The settlement at Bornais consists of a complex of mounds which protrude from the relatively flat machair plain in the township of Bornais on the island of South Uist. This sandy plain has proved an attractive settlement from the Beaker period onwards; it appears to have been intensively occupied from the Late Bronze Age to the end of the Norse period. Mound 1 was the original location for settlement in this part of the machair plain; pre-Viking activity of some complexity is present and it is likely that the settlement activity started in the Middle Iron Age, if not earlier. The examination of the mound 1 deposits provides an important contribution to our understanding of the Iron Age sequence in the Atlantic province. The principal contribution comprises the large quantities of mammal, fish and bird bones, carbonised plant remains and pottery, which can be accurately dated to a fairly precise and narrow period in the 1st millennium AD. These are augmented by a substantial collection of small finds which included distinctive bone artefacts. The contextual significance of the site is based on the survival of floor deposits and a burnt-down roof; the floor deposits can be compared with abandonment and adjacent midden deposits providing contrasting contextual environments that help to clarify depositional processes. The burning down of the house and the excellent preservation of the deposits within it provide an unparalleled opportunity to examine the timber superstructure of the building and the layout of the material used by the inhabitants.

Eventful, influential and absorbing, the early history of Northumberland is a fascinating story that has rarely been brought together under one cover. In this authoritative historical account, the authors bring to bear a huge quantity of old and new data and craft it into an in-depth synthesis. The authors deliver this history in chronological order from a perspective that places human activity and environment at its core. The narrative extends from the Palaeolithic through to, and including, the Anglo-Saxon period. This enormous sweep of history is supported by a robust radiocarbon chronology, with all available dates for the region brought together and calibrated against the most recent calibration curves for the first time. The geographic focus of the volume is North Northumberland but the narrative frequently extends to cover the whole county and occasionally further afield into neighbouring areas so as to deal with key topics at an appropriate geographic scale and to take account of important information from nearby areas. This second volume in the Till-Tweed monograph series follows on from the first volume, Managing Archaeological Landscapes in Northumberland , which provided a considerable quantity of new field data, in addition to presenting a landscape management methodology based around the "landform element" approach.

Britain's abolition of the slave trade in 1807 did not end the traffic of human beings across the Atlantic. Indeed, for many decades to come, hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans continued to be shipped into slavery. From 1840 to 1872 the remote South Atlantic island of St Helena played a pivotal role in Britain's efforts to suppress the slave trade, and over this time it received over 25,000 'liberated Africans', taken from slave ships by Royal Navy patrols. Conditions aboard the slavers were appalling, and many did not survive the journey. Rupert's Valley therefore became a graveyard to many thousands of Africans - 'a valley of dry bones' in the words of a visiting missionary. In 2008 archaeological excavations uncovered a small part of that graveyard, revealing the burials of over 300 victims of the slave trade. It was disposal on a massive scale, with the dead interred in a combination of single, multiple and mass graves. This book presents the finding of the archaeological and osteological study, and in so doing brings the inhumanity of the slave trade into vivid focus. It tells the story of a group of children and young adults who had lived in Africa only a few weeks prior to their death on St Helena, and whose remains bear witness to the cruelty of their transportation. However, the archaeology also shows them as more than just victims, but also as individuals with a sense of their own identity and culture. The slave trade continues to this day, and although this book is a study of the past it also serves as a reminder of evils that persist into the modern day.

This is last in a series of fascicules publishing the British Museum's programme of research excavations at Grimes Graves, Norfolk. Research into flint mines such as Grimes Graves, one of the largest Neolithic flint mine complexes in Europe, offers a fascinating glimpse into the practical knowledge and skills of humans at that time. This fascicule considers the miners' methods as well as their motivation and the uses to which the finished products were put. Ian Longworth was formerly Keeper of Prehistoric and Romano-British Antiquities at the British Museum, Gillian Varndell is a curator of Prehistory and Europe at the British Museum and Jacek Lech has a professorship at the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw.

