed to human activity.By 1930, however, some members of the Society were contemplating change. As C. S. Phillips (1980, 113) has pointed out, it was the only body in Britain devoted entirely to Prehistoric studies, but whilst its membership had originally been local to East Anglia, by the fourth decade of the century it was expanding outside the region.
Early Palaeolithic in Moravia, Czechoslovakia.
Authors: Valoch Karel 
Published: February 2015

The first early palaeolithic tools, i.e. tools older than the Riss glacial period, were found already in the 1950s as isolated finds on the outskirts of Brno, either in the clay pits of brickworks (at the Brno–‘Červený kopec’, Brno-Židenice, ‘Malá Klajdovka’ and ‘Růženin dvůr’ localities) or in gravel terraces (Brno–Židenice, Brno–Líšeň). All these finds were worked pebbles or flakes.
The research of the Lower Pleistocene palaeontological site ‘Stránská skála’, on the eastern fringes of the City of Brno, started in the early 1960s by the Anthropos Institute of the Moravian Museum and led by R. Musil, brought to the light the first collection of artefacts accompanied by fauna. Stránská skála is a rock of Jurassic limestones, its north-western slope covered with debris, loess and fossil soils. There is a very rich fauna of vertebrata and molluscs, especially in the complex of fossil soils, but also in the loess and in the numerous crevices, fissures and caves of the rock massif. They are classed as Upper Biharian and dated to the Cromerian period (Musil and Valoch 1968). In the loess below the soil complex was also located the Matuyama/Brunhes palaeomagnetic inversion (Bucha et al. 1975).
Intensive survey of prehistoric sites in the Stilo region, Calabria.
Authors: Hodder Ian , Malone Caroline 
Published: February 2015

The results of a two-year field survey in Calabria are described. A number of specially designed ‘intensive’ field survey methods were devised and tested, and the results quantified.Through typological and fabric analysis of the pottery material recovered on the survey, some indication of the changing patterns of settlement in the region are detectable, and these have a number of implications relating to the questions of internal settlement organization and exchange patterns of neolithic and later prehistoric societies in Southern Italy.
A Bronze Age Glass Bead from Wilsford, Wiltshire: Barrow G.42 in the Lake group.
Authors: Guido Margaret , Henderson Julian , Cable Michael , Bayley Justine , Biek Leo 
Published: February 2015

This paper deals with a unique glass bead from the second millennium BC in Wessex. Overlooked for more than 150 years, it has now been recognized for its intrinsic interest and general importance and is here presented for its wide significance in ancient Europe and beyond (pls 8 and 9).InAncient Wiltshire(1812, 210) Richard Colt Hoare recorded the excavation of a barrow in a group of Bronze Age date at Wilsford: ‘No. 7 is a large bell-shaped barrow’ (now regarded as a bowl barrow) ‘composed entirely of vegetable earth. It contained within a cist a little pile of burned bones with which had been deposited a very fine brass pin, a large stone bead which had been stained red, a bead of ivory and a lance head of brass’. This account is based on the records of William Cunnington (1807, 5–6), which include a transcription of a letter from the original excavator, a Mr Owen. The dimensions of the barrow are there given as 80 ft in diameter, 9 ft high, with a circular cist 18 in deep. The barrow is described as ‘No. 6 of Mr Duke's barrows’; there is thus a discrepancy in the numbering of the barrow, since Colt Hoare referred to it as Lake No. 7, while Cunnington kept to No. 6. The barrow, though recently ploughed, still stands to a height of over 2 m, and is today known as G.42 (Grinsell 1957, 211).
Site Location and Site Hierarchy in Prehistoric Thailand
Authors: Hicham C. F. W. , Kijngam Amphan , Manly B. F. J. 
Published: February 2015

During the past decade, archaeological research in north-east Thailand has concentrated on the excavation of individual sites. Of these, the best known are Non Nok Tha (Bayard 1971) and Ban Chiang (Gorman and Charoenwongsa 1976). Both are relatively small occupation and burial sites, covering c. 1 ha and 3.5 ha respectively.There have been several claims for an unexpectedly early bronze-working tradition in the area, and of the inception of iron technology during the second millennium BC. Biological remains from these sites reveal cultivation of rice and maintenance of domestic herds of cattle, pig and water buffalo (Gorman and Charoenwongsa 1976). While the recent surge of prehistoric research here and in adjacent areas has clearly demonstrated the presence of a south-east Asian bronze working tradition of some antiquity (Ha Van Tan 1980), the establishment of a chronological framework and of the settlement pattern in the area are in their infancy.As part of the Thai Government's North-east Thailand Archaeological Project, steps were taken in 1980–81 to expand our knowledge of the Ban Chiang culture. During the 1980 dry season, Higham and Kijngam co-directed two intensive field surveys.
Azilian Pebbles in British Collections: a Re-examination
Authors: Couraud Claude , Bahn Paul G. 
Published: February 2015

The name ‘Azilian’ is firmly linked to that of Edward Piette, the principal excavator of the site on the left bank of the river Arize in the tunnel-cave of the Mas d'Azil (Ariège), in the French Pyrenees (see Bahn 1979). From 1887 onward this site yielded hundreds of painted and engraved pebbles (Piette 1896, 1903). Their decoration shows little variation, and consists largely of groups of dots and transverse marks; however, there are more complex signs such as longitudinal marks, lines of chevrons, grecques, crosses, perpendicular marks and ovals, while some pebble-faces are completely painted over. These little stones constitute almost the only evidence of artistic activity at the very end of the Upper Palaeolithic, and they span a period from c. 9000 to c. 7500 BC.Twenty-eight sites in France, five in Spain, three in Italy and one in Switzerland have yielded a total of 1951 worked pebbles, but the Mas d'Azil accounts for no less than about 1427 of these. The figure is approximate because it is very difficult to reach an exact total: there have been losses, and infiltrations of fakes, and the ensemble is scattered in at least 16 museums and private collections.