In Julius Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War, the term “oppidum” – used to designate any fortified community – indicates those particular Gaulish sites which are characterized both by a strong tendency to social cohesion and the development of a centralized territorial policy. From a chronological point of view, these sites are limited to a very precise period: the two last centuries BCE, from La Tène D1 to La Tène D2 (120–30 BCE). The purpose of this study is to define the role of animal production within the new urban structures. Hence, the research focuses on the specific economical aspect of meat resources and their management: what is the place of this activity in the economy of Gaulish peoples? Is it possible to detect within the sites any precise organisation in sectors in relation to the butchering activities? What about the meat imports and, consequently, the interactions between the communities and the sites of production? Who was the target of the produced food resources? Were they part of some large-scale “sales strategy”. The research aims to approach these economic issues through the study of the fauna remains recovered mostly from Condé-sur-Suippe, in the territory of the Remi, and also from Villeneuve-Saint-Germain, the capital of the Suessiones. Dating respectively from 120 to 90 BCE and from 90 to 40 BCE, these fortified communities are among the most important in Europe, not only because of their size and of the exceptional conservation of their town planning but also because of their almost unequalled faunal wealth. The comparison between the two sites and their neighbours, i.e. contemporaneous rural sites of an a priori inferior status will hence attempt to cast a new light on the economic role of these fortified communities which are the outcome of a long stratification process within the Gaulish society.

Famous for the excavations carried out by Sir Mortimer Wheeler in 1951–52, the late Iron Age earthwork complex at Stanwick, North Yorks, is the largest prehistoric site in northern England. The site was probably the seat of the Brigantian queen Cartimandua, and both the structures and the finds from the site reflect this status. A recent re-evaluation of the radiocarbon dates has led to a new chronology which has rewritten our understanding of late Iron Age Britain. This volume reports not only on the excavations of the 1980s, but also synthesises other work in the environs of the site.

This thesis focusses on the arrowheads found in graves of Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age date (2500-1700 BC) in the Armorican massif, the southern British Isles and Denmark. These artefacts are examined from the angle of typology, raw materials, technology, experimentation and use-wear. The aim of these different approaches is to characterize the modes of production and the functions of stone arrowheads during a period which successively sees the introduction of copper then bronze metallurgy. Several interpretations are proposed, from warriors renewing their quivers to craftsmen manufacturing prestige goods for the elite. In Brittany, the arrows are set in their cultural and social context, marked by an individualization of funerary practices and then by the emergence of chiefs at the head of strongly hierarchical communities with geographically coherent territories. Power seems founded on reorganization of land-use and exploitation of agricultural resources, rather than on control of incipient metallurgy. Lastly, arrows are placed in the broader perspective of major trends affecting Atlantic Europe. The origin of the squared-off barbed and tanged arrowheads of the Bell Beaker culture seems anchored in the Final Neolithic of west-central France, while in the Early Bronze Age the arrowheads with oblique barbs seem to indicate an attachment to the Atlantic cultural complex.

Beyond Thalassocracies aims to evaluate and rethink the manner in which archaeologists approach, understand, and analyse the various processes associated with culture change connected to interregional contact, using as a test case the world of the Aegean during the Late Bronze Age (c. 1600–1100 BC). The 14 chapters compare and contrast various aspects of the phenomena of Minoanisation and Mycenaeanisation, both of which share the basic underlying defining feature of material culture change in communities around the Aegean. This change was driven by trends manifesting themselves in the dominant palatial communities of each period of the Bronze Age. Over the past decade, our understanding of how these processes developed and functioned has changed considerably. Whereas current discussions on Minoanisation have already been informed by more recent theoretical trends, especially in material culture studies and post‐colonial theory, the process of Mycenaeanisation is still very much conceptualised along traditional lines of explanation. Since these phenomena occurred in chronological sequence, it makes sense that any reappraisal of their nature and significance should target those regions of the Aegean basin that were affected by both processes, highlighting their similarities and differences. Thus, in the present volume we focus on the southern and eastern Aegean, in particular the Cyclades, Dodecanese, and the north-eastern Aegean islands.

