Le Yaudet (in Brittany, France) is a promontory of granite commanding the estuary of the river Léguer down-river from the modern town of Lannion (Côtes d'Armor). It has long been known as the 'Old Town' ( Civitas vetus in Latin documents and Coz Yaudet in Breton) and Iron Age, Roman and medieval finds have been made from time to time over the last two centuries. A programme of research excavations began in 1991 and continued annually until 2002. The results of the work show the site to have been in use almost continuously from the early prehistoric period. This is the second volume and deals with the Prehistoric period, continuing up until the end of the Gallic Empire.

This volume, number six in the Çatalhöyuek Research Project series, draws on material from Volumes 3 to 5 to deal with broad themes. Data from architecture and excavation contexts are linked into broader discussion of topics such as seasonality, art and social memory. Rather than assuming that the work of the project is finished once the basic excavation and laboratory results have been presented in Volumes 3 to 5, it has been thought important to present more synthetic accounts that result from the high degree of integration and collaboration which the project has strived for at all stages. In this synthetic volume we most clearly describe the stories we have been telling ourselves during the data recovery/interpretation process. This volume thus provides a contextualisation of the work carried out in Volumes 3 to 5; it records the framework of thought within which the data were collected and studied, but it is also the result of the interpretation that occurred in the interaction with data.

A long-term, low-cost rescue project was undertaken in response to gravel quarrying at Maxey between 1983 and 1990. Throughout, the archaeological focus was the more or less concurrent excavation taking place at the Etton causewayed enclosure, a site which was effectively a central point within this part of the lower Welland valley. The Etton Landscape consists of the relict river systems, former floodplain and lowermost parts of the Welland First Terrace gravels between the modern villages of Maxey, Etton and Northborough. Situated on the fringe of this seasonally wet landscape was a series of later Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments and more enigmatic areas of occupation. The principal monuments, other than the Etton causewayed enclosure, were three small henges which exhibited several phases of re-modelling, a C-shaped enclosure, the Etton Woodgate contour ditched enclosure and associated settlement, and four barrows (out of many more that are in the vicinity). The occupation areas were relatively few and ephemeral, often only consisting of a spread of occupation or midden material within the buried soil, a few post-holes and/or pits in no apparent pattern or structure. There is also evidence of field demarcation on the floodplain edge in the later Neolithic. All of these sites straddled the period of later use of the causewayed enclosure, in the third millennium and early second millennium BC. There seems to have been at this time a mosaic of old and new environments, ranging from old woodland to pasture and small zones of scrubby, fen-like carr, with the stream zones being affected by seasonal freshwater flooding and the minor deposition of silty clay alluvium. By the middle part of the second millennium BC, field systems laid out at right angles to the contemporary streams were in use, with successive versions of the same general layout continuing on into the Roman period. Throughout the last two millennia BC there was a gradual opening up of the landscape, on the face of it largely pasture, but probably with some arable cultivation on the higher and better drained ground. By the later Roman period, it appears that the area was more and more affected by the seasonal deposition of alluvium and overbank flooding, which led to the establishment of a loose and scattered layout of farmsteads and associated field systems on the higher parts of the first terrace. By medieval times, the higher parts of the terrace were completely given over to ridge and furrow cultivation, with villages established to the north and south, and the lowest zones occupied by infilled stream courses still remaining seasonally wet and possibly used as seasonal, unenclosed pasture. This more or less remained the case until 1953, when the enlargement of the Maxey Cut effectively drained the lowest parts of the terrace and permitted an expansion of arable agriculture onto the most thickly alluviated parts of the lower Welland valley between Maxey and the fen-edge.

In 1999 a collection of documents were found in the archives of the Italian Institute of Human Palaeontology belonging to Luigi Cardini, one of the founders of the Institute. These documents included site notebooks, photographs, drawings and maps relating to work carried out in Albania from 1930-39 where he was sent on a governmental mission to `reinforce Italian supremacy in Albania through archaeological research'. This monograph publishes extracts from these notebooks within a historical, political and archaeological context. The work he carried out is synthesised and a report is included on survey work carried out in 2000 and 2001 to attempt to relocate many of Cardini's cave sites described in his notebooks.

