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Funerary and related cups of the British Bronze Age presents the
first national corpus and study of these often highly decorated
items. Cups are the least studied of all Bronze Age funerary
ceramics and their interpretations are still based on antiquarian
speculation. They are clearly ‘Urnes of no small Variety’ and
previous attempts at classification have largely failed due to this
variation. Their potential uses, technologies and associations are
examined and many myths, such as their association with children
and their role in accompanying other ceramics such as Collared Urns
and Food Vessels are examined and questioned. Cups appear to have
been grave goods in their own right and the term ‘accessory
vessel’ is rejected. The book contains a fully referenced and
illustrated national corpus that will form the basis for future
studies.
Contents: Introduction (Alex Gibson); Earthen Enclosures in Britain
& Ireland: An Introduction to the study of henges: time for a
change? (Alex Gibson); Henging, mounding and blocking: the
Forteviot henge group (Kenneth Brophy & Gordon Noble); Henges
in Ireland: new discoveries and emerging issues (Muiris O'Sullivan,
Stephen Davies & Geraldine Stout); Journeys and Juxtapositions.
Marden Henge and the View from the Vale (Jim Leary & David
Field); Conformity, Routeways and Religious Experience - the Henges
of Central Yorkshire (Jan Harding); Ringlemere: A Pit/Post
Horseshoe and Henge Monument in East Kent (Keith Parfitt &
Stuart Needham); Living with Sacred Spaces: The Henge Monuments of
Wessex (Joshua Pollard); Neolithic enclosures: European case
studies: Mid Neolithic Enclosures in Southern Scandinavia (Lars
Larsson); Mid- Late Neolithic Enclosures in the South of France
(Fabien Convertini); Kreisgrabenanlagen - Middle Neolithic Ritual
Enclosures in Austria 4800-4500 BC (Wolfgang Neubauer); Mind the
gap: Neolithic and Chalcolithic enclosures of south Portugal
(Antonio Carlos Valera); The Neolithic enclosures in transition.
Tradition and change in the cosmology of early farmers in central
Europe (Jan Turek); Journey to the Centre of the Earth (Richard
Bradley).
In October 2004 over 70 delegates met in the Department of
Archaeological Sciences at the University of Bradford for the
second International Conference on Prehistoric Ceramics. The
conference was the second major biannual conference to be organised
by the Prehistoric Ceramics Research Group. It is hoped that in the
papers presented in this volume, readers will find much to
stimulate the mind and their own directions of study even if the
subject matter is not directly relevant to their own specific
fields. This is the unifying beauty of ceramic research.
This volume arises from a session at the EAA conference in Lisbon
in 2000. Its aim was to draw together the new data from Europe on
prehistoric wooden palisaded enclosures. Wood was important to
early humans yet the rarity of surviving wooden objects from
prehistoric contexts means that it is a rarely studied and often
ignored medium. However and wherever these wooden remains are
tantalizingly discovered, there is common concern across Europe of
the lack of understanding on them. However, an increasing amount of
work is taking place across Europe on Neolithic palisade
enclosures, in particular, and the number of sites is expanding.
These sites present their own problems with horizontal stratigraphy
and phasing, as well as the more obvious considerations of dating
and scarcity of internal features. Questions such as 'what were
they for?' are likely to remain unanswered for some while, but it
is hoped that the five papers in this volume (discussing sites from
Ireland to Romania) as well as presenting a large body of new data,
will go some way towards shedding some light on the study of these
enigmatic structures.
Most people believe that traditional landscapes did not survive the
collapse of Roman Britain, and that medieval open fields and
commons originated in Anglo-Saxon innovations unsullied by the
past. The argument presented here tests that belief by contrasting
the form and management of early medieval fields and pastures with
those of the prehistoric and Roman landscapes they are supposed to
have superseded. The comparison reveals unexpected continuities in
the layout and management of arable and pasture from the fourth
millennium BC to the Norman Conquest. The results suggest a new
paradigm: the collective organisation of agricultural resources
originated many centuries, perhaps millennia, before Germanic
migrants reached Britain. In many places, medieval open fields and
common rights over pasture preserved long-standing traditions for
organising community assets. In central, southern England, a
negotiated compromise between early medieval lords eager to
introduce new managerial structures and communities as keen to
retain their customary traditions of landscape organisation
underpinned the emergence of nucleated settlements and distinctive,
highly-regulated open fields.
Pottery is one of the most enduring artefacts from prehistory. It
is of fundamental importance since, unlike stone, it can be
precisely dated, displays regional variation and can produce
information on the diet and economy of prehistoric people. This
book introduces the reader to the style and forms of British
pottery.
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