This publication presents the results of archaeological investigations by Pre-Construct Archaeology at Laurel Farm to the south-east of Norfolk. An extraordinarily long and complex history of occupation and exploitation was revealed, dating back to the Lower Palaeolithic. The site was also visited in the Upper Palaeolithic by hunter-gatherer communities who used the shelter provided by the roots of an upturned tree to knap flint into blades and tools. Tree-throw hollows continued to be significant features in the landscape and, in the Early Neolithic, a remarkable deposit of pottery and flint was placed into a pair of adjacent hollows . Around 4,500 years ago, use of the area changed with the construction of a substantial ring-ditch, probably the remains of a ploughed-out round barrow. From the late Anglo-Saxon into the early Medieval period the area was used for the early stages of iron extraction and production - processes which have rarely been identified archaeologically. There is evidence that ore was quarried, washed and roasted to remove impurities. Mousehold Heath continued to be visited for its natural resources, with gravel quarries and brick kilns exploiting the natural clays, until pressures on agricultural production towards the end of the eighteenth century resulted in the enclosure of the landscape.

Ancient Trees in the Landscape is the outcome of many years research into the history of trees in Norfolk, and represents the first detailed, published account of the ancient and traditionally managed trees of any English county. Yet it is far more than a regional survey. It is an exploration of how trees can be studied as part of the landscape. It discusses how accurately trees can be dated; explains why old trees are found in certain contexts and not in others; discusses traditional management practices and how these changed over time; and looks at the various ways in which trees have been used in parks and gardens. Above all, it considers how trees were regarded by people in the past, and how this has affected their survival to the present. Ancient Trees in the Landscape is a fascinating and original study which sets out a new agenda in landscape history. It will be essential reading for countryside managers and conservationists, and for all those interested in landscape history, arboriculture, and the history of the English countryside.

This review of Research and Archaeology augments the regional research framework, which appeared in two parts as a Resource Assessment (Glazebrook ed. 1997); and a Research Agenda and Strategy (Brown and Glazebrook eds 2000). The review considers new evidence on a period-by-period basis, with each period subdivided into an assessment of key projects undertaken since 2000, an assessment of progress on research topics proposed in 2000 and a consideration of future research topics. The regional research framework was never intended to be a fixed point but rather a dynamic process through which the region's archaeology can be influenced, and subject to periodic review and revision. All three parts of the framework are available online (at www.eaareports.org.uk) and will be kept live and updated by the historic environment community of the East of England as new discoveries are made and new research priorities established.

Excavations in 2006-8 by MOLA on the site of St Giles Court, on the north side of St Giles High Street, Camden, illustrate the development of this London suburb from the medieval period to the early 20th century. Located opposite the parish church of the former medieval leper hospital of St Giles-in-the-Fields, the site was open ground and gardens until the mid-16th century when residential houses were built along the High Street. St Giles was at the heart of London suburban expansion by the mid-17th century. At this time it was a relatively prosperous district, with houses lining the main streets and businesses developing behind, including the Eagle and Child and Hampshire Hog inns. The numerous objects recovered indicate a varied standard of living among the inhabitants. By the late 18th century the reputation of the St Giles area and its housing had declined and the site lay within the southern core of the area known as the "Rookery" - a notorious late 18th- and 19th-century slum. However, this study reveals that the area's image may not be entirely matched by reality: it found evidence of contrasting lifestyles, households and businesses in this period, including a prosperous family brewery, before the area eventually lost its residential character and became almost purely commercial.

The site of 1 Poultry, excavated in the 1990s, is located near the Bank of England in the heart of the City of London. It lay immediately west of the point where the main east-west road through Roman London bridged the Walbrook stream and proved to be one of the most significant archaeological sites ever excavated in the City, with an unparalleled sequence of buildings, roads and open spaces. A timber drain of AD 47 beneath the main road is the earliest, securely dated structure yet known from Londinium and a pottery shop destroyed in the Boudican revolt gives a snapshot of life in AD 60/61. A 2nd-century AD writing tablet preserves the only evidence for the sale of a slave found in Britain to date, while the 3rd- and 4th-century buildings on the site provide a rare demonstration of the continuities and changes that occurred in Roman urban life. The key sequence from 1 Poultry provides the majority of the evidence but is augmented by findings from Docklands Light Railway sites at Bucklersbury, Lothbury and Lombard Street and other work at 72-75 Cheapside, 76-80 Cheapside, 36-37 King Street and Mansion House. Together, the sites provide a comprehensive record of the development of Londinium over the entire Roman period.

