Problems in Neolithic Archaeology is a notable contribution to the debate about how we can write prehistory. Drawing on both processual and post-processual approaches, it reaffirms the central role of theory and interpretation while accepting as permanent the uncertainty which makes the testing of archaeological hypotheses difficult or even impossible. Dr Whittle asserts in particular the need for greater self-confidence and for the formulation of new theory and questions more appropriate to the archaeological record. The book's specific strength lies, however, in a close contextual study of the Neolithic period in western and central Europe. In this respect it provides an admirable complement to his textbook Neolithic Europe.

Problems in Neolithic Archaeology (New Studies in Archaeology)

Politics & Social Sciences

Whittle, Alasdair

Archaeology

Cambridge University Press

Scord of Brouster: An Early Agricultural Settlement on Shetland

Oxford University School of Archaeology

Prehistoric Europe

The study of European prehistory has been revolutionized in recent years by the rapid growth rate of archeological discovery, advances in dating methods and the application of scientific techniques to archaeological material and new archaeological aims and frameworks of interpretation. Whereas previous work concentrated on the recovery and description of material remains, the main focus is now on the reconstruction of prehistoric societies and the explanation of their development. This volume provides that elementary and comprehensive synthesis of the new discoveries and the new interpretations of European prehistory. After and introductory chapter on the geographical setting and the development of prehistoric studies in Europe, the text is divided chronologically into nine chapters. Each one describes, with numerous maps, plans and drawings, the relevant archaeological data, and proceeds to a discussion of the societies they represent. Particular attention is paid to the major themes of recent prehistoric research, especially subsistence economy, trade, settlement, technology and social organization.

Gamble, Clive

Shennan, Stephen

Champion, Timothy

Routledge

The Times of their Lives explains how archaeologists can now move away from thinking about history in terms of thousands of years, to periods from one or two centuries down to lifetimes and generations — a little more than two decades. This vastly improved precision comes from the application of Bayesian chronological frameworks for the interpretation of radiocarbon dates. If they do the right things, archaeologists in general and prehistorians in particular need not confine themselves any longer to the long term, which has often been seen as the defining currency of the discipline.Many prehistorians are still uncomfortable with the choice of narratives now available — or have not yet critically rethought old habits. This book will show how temporally much more precise accounts of the past can be achieved, across a broad range of contexts and situations. It offers a series of case studies across much of the continent, to provide much more precise timings of key features and trends in the European Neolithic sequence than are currently available, and to construct much more precise estimates of the duration of events and phenomena. From these there is the possibility to open up new insights into the tempo of change through the detailed study of selected sites and situations across the span of the European Neolithic, from the sixth to the early third millennia cal BC. At stake is our ability to study the lives of Neolithic people everywhere at the scale of lifetimes, something unimaginable even a few years ago.

