This thesis investigates hunter-gatherer mobility in the Mesolithic landscape of northern England through their exploitation of chert. The principal aim of this study is to evaluate two hypotheses of hunter-gatherer movement: 1) huntergatherers would primarily move between the lowlands and uplands with no extensive movement along the interior of the uplands and 2) hunter-gatherers would primarily move along the interior of the uplands. The chert content of the lithic assemblages present at Malham Tarn Site A (northern Pennines) and Lismore Fields (southern Pennines) would differ according to the manner of movement practiced by the huntergatherers, thereby resulting in different frequency distributions of local and non-local cherts. Hunter-gatherer mobility is important in understanding hunter-gatherer subsistence, trade/exchange and colonisation, but mobility does not leave direct evidence in the archaeological record. Improved understanding of lithic raw material movement across the landscape provides another dimension in examining hunter-gatherer mobility. The principal 'tool' used in this study to investigate potential hunter-gatherer mobility during the Mesolithic in northern England is geochemical sourcing of cheli by LA-ICPMS. Geochemical characterisation is increasingly being embraced by archaeologists, but had not yet been applied to chert in northern England. Geological sources were first sampled and analysed using LA-ICP-MS with limited success in differentiating sources. Combined with other techniques it was possible to differentiate most cherts and apply the resulting "key" to the archaeological sites. The results support the first hypothesis indicating that hunter-gatherers were primarily moving between the lowlands and uplands with little direct movement between the interior upland regions.

This thesis seeks to demonstrate intentional selection, and spatial and associational patterning in the past deposition of artefactual, faunal and human remains in the British Neolithic. Drawing on theory from material culture studies and anthropology, it is suggested that depositional practices were the result of, and played a part in the creation and maintenance of, systems of cultural classification and symbolic order. Furthermore, that deposition was often actively employed in ascribing sets of meanings and references to places, events and practices through a process of material culture signification and connotation. A major part of the thesis takes the form of a series of detailed case studies of depositional practices within excavated sites in the Avebury and Stonehenge regions of Wiltshire. A variety of contexts, including pits, funerary monuments and enclosures of both Earlier and Later Neolithic date, are examined; within which consciously motivated acts of deposition are seen as a recurrent feature. In a broader discussion, implications developing from the case studies and analysis of depositional activity at other sites elsewhere in southern Britain are related to issues of Neolithic perceptions of identity, locality, time, ancestry and the supernatural. Particular attention is paid to the way in which depositions contributed to the structuring and classification of space within monuments. In a final section, depositional practices are considered in relation to a wider debate surrounding Neolithic origins and processes of becoming and being Neolithic.

Coins have played an important role in the construction of narratives and models of late Iron Age society in Britain. Distribution maps, in particular, have been employed to identify the supposed tribal structure of the island in the pre-Roman period, which is thought to have survived the Roman conquest to be preserved in the Roman civitas administration system. The continued prominence of the broad stylistic categories that structure all numismatic classifications, and which are often seen to support the projection of Romano-British civitates back into the pre-Roman period, has ensured that while archaeology has moved away from interpreting Iron Age Britain in terms of ‘tribes’ and dynastic kings, coins are often still interpreted in this way. In the twenty-two years since the publication of Van Arsdell’s Celtic Coinage of Britain (1989), the number of provenanced Iron Age coins has increased by almost seventy-five percent and the number of distinct types almost doubled. This thesis assembles a digital dataset comprised of 32,866 provenanced coins, adding dating and new classification information that allow it to be interrogated from geographical, chronological and typological perspectives using GIS software. The corpus of Iron Age coinage is now too vast to consider every coin at a contextual level, repeating the approach of Haselgrove (1987). Instead, this thesis has developed an alternative method of analysing the complete dataset, providing an overview of the national trends and patterns against which future localised, contextual studies can be compared. By analysing the data in this way it is possible to show that localised distribution patterns are often obscured by regional-stylistic or ‘tribal’ identifications. Some of these patterns are highly significant and allow the numismatic data to support non-tribal models of a regionally diverse and dynamic late Iron Age in Britain.

