United Kingdom of Great Britain and Nort (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
1,301-1,325 (1,331 Records)
White bones in black caves: cave burials and social memory Caves have always been part of contemporary, living landscapes: as such, they have acted not only as natural, cultural, social, economic and ritual places, but also as political locales. One of the most recent, and contested, examples of this phenomenon in Slovenia is the use of karstic shafts as sites of post-war executions between May 1945 and January 1946, in the aftermath of the Second World War. Such sites of mass executions are...
Who Holds Your Light? Revealing relationships through a forensic approach to Upper Paleolithic cave art (2017)
The study of finger flutings, lines drawn with fingers in the soft surfaces of cave walls and ceilings, allows for the identification of unique individuals within a cave’s context. In early years of research we were able to identify men, women, and children in some of the 15 caves which have been studied. These led to discoveries as to which individuals which were often found together in their movement through the caves. The intimacy of cave spaces with artists working side by side, sometimes in...
Why Build When There Are Caves? Investigating the Construction and Use of a Stone Structure in Pleistocene France (2019)
This is an abstract from the "More Than Shelter from the Storm: Hunter-Gatherer Houses and the Built Environment" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Late Pleistocene in Western Europe is the origin of the idea of the "caveman," and the majority of research has historically focused on cave sites. In regions of Europe where caves are not present but archaeological evidence is, the assumption is that people used lightweight ephemeral shelters such as...
Widening social participation in conservation and display of archaeology at the Museum of London (2013)
Since the 1980s, the MoL conservators have carried out innovative projects to engage new audiences and involve the public in conservation activities. Large structures have been conserved in the galleries, with students providing interpretation. Volunteer programmes have also been used to engage diverse audiences, offering the opportunity to handle archaeological material, take part in museum work and gain transferable skills. For the Galleries of Modern London, adults from an employment-support...
Will your childhood years kill you earlier? A study exploring the relationship between height, stress and age at death. (2017)
Could shorter legs mean premature death? Stature is a highly complex trait which seems to be influenced by many different factors. To name a few; genetics, social status, through to environment, diet or health issues. However, it has been observed for some time that taller people live longer. For the purpose of current research, data from 10 multi-period sites were collected. The main focus of project is to explore the correlations between height and age-at-death. Additional to this, as it is...
William’s Patent "Cleaner" Ammunition: Enigmatic Bullets from the American Civil War (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "The Archaeology of Arms: New Analytical Approaches", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Williams Patent bullets (types I, II, and III) are the second-most common bullet type found on American Civil War military sites. Between December 1861 and January 1864, when the Army cancelled manufacturing contracts, an estimated 102,500,000 Williams Patent Bullets had been purchased by the United States Army. Despite their...
Winds of Change – Funerary practices at the dawn of Late Bronze Age in Southeast Hungary (2017)
The transition from Middle to Late Bronze Age in the Carpathian Basin encompassed a broad range of changes in material culture, settlement, and societal organization. This transition is traditionally seen as a short, war-ridden horizon reflecting the arrival of the Tumulus culture population. Recent research, however, emphasizes the complexity of these transformations, and suggests a longer, less abrupt transition, in which existing Middle Bronze Age populations play a significant role in the...
Witches and Aliens: How an Archaeologist Inspired Two New Religious Movements (2017)
Egyptologist and Folklorist Margaret Murray was a major figure in the creation of professional archaeology in the United Kingdom, President of the Folklore Society, and advocate for women’s rights in higher education. However, another major part of her legacy was the mainstream acceptance of the concept of the "witch-cult," a hidden ancient religion dating back to the Pleistocene but continuing until at least the seventeenth century when it was persecuted by witch-hunters. Historians have...
With a Little Help from my Friends: New Radiocarbon Dates from the Great Hungarian Plain (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The expanded availability and use of radiocarbon dating by archaeologists has significantly reshaped the understanding of longstanding prehistoric narratives. These advances have also challenged the cultural-historic notion of archaeological cultures that have dominated research for over a century. In this paper, we examine recently collected radiocarbon...
Wizards, Dragons and Giants: Creating Motte Castles in an English Landscape (2017)
Medieval motte castles are large flat-topped earth and stone mounds, often coupled with an enclosure or bailey, and represent a characteristic component of the British landscape. Mottes often dominate their immediate surroundings, with many remaining visually impressive monuments to this day. Although their creation often involved substantial landscape change, it is becoming increasingly clear that continuity could also be maintained. Many mottes were placed at points in the landscape with...
Women in small-scale societies: how demographic archaeology can contribute to gender archaeology (2017)
Demography has re-emerged as a growing research area within archaeology. Recent studies have refined archaeological demographic methods and developed models which cite demographic change as a key variable in explaining social and artefactual change. However, one aspect which has not been explicitly acknowledged is how archaeological demography is intrinsically concerned with women. In this paper I explain the importance of women to the demographic regimes of small-scale societies and discuss...
The Wood Age? The significance of wood usage in Pre-lron Age North-Western Europe (1982)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the EXARC Bibliography, originally compiled by Roeland Paardekooper, and updated. Most of these records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us using the...
Woodhenges in Northwest Europe (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Monumental Surveys: New Insights from Landscape-Scale Geophysics" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Circles, variously of wood and stone, are a major feature of the ceremonial centres dating to the third and early second millennia BC in northwest Europe. Some, such as Stonehenge, are very well known and complicated in their design and layout. Many others are more modest in scale and form. Geophysical surveys and...
