This research is concerned with the critical reinterpretation of the burnt mounds of Shetland. Burnt mounds have been described as ‘among the most boring sites with which a field archaeologist must deal’ (Barber & Russel-White 1990:59). Traditionally burnt mound studies have been dominated by concerns relating to technology, form and function. This approach is understood to be a product of modernist understanding of the world which views technologies as primarily adaptive. As such, it is argued that a critical reappraisal of the frameworks through which burnt mounds are interpreted is required in order to develop an account of their construction and use which situates them within wider disciplinary discourses concerning the Bronze Age. In order to do so this thesis evaluates a range of theoretical frameworks which have explored the emergent and situated nature of encounters between people, places and things. Drawing upon this, a new approach is advocated that examines the relationship between burnt mounds and their wider landscape, and explores the material and social engagements which their construction and use affords. In order to offer a more holistic approach in keeping with current archaeological discourses, this study reconceptualises the burnt mound as an active site within Bronze Age society, a place where meanings were negotiated and materials transformed. This thesis utilises GIS analysis and in-situ observation to explore the landcape setting of the burnt mounds of Shetland and combines this with an exploration of the material engagements involved in the construction and use of burnt mounds through a series of experimental firings at a replica site. Through this burnt mounds are identified as powerfully symbolic locations involving the interplay of elemental substances which combine to transform people, places and things. This thesis further challenges the conception that burnt mounds are unable to offer any insight into life in the Bronze Age, by analysing the impact which this reinterpretation has on our understanding of Bronze Age Shetland. In particular, it is argued that in their concern with processes of fragmentation, regeneration and transformation Burnt Mounds reflect the cosmological concerns of wider Bronze Age society. The Bronze Age in Shetland has been identified as a period of apparent isolation and stagnation within the islands. By re-evaluating burnt mounds and situating them within a framework of wider Bronze Age practise this conception is challenged, and the Bronze Age of Shetland is presented as a dynamic period in which burnt mounds played a key role in the understanding of networks of persons, places and substances.

This thesis investigates the archaeological potential of masonry mortars throughout North Atlantic Europe, with a particular focus on the buildings and environments of medieval northern and western Scotland. The results of an extensive non-intrusive survey of medieval and later buildings are presented, within which nine multiphase sites were subject to more comprehensive building, environment and materials analysis. The survey suggests that, in general, different mortar-making techniques had well-defined sub-regional distributions which are not simply a correlate of environmental availability, but developed in different ways over time. Moreover, all of the more comprehensively studied buildings contain evidence of striking material contrasts from phases to phase which has great potential in standing building analysis. Material contrasts in masonry evidence between building phases, between neighbouring buildings, between specific buildings and the regional corpus, and between the regions themselves, are then considered as evidence of changing cultural, chronological and environmental context. The relationship between secular and ecclesiastical buildings across the region is a particular concern. Qualitative lab-based and on-site material interpretations made throughout the thesis are supported by a programme of comparative experimentation. This thesis includes the first comprehensive investigation of lime mortars made from marine shells, the first evidence of lime mortars made from coralline algae, results from the first programme of dating medieval buildings in Scotland through radiocarbon analysis of relict mortar fuel, and microstructural analysis of a large range of medieval mortars from Norway to the Isle of Man. Wider research considers the initial emergence of mortared masonry in North Atlantic Europe and the relationship between clay and lime mortars. Ultimately, by placing the upstanding buildings archaeology at the centre of the medieval and later landscape this thesis will demonstrate that masonry mortars have significant potential to inform our understanding of the cultural and environmental context of lordship construction in the North Atlantic, providing a new focus for further interdisciplinary discourse.

Following a review of the paradigmatic context of broch towers in 2012, a revised standard model (the RSM) was defined. The then prevailing paradigm supports a view of broch remains as single monuments of highly variable form that continued in use over perhaps a millennium or more, without significant modification of their original tectonics i.e. their people/constructed-space relationships. This thesis challenges the pre-2012 paradigm by testing the hypothesis that brochs were built to the standard canonical form of the RSM and that their apparent diversity results from anthropic and, or natural modification, not design variability. The fieldwork tests could but did not find refutation of these hypotheses in the observable evidence and offered more profound interpretations of several surviving feature-types. The loading on the stone lintels of the entrance passage through the massively built outer wall and the structurally overladen inner wall created a major structural challenge, evoking a complex engineering solution. Its elements were individually noted pre-2012 but the significance of the engineering response to compression management had not been identified. This structural response was necessary for a tall structure with massive loads, and meaningless without one and its elements are therefore, jointly and severally, clear diagnostics of a broch tower. The entrance engineering was probably the inspiration of one individual or of a small group of master mason-types, not vernacular responses, contra the 2012 paradigm. Isolated stacked voids high in the inner wall are relict features indicative of significant modification of the inner wall. Other anomalous features are shown to be relict stacked void fragments. The East/West differences in brochs across Scotland have long been identified and these are generally attributed to their lithologies. Accepting that, this thesis argues that the principal differences are attributable to the social processes that gave rise to centralisation of settlement around, in and over brochs in the east and north, possibly during the first century BC, and the absence of centralisation in the west; perhaps also explaining the differences in the scale and composition of the artefact assemblages between the two zones. The canonical form facilitates calculation of the relative social costs of broch building for hard-rock and sedimentary stone types. This indicates that the costs of building, increase between 16-, and 32- fold over the buildable range of brochs. Constraints of design down-scalability, design weakness in ground loading, and design cost were major constraints on the mind of the broch builders. Canonicity and the limitations of drystone building technologies predicated specific forms of decomposition on the canonical broch, further complicating their autobiographies and their conservation: the main challenge now being that of finding ways to conserve the evidence for a sequence of processes while conserving the products of those processes.

No description available.

