Between 2018 and 2019, Cornwall Archaeological Unit undertook two projects at Mount’s Bay, Penwith. The first involved the excavation of a Bronze Age barrow and the second, environmental augur core sampling in Marazion Marsh. Both sites lie within an area of coastal hinterland, which has been subject to incursions by rising sea levels. Since the Mesolithic, an area of approximately 1 kilometre in extent between the current shoreline and St Michael’s Mount has been lost to gradually rising sea levels. With current climate change, this process is likely to occur at an increasing rate. Given their proximity, the opportunity was taken to draw the results from the two projects together along with all available existing environmental data from the area. For the first time, the results from all previous palaeoenvironmental projects in the Mount’s Bay area have been brought together. Evidence for coastal change and sea level rise is discussed and a model for the drowning landscape presented. In addition to modelling the loss of land and describing the environment over time, social responses including the wider context of the Bronze Age barrow and later Bronze Age metalwork deposition in the Mount’s Bay environs are considered. The effects of the gradual loss of land are discussed in terms of how change is perceived, its effects on community resilience, and the construction of social memory and narratives of place. The volume presents the potential for nationally significant environmental data to survive, which demonstrates the long-term effects of climate change and rising sea levels, and peoples’ responses to these over time.

Excavation of a Scheduled burial mound on Whitehorse Hill, Dartmoor revealed an unexpected, intact burial deposit of Early Bronze Age date associated with an unparalleled range of artefacts. The cremated remains of a young person had been placed within a bearskin pelt and provided with a basketry container, from which a braided band with tin studs had spilled out. Within the container were beads of shale, amber, clay and tin; wo pairs of turned wooden studs and a worked flint flake. A unique item, possibly a sash or band, made from textile and animal skin was found beneath the container. Beneath this, the basal stone of the cist had been covered by a layer of purple moor grass which had been collected in summer. Analysis of environmental material from the site has revealed important insights into the pyre material used to burn the body, as well as providing important information about the environment in which the cist was constructed. The unparalleled assemblage of organic objects has yielded insights into a range of materials which have not survived from the earlier Bronze Age elsewhere in southern Britain.

During November and December 2014, Cornwall Archaeological Unit undertook a programme of archaeological excavation in advance of construction of a road corridor to the south of Newquay. Evidence for Middle Bronze Age occupation took the form of a hollow-set roundhouse; however, the majority of the excavated features have been dated to the Iron Age and Roman periods. The area was enclosed as fields associated with extensive settlement activity throughout the last centuries cal BC into the third century AD. The excavations revealed the character of settlement-related activity during the later prehistoric and Roman periods. The evidence strongly suggests growing intensification of agriculture, with ditched fields and enclosures appearing in the landscape from the later Iron Age and into the Roman period. The results shed light on later prehistoric and Roman practices involving the division of the landscape with ditched fields and enclosed buildings. Many of the structures and pits were found to be set within their own ring-ditched enclosures or hollows, and the field system ditches were in some instances marked by 'special' deposits. As has previously been demonstrated for Middle Bronze Age roundhouses, structures could be subject to formal abandonment processes. Gullies and hollows were deliberately infilled, so that they were no longer visible at surface. However, unlike the abandoned Bronze Age roundhouses, the later structures appear to have been flattened and not monumentalized. In other words, buildings could be both etched into and subsequently erased from the landscape and thereby forgotten. This volume takes the opportunity presented by investigations on the Newquay Strategic Road to discuss the complexity of the archaeology, review the evidence for 'special' deposits and explore evidence for the deliberate closure of buildings especially in later prehistoric and Roman period Cornwall. Finally, the possible motives which underlie these practices are considered. Includes contributions by Ryan S Smith, Dana Challinor, Julie Jones, Graeme Kirkham, Anna Lawson-Jones, Henrietta Quinnell and Roger Taylor.

