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This thesis presents the first ever synthesis of the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age in Perthshire and Stirlingshire. It draws on evidence from excavations, field survey and aerial survey, the latter two largely undertaken by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland. It is clear from this study that the key to appreciating the structure of the data within this region is a sound understanding of the history of research. Several key players are identified in the history of antiquarian research in the area, with Christian Maclagan and David Christian emerging as pioneers in field recording. However, aerial and ground survey, particularly since the mid-1970s has been crucial in altering the perceived nature of the archaeological resource, with the density of known upland settlement increasing dramatically, and numerous plough-truncated sites being identified in lowland cropmarks. The geology, geomorphology and soils of the study area is characterised, and factors that might have affected how later prehistoric people interacted with and perceived their environment are identified. These include sea level change in the Forth Valley in the Iron Age, climatic deterioration in the Early Iron Age and major forest clearance and increased cultivation in the Late Iron Age. A mosaic of vegetation types can be envisaged for the later prehistoric landscape, which seems to have opened out in the last few hundred years of the first millennium ВС, perhaps to cope with an increased population. Analysis of existing excavated data on plant macrofossils provided further detail here, suggesting that such crops were grown and processed in both the upland and lowland zones. While the absence of significant quantities of cereal pollen need not conclusively imply a pastoral dimension to the later prehistoric economy, a reassessment of zoo-archaeological evidence made it quite clear that domestic cattle and sheep/goat were in use, in addition to domestic horses and wild animals. Following this, a critical review of the chronological framework is provided, followed by reclassification of the various site types known. It proves possible to assign broad date ranges to the different types of site identified. This new classification is used as the basis for an assessment of dating and function of these sites. The case studies of Stirling, south-east Perthshire and north-east Perthshire enable an assessment of site morphology and settlement patterns on a more local level, armed with a regionally-specific chronological and functional framework. These various lines of enquiry are then drawn together to provide a narrative describing the nature of later prehistoric settlement and society. The study area is then put into context, through comparison with the evidence from adjacent areas of Eastern Scotland. The previous models, which emphasised the differences between settlement, society and economy in areas north and south of the Forth, as a long-term structural feature of Scottish archaeology have been shown to be erroneous. It is not until the Late Iron Age that marked differences in the settlement of Stirlingshire and Perthshire can be observed. A conscious decision was made in this study to move away from the status-dominated assumptions of previous accounts. When we look at the Iron Age of Stirlingshire in a chronologically dynamic way, we see rather than the no-man's land described by previous authors, or the highly stratified society envisaged by those who assume that the lowland brochs are high-status, a wealthy area with a high enough population to necessitate large-scale woodland clearance by the final years of the first millennium ВС. In Perthshire too, both highland and lowland, there is little evidence of a social hierarchy at any time. The contextual, temporally dynamic approach to later prehistoric remains taken here has enabled us to gain a much more firmly-based view of settlement and society in Perthshire and Stirlingshire.

The project is a study of soil erosion within the cairnfields on the Eastern Moors of Derbyshire. A range of Archaeological features and natural sedimentary sequences were excavated in the search for eroded sediments. The erosion evident at these features was dated by means of radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence dating. Contrary to previous assumptions as to the scale of erosion in later prehistory, which maintain that this was a severe problem, it is concluded that the evidence indicates a low degree of erosion for the Bronze Age. Erosion is concluded to have increased from the Iron Age with the establishment of extensive pasture land.

