Long before the Norman Conquest of 1066, England saw periods of profound change that transformed the landscape and the identities of those who occupied it. The Bronze and Iron Ages saw the introduction of now-familiar animals and plants, such as sheep, horses, wheat, and oats, as well as new forms of production and exchange and the first laying out of substantial fields and trackways, which continued into the earliest Romano-British landscapes. The Anglo-Saxon period saw the creation of new villages based around church and manor, with ridge and furrow cultivation strips still preserved today. The basis for this volume is The English Landscapes and Identities project, which synthesised all the major available sources of information on English archaeology to examine this crucial period of landscape history from the middle Bronze Age (c. 1500 BC) to the Domesday survey (c. 1086 AD). It looks at the nature of archaeological work undertaken across England to assess its strengths and weaknesses when writing long-term histories. Among many other topics it examines the interaction of ecology and human action in shaping the landscape; issues of movement across the landscape in various periods; changing forms of food over time; an understanding of spatial scale; and questions of enclosing and naming the landscape, culminating in a discussion of the links between landscape and identity. The result is the first comprehensive account of the English landscape over a crucial 2500-year period. It also offers a celebration of many centuries of archaeological work, especially the intensive large-scale investigations that have taken place since the 1960s and transformed our understanding of England's past.

Britain is internationally renowned for the high quality and exquisite crafting of its later prehistoric grave goods (c. 4000 BC to AD 43). Many of prehistoric Britain's most impressive artefacts have come from graves. Interred with both inhumations and cremations, they provide some of the most durable and well-preserved insights into personal identity and the prehistoric life-course, yet they also speak of the care shown to the dead by the living, and of people's relationships with 'things'. Objects matter. This book's title is an intentional play on words. These are objects in burials; but they are also goods, material culture, that must be taken seriously. Within it, we outline the results of the first long-term, large-scale investigation into grave goods during this period, which enables a new level of understanding of mortuary practice and material culture throughout this major period of technological innovation and social transformation. Analysis is structured at a series of different scales, ranging from macro-scale patterning across Britain, to regional explorations of continuity and change, to site-specific histories of practice, to micro-scale analysis of specific graves and the individual objects (and people) within them. We bring these different scales of analysis together in the first ever book focusing specifically on objects and death in later prehistoric Britain. Focusing on six key case study regions, the book innovatively synthesises antiquarian reports, research projects and developer funded excavations. At the same time, it also engages with, and develops, a number of recent theoretical trends within archaeology, including personhood, object biography and materiality, ensuring that it will be of relevance right across the discipline. Its subject matter will also resonate with those working in anthropology, sociology, museology and other areas where death, burial and the role of material culture in people's lives are key contemporary issues.

This study examines developments in British archaeology over the last 30 years or so (between 1975-2010), focusing in particular on transformations in prehistoric research. Ultimately it seeks to foreground the extent to which recent historical developments (at all levels of the discipline and in various working contexts) are implicated in contemporary research practices. Advocating the need for taking a multi-stranded and interdisciplinary approach, the author consulted a range of sources - digital archives, documentary and oral material - and draws on ideas from archaeology, sociology, anthropology and oral history. Through a detailed analysis of a leading disciplinary newsletter, key concerns are highlighted which have shaped archaeological practice over this period, and how particular roles and relationships have been defined and developed.