Food is the foundation upon which societies are built. It is a means of survival, a source of wealth and prosperity and can be used as a means of social display. In Iron Age Atlantic Scotland, a wide range of food resources were open to exploitation. Among these, barley is likely to have been an important backbone to the system. Far from being at the mercy of the elements, the Iron Age population of Atlantic Scotland was able to extract surpluses of food from the landscape which could be manipulated for social, political and economic gain. One means through which this could be achieved is feasting, a practice considered significant elsewhere in the Iron Age. With such ideas at its core, this thesis examines the main arenas for consumption events in Iron Age Atlantic Scotland (dwellings) in detail, considering also the underpinnings of the system in terms of food production and accumulation, in particular the barley crop. The distribution of food processing and preparation between a dwelling and its associated ancillary buildings at Old Scatness provides insights into the organisation of life on the settlement.

No description available.

Moving away from the highly regionalised and constrained purely humanistic and empirical studies of hillfort location and morphology, this study is a multi-regional GIS-based analysis of the form and siting of several groups of hillforts across Britain. Hillforts in Dartmoor, Aberdeenshire, The Gower and Warminster are assessed, four regions that are topographically diverse. The highly varied topography of these regions also tests the GIS-basis of this study, another important intrinsic aspect of this novel research. GIS-based analysis has never before been applied to a study of hillfort location and morphology to this degree and, as with any innovative methodology its worth has to be tested and assessed. The thesis demonstrates that GIS-based analysis, when combined with field visits, provides a fundamental insight into the possible influences of hillfort location and morphology, which fieldwork alone will never be able to do. The GIS-based analysis developed here focuses largely upon examining degrees of movement and visibility. Unlike other GIS-based analyses of movement and visibility this integrates the two to examine visual pathways across landscapes to further investigate the visual qualities of hillforts within the various test areas. The study demonstrates that GIS-based analysis when combined with fieldwork can be affectively applied to qualitative based questions surrounding hillfort location and morphology. The overall results of this analysis had some relatively predictable results whilst there were some very surprising cases. A large number of entrances were placed within the most accessible area, however in the case of Battlesbury there was evidence for the complete disregard to accessibility within the orientation of its northwestern entrance. There were also numerous examples of the placement of a site's most prominent morphological components in correlation with the blind pathways. In these cases sites were orientated to encourage an element of surprise upon the approaching travellers.

Since the 1970s, the study of molecular organics preserved in archaeological ceramics, commonly referred to as organic residue analysis, has been used to infer vessel use and study dietary, economic, and ritual activities in the past. The purpose of this project is to analyse organic residues from a variety of ancient vessels and attempt to understand further the relationship between molecular organic preservation and vessel characteristics. It has been previously assumed that the absorption of these organics in the ceramic matrix is predominantly responsible for their preservation. The clarification of this or other preservative mechanisms and the further understanding of the relationships of vessels with their contents has a direct impact on the interpretation of organic residues and vessel use. The first section addresses the preservation of molecular organics in pottery vessels from Tel Kabri, Israel; Tel Megiddo, Israel; and Lefkandi, Greece. The one hundred and thirty-three samples from these three sites represent vessels used in domestic, burial, ritual, and elite contexts from the Early Bronze Age through the Iron Age Eastern Mediterranean. The focus of the study is the quantification of residue yields and identification of potential links with vessel properties and characteristics of the ceramic samples. Sequential extractions using two methods, conventional chloroform/methanol solvent extraction and direct FAME extraction/derivatisation, were applied to the sherds to test the absorption and adsorption of organics into ceramic materials. The majority of samples were tested non-destructively, enabling the comparison of residue yields to certain vessel properties and characteristics displayed in the same sherds. Where available, data concerning vessel form, sampling location on the vessel profile, thickness measurements were recorded, and XRF measurements were taken, with this in mind. The second section investigates the question of whether bronze and copper alloy vessels have the capability to preserve molecular organics within their corrosion products. Twenty-two samples of corrosion and associated material from five Early Roman bronze vessels found in cremation burials during the A2 Pepperhill to Cobham project in County Kent, United Kingdom were studied for organic material. These samples provide some of the first evidence that the residues of original content are preserved in copper alloy vessels either through entrapment in or reactions with copper corrosion.

No description available.

This thesis is a reassessment of the concept of the ‘fort community’ and analysis of the people who dwelled within it, utilising archaeological evidence from the northern frontier of Roman Britain. Traditional approaches which have focused on military functions or on military-civilian dichotomies cannot provide a full account of discrepant identities (Mattingly 2011). A holistic approach which acknowledges and incorporates non-military activities can provide an important alternative perspective into how the inhabitants of Roman fort communities related to one another. The thesis utilises Lewis Coser’s concept of the ‘greedy institution’ (1974) to resituate the imbalance of power affecting identity within the Roman military. The discussion is framed within nested layers of identity and community. In the first chapter, a historical overview of Roman military scholarship is presented that contextualises the current archaeological climate and illustrates key issues of bias. Three core forms of identity are analysed in the second chapter in the context of the Roman auxilia; socio-cultural, gender, and ethnicity. This discussion positions the auxiliaries as a group both empowered and subjugated, consisting of ‘martial races’ exploited within a military role. In the third chapter, the textual evidence for identity on the northern frontier is analysed, using epigraphy and the Vindolanda tablets. Within these the discrepant identities of members of the fort communities are identified. In the fourth chapter, I analyse the architectural underpinnings of military identity through an examination of the development and ideology of the ‘standard plan’ fort. In the fifth chapter, I analyse the material evidence for the habitus of fort community life, focusing on three activity contexts; military display, craft and industry, and bodily consumption. The thesis concludes by assessing the strengths of the ‘greedy institution’ approach and outlining its significance with regards to future research.