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"Landscape archaeology -- England"
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Interpreting the Landscape
Most places in Britain have had a local history written about them. Up until this century these histories have addressed more parochial issues, such as the life of the manor, rather than explaining the features and changes in the landscape in a factual manner. Much of what is visible today in Britain's landscape is the result of a chain of social and natural processes, and can be interpreted through fieldwork as well as from old maps and documents.Michael Aston uses a wide range of source material to study the complex and dynamic history of the countryside, illustrating his points with aerial photographs, maps, plans and charts. He shows how to understand the surviving remains as well as offering his own explanations for how our landscape has evolved.
eBook
Landscape History Discoveries in the North West
From optical remote-sensing technology (lidar) to more traditional forms of landscape analysis and documentary research, this volume brings together the work of both amateur and professional historians and archaeologists, united in their enthusiasm for the landscape of northwest England and north-east Wales. This collection of research papers arose from the Chester Society for Landscape History's 25th anniversary conference and includes a wealth of illustrations. The publication offers new insights into a wide range of features indicative of the region's history between the twelfth and the twentieth centuries, including residential buildings, settlement patterns, the names and boundaries of fields, and the legacy of developments in transport and industrialisation: a collection of 'landscape discoveries' to be shared.
eBook
The North Pennines from Prehistory to Present
The first comprehensive survey of the archaeology of the North Pennines, from Mesolithic to modern times. Traces of 10,000 years of human activity survive today, including flint scatters at Mesolithic campsites, earthworks of prehistoric and later settlements and field systems, and extensive remnants of the post-medieval 'miner-farmer' landscape.
eBook
Assessing Iron Age Marsh-Forts
Iron Age marsh-forts are large, monumental structures located in
low-lying waterscapes. Although they share chronological and
architectural similarities with their hillfort counterparts, their
locations suggest that they may have played a specific and
alternative role in Iron Age society. Despite the availability of a
rich palaeoenvironmental archive at many sites, little is known
about these enigmatic structures, and until recently, the only
acknowledged candidate was the unusual, dual-enclosure monument at
Sutton Common, near Doncaster. Assessing Iron Age
Marsh-Forts considers marsh-forts as a separate phenomenon
within Iron Age society through an understanding of their landscape
context and palaeoenvironmental development. At the national level,
a range of Iron Age wetland monuments has been compared to Sutton
Common to generate a gazetteer of potential marsh-forts. At the
local level, a multi-disciplinary case-study is presented of the
Berth marsh-fort in North Shropshire, incorporating GIS-based
landscape modelling and multi-proxy palaeoenvironmental analysis
(plant macrofossils, beetles and pollen). The results of both the
gazetteer and the Berth case-study challenge the view that
marsh-forts are simply a topographical phenomenon. These
substantial Iron Age monuments appear to have been deliberately
constructed to control areas of marginal wetland and may have
played an important role in the ritual landscape.
eBook
Huntsman's Quarry, Kemerton
Archaeological investigations at Huntsman’s Quarry, Kemerton, south Worcestershire during 1995-6 recorded significant Late Bronze Age occupation areas and field systems spreading across more than 8 hectares. Limited evidence for Upper Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic and Beaker activity was also recovered together with an Early Bronze Age ring-ditch. Waterholes and associated round-houses, structures and pits were set within landscape of fields and droveways radiocarbon dated to the 12th–11th centuries cal BC. Elements of this field system probably predated the settlement. Substantial artifactual and ecofactual assemblages were recovered from the upper fills of the waterholes and larger pits . The settlement had a predominantly pastoral economy supported by some textile and bronze production. Ceramics included a notable proportion of non-local fabrics demonstrating that the local population enjoyed a wide range of regional contacts. Wider ranging, national exchange networks were also indicated by the presence of shale objects as well as the supply of bronze for metalworking, perhaps indicative of a site of some social status. Together the evidence indicates a small settlement within which occupation of individual areas was short-lived with the focus of the settlement shifting on a regular basis. It is proposed that this occurred on a generational basis, with each generation setting up a new ‘homestead’ with an associated waterhole. The settlement can be compared favorably to those known along the Thames Valley but until now not recognized in this part of the country. Cropmark evidence and limited other investigations indicate that the fields and droveways recorded represent a small fragment of a widespread system of boundaries established across the gravel terraces lying between Bredon Hill and the Carrant Brook. This managed and organized landscape appears to have been established for the maintenance of an economy primarily based on relatively intensive livestock farming; the trackways facilitating seasonal movement of stock between meadows alongside the Carrant Brook, the adjacent terraces and the higher land on Bredon Hill.
