This thesis attempts to study the prehistoric archaeology of the English-Welsh Marches (the Anglo-Welsh borderland) from a theoretical position which includes the concept of belonging engendered by landscape and which is informed by border theory. As such it critiques recent approaches which emphasise ethnicity and personhood. The concept of culture is also critically examined and an approach taken which is described as a "border perspective". The Neolithic and Bronze Age archaeology of the region is outlined and three classes of evidence form the main focus of the study. The use of stone and flint for the production of tools is considered and the distribution of these materials used to illustrate the presence of a prehistoric population with connections outside the region. The use of stone' as a potting material in the later part of the Bronze Age is also considered, and the use of special materials from places such as the Malvern Hills and Clee Hills is described. The analysis of the production, utilisation and discard of Bronze Age metalwork is the second class of material covered here. Distinctive patterns of use and deposition are identified and some interpretations of the possible meanings of these patterns are forwarded. The construction of enclosures is the final class of evidence considered. The construction of enclosures throughout prehistory is a well-known practise, but those in the study area differ in a number of ways to those found elsewhere. Particular attention is focussed on the construction of hilltop enclosures/hillforts in the later part of the Bronze Age and the social role these might have played. A number of themes run through the research presented here. These include the use of places such as hilltops and wetlands for certain kinds of practise; the nature of difference and how this may be accounted for and the negotiation of different kinds of border by individuals in the past.

The Severn-Cotswold region occupies a pivotal position in Iron Age studies, lying at the interface between the well-studied regions of Wessex, the Upper Thames Valley and the Welsh Marches. In contrast to them, the Severn-Cotswolds has continued to be neglected despite the rich potential demonstrated by earlier surveys and excavations. This study sets the Iron Age of the Severn-Cotswold region in a national context. Both the older material and the mounting new evidence from rescue excavations are examined and interpreted in the light of recent theoretical advances. Aerial photographs have been used to enhance understanding of unexcavated sites which, alongside a database of excavated sites, provide a morphological framework to assess variation in settlement form and social organisation. The material culture and exchange networks of the later 1(^st) millennium BC are also assessed within a wider social context stressing the need to incorporate production, exchange and deposition when studying Iron Age societies. This material is used to construct a narrative of social and landscape change identifying the complexity of community reactions to wider cultural developments. It is suggested that a radical transformation in the form and organisation of settlements took place at the beginning of the later Iron Age, reflecting changes in social organisation and a greater emphasis on defining the household. Examination of the settlement and material culture evidence suggests complex social networks developed in the later Iron Age. It is against this background that the emergence of new settlement forms and communities in the late Iron Age needs to be understood.

The thesis, which opens with a critical review of the primary and secondary literature on the British woollen industry and trade generally, examines the development of the Stroud industry, its rise to an area of considerable industrial importance, and its eventual decline. Important factors that influenced its development included gradual mechanisation and transition from water to steam power over a protracted period. Following woollen's decline, many mills were reused by a variety of successor industries. At the core of the study are three chapters based largely on site visits that review and analyse power sources, power transmission systems and the construction and architecture of mill buildings. A methodology pioneered by the RCHME's survey of Yorkshire mills is used; this combines the use of maps, record office archives, printed sources, site visits and record making. The focus on industrial enterprises, mill sites and buildings reveals some similarities with competing areas but also significant differences. In Gloucestershire, a capitalism system of organisation was adopted early, with clothiers living in or near their mills. Most mill sites developed in a piecemeal fashion over protracted periods. Their owners were cautious and conservative men who adapted only slowly to new ideas and change and many remained heavily dependent on water power long after competing areas had switched to steam. Mechanisation of the industry in Gloucestershire was relatively trouble-free as a result of a compliant workforce. Overall, the woollen industry in the Stroud valleys was characterised by a history of tradition and reluctance to change in the face of changing market requirements. However, even after woollen cloth's demise, a surprisingly high degree of industrial activity continued in the region.

The objective of this thesis is to place the pottery used by people in 17th and 18th century Worcester into context, flowing from a desire to see the archaeological study of pottery placed within the wider study of material culture. It develops a model for doing so by addressing both a corpus of pottery drawn from a number of sites in the city and a sample of probate inventories covering the century 1650-1750. This century is of interest in local ceramic studies because it is transitional between a period in which the prime provider of pottery for the whole region was the Malvern industry, and the later period of industrial scale manufacture and distribution in Staffordshire. The thesis begins by reviewing possible theoretical approaches to the study of pottery and adopting a standpoint based on a phenomenological view of material culture as embodied experience, as opposed to the idealist representation of meaning. Since an implication of this standpoint is that the experience of past people encompassed more than the use and possession of pots, the subsequent Chapter explores the physical development of Worcester over the century under review. The next section then embarks on the consideration of 11 groups of pottery drawn from six sites in the city. Each group is considered and interpreted in turn, in its archaeological context, before the resulting data is combined to form images of the ceramic ‘repertoire’ for each of three Stages covering the century. A product of this process is the draft of a Type Series for later early modern pottery in Worcester. A sample of probate inventories taken at ten year intervals is then considered, and images of household material culture developed for three similar temporal Stages. Finally information from both the archaeological study and the analysis of inventories is combined imaginatively in ‘walking through’ three houses, one for each Stage, in order to experience, at least vicariously, the place of pottery in each. The model thus endeavours to establish for a particular locality both the nature of the ceramic repertoire for the period under review, using a development of ‘traditional’ archaeological methodology, and the position within particular households which it appears to have occupied. This approach combines the archaeological study of pottery, often pursued in isolation, with the detailed consideration of related historical data, in a way which illuminates both and can be further refined and applied elsewhere.