This work covers the Western Desert to the Nile Valley during the period ca. 6500-3750 calBC and determines the aetiology and nature of early Predynastic (Badarian- ca. 4350-3750 calBC) belief systems. The migration of peoples from the Western Desert to the Nile Valley as a result of the commencement of aridification in ca. 5300 calBC would have influenced belief systems. Throughout, a flexible theoretical framework is used to interrogate the heterogeneous evidence. The catalyst for the work is Bárta’s retrospective interpretation of the rock-art motifs in Wadi Sura as early representations of ancient Egyptian deities and the beginnings of ancient Egyptian religion. The motifs are also linked to Middle Kingdom concept of the dead by Le Quellec. These two interpretations are examined and are proved to be incorrect. The conclusion is that the motifs are the result of a shamanic rain ritual. Archaeological evidence reveals there was no direct contact between Wadi Sura and the Nile Valley. The rock-art in Dakhleh Oasis and environs was also analysed as was the megalithic site of Nabta Playa. Although different, both appear to have had concerns about rain and fertility. Ceramic evidence reveals contacts between Nabta Playa, Dakhleh Oasis and the early Badarian sites. This suggests that at least part of the aetiology of beliefs was the Western Desert. The interrogation of mortuary evidence at Gebel Ramlah, associated with Nabta Playa and that of the Badarian period reveals a belief in an afterlife, rebirth and regeneration. The role of the living is considered vital for the dead to achieve this transformational status. At all sites the supernatural and symbolism appear to play an important role as does shamanism. It is apparent that the concepts of fertility, an afterlife and rebirth formed the basis of the early Predynastic belief systems. No recognisable deities existed.

This thesis discusses the adaptation of the wiggle-match dating technique and Bayesian chronological models to the practicalities of dating timbers from Iron Age Scottish wetland sites, with a focus on the area between the firths of the rivers Clyde and Solway. Wiggle-match dating technique relies on taking measurements from a sequence with an estimated, or known deposition rate, such as timbers, and fitting the resultant time series to an established calibration curve. Bayesian modelling entails combining various forms of information about the material dated to obtain a more comprehensive chronological understanding. These techniques are relevant to Iron Age wetland settlement in Scotland due to the lack of other methods that could produce high-precision dates on a routine basis; too few timbers from Scottish wetlands produce absolute dendrochronological dates and ordinary radiocarbon calibrations tend to have low precision during the period 750-200 BC, which covers the formative stages of both the Scottish Iron Age and wetland settlement tradition. Effective use of the wiggle-match dating technique requires attention to aspects of technique, its practical implementation and suitable research design. As far as technical aspects are concerned, the work conducted within this thesis demonstrated the need to match the length of sample blocks of wood with the length of the measurements underpinning the calibration curve. Furthermore, presence of small offsets between the calibration curve and the actual past trend of radiocarbon has been identified; while these offsets have minimal impact on most radiocarbon applications, the wiggle-match dating technique is sensitive to them and hence conscious decisions need to be made at the stage of research design to avoid systematic bias in the results. Aspects of practical implementation have been explored through wiggle-match dating studies at four sites: Black Loch of Myrton, Cults Loch 3, Dumbuck and Erskine Crannog. Results demonstrate that even on the most challenging parts of the calibration curve wiggle-match dating can succeed in producing modelled date ranges of less than 100 years and that, on more favourable parts of the curve, it can be used to aid the resolution of questions regarding site formation processes. Moreover, these case studies highlighted a number of practical issues such as propensity of decayed rings to produce radiocarbon results biased towards older ages. Efficient use of wiggle-match dating in archaeological contexts requires not only the technical and practical capacity, but also a strategic framework within which the methodology is to be employed. While the nature of this framework depends on the interpretations the researcher is interested in, this thesis suggests a focus on developing linkage between different sites, both wetland and terrestrial, so that the well-preserved deposits become informative of not only a single site, but also shed light on the local and regional developments.