Gathering Time presents the results of a major dating programme that re-writes the early Neolithic of Britain by more accurately dating enclosures, a phenomenon that first appeared in the early Neolithic: places of construction, labour, assembly, ritual and deposition. The project has combined hundreds of new radiocarbon dates with hundreds of existing dates, using a Bayesian statistical framework. Such formal chronological modelling is essential if significantly more precise and robust date estimates are to be achieved than those currently available from informal inspection of calibrated radiocarbon dates. The resulting dating project included over 35 enclosures - the largest study so far attempted in a Bayesian framework. This establishes a new chronology for causewayed and related enclosures in southern Britain, which appeared in the final decades of the 38th century cal BC, increased in number dramatically in the 37th century cal BC, and began no longer to be built by the end of the 36th century cal BC. Several enclosures were of short duration - in some cases probably in use for less than a generation - though some examples do conform to the conventional assumption of a long primary use-life. In Ireland, enclosures of this kind are much scarcer. The project helped to date two of these: Donegore, Co. Antrim and Magheraboy, Co. Sligo. As well as establishing a new chronology for enclosures, Gathering Time also places these results into their wider context, by considering the chronology of the early Neolithic as a whole. Well over a thousand other radiocarbon dates have been critically assessed and modelled in a Bayesian framework - for settlement, monument building and other activity, region by region across southern Britain and across Ireland as a whole (a brief comparative study of Scotland as far north as the Great Glen is also included). Generally in southern Britain other Neolithic activity can be dated before the beginnings of monument building and, among the monuments, long barrows, long cairns, and related forms clearly preceded the earliest causewayed enclosures. The first Neolithic things and practices probably appeared in south-east England in the 41st century cal BC, arguably by some kind of small-scale colonisation from the adjacent continent, and spread at a variable pace across the rest of Britain and Ireland over the next two and a half centuries or more, a process involving acculturation of local people as well as immigrants. Enclosures may have been adapted as a social strategy of harnessing the power of the distant and the exotic, and perhaps old ancestral ties to the European continent, in a dynamic and rapidly changing social milieu. Close attention is given to themes of deposition, material culture and different kinds of social interaction, from networks of exchange to episodes of violence. A high tempo of change continued, as very different constructions came to be built from the 36th century cal BC onwards: the linear and more arcane cursus monuments. The study of Irish Neolithic chronology reveals significant patterning, including a short currency for rectangular timber houses in the 37th century cal BC, but also highlights the challenge of establishing more reliable chronologies, for monuments in particular. Alternative scenarios for the date and nature of the beginning of the Neolithic in Ireland are modelled. Gathering Time ends with reflections on the nature and pace of change in prehistory. If generational timescales are now within our grasp routinely, more subtle and individualised kinds of (pre)history can and must be written, and the conventional frame of the long-term must shift from being familiar and comfortable to problematic.

Between 1998 and 2001, Albion Archaeology (formerly Bedfordshire County Archaeology Service) carried out a series of archaeological investigations in advance of development at Marsh Leys on the outskirts of Bedford. Although the discovery of flint artefacts suggested limited earlier prehistoric activity, the first firm evidence for sustained use of the site was a ditched enclosure, which pre-dated the late Iron Age. The vast majority of the archaeological evidence was associated with two Romano-British farm sites c. 400m apart. The farms varied in size over time, ranging from c.1ha to 3.3ha. Their layout, morphology, chronological development through three distinct phases, mixed farming economy and environment were similar, although subtle contrasts were identified.