Ce catalogue accompagne la publication de l’ouvrage « Flèches de pouvoir à l’aube de la métallurgie de la Bretagne au Danemark (2500-1700 av. n. è. ) ». Il rassemble pour la première fois un corpus d’armatures de flèches déposées dans les tombes de la fin du Néolithique et du Bronze ancien dans le Massif armoricain, dans le sud des îles Britanniques et au Danemark. Il contient la description (architecture, anthropologie, mobilier funéraire) de 231 sépultures, ayant livré un total de 1375 pointes de flèches. La plupart de ces armatures sont illustrées par 718 dessins (dont 200 originaux) et 454 photographies (dont 415 originales). À cela s’ajoutent la figuration des plans des tombes et du mobilier associé aux armatures. Ce corpus est enrichi d’un inventaire complémentaire pour le Danemark de 274 pointes de flèches issues de 92 sépultures de datation plus incertaine. Enfin, l’ensemble des armatures étudiées sont décrites selon leurs dimensions, leurs matières premières et leurs lieux de conservation.This volume contains the catalogue belonging to the book « Flèches de pouvoir à l’aube de la métallurgie de la Bretagne au Danemark (2500-1700 av.

Of Odysseys and Oddities is about scales and modes of interaction in prehistory, specifically between societies on both sides of the Aegean and with their nearest neighbours overland to the north and east. The 17 contributions reflect on tensions at the core of how we consider interaction in archaeology, particularly the motivations and mechanisms leading to social and material encounters or displacements. Linked to this are the ways we conceptualise spatial and social entities in past societies (scales) and how we learn about who was actively engaged in interaction and how and why they were (modes). The papers provide a broad chronological, spatial and material range but, taken together, they critically address many of the ways that scales and modes of interaction are considered in archaeological discourse. Ultimately, the intention is to foreground material culture analysis in the development of the arguments presented within this volume, informed, but not driven, by theoretical positions.

This is the first volume charting the CAU’s on-going Barleycroft Farm/Over investigations, which now encompasses almost twenty years of fieldwork across both banks of the River Great Ouse at its junction with the Fen. Amongst the project’s main directives is the status of a major river in prehistory – when a communication corridor and when a divide? Accordingly, a key component throughout has been the documentation of the lower Ouse’s complex palaeoenvironmental history, and a delta-like wet landscape dotted with mid-stream islands has been mapped. This book is specifically concerned with the length of The Over Narrows, whose naming alludes to an extraordinary series of mid-channel ‘river race’ ridges. With their excavation generating vast artefact sets and unique palaeo-economic data, these ridges saw intense settlement sequences, ranging from Mesolithic camps, Grooved Ware, Beaker and Collared Urn pit clusters (plus field plots) to Middle Bronze fieldsystems and their attendant settlements, a massive Late Bronze Age midden complex and, finally, an Iron Age shrine. The latter involved extensive human bone or body-part deposition and bird sacrifice. Four upstanding turf barrows and two accompanying waterlogged pond barrows feature among the main excavations reported here. With more than 40 cremations (including in situ pyres), the resultant detailing of Early Bronze Age mortuary practices and the insights into the period’s monument construction are ground-breaking. This is an important book, for the scale of The Narrows’ excavations and palaeoenvironmental studies, its comprehensive dating programmes and, particularly, the innovative methodologies and analyses undertaken. Indeed, a commitment to experiment has lain at the project’s core.