The Times of Their Lives: Hunting History in the Archaeology of Neolithic Europe

History

Europe

Oxbow Books

The hunt is on for the most detailed histories of people in the remote past that we can achieve. We can now routinely, through Bayesian modelling of radiocarbon dates, construct much more precise chronologies than previously, down to the scales of lifetimes and generations, and even on occasion of decades. Better timing opens estimates of duration and the evaluation of the tempo of change. Rather than the conventional default perspective of generally slow change and much continuity, in blocks of time a couple of centuries long or more, we can now examine sequences that are often much more dynamic, quicker-changing, and from time to time more interrupted and punctuated than we had previously imagined. We can now write much more precise and ambitious narratives about the actions, decisions and choices of past people; the pre- can and should come out of prehistory. Despite the absence of written records, such narratives can be aligned much more closely with those of history and its concerns with the specific and the particular, and can serve to rid archaeology of its addictions to generalization and fuzzy chronology.Coming out of a recent major project funded by the European Research Council, and with the experience of Gathering Time (Oxbow Books 2011) also behind it, The Times of their Lives sets out this case. It considers the varying timescales of archaeology, history and anthropology, and the construction of precise chronologies. It examines the reach of precision in a series of case studies across Neolithic Europe to do with big themes of settlement, monumentality and materiality through the sixth to third millennia cal BC. It goes on to consider the implications of much more precise chronologies for narratives of social differentiation and change through the Neolithic sequence, and reflects on how to combine the varying timescales presented by turning points in the long term, by the slow time of daily life, subsistence practices and population growth, and by lifetime and generational developments. It ends by looking ahead to a future archaeology, exploiting the best of archaeological science, which can write precise and detailed narratives for the people of early history. Though focused on the European Neolithic, The Times of their Lives sets a challenge for archaeology as a whole.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements1. Hunting history2. Long pasts, brief lives: the lenses of history3. The rags of time: building chronologies4. ‘Sometimes sudden and sometimes slow’: the reach of precision5. Time lords? Community and leadership across the Neolithic sequence6. An old Europe in a new light7. Kinds of history: the future of the Neolithic pastBibliographyIndex

This volume explores the landscape settings of megalithic chambered monuments in Wales. Set against a broader theoretical discussion on the significance of the landscape, the authors consider the role of visual landscapes in prehistory, meanings attached to the landscape, and the values and beliefs invested in it. Wales is rich in Neolithic monuments, but the general absence of certain classic monumental forms found in the rest of Britain and Ireland, such as causewayed enclosures, henges, and cursus monuments, seems to have marginalized the Welsh record from many wider discussions on the Neolithic. Instead of seeing Wales as an area which lacks many of these 'classic' components, Cummings and Whittle argue that Wales has its own unique and individual Neolithic which is simply different from the Neolithic found further to the east. It is suggested that this difference may relate to an essentially mobile existence, with strong links back to the Mesolithic period. The authors present three detailed case studies, examining the settings of sites in southwest, northwest and southeast Wales. They outline the history of research for each region, including the previous classification of the monuments and any excavations, and describe the specific landscape settings of the monuments. They assess the significance of a variety of landscape features which would have been visible from the monuments, in particular emphasizing the mythological and symbolic significance of the sea, rivers and mountains. An illustrated inventory of sites completes the volume.

Places of Special Virtue: Megaliths in the Neolithic landscapes of Wales (Cardiff Studies in Archaeology)

Ancient Civilizations

This book takes a fresh look at the European Neolithic and asks pertinent questions about the way in which we study it. By unsettling accepted notions regarding sedentism and the onset of farming, the contributors are able to sow that many ideas which are taken as read may need re-evaluating in the light of new modes of thinking. Sedentism and mobility form the bulk of this volume's focus, and a number of papers look at these concepts through examining/re-examining certain sites or collections of sites. Paul Halstead makes the case that sedentism does not preclude a large degree of mobility. Bailey asks us to completely re-think our attitude to the built environment of the Neolithic, arguing that we are trapped by details as to the purpose of structures, rather than on what effect their presence had on the people who used them. Taken together, these fourteen papers encourage us to move beyond the search for sedentism or mobility as a characteristic of society.Table of ContentsUnsettling the Neolithic: breaking down concepts, boundaries and origins (Douglass Bailey and Alasdair Whittle) Across the border: unstable dwellings and fluid landscapes in the earliest Neolithic of Greece (Kostas Kotsakis) Deconstructing essentialisms: unsettling frontiers of the Mesolithic-Neolithic Balkans (Dušan Boric) Can seasonality studies be used to identify sedentism in the past? (Nicky Milner) Resettling the Neolithic: faunal evidence for seasons of consumption and residence at Neolithic sites in Greece (Paul Halstead) Plain talk: animals, environment and culture in the Neolithic of the Carpathian Basin and adjacent areas (László Bartosiewicz) Lived experience in the Early Neolithic of the Great Hungarian Plain (Alasdair Whittle) The role of pottery in agropastoralist communities in early Neolithic southern Romania (Laurens Thissen) Sensing the place: sounds and landscape perception (Steve Mills) Beyond the meaning of Neolithic houses: specific objects and serial repetition (Douglass Bailey) Weaving house life and death into places: a blueprint for a hypermedia narrative (Ruth Tringham) Memory and ordination: environmental archaeology in tells (J.G. Evans) The spatio-temporal organisation of the early 'town' at Çatalhöyük (Ian Hodder) Settling the Neolithic: a digestif (Andrew Sherratt)

Unsettling the Neolithic

Bailey, Douglass W.