This volume explores the idea of regionally-based archaeologies across the British Isles which are not necessarily defined by modern political boundaries or through comparisons with regions such as Wessex and Orkney. In the past these intensively studied areas have often been assumed to represent the 'typical' - other areas with apparently different narratives have generally been labelled 'peripheral' and their diversity and distinctiveness overlooked. Assumptions about these core-based models have been challenged, especially by archaeologists in Ireland and Scotland and to some extent Wales. In England, despite more than two decades of intensive developer-funded archaeological investigation, new regional narratives are only just beginning to emerge. The 12 contributions to the collection - based on a session at the Exeter TAG conference in 2006 - identify distinctive elements of the prehistoric archaeology of a number of discrete areas across the British Isles, from Cornwall to Scotland and south-east England to Ireland. Some also consider how archaeologically coherent regions might be defined and the associated methodological problems in approaching such definitions. Others examine the ways in which 'universal' artefact forms and monument types have been interpreted in different areas, and how different patterns of contact, with the Continent or other regions, may have affected the construction of identities.

Six multi-period archaeological sites investigated in advance of gravel extraction in the London Borough of Havering between 1963 and 1997 form the basis of a landscape history of the Rainham and Upminster area. Residual Mesolithic finds from the study area include an adze. The first significant activity locally was an Early Neolithic ring ditch, which remained in use for about a millennium. During the Bronze Age the area was transformed by extensive woodland clearance and the creation of rectilinear fields and scattered farmsteads. The Iron Age saw more intensive landscape utilisation and settlement. About the time of the Roman invasion two farmsteads were fortified. A waterhole from one of these farmsteads revealed a large pottery assemblage dating to c. AD 60-70, showing a low level of Romanisation and few imported wares. A number of farmsteads were continuously occupied throughout the Roman period until after c. AD 370. The presence of Early Saxon activity at some sites suggests either continuity of occupation or only a short period of abandonment. These scattered Saxon farmsteads were probably abandoned during the Late Saxon period, when the rural settlement pattern generally changed to nucleated villages. Significant medieval remains include a farmstead and a manorial enclosure.

Archaeological evidence is enriched when it is viewed against the backdrop of its natural landscape setting. This setting is not readily apparent in the lower Lea valley, where evidence for the natural topography has been cut away by quarrying and reservoir construction or buried by metres of alluvium and modern made ground. The Lea Valley Mapping Project, funded by the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund, has taken a geoarchaeological approach to reconstructing the past landscape and its relationship to archaeological distributions by using existing borehole information to model the buried topography and past environment of the lower Lea valley from the M25 to the confluence of the Lea and the Thames. The results place the known archaeology within its past landscape context and also predict the archaeological potential of the study area, which readers can investigate by referring both to the maps in the monograph and to the accompanying gazetteer. They can also download the interpreted geo-referenced datasets produced for the project from the ADS website. This book will be an indispensable guide not only for those wishing to know the archaeological potential and past landscape characteristics of the lower Lea valley but to anyone proposing to investigate the buried landscape in other river valleys or wanting an introduction to Quaternary deposits, environments and landscape processes in Greater London.

The Manchester Botanical and Horticultural Society was founded in 1827 to allow members the opportunity to study botany and horticulture and to create an ambience "not unlike a fashionable resort". Today the Garden is all but forgotten and only the former entrance gates and a street name remain. This book, illustrated with many contemporary engravings and postcards, charts the history of the Garden; its international reputation in horticultural developments and many floral triumphs; its recurrent financial crises and ultimate degeneration into a venue for cat and dog shows and final conversion to a doomed amusement park. Ann Brooks studied Pharmacy at Manchester University followed by a varied career in hospital pharmacy. Her great love of gardening and the history of the gardening movement led her to return to academia and she completed a PhD in 2007 on The Manchester Botanic Garden and the Movement for Subscription Botanic Gardens. She is the co-author of a number of papers on the history of Manchester and is currently writing a book on the movement for subscription botanic gardens and conducting research on Victorian villa gardens.