Charles Thomas (1928-2016) was a Cornishman and archaeologist, whose career from the 1950s spanned nearly seven decades. This period saw major developments that underpin the structures of archaeology in Britain today, in many of which he played a pivotal part. He campaigned for the Chair of Cornish Studies at the University of Exeter, which he then held from 1972 until retirement, after teaching archaeology at Edinburgh and Leicester Universities. The ‘Intellectual Adventure in Archaeology’ was to Charles the mental stimulation of developing narratives for the past, especially in the areas in which he was a leading authority, including the early church in Britain, the early medieval period more generally, and Cornish studies. The contributions to this volume demonstrate the extent to which his scholarship and character has underpinned the work of others, in Cornwall and beyond. Contributions come from life-long friends and from archaeologists at all of stages of their careers. Their subjects are predominantly Cornish, Gwithian, Tintagel and Scilly, but also range from Scotland to Southern France. The whole is brought to life by a series of Charles’ watercolours, previously unpublished. The volume should appeal to all those interested in the development of archaeology in the later 20th century and of Cornwall from prehistory to its distinctive present.

Later Prehistoric Settlement in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly reports on the excavation between 1996 and 2014 of five later prehistoric and Roman period settlements. Three of the mainland sites - Killigrew, Nancemere and Higher Besore - are located in central Cornwall, near Truro, with the fourth, at Porthleven, situated on the south coast in west Cornwall. The fifth settlement, Porth Killier, is on the island of St Agnes on the Isles of Scilly. All the sites were multi-phased, revealing both similar and contrasting patterns of occupation stretching from the Bronze Age into the Iron Age and beyond. Despite having broadly comparable chronological sequences, there are considerable differences in both the tempo and intensity of occupation, and significant contrasts in practices associated with them. Significantly, all four mainland sequences culminate with an enclosed settlement in the Late Iron Age and especially during the Roman period, a time of significant economic and social change following the conquest. During this period there continued to be differences in the character of occupation. Notably two of the enclosures seem to have been strongly associated with industrial activities, including metalworking at Killigrew, suggesting that the working of iron may have been a controlled or ritualized activity undertaken within a dedicated space. The volume presents the results from each of the five settlement sites, before reviewing the key themes which have emerged from the investigations.

This monograph presents the results of archaeological recording along two South West Water pipelines, between Tintagel and Boscastle and between Harlyn Bay and Padstow. The sequence began with Mesolithic lithics and continued through pits with Early Neolithic ceramics, with Grooved Ware and with Beaker pottery. A Middle Bronze Age roundhouse of unusual character had been submerged by colluvium and produced a mould for a copper alloy racloir, an artefact more commonly found in Continental Europe. There were Bronze Age field walls, and a modified 'natural' stone, a focus for prehistoric activity. At Forrabury, uniquely in Cornwall, Early Iron Age cists were revealed, and, close to the well-known later Iron Age cemetery at Harlyn Bay, an Iron Age to Romano-British settlement was uncovered beneath blown sand. The terrain of each pipeline had its own distinctive character and a concluding discussion explores the archaeology of successive periods against this and against the background of Cornish prehistory.

Following an archaeological assessment, geophysical survey, and evaluation trenching, a large-scale excavation covering some 30 hectares was undertaken by the Historic Environment Service projects team of Cornwall County Council at the site of Imerys Minerals Ltd's Scarcewater tip, St Stephen-in-Brannel in 2004. The archaeological excavations were focused upon the investigation of three sunken-floored roundhouses of Middle Bronze Age date, together with a range of Bronze Age pits and timber structures, a Late Bronze Age roundhouse and palisade enclosure and pits, a Middle Iron Age 'cairn', and Romano-British settlement and funerary activity. The analyses of the information from the excavated sites has provided the opportunity to investigate shifting settlement foci and changes to Bronze Age roundhouse architecture over a period between 1500 and 1000 cal BC, and to examine the relationships between settlement-related and ceremonial activity in the middle of the second millennium cal BC.

This volume reports on excavations conducted in advance of the construction of a campus of Cornwall University. In addition to the expected linear field systems and Romano-British settlement activity, Early and Later Neolithic pits were uncovered as well as 5 circular post-ring structures and other features dating to Early to Middle Bronze Age.

The purpose of this study is to provide some interpretation and synthesis for Cornwall's regional archaeology. Contents: Introduction and Background - structure and methodology, barrow studies, 18th, 19th, 20th and recent research and models; The Later Neolithic Background and the role of Beakers in Cornwall - comparative studies, ceremonial sites and ritual traditions; The Evidence from the Barrows - dating, the Watch Hill Barrow and Needham's chronology; Barrow Cemeteries and their Landscape; The Role of Bronze Age Barrow Cemeteries in Cornwall - 4 case studies; Devon; Cornish Ceremonial Landscapes - New Interpretations. Appendices include lists of terminology and excavated barrows.