Between AD c.860 and c.970, hundreds of thousands of silver coins (dirhams) from Central Asia reached Scandinavia, where evidence suggests adoption within market environments as commodity-money within a hacksilver currency. Although several hundred dirhams are found in hoards and as single-finds in Britain and Ireland, the extension of this ‘economic’ phenomenon here is rarely discussed due to a focus on social exchange. This bias comes from a failure to incorporate market-based network theory developed in recent Scandinavian Baltic studies on the back of that region’s dirham influx, and the excavation there of market sites like Birka, Hedeby, and Kaupang probably responsible for their further dissemination. Considered for the first time, then, this study allows an Insular dirham dataset assembled in a new database to be interpreted beyond the restrictive corpus of Viking-Age Insular exchange literature. The Baltic perspectives, centred on the nodal network role of hub markets like Hedeby in Jutland, offer the best model of how long-distance exchange operated in the period c.850-950. Accordingly, the nodal Insular Scandinavian import and export sites of Dublin and York are contextualised within the distribution of Insular dirham deposits to characterise the economic and social context of this network. Beyond the dirhams, this ‘Silver Route’ network is considered responsible for the bi-directional trade of high-value commodities between Insular Scandinavia, England, and the Baltic. Thus, a new non-numismatic database includes pieces considered to have arrived in Britain and Ireland in concert with the dirhams. This database – included in a CD alongside the dirham data – includes metrological equipment, jewellery, amber, silk, and silver of Scandinavian Baltic, Eastern European, and Central Asian origin. Like the numismatic material, the non-numismatic data support a model of network kingdoms, defined as polities based on control of nodal/hub markets and influence over the trade routes connecting them, with the latter aspect requiring royal co-operation with independent long-distance and regional traders. From this point of departure, a case is made for Ívarr and the Uí Ímair using control of Dublin and York to introduce an import and currency package to Britain and Ireland from a possible homeland in a ‘Danish Corridor’ focussed on Kaupang and Hedeby. This idea of market-centric polities is alloyed by the use of post-substantivist economic theory, which argues that nodal-market sites encouraged the social and exchange conditions where market economics and production could flourish. While it is accepted that socially-embedded exchange dominated Viking-Age Scandinavia, post-substantivism allows for the increasing import of market exchange, and it is applied to Insular Scandinavia for the first time here.

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The nature of rural settlement patterns and the economy during the Roman occupation of Britain from the Claudian invasion of AD 43 to the end of the fourth century in Hampshire and West Sussex formed the focus of this research. The objective is to define a method of measuring the attributes of Romano-British ceramic assemblages that can be linked to the socio-economic status of the original owners and their villas. It is the hypothesis of this study that domestic ceramic vessels can be used as a reliable indicator of social status. A tenet of this hypothesis is that the higher social and economically wealthy Romano British villa owners would be in possession of greater amounts of ceramic fine table wares. The pottery assemblages and the architectural features of twenty villas in West Sussex and Hampshire were analysed in order to test this hypothesis. The quantities of fine wares were measured by Estimated Vessel Equivalents (EVEs) and the Romanised architectural features present were quantified by their presence. The economics of the Roman Empire was integrated with wealth and power which in itself was reflected in the fashions of the material culture together with the aspirations to acquire status. Social mobility during the Rome Empire relied on wealth and the consequent display of that wealth. The way a person could demonstrate a change in status was to acquire and display higher quality material culture. This can be seen to be demonstrated in the display of Romanised architectural features present in Romano-British villas coupled with the evidence of high value ceramic fine wares present in the cultural artefacts. This demonstration of wealth can be seen as representing the status of an individual within society and by comparison the fewer high value status symbols would indicate a lower status or class of an individual. The differences in the quantity of these ceramic fine wares obtained by the villa owners can, therefore, be seen as an indicator and a measure of their relative social status. It is this theory that is the basis for the development of the methodology and the creation of a testable model.