This volume describes the two seasons of excavation at Segsbury Camp which form a part of Oxford University's Hillforts of the Ridgeway Project . It contains background material and a series of interpretations of the site at different scales finishing with a discussion of the Lambourn Downs landscape in later prehistoric and Romano-British times. The evidence suggests that the large hillfort of Segsbury was used during the period 6th to 2nd century BC but was not densely and permanently occupied. It also seems that Segsbury was constructed in a new and previously unused area of the Downs. Alternative interpretations are explored within a framework of trying to understand what is meant by 'community' and how Segsbury interacted with other hillforts in the area. The detail provided by the excavation of several hillforts on the Lambourn Downs suggests that they were different forms of monument and argues against trying to understand hillforts as a single category.

The term 'Mesolithic' was born in the nineteenth century from the need to label a 'hiatus' period and was not generally accepted as a useful term by many scholars until around fifty years later. It has been championed by some, but still concerns others because of the difficulty of defining what it represents. This volume highlights the enthusiasm for Mesolithic studies in the 21st century and the feeling that there is a need to explore the many facets of Mesolithic lifeways. Approaches are now moving away from the traditional Mesolithic canon that seems to have been based on a particular set of biological and/or ecological perspectives and are now looking for new directions and new theoretical arenas which can only help stimulate Mesolithic debate. The papers in this volume take a range of approaches to a period that has largely been devoid of explicit theoretical discussion. They deconstruct and explore a broad variety of subjects, including mobility, complexity, seasonality, death & burial, gender & sexuality, social relations, music, human agency, ethnoarchaeology and emotion.

Excavations conducted between 1981 and 1986 in advance of gravel extraction in Gravelly Guy field, Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire, revealed archaeological evidence spanning from the Neolithic through to the Saxon period. Neolithic and early Bronze Age activity is represented by pit scatters and a series of ring ditches with associated burials. The Iron Age and early Roman periods witnessed the continuous development of a linear settlement, consisting of a dense area of pits, gullies, circular structures, four-posters and boundary ditches in the mid to late Iron Age phase and a series of rectilinear enclosures and unusual 'ramped hollows' and wells in the late Iron Age/early Roman period. Excavation of a section at the junction of the floodplain and the gravel terrace has also provided information regarding the changing land use and contemporary environment in the vicinity of the site. Gravelly Guy remains one of the most thoroughly excavated sites of this period in the Thames Valley. As well as the vast amount of structural evidence, the considerable quantities of artefacts and environmental information recovered, together with a series of ten radiocarbon dates, have resulted in a detailed study of the site, its position in the landscape and relationship to the contemporary archaeology of the surrounding area.

Traditionally, the Mesolithic has been regarded a time of cultural regression in northern Europe, relieved only around 4000 BCE when the enlightened villagers of the Neolithic arrived on the scene, bringing with them the beginnings of agriculture. But new evidence in the last 30 years has led archaeologists to think of the early postglacial foragers that lived in the Mesolithic as complex, sedentary coastal dwellers who made the era a time of innovation, interaction and successful adaptation to a rapidly changing environment. The excavations at Smakkerup Huse help to flesh out this revised portrait. Al though the settlement area (5000 to 3900 BCE) on land had suffered marine erosion, submerged deposits adjacent to the settlement included a midden and a fishing and boat-landing area in excellent condition, with numerous organic materials surviving intact. Deposits included fire-cracked rock, charcoal, oyster shells, amber and teeth pendants, a complete rack of antlers, pieces of dugout canoes and a bow, pointed wooden stakes, large pieces of bark and fungus, thousands of hazelnut shells and fishbones, a fish trap fragment, fishhooks, worked bone and antler tools, potsherds and more than 350 projectile points. The most intriguing artefact was a small painted cobble, a type previously unknown from the Danish Mesolithic. The site also yielded remains from some of the earliest domestic cattle in Denmark, raising important questions about foraging adaptations and the transition to agriculture. Besides specialist reports from geology, archaeozoology, palaeoethnobotany, archaeological chemistry and conservation science, there are useful chapters describing the Mesolithic in southern Scandinavia and situating the Smakkerup Huse finds within the context of this time of critical transition.