It is just over forty years since the start of the excavations of the Ascott-under-Wychwood long barrow (1965-69) under the direction of Don Benson. The excavations belonged to the latter part of a great period of barrow digging in southern Britain, which was ending just as, by striking contrast, intensified investigation and fieldwork at causewayed enclosures were beginning. Although a long gap has passed since the excavations took place, they have nonetheless produced a rich and important set of results, and the analysis has been enhanced by more recent techniques. The site now joins Burn Ground and Hazleton North as one of only three Cotswold long barrows or cairns to have been more or less fully excavated. The barrow had been built in two main stages, in a series of bays defined by lines of stakes and stone, and filled mainly with earth and turf, with some stone; it was enclosed or faced by stone walling, the outermost being of very fine quality. The barrow contained two opposed pairs of stone cists, each with a short passage from the long sides of the monument. The cists and passages contained the remains of some 21 people (of all ages and both sexes), probably deposited in a variety of forms from fleshed inhumations to incomplete secondary remains and cremations. The barrow was built in the 38th century cal BC and was probably one of the earliest such constructions in the region. It was probably in use for only three to five generations, lasting into the 37th century cal BC. Occupation features from the early fourth millennium cal BC included small pits, hearths and two small timber post structures, and there were finds of pottery, flint, axe fragments, stone querns and animal bone. People used cattle, sheep and pigs, and there is a range of wild species, especially in the midden. The authors of this report not only document the finds and research, but also address wider questions of how the early Neolithic inhabitants viewed their society through the barrow, and how the development of the site reflected memory and interaction with a changing world. Table of Contents The Excavations of 1965-1969 (Don Benson with a contribution by Fiona Rue) The Pre-Barrow Contexts (Lesley McFadyen, Don Benson and Alasdair Whittle) The Environmental Setting (John G. Evans, Susan Limbrey and Richard Macphail) The Long Barrow (Lesley McFadyen, Don Benson and Alasdair Whittle) The Layout, Composition and Sequence of the Human Body Deposits (Alasdair Whittle, Dawn Galer and Don Benson) The Human Remains (Dawn Galer with a contribution by Christopher Knusel) Interpreting Chronology: The Radiocarbon Dating Programme (Alex Bayliss, Don Benson, Christopher Bronk Ramsey, Dawn Galer, Lesley McFadyen, Johannes van der Plicht and Alasdair Whittle) The Animal Bones (Jacqui Mulville and Caroline Grigson) Carbon and Nitrogen Stable Isotope Compositions of Animal and Human Bone (Robert E. M. Hedges, Rhiannon E. Stevens and Jessica A. Pearson) The Early Neolithic Pottery and Fired Clay (Alistair Barclay and Humphrey Case, with Mark Copley, Chris Doherty, Richard Evershed, Kevin Nimmo and Alasdair Whittle) Organic Residue Analysis (Mark S. Copley and Richard P. Evershed) The Flint (Kate Cramp, with Humphrey Case and Kevin Nimmo) The Worked Stone (Fiona Roe) Post-Neolithic Finds ( Edward Biddulph, Peter Guest and William Manning) Place and Time: Building and Rememberance (Alasdair Whittle, Alistair Barclay, Lesley McFadyen, Don Benson and Dawn Galer)

Building Memories: The Neolithic Cotswold Long Barrow at Ascott-under-Wychwood, Oxfordshire (Cardiff Studies in Archaeology)