Archaeological surveys and excavations were carried out between 2006 and 2010 in advance of the construction of a gas pipeline in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds. They resulted in the discovery of many new sites and the investigation of eighteen of them dating from the prehistoric to medieval periods.Early Neolithic and Beaker/Early Bronze Age pits in the southern part of the route near Winstone, suggest transitory occupation in early prehistoric times. Early Bronze Age cremation graves on lower ground near Stanway were associated with two slightly later ring-ditches, and another Bronze Age ring-ditch was excavated at Foxcote Hill. A segmented boundary ditch near Winstone was also the location of Iron Age and Roman activity. An Iron Age settlement on Salter’s Hill, Winchcombe, included an Early Iron Age roundhouse, while Middle Iron Age grain-storage pits here and elsewhere indicated other farming settlements. Late Iron Age and Roman occupations in the high Wolds showed a range of remains, including unusual deposits of artefacts, animal bones and burials.A fragmentary sequence of Anglo-Saxon boundary burials was found at the southern end of the route near Sapperton. In the same area, two 12th- to 13th-century buildings near Overley Wood may have been part of the medieval settlement of Pinbury. Trackways revealed near Coberley, Foxcote and Hailes linked rural settlements in historical times.The range of sites and finds from these investigations provide important new information on the human past across parts of a landscape in many respects considered to be marginal.

A Bronze Age barrow, one of several in the Rhee valley, was encircled by two concentric rings of posts in the early to middle Iron Age, and a single crouched inhumation was buried nearby. A small group of roundhouses and granaries was built on the clays c.100m from the river, and nearly 200 possible grain storage pits were dug on chalk deposits next to the river. Some of the pits contained human burials and animal bone groups of the pit burial tradition common in central southern and south-eastern England Significant assemblages of Chinnor-Wandlebury pottery and animal bone, including examples of rarely-found wild species, were also found. The site was unoccupied in the late Iron Age and Roman periods but still farmed, as evidenced by animal pens, field ditches and sparse domestic debris probably spread by manuring. During the later 6th century AD, a small open farming settlement of six sunken-featured buildings was established, akin to many similar settlements investigated in South Cambridgeshire. A substantial ditch enclosed the settlement in the 8th or 9th century, and occupation had shifted to Harston village by the 10th century.

Mobility is a fundamental facet of being human and should be central to archaeology. Yet mobility itself and the role it plays in the production of social life, is rarely considered as a subject in its own right. This is particularly so with discussions of the Neolithic people where mobility is often framed as being somewhere between a sedentary existence and nomadic movements. This latest collection of papers from the Neolithic Studies Group seminars examines the importance and complexities of movement and mobility, whether on land or water, in the Neolithic period. It uses movement in its widest sense, ranging from everyday mobilities – the routines and rhythms of daily life – to proscribed mobility, such as movement in and around monuments, and occasional and large-scale movements and migrations around the continent and across seas. Papers are roughly grouped and focus on ‘mobility and the landscape’, ‘monuments and mobility’, ‘travelling by water’, and ‘materials and mobility’. Through these themes the volume considers the movement of people, ideas, animals, objects, and information, and uses a wide range of archaeological evidence from isotope analysis; artefact studies; lithic scatters and assemblage diversity.

Volume II describes the excavation and finds from the Special Deposits at Kavos at the sanctuary on Keros lying opposite the settlement on the islet of Dhaskalio (described in Volume I). The finds of marble from the Special Deposit South are described in Volume III, and the pottery in Volume V. The sanctuary at Kavos, dating from c. 2700 BC to 2400 BC has yielded the richest ritual deposits of the early bronze age Cyclades. The finds are presented here in their excavation contexts, and the significance of the Special Deposit South as a ritual deposit is examined in the context of Aegean prehistory.

This volume honors the career and contributions of Andrew M.T. Moore. Moore’s groundbreaking work at Abu Hureyra, Syria and excavations at Neolithic sites in Croatia have made him a pioneer in integrated interdisciplinary research in archaeology, expressing a deeply held conviction that developments in human culture can only be understood when embedded in an ecological approach. In this book, colleagues and former students of Moore, working in the Near East and Croatia, present current research, illustrating the continuing impact of Moore’s work on the early farming and herding peoples of the eastern Mediterranean. Contents Preface: People, Landscape, and Change in Prehistory Michael Chazan and Katina Lillios Andrew M.

