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Penannular brooches are a simple form of dress fastener used in Britain from the late Iron Age, through to the Roman and Early Medieval periods. This thesis represents the first full study of their British development for fifty years. The catalogue of penannulars originally compiled by Elizabeth Fowler in the late 1950s has been more than doubled, allowing a thorough re-analysis of chronological variation and continuity in stylistic development, distribution, use and deposition. This has been carried out via broad analysis of the penannular database and two regional case studies looking at South-West England and Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire, the two areas where penannulars were concentrated throughout their chronology. Many previous studies have focused only on the later penannular types, leading to an unbalanced approach dominated by the preoccupations of early medieval archaeology. This has created the perception that penannulars had a simple evolutionary development that contributed to the straightforward survival of a ‘Celtic’ culture in some regions during the Roman period and beyond. To counterbalance this, analysis here has particularly focused on the earlier end of the penannular chronology. As a result an alternative picture is presented, of a highly complex development influenced by Continental parallels, which stands in deep contrast to the simplistic sequences proposed in most previous studies. The ever increasing corpus of theoretical work on bodily adornment has also been drawn on, enabling a more nuanced approach that moves us away from the idea that appearance is just an external manifestation of a single, static form of identity and instead recognises that it plays a vital role in an active and continual process of forming and maintaining multiple, complex, overlapping and sometimes opposing identities.

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While the construction techniques associated with building British Neolithic and Early Bronze Age ritual monuments and earthworks have been widely discussed (for instance, the types of tools used for construction, the choice of timber, earth or stone materials and how the particular structure was to be used), archaeologists have often tended to overlook those events which took place before any structure was actually constructed, that is, the pre-construction processes of building a monument or earthwork. In this thesis, I focus on three important processes involved with the pre-construction phases of building structures. That is site selection, site preparation and, most significantly, the setting-out process. Importantly, through a series of archaeology experiments, I have explored in greater detail the processes of the setting-out of monuments and earthworks prior to their construction. In the main body of this thesis I present the results of three case studies in which I re-enacted the setting-out process for reconstructing the ground plans of three different types of prehistoric structures: the Capel Garmon long barrow, Arbor Low henge and the Barbrook I stone circle. The successes of these experiments have allowed me to propose that similar methods of setting out could have been used to construct a number of other Cotswold Severn long barrows, henges and stone circles. The analysis of both the respective archaeology and my successful experiments lead me to propose that during the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age people might have planned the desigus of their monuments and earthworks using rudimentary methods. Consequently, I suggest that there may actually be a "middle ground" option in terms of understanding whether or not structures were deliberately planned, that is between the suggestion that these structures were the result of complex planning, astronomy and mathematics, and the alternative which is that structures were set-out by eye and built with little or no planning at all. In essence my thesis attempts to contribute towards our knowledge of the processes of construction by highlighting both the importance of the pre-construction phases involved with building as well as filling the middle ground regarding the subject of deliberate planning. Indeed, this thesis will contribute towards that debate by offering an original theory that can be proven by experiment.

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This thesis examines the re-use of Roman material culture in England following the Norman Conquest at St Albans, Chester, and Colchester. It argues that the material legacy of Roman Britain conveyed a sense of imperial authority, antiquity and longevity and an association with the early Christian church, which were appropriated to serve transitional Norman royal, elite, monastic and parochial interests in different architectural forms. Importantly, this thesis examines literary evidence describing the Roman past, Roman buildings, and even instances of re-use, which were produced at each town as part of the intellectual expansion of the twelfth century. This thesis comprises of two introductory chapters, followed by three central case study chapters, and culminates in a comparative discussion chapter which evaluates re-use in the context of competing socio-political interests following the Norman Conquest. It expands upon previous understandings of re-use by focusing on topography, building material and hidden reuse, in addition to the re-use of portable remains and decorative emulation. The aim of this thesis is to develop an interdisciplinary methodological and theoretical approach to examine re-use, in the knowledge that this yields a more comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon. In addition to literary and archaeological evidence, it draws theoretical perspectives from history, art history, and literary criticism. The underlying tenet of this thesis challenges the view that re-use was often unremarkable. Through an examination of multi-disciplinary evidence, it becomes clear that re-use was a complex, nuanced and, above all, meaningful part of the architectural endeavours of the Normans, and was used to secure their primacy at these towns and across their emerging nation.