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. Table of Contents 1. Gathering time: causewayed enclosures and the early Neolithic of southern Britain and of Ireland (Alasdair Whittle, Frances Healy and Alex Bayliss ) 2. Towards generational time-scales: the quantitative interpretation of archaeological chronologies (Alex Bayliss, Johannes van der Plicht, Christopher Bronk Ramsey, Gerry McCormac, Frances Healy and Alasdair Whittle) 3. The North Wiltshire Downs (Alasdair Whittle, Alex Bayliss and Frances Healy) 4. South Wessex (Frances Healy, Alex Bayliss, Alasdair Whittle, Michael J. Allen, Roger Mercer, Mick Rawlings, Niall Sharples and Nicholas Thomas) 5. Sussex (Frances Healy, Alex Bayliss and Alasdair Whittle) 6. Eastern England (Frances Healy, Alex Bayliss, Alasdair Whittle, Francis Pryor, Charles French, Michael J. Allen, Christopher Evans, Mark Edmonds, John Meadows and Gill Hey) 7. The Greater Thames estuary (Alex Bayliss, Michael J. Allen, Frances Healy, Alasdair Whittle, Mark Germany, Seren Griffiths, Derek Hamilton, Tom Higham, John Meadows, Grant Shand, Simon Stevens and Michael Wysocki) 8. The Thames valley (Frances Healy, Alasdair Whittle, Alex Bayliss, Gill Hey, Reay Robertson-Mackay, Tim Allen and Steve Ford) 9. The Cotswolds (Philip Dixon, Alex Bayliss, Frances Healy, Alasdair Whittle and Timothy Darvill) 10. The south-west peninsula (Alasdair Whittle, Alex Bayliss, Frances Healy, Roger Mercer, Andy M. Jones and Malcolm Todd) 11. The Marches, south Wales and the Isle of Man (Alex Bayliss, Alasdair Whittle, Frances Healy, Keith Ray, Peter Dorling, Richard Lewis, Timothy Darvill, Geoffrey Wainwright and Michael Wysocki) 12. Ireland (Gabriel Cooney, Alex Bayliss, Frances Healy, Alasdair Whittle, Ed Danaher, Lydia Cagney, Jim Mallory, Jessica Smyth, Thomas Kador and Muiris O’Sullivan) 13. Carbon and nitrogen stable isotope values of animals and humans from causewayed enclosures (Julie Hamilton and Robert E.M. Hedges) 14. Neolithic narratives: British and Irish enclosures in their timescapes (Alex Bayliss, Frances Healy, Alasdair Whittle and Gabriel Cooney) 15. Gathering time: the social dynamics of change (Alasdair Whittle, Alex Bayliss and Frances Healy) Appendix: Some unanswered research questions for southern British enclosures (Frances Healy, Alasdair Whittle and Alex Bayliss) Index

Gathering Time: Dating the Early Neolithic Enclosures of Southern Britain and Ireland

HEALY, Frances

Bayliss, Alex

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Whittle, Alasdair. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Whittle, Alasdair

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Whittle, Alasdair. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Problems in Neolithic Archaeology (New Studies in Archaeology)

Problems in Neolithic Archaeology (New Studies in Archaeology)

Scord of Brouster: An Early Agricultural Settlement on Shetland

Prehistoric Europe

The Times of Their Lives: Hunting History in the Archaeology of Neolithic Europe

The Times of Their Lives: Hunting History in the Archaeology of Neolithic Europe

Places of Special Virtue: Megaliths in the Neolithic landscapes of Wales (Cardiff Studies in Archaeology)

Unsettling the Neolithic

Building Memories: The Neolithic Cotswold Long Barrow at Ascott-under-Wychwood, Oxfordshire (Cardiff Studies in Archaeology)

Gathering Time: Dating the Early Neolithic Enclosures of Southern Britain and Ireland