No description available.

This thesis reflects on the value of the study of field-names in understanding the historic landscape of Somerset. The post-medieval field-names recorded in the nineteenth century Tithe surveys of Somerset represent a comprehensive resource which offers evidence of how the people of a parish experienced and managed their working environment. This investigation considers field-names in their landscape, drawing on sources which offer indications of how the community understood and appreciated local conditions. The study will begin with sources post-1600, although earlier material will be included where appropriate. Wider sources such as records of archaeological investigations and aerial photography will allow additional insights into the nuanced naming of fields, boundaries and routeways and the changes which occurred over time. The focus of the study is particularly on the relationship between field-names and locality and how naming practices differed across contrasting parish settings. A key finding in this investigation was that field-names communicated a broad range of detailed information about the environment of the parish and the wider working countryside. A significant conclusion was that although parishes across the contrasting landscapes of the study area were seen to share many field-name elements, they used them in different ways and added locally distinctive elements more meaningful in their familiar environment. A significant indication was that field-names could illustrate change, for example through the naming of new field boundaries, access rights, routeways, landuse and crops. Field-names reflected the lives of the people of a parish and how they managed their land, processed materials and developed crafts for their complex lives.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 123-126).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, December 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

This research examines the archaeological sequence from the first millennium BC in the central Welsh Marches. It situates the hillforts of this region within their broader landscape context by considering the practices involved in their construction, and their position within wider networks of routine activity. In order to achieve this, a detailed historiographical account of archaeological work on these monuments is presented. This forms the basis of a series of critically informed interpretations of the later prehistory of this region. My central thesis is that we must consider the landscape as Process if we wish to interpret the nested social relations that operated in this period. This demands that we develop a detailed understanding of the regional context of the practices associated with building and inhabiting the hillforts. As such, we need to explore the patterning and temporality of various forms of activity across the landscape, in order to comprehend how both places and objects were bound up in the reproduction of historically contingent social relations. I will work at different scales with a variety of forms of evidence. I examine the complex human palaeoecology of the region, considering how the structure of the landscape was created and sustained by the building and reworking of these monuments. In doing so, I place the developments we associate with the building of the first hillforts within their historical context. I also address the relationship between the hillforts and other classes of monuments, and how their inhabitation articulated with the creation, use and deposition of various forms of material culture. By moving beyond previous interpretative models, I demonstrate how these monuments became an integral part of the social worlds of the first millennium BC.

This thesis explores a conceptual methodology for studying archaeological sites in fluvial settings. The methodology stems from geoarchaeology, an approach to the past that focuses upon the geomorphic context of artifacts or the application of geological principles and techniques to the solution of archaeological problems. The paper will examine its application to fluvial systems in two different geomorphic environments, the Oklawaha River in Florida and the Earn River Valley in Scotland. In these different environmental settings, the geoarchaeological approach makes use of different kinds of evidence available to it. Survey in submerged and eroding river margins offers additional information on site distribution and density within the landscape that can go unnoticed by traditional terrestrial surveys. Through conceptualization and application of the methodology that has developed from these studies, the arbitrary land/water interface can effectively be erased from research areas and rivers can begin to be viewed not as permanent and non-moving barriers, but as significant and dynamic components of the archaeological landscape.

No

No description available.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Glasgow, 2004. / Ph.D thesis submitted to the Department of Archaeology, University of Glasgow, 2004. Includes bibliographical references. Print version also available.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Aberdeen University, 2009. / Title from web page (viewed on Jan. 18, 2010). Includes bibliographical references.