Words for domestic animals used as metaphors in coastal naming (2017)
Place-names are important sources to understand and reimagine past conceptions of the landscape. Toponyms map animal lives on to the landscape. In some cases, however, words for animals – wild as well as domestic – are used as metaphors. In some names denoting sunken rocks along the Norwegian coast, e.g. Sugga (’sow’), Oksa (‘bull’), Hesten (’horse’), Porthunden (‘watchdog’), the words either refer to the shape or sound of the locations, or to some special circumstances, e.g. dangerous rocks in...
The work space of the British planter class, 1770 – 1830 (2013)
Focusing on Jamaica, the largest and most prosperous eighteenth-century British sugar colony, this paper will analyse the work space of wealthy Caribbean planters within a wider British-Atlantic context. The letters and probate inventory of Simon Taylor (1738-1813), one of the wealthiest sugar planters of his generation, will provide the main basis for the paper, which will analyse two aspects of the world of the planters and their perceptions of it. First, it will examine where plantation...
The Working Agroscape of the Iron Age - Landscape History (1980)
This paper represents an assay into the vexed area of prehistoric and in particular Iron Age agriculture. This is offered rather more as a polemic than a statement and is designed to provoke argument rather than agreement. The majority of the experimental data from which the arguments are raised is drawn from the current research programs at the Butser Ancient Farm Research Project, Hampshire.
Working on the Margins of the Modern World and Within Archaeology: The Historical Archaeology of Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentith-Century Ireland (2017)
In Ireland, historical, post-medieval, or modern world archaeology as a discipline is located on the margins. The time period and material comprising our research is argued by many to be relevant only to the pursuits of historians and folk studies. In this paper I discuss the importance and relevance of a discipline on the margins and the study of Ireland’s impoverished class during the last decades of the 19th and early 20th centuries. This marks one of the most dynamic periods in Ireland’s...
Working with indigenous (descendant) communities and the study of Roman Britain (2013)
This paper explores the meaning of the Roman past to people in Britain. The imperial context of Roman studies has been interrogated for almost two decades and alternative, more-critically-based, accounts of the impact of Roman upon Britain have been produced. The popular media, however, often portrays the Roman intervention in Britain as having granted material progress to barbarian Britons through the gift of Roman civilization. These arguments tend to divide specialists from the broader...
Working-class culture in the urban landscape of twentieth-century Sheffield (2018)
This paper will examine the legacy of early twentieth-century working-class cultural practice encoded within the archaeology of the post-industrial landscape of Sheffield, in the United Kingdom. Sheffield was a booming industrial city, specialising in the metal trades, which underwent a considerable building boom towards the end of the nineteenth century. The north-city suburb of Firth Park saw the rapid expansion of domestic housing stock and the opening of Sheffield’s first public park in this...
World Heritage and Industrial Archaeology on Minions Moor: Cars, Cattle and Commoners (2013)
Tin and copper mining on Minions Moor (Cornwall, England) was a relatively brief interlude in the traditional economy of the moor, which is largely based around grazing. In 1836 rich reserves of copper were discovered here, leading to mass immigration and the development of moorland settlements. The ensuing mining boom turned to bust after only 40 years. As the industrial wasteland began to green-over grazing practices were gradually reintroduced. The moor today is commonly seen as a ‘natural’...
World prehistories and the development of a global archaeological narrative (2017)
The origins of prehistoric archaeology as a discipline lie in the New Learning of the 16th and 17th centuries and derive from a number of sources: antiquarian researches in northwest Europe; European exploration and the encounter with non-European peoples; and speculative accounts of human origins and development. It was only in the 19th century that these strands first began to be woven together to create a global narrative of human prehistory. Such a narrative raises a number of problematic...
Worn Down: Dental Attrition and Dietary Differences at an Early Medieval Settlement in Central Europe (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Medieval diets may have differed in preparation rather than composition, with certain classes, genders, or age groups eating more abrasive and/or more cariogenic preparations of the same foods (Beranová 2007; Esclassan et al. 2015). This study is a bioarchaeological examination of dental attrition at the 9-11th century site complex of Libice nad Cidlinou in...
Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow (1980)
First Bohunt Lecture, given at Bohunt School 23rd April, 1980.
Your Horse Is a Donkey! Identifying Domesticated Equids Using ZooMS (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Horses (Equus caballus) and donkeys (Equus asinus) play essential roles in human culture and economy. Unlike most other domesticates, horses and donkeys can produce hybrids. Mules, offspring of female horses and male donkeys, have been found in archaeological contexts across the Old World. Written sources describe the choice of horse, donkey, or mule as...
Zooarchaeological Analysis of a Late Pleistocene Cave Site in Northwestern Italy, Arma Veirana (2018)
Italy serves as a critically important region for better understanding the late Pleistocene as it was home to Neandertals and other hominins. Archaeological excavation in northwestern Italy at the cave site of Arma Veirana, with layers dating back to 44 ka, intends to provide insight into this ambiguous period in prehistory. Preliminary data from zooarchaeological analysis of 1,414 specimens indicate that Neandertals primarily hunted medium-sized bovid/cervids, including Capra ibex, Cervus...