The shed light on past social and economic processes it is crucial to analyze the ways in which past societies absorb and develop new technologies. It is generally thought that technological development is a linear process, particularly in prehistory and the British Iron Age is a very useful period in which to address and challenge this accepted notion. It has previously been argued that flint tools and technology ceased at the end of the Bronze Age, being replaced by metals. Close scrutiny of excavation records in fact reveals the fallacy of such arguments and this thesis seeks to challenge these assumptions by establishing that flint definitely was used in the Iron Age. Most archaeologists are unaware of the existence of contemporary lithics as a significant component of Iron Age artefact repertories. As such, there is no Iron Age lithic typology which might facilitate the study and identification of this very late lithic material. This study provides fresh insights into Iron Age studies that have previously been neglected and sets out to establish a fluid typology where Iron Age flint assemblages can be recognised and recorded, to explore who was producing and using the flint artefacts and what they were using them for. Thus, this thesis provides an in-depth re-analysis of the flint materials from a catalogue of sites with potential Iron Age assemblages, a re-consideration of Iron Age material cultures, and a wider theoretical analysis of social and material transitions from the Late Bronze Age to Iron Age. It is believed that the new information and hypothesis resulting from this study will greatly increase our understanding of the diversity and complexity of technological change and maximise our data resources, both of which will impact on our existing and future research on wider issues of social and economic practices.

No description available.

The urbanisation programme instigated by the Romans as they conquered the western provinces resulted in a network of chartered towns and numerous slighter settlements, popularly titled 'small towns'. Much research has focussed on the wide range of sites encompassed by the term 'small town'; Burnham's work has provided a framework for analysing these sites, based on settlement morphology and functions. Concentrating on the evidence of small towns alone can answer many questions about appearance, development, functions and complexity, but cannot indicate the audiences at which a wide range of activities was aimed. This thesis concentrates on the small towns of the East Midlands, using existing analytical frameworks to establish a hierarchy, and testing this by exploring the nature and strength of relations with neighbouring settlements. Small towns are placed in their landscape, and evaluated as administrative, regional, local market and service centres. Investigation is carried out in three stages: (i) detailed comparative analysis of the small towns alone; (ii) comparing small town-country relations, selecting a sample area of fixed size around each small town; (iii) assessment of the region as a whole, placing small towns in regional economic, administrative and religious networks. The balance of current academic opinion is that small towns served as local socio-economic centres. However, this thesis shows that few small towns In the East Midlands developed into market centres, the rest being more satisfactorily explained as rural, rather than central, places. Moreover, not all specialist production in some small towns need have been aimed at the locality, but a more distant market. Although many small towns originated as sites of specialist production, or were religious or administrative centres, one cannot assume that their continued existence relied on the evolution of local trade and exchange networks centred upon them.

This thesis examines the evidence for prehistoric human activity in a defined area of the East Midlands of England where the dominant substrata is clay. It aims to examine whether the traditional model for limited prehistoric occupation of areas of clayland is accurate in the light of recent fieldwork. Problems of visibility, interpretation and biases in the record for clayland areas which may have influenced this model are discussed. The area selected consists of 4200 sq km comprising over sixty per cent clay substrata covering areas of Leicestershire and Northamptonshire and adjacent counties. The research examines the evidence at four levels: regional, sub-regional, micro-regional and at the level of the core area. The regional analysis examines the distribution of prehistoric activity based on information from Sites and Monuments Records. To test the results of this analysis four area surveys at sub-regional and micro-regional level are then examined. Evidence at the level of the core area based on excavated settlements in clayland areas is also analysed. This analysis suggests that there is no pattern of avoidance of clayland areas during the prehistoric periods but that the evidence for pre-iron Age activity is uneven. Where systematic survey has been undertaken pre-Iron Age activity is present in some clayland valleys, with lower levels of activity on the higher boulder clay plateaux areas, although by the Later Iron Age core area activity has spread into these locations. One boulder clay area examined in the Swift Valley, however, has lithic densities comparable with southern gravels and chalklands, the preferred locations for prehistoric settlement in the traditional model. The conclusion from this research is that clayland areas in the East Midlands were not actively avoided and other environmental and social factors may have had a greater influence on site selection than the substrata.