This thesis seeks to take the motifs on Irish Passage tombs beyond their traditional role as passive epiphenomenon and furthers understands them as performing active roles in the Neolithic. Rather than view the images through a textual representational analogy, I utilise visual cultural and neurological studies, set within a worldview perspective to paint a picture of the possible ambiguities of life and belief at some passage tomb locations. I explore the richness of evidence from the archaeological data and literature, to move beyond previous positions, and suggest new ways to deal with a past that develops multiple narratives. Such an account is thick with paradoxes, similarities, differences, tensions, emotions, life, death, pleasures and pain. Visions, context and belief layered together often generate ruptures in daily life that can facilitate new imaginings within the rhythms and sequences of images. Within such a perspective the Irish passage tomb motifs present fresh conditions for possibility and diverse understanding. In combining broader and more fine-grained analysis of particular passage tomb sites located in the north, east and south of Ireland, I demonstrate that social complexities operate at all scales. Magnified via cosmological perspectives, images on passage tombs interact with spectators through two-way intimate engagements. The assemblages that accompany the motifs are not static, instead they display notions of material animacy. Humans do not control all these interactions, for the motifs and objects are dynamic montages. These actions can be enhanced via process, such as the sequential nature of some images or by the application of liquid solutions, especially when conducted at particular times and places. With passage tombs acting as 'stages' and 'islandscapes', I construct interpretations that include both carnivalesque and axis mundi environments, which subvert, disrupt and perpetuate social beliefs. Such performances may have created dialogues and myths about the specialness of these places. These conversations would in turn factor and texture new illusions and simulations of the world, whilst creating fresh opportunities for experience.

This thesis examines technological behaviour during the early British Middle Palaeolithic (Late OIS 9-7), as reflected by lithic artefacts. The British data-set, whilst containing few high-resolution sites providing information relevant to ethnographic-scale behavioural reconstruction, actually forms a valuable corpus of well-contextualised locales within a tightly constrained chronostratigraphic framework. Lithic artefacts from these sites can be used to address broader questions concerning the emergence and nature of particular "Middle Palaeolithic" behaviours; specifically, the emergence of, and variability within, Levallois technology in Britain, and increasing complexity in the organisation of technology in the landscape. The assemblages analysed in this thesis comprise the nine best-preserved British sites dated to this period, which can be placed within secure chronological, geographical and ecological contexts. Whilst previous surveys have emphasised the typological composition of such assemblages, this thesis considers the specific technological behaviours evident at particular locales, in terms of which stages of lithic reduction are represented, what specific Levallois preparatory and exploitation strategies were applied, and how the choices between such options are explicable. On this basis, it is possible to discuss the development of a technologically complex treatment of particular places in the landscape during the early Middle Palaeolithic, linked to the increased transport and curation of particular Levallois products. Whilst on a European scale, such patterns are seen as typical of the Middle Palaeolithic but are essentially undated; this study shows that such behaviours are apparent from at least OIS 8 onwards in Britain, with concomitant implications for our understanding of developing Middle Palaeolithic behaviours in Europe.

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No description available.

Monuments of stone, earth and wood were built for the first time at the beginning of the Neolithic period in Scotland (4000 BC). While archaeological attention and investigation has focused upon monuments of stone and earth, those of timber have generally received much less attention and remain to be fully accepted and integrated into wider understandings of the Neolithic. This is despite a rich record of cropmark timber monuments held within the aerial archives of the National Monuments Record of Scotland (NMRS) and an increasing number of excavated timber monuments. This thesis is an attempt to remedy this imbalance. It examines all the evidence for timber monuments of Neolithic date currently recorded in Scotland, integrating those recorded as cropmarks with those uncovered during excavation and considers their place within the wider Neolithic repertoire. As the majority of timber monuments have been recorded as cropmarks, this thesis strives to move beyond cropmarks and the morphology of sites and argues that strict typologies serve to constrain the archaeological record. Instead a more contextual approach is taken whereby other factors, such as materialities or the use of space are taken into account. This is particularly put into practice within three case study areas where a landscape approach, employing field visits and a bodily engagement with the location of sites, is combined with GIS analysis and the consideration of the case study areas as a whole. Consideration of timber monuments, both at a country-wide level and at the more detailed level of the three case study areas, demonstrates the wide range of timber monuments that were constructed and the important part they had to play within the wider monumental repertoire of Neolithic Scotland. Timber monuments can be suggested to reflect wider values and ideals shared by Neolithic communities as well as more local concerns and engagements by individual groups and communities. The monuments built may reflect some of the ways in which communities thought through and transformed their relationships to the forest and the wider environment and provide perspectives upon the importance of place and memory, the influence and important role of the environment, and the regional nature and diversity evident throughout Neolithic Scotland. Ultimately, this thesis demonstrates that timber monuments were important spaces and places that were used by Neolithic communities for many different purposes and so should form an important part of any consideration of the Neolithic period in Scotland.