Analysis of the historical significance of 'salvage' or 'spolia' in British buildings during the 17th - 19th centuries, based on case studies from the author's professional caseload. Concludes that the material was used for aesthetic and polemical effect by predominantly Catholic owners and tenants.

One of the most ubiquitous types of Romano-British coarseware pottery, Black- burnished ware 1 (BB1), was produced around the shores of Poole Harbour, in South East Dorset. Previous researchers have shown that this industry was already well- established by the 1st century BC, while reports documenting excavations at earlier Iron Age sites in Dorset indicate that its roots can be traced back to around 700 BC. However, little is known about the production and circulation of wares during these formative phases of the industry, a topic that is addressed by the research presented here with a specific focus on the clays selected by potters working between 700 BC and 100 BC. A typology of Iron Age Poole Harbour wares has been compiled, drawing together the range of forms found on sites across Dorset. A programme of fieldwork revealed that the landscape of Poole Harbour and the Isle of Purbeck offered a range of clays and sands to the potters. Petrological analysis of 255 sherds of pottery illustrated that the Poole Harbour ware fabrics are characterised by the presence of elongated argillaceous inclusions and a low incidence of silt-sized quartz, with variability in the range of larger quartz grains. Thin sections of 105 clay samples revealed the silt content of the clays is greater than that of the pottery, suggesting potters levigated the raw clay rather than simply utilising a naturally sandy clay. Examination of the elongated argillaceous inclusions in the pottery, using petrology and a scanning electron microscope with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, indicated they are a component of the clay rather than shale fragments added as temper. Compositional analysis of 100 samples of pottery and clay, using inductively coupled plasma spectrometry, demonstrated the potters selected the iron-rich, red- firing clays, rather than the malleable white-firing clays. It also revealed that during the earlier Iron Age the potters utilised the Wealden Clay deposits from the southern side of the Purbeck Ridge, but exploited the Poole Formation clays to the north during the later Iron Age. The wider cultural context of this change is considered and it is suggested that shifting settlement patterns may have influenced the location of the expanding production sites and their ties to communication networks.

This thesis explores the creation of embodied space and place in the landscapes of Orkney during the first millennium BC. This aims to address the persistent obsession with architectural evidence in Atlantic Scotland which has dominated research into the period, and has come at the expense of considerations of later prehistoric landscapes, particularly those of Orkney. Current approaches to the archaeology of past landscapes tend to be situated in one of two schools; one rooted in a 'muddy boots' approach to landscape archaeology which centres on the empirical collection and analysis of data; and a second more theoretically driven approach, which draws heavily on phenomenology to consider the ways in which people would have dwelt within past worlds. There has been little dialogue between practitioners of the respective approaches, and each camp has been heavily critiqued by scholars from the other. However there exists much shared ground between the two schools and it is proposed that within a theoretically driven research framework both quantitative and qualitative approaches to the landscape can be integrated more fully to illuminate the nature of the relationships between individuals and groups, and between people and the world during the later prehistoric period in Orkney and Atlantic Scotland. Such combination of techniques and approaches to the landscape also provides scope to consider the ways in which archaeologists collect, interpret and present data and study embodied archaeological landscapes

This thesis is concerned with developing a theoretical rationale and critical methodology by which we can test for the existence of proto-artistic behaviours. In doing so it seeks to ask whether art as we understand it in the modem world is an emergent phenomenon or whether 'primitives' of this phenomenon can be identified. The first part of the thesis sets out to critique and develop upon existing models of how art is conceptualised in archaeology, using developments in the philosophy of art, primatology and neuroscience. The result of this is an appeal to acknowledge a greater role for the aesthetics of gesture ,during the production and use of material culture. This is then proposed to be one potential 'primitive' of a later emergent art that may be archaeologically identifiable within the Middle Pleistocene. The second part of the thesis sets out a suitable case study for the testing of this assumption, the so called 'twisted ovate biface tradition' of the later British Acheulean. A methodology by which the twisted shapes of these objects may be tested for evidence of a gestural aesthetic is then developed and the objects subjected to statistical analyses. The results of these analyses, whilst affirming that there is a significant concentration of twisted pieces within sites of this period, show inconclusive evidence of the potential for an aesthetic of gesture being imbued within the object in a manner that would allow distribution of meaning and identity within a social network. As such these objects cannot be said to show evidence of being proto-artistic in the sense defined by this project.