This thesis has used building recording techniques, documentary research and oral history testimonies to explore how concepts of the modern and new between the 1870s and 1930s shaped the urban built environment, through the study of a particular kind of infrastructure that was developed to meet the needs of expanding cities at this time – social (or municipal) housing – and how social housing was perceived and experienced as a new kind of built environment, by planners, architects, local government and residents. This thesis also addressed how the concepts and priorities of the Victorian and Edwardian periods, and the decisions made by those in authority regarding the form of social housing, continue to shape the urban built environment and impact on the lived experience of social housing today. In order to address this, two research questions were devised: • How can changing attitudes and responses to the nature of modern life between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries be seen in the built environment, specifically in the form and use of social housing? • Can contradictions between these earlier notions of the modern and new, and our own be seen in the responses of official authority and residents to the built environment? The research questions were applied to three case study areas, three housing estates constructed between 1910 and 1932 in Birmingham, London and Liverpool. During the course of answering these research questions, three further themes have arisen, which have broader relevance beyond this thesis: • How to interpret buildings that have a life extending beyond their original purpose. • The practice of contemporary archaeology as it relates to the built environment • How new kinds of environments are created and experienced, and how this can be investigated through material evidence.

The transitional period between the Roman occupation of Britain and the creation of smaller kingdoms during the Early Medieval period is one that is heavily debated. The shift in material culture from the fifth century onwards suggests Continental influences, but the extent to which this represents large-scale migrations or acculturation by indigenous people is contested. New bioarchaeological and isotopic studies of skeletal remains demonstrate an improvement in health from the Roman to Early Medieval periods, along with greater evidence of a much more complicated picture with respect to the direct association of particular grave goods with migrants. This comprehensive analysis of stature, body proportions, and health stress from the Romano-British to Early Medieval period represents an additional bioarchaeological contribution to these debates. A total of 1248 individuals excavated from 20 cemetery sites of Romano-British and Early Medieval date throughout southern and eastern England were analysed. Stature was examined as an indicator of health and growth as it is associated with childhood adversity, whilst body proportions can reflect adaptations to local environments. The stature and body proportions of individuals from all sites were determined through the reconstruction of living stature using Raxter et al.’s (2006, 2007) revised Fully anatomical method and through the analysis of a variety of indices. New mathematical regression formulae were created for each sample based on the reconstructed living stature. Comparisons of the anatomical and mathematical methods of stature calculation discovered a general overestimation of stature when the Trotter and Gleser, 1952, 1958 and Trotter, 1970 methods were used. The use of different indices aided in the assessment of examining differential body proportions within and between periods. In combination with the skeletal indicators of stress recorded, shorter tibial lengths, lower crural and higher intermembral indices, and shortened relative lower limb lengths demonstrated the negative impact that Roman occupation had on the residents of Britain. An improvement in overall health was noted within the Early Medieval sample with a decreased prevalence of these stress indicators, as well as increases in indices and stature. This thesis demonstrates the usefulness of utilizing the anatomical method when estimating stature of past populations in conjunction with the analysis of body proportions and stress indicators.

The nature of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Britain has often been debated. This thesis represents the first application of strontium and oxygen isotope analysis to study land use and mobility during this period (c. 4000-3500 BC). Results of analysis of populations from a sample of long cairns and a causewayed enclosure complex are described and interpreted in relation to current archaeological evidence for the period. Limitations to the application of oxygen isotope analysis as a direct proxy for landscape use are identified. The potential of strontium isotope analysis to study the period is demonstrated and prospects for future development and application of this method are discussed.