The investigations have produced evidence for 6,000 years of landscape and settlement evolution. Perhaps the most striking result is the evidence for continuity, rather than discontinuity, in the development of the landscape. The act of defining chronological periods, while essential in describing past human society, does tend to accentuate discontinuity. This applies both to individual monuments — some on the Biddenham Loop played a major part in people’s lives for many generations — and to the wider landscape itself. The Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments were incorporated into the middle Bronze Age field systems and some were still used for the burial of the dead. Continued use of these fields into the middle Iron Age and even the Romano-British period is clearly evidenced by the way in which later farmsteads were set up on their periphery. The positioning of the main early Iron Age pit alignment across the Biddenham Loop has elements of both discontinuity and continuity. It does ‘cut’ a number of ditched boundaries but does so at the corners of fields, so that over the majority of its course it crosses unenclosed land between two separate middle Bronze Age field systems. For the Roman–Saxon transition it is significant that the majority of the evidence for early Saxon settlement occurs in the vicinity of Romano-British settlements.

The excavations led by Margaret and Tom Jones on the Thames gravel terraces at Mucking, Essex, undertaken between 1965 and 1978 are legendary. The largest area excavation ever undertaken in the British Isles, involving around 5000 participants, recorded around 44,000 archaeological features dating from the Beaker to Anglo-Saxon periods and recovered something in the region of 1.7 million finds of Mesolithic to post-medieval date. While various publications have emerged over the intervening years, the death of both directors, insufficient funding, many organisational complications and the sheer volume of material evidence have severely delayed full publication of this extraordinary palimpsest landscape.Lives in Land is the first of two major volumes which bring together all the evidence from Mucking, presenting both the detail of many important structures and assemblages and a comprehensive synthesis of landscape development through the ages: settlement histories, changing land-use, death and burial, industry and craft activities. The long time-gap since completion of the excavations has allowed the authors the unprecedented opportunity to stand back from the density of site data and place the vast sum of Mucking evidence in the wider context of the archaeology of southern England throughout the major periods of occupation and activity.Lives in Land begins with a thorough evaluation of the methods, philosophy and archival status of the Mucking project against the organisational and funding background of its time, and discusses its fascinating and complex history through a period of fundamental change in archaeological practice, legislation, finance, research priorities and theoretical paradigms in British Archaeology. Subsequent chapters deal with the prehistoric landscape, each focusing on the major themes that emerge by major period from analysis and synthesis of the data. The authors draw on archival material including site notebooks and personal accounts from key participants to provide a detailed but lively account of this iconic landscape investigation.

The present publication attempts to make the collection of Prehistoric Aegean and Near Eastern bronzes in the National Museum of Denmark known to scholars in the field. The catalogue contains all Aegean metals kept in the Department of Ancient Cultures of Denmark and the Mediterrenean. In the section on the Near Eastern metals, bronzes from Hama, however, are not included. Except for that, all metal objects from the Near East dated before 1000 BC are found in the catalogue.

Megalithic monuments are among the most striking remains of the Neolithic period of northern and western Europe and are scattered across landscapes from Pomerania to Portugal. Antiquarians and archaeologists early recognised the family resemblance of the different groups of tombs, attributing them to maritime peoples moving along the western seaways. More recent research sees them rather as the product of established early farming communities in their individual regions. Yet the diversity of the tombs, their chronologies and their varied cultural contexts complicates any straightforward understanding of their origins and distribution. Megalithic Architectures provides new insight by focusing on the construction and design of European megalithic tombs – on the tomb as an architectural project. It shows how much is to be learned from detailed attention to the stages and the techniques through which tombs were built, modified and enlarged, and often intentionally dismantled or decommissioned. The large slabs that were employed, often unshaped, may suggest an opportunistic approach by the Neolithic builders, but this was clearly far from the case. Each building project was unique, and detailed study of individual sites exposes the way in which tombs were built as architectural, social and symbolic undertakings. Alongside the manner in which the materials were used, it reveals a store of knowledge that sometimes differed considerably from one structure to another, even between contemporary monuments within a single region. The volume brings together regional specialists from Scandinavia, Germany, Britain, France, Belgium and Iberia to offer a series of uniquely authoritative studies. Results of recent fieldwork are fully incorporated and much of the material is published here for the first time in English. It provides an invaluable overview of the current state of research on European megalithic tombs.