eBook
Romano-British Settlement and Cemeteries at Mucking
Excavations at Mucking, Essex, between 1965 and 1978, revealed extensive evidence for a multiphase rural Romano-British settlement, perhaps an estate center, and five associated cemetery areas (170 burials) with different burial areas reserved for different groups within the settlement. The settlement demonstrated clear continuity from the preceding Iron Age occupation with unbroken sequences of artefacts and enclosures through the first century AD, followed by rapid and extensive remodeling, which included the laying out a Central Enclosure and an organized water supply with wells, accompanied by the start of large-scale pottery production. After the mid-second century AD the Central Enclosure was largely abandoned and settlement shifted its focus more to the Southern Enclosure system with a gradual decline though the 3rd and 4th centuries although continued burial, pottery and artefactual deposition indicate that a form of settlement continued, possibly with some low-level pottery production. Some of the latest Roman pottery was strongly associated with the earliest Anglo-Saxon style pottery suggesting the existence of a terminal Roman settlement phase that essentially involved an ‘Anglo-Saxon’ community. Given recent revisions of the chronology for the early Anglo-Saxon period, this casts an intriguing light on the transition, with radical implications for understandings of this period. Each of the cemetery areas was in use for a considerable length of time. Taken as a whole, Mucking was very much a componented place/complex; it was its respective parts that fostered its many cemeteries, whose diverse rites reflect the variability and roles of the settlement’s evidently varied inhabitants.
eBook
Waiting for the End of the World?
Waiting for the End of the World? addresses the archaeological, architectural, historical, and geological evidence for natural disasters in the Middle Ages between the 11th and 16th centuries. This volume adopts a fresh interdisciplinary approach to explore the many ways in which environmental hazards affected European populations and, in turn, how medieval communities coped and responded to short- and long-term consequences. Three sections, which focus on geotectonic hazards (Part I), severe storms and hydrological hazards (Part II) and biophysical hazards (Part III), draw together 18 papers of the latest research while additional detail is provided in a catalogue of the 20 most significant disasters to have affected Europe during the period. These include earthquakes, landslides, tsunamis, storms, floods and outbreaks of infectious diseases. Spanning Europe from the British Isles to Italy and from the Canary Islands to Cyprus, these contributions will be of interest to earth scientists, geographers, historians, sociologists, anthropologists and climatologists but are also relevant to students and non-specialist readers interested in medieval archaeology and history as well as those studying human geography and disaster studies. Despite a different set of beliefs relating to the natural world and protection against environmental hazards, the evidence suggests that medieval communities frequently adopted a surprisingly ‘modern’, well-informed and practically-minded outlook.
eBook
The Uffington White Horse geoglyph as sun-horse
The Uffington White Horse is a unique later prehistoric geoglyph worked onto the chalk hillside of the Berkshire Downs in southern England. This large figure has seen little new interpretation since the early twentieth century. Unable to explain the form satisfactorily, archaeologists have shied away from acknowledging the distinct nature of the horse and its probable importance to previous occupants of the land. By reviewing the image's context within the broader archaeological landscape, the argument can now be made that the Uffington carving is a representation of the sun-horse found in iconography throughout later prehistoric Europe.
Journal Article