As Peacock and Williams have noted, amphorae provide us "not with an index of the transportation of goods, but with direct witness of the movement of certain foodstuffs which were of considerable economic importance ..

As its title might suggest, this volume sets out to present a new view of Scotland's Neolithic as seen via its monumental structures. The papers brought together here came out of a research day at Cardiff University's School of History and Archaeology in January 2002 and cover a diverse number of topics. They raise questions of ancestry and worldview, and highlight the amount that can be done in examining the settings of monuments.

This catalogue presents 225 pieces of jewellery, predominantly Etruscan, but also including some Classical Greek and Roman artefacts. Objects include hairpins, hair ornaments, wreaths and diadems, earrings, necklaces, pendants, fibulae, bracelets, rings and gems, whilst appendices detail production techniques and materials.

This paper reports on the excavation of a Bronze Age burnt mound discovered in a woodland clearing in the Fens. A number of waterlogged features were also found in association with it, including a pit containing wooden planks and Beaker pottery. Much of the paper focuses on the finds and environmental remains with specialist reports on the worked flint, pottery, faunal remains, plant remains, molluscs, soil and the tight sequence of radiocarbon dates. The book also reports on the Neolithic features beneath the mound.

Excavations in 1999 at Brandon in Suffolk uncovered the remains of a sequence of middle to late Bronze Age enclosure ditches associated with a number of post-built structures, pits, hearths and three unurned cremations. Some late Neolithic activity was also detected. Of particular interest were an unusual Bronze Age square-ditched enclosure and evidence of `activity surfaces'. Specialist finds reports examine the flint, the Neolithic and Bronze Age pottery, the small finds, human remains, animal bone, soils, waterlogged remains, pollen and charcoal. A final synthesis discusses the nature of this occupation landscape and the place in it of the funerary deposits.

Few areas of the world have played as prominent a role in human evolution as the Levantine Corridor, a comparatively narrow strip of land sandwiched between the Mediterranean Sea on the west and the expanse of inhospitable desert to the east. The first hominids to leave Africa, over 1.5 million years ago, first entered the Levant before spreading into what is now Europe and Asia. About 100,000 years ago another African exodus, this time of anatomically modern humans, colonised the Levant before expanding into Eurasia. Toward the end of the Pleistocene, this Corridor also witnessed some of the earliest steps toward economic and social intensification, perhaps the most radical change in hominid lifestyle that ultimately paved the way for sedentary communities wholly dependent on domestic animals and cultivated plants.

Text in German. The purpose of the present work is to combine the advantages of the various research traditions and at the same time to avoid the respective disadvantages. An attempt will be made to interpret the existing archaeological facts with reference to cultural development in large parts of Europe. As a first step an investigation will be made of all indications of contacts between the Ertebølle culture and the early Funnel Beaker culture (5500-3500 BC) on the one hand, and Neolithic cultures in various parts of Europe on the other hand. This will incorporate an analysis of all imported artefacts and also locally produced artefacts and structures with a form that suggests external influence. The results will subsequently be used for an investigation of a range of local factors -- such as regionality, social structures and communication structures - which are thought to be of significance for understanding the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition. An analysis will also be carried out of the central European background of the Funnel Beaker culture. The results of these investigations will in conclusion be combined into a new theory concerning the introduction of agriculture in the Nordic region.

A truly multi-disciplinary book allowing the reader to gain insights into an exceptionally diverse set of topics such as hunting, burial, sword-production and rock art, from the Mesolithic to the Middle Ages.