For the last twenty years phenomenology has been an intensely discussed topic in prehistoric archaeology. The phenomenological way of thinking has taken steps to embrace an understanding of the past based on bodily experience in the world. However, this process has been rarely applied to medieval studies despite a much richer dataset. Phenomenology has initiated a number of discussions concerning how we can think about human experience in the past (the lived experience of the past). The phenomenological approach has been criticised for a lack of methodological robustness and for being overly subjective. In the same period archaeological computing has developed alternative frameworks for sensory interaction with the material evidence of the past, and with its varied interpretations. Its underlying methodologies have been similarly critiqued, and also interconnected with phenomenological and other models for experience. Critiques of archaeological computing have been asking the same questions as those of phenomenology: namely how do we deal with uncertainty and subjectivity when interpreting the archaeological record. In this thesis I suggest digital techniques in archaeological computing that can offer new routes to approaching human experience in the medieval past. I present two case studies that demonstrate alternative and complementary techniques to explore the notion and implementation of a digital “lived experience” of late medieval buildings. My first case study based at Bodiam Castle uses visualisation techniques to explore the lived experience of the private apartments. I propose a mixed media approach for the presentation of visualisations. In my second case study I move away from visual experience of medieval sites. I present an assessment of a series of auralizations of Ightham Mote. The conclusions demonstrate that digital techniques that work across senses can provide a robust mechanism for exploring the concept of lived experience, and for exploring the lived experience of specific medieval buildings.

Investigation of the archaeological record of hunters and gatherers has been frequently concerned with the origins of social complexity. Yet, 'social complexity' is not a straightforward variable, and the category 'complex hunter-gatherer' may create more problems than it solves. Rejection of the category does not, however, eliminate nor account for real variation in the social organisation and archaeological signatures of hunter-gatherers. Archaeological analyses of hunter-gatherer economies have frequently considered time-budgeting constraints associated with the production, storage, and redistribution of surpluses to be central. However, examination of these time constraints show that they are not necessarily a constraint upon the development of social complexity, but are an expression of the relationship between individual humans and their environment. Spatial and temporal constraints are manifested through the individual's body, and are expressed through technology, settlement pattern, and mobility practice. Some spatial approaches in archaeology, such as locational analysis, have focused on the individual monad but few have done so in a manner that adequately expresses the possibilities and constraints of the individual and individual agency. Instead, most analyses have cast the individual as either a simple optimising 'Homo economicus' making rational decisions within a neutral environment, or as subject to a highly normative culture, or both. It is argued in this thesis that reconceptualising the individual as living within a 'habitus' may be conducive to understanding some aspects of the archaeological record. In particular, conceiving of the individual - environment relationship as one of non-Cartesian mutualism leads to an appreciation of the paired importance of the mobile individual in a built environment. From this perspective, a case study from Vancouver Island on the Northwest Coast of North America is introduced. The pmedian model in a Location-Allocation analysis is applied to a network formed by transportation linkages between 238 habitation zones, created by clustering 576 archaeological sites. It is shown that centrality of place within a network matters, as the more central places are also larger sites, but this pattern only occurs at a spatial scale difficult to reconcile with deliberate optimising behaviour. It is therefore concluded that this descriptive spatial geometry is irreconcilable with any plausible underlying generative social geometry based on either normative cultural rules or deliberate optimisation. Recognition that the built environment is an interrupted process rather than a planned, finished product, allows one to avoid imposing the 'fallacy of the rule:' in this case ascribing to the inhabitants of the study area a totalised decisionset for site location and intensity of use based on the location-allocation solution sets. Instead, it is argued that the observed spatial patterning in the case study is better seen as the archaeological signature of long-term, wide-scale, practical activity of individuals within a landscape of habit. The result is the discovery of an important threshold in the spatial scale of the culturallyperceived environment. Discussion follows of the implications of this thesis for the interpretation of social complexity, for the predictive modelling of site location, for the establishment of relevant spatial units of analysis, and for such familiar spatial ecological variables as 'population density,' on the Northwest Coast and elsewhere.