Search results for ""Author Peter Topping""
Oxbow Books Neolithic Stone Extraction in Britain and Europe: An Ethnoarchaeological Perspective
This book focuses on the introduction of Neolithic extraction practices across Europe through to the Atlantic periphery of Britain and Ireland. The key research questions are when and why were these practices adopted and what role did extraction sites play in Neolithic society.Neolithic mines and quarries have frequently been seen as fulfilling roles linked to the expansion of the Neolithic economy. However, this ignores the fact that many communities chose to selectively dig for certain types of stone in preference to others and why the products from these sites were generally deposited in special places such as wetlands. To address this question, 168 near-global ethnographic studies were analysed to identify common trends in traditional extraction practises to produce robust statistics about their motivations and material signatures. Repeated associations emerged between storied locations, the organisation of extraction practices, long-distance distribution of products, and the material evidence such activities left behind. This suggests that we can now probably identify mythologised/storied sites, seasonality, ritualised extraction, and the use-life of extraction site products.The ethnographic model was tested against data from 223 near-global archaeological extraction sites, which confirmed a similar patterning in both material records. It was used to analyse the social context of 79 Neolithic flint mine and 51 axe quarry excavations in Britain and Ireland and to review their European origins. The evidence that emerges confirms the pivotal role played by Neolithic extraction practices in European Neolithisation and that the interaction of indigenous foragers with migrant miners/farmers was fundamental to the adoption of the new agropastoral lifestyle.
£42.21
Oxbow Books Excavations on Wether Hill, Ingram, Northumberland, 1994–2015
The Northumberland Archaeological Group’s (NAG) Wether Hill project spanned the years 1994–2015 and was located on the eponymous hilltop overlooking the mouth of the Breamish Valley in the Northumberland Cheviots. The project had been inspired by the RCHME’s ‘Southeast Cheviots Project’ that had discovered and recorded extensive prehistoric and later landscapes.The NAG project investigated several sites. Over the 11 seasons of excavation, NAG recorded evidence of residual Mesolithic activity (microliths), a burial cairn containing two Beakers in an oak coffin, which was superseded by a stone-built cist containing three Food Vessels, Iron Age cord rig cultivation and clearance cairns, a series of Middle/Late Iron Age timber-built palisaded enclosures, a cross-ridge dyke, which protected the southern approach to the Wether Hill fort, and sampled the multi-period bivallate hillfort.The hillfort sequence on Wether Hill began with a succession of palisaded enclosures, which were later replaced by bivallate earth and stone defenses; both phases appear to have been associated with timber-built houses. Eventually the fort was abandoned, and three stone-built roundhouses were constructed in the fort. The 18 radiocarbon dates obtained from various contexts in the hillfort makes this site one of the better dated forts in the Borders.The chronology of the Wether Hill fort spanned the Middle/Late Iron Age, which corresponds with dates from palisaded enclosures excavated elsewhere on the hilltop spur. Taken together, this evidence provides a snapshot of settlement hierarchies and agricultural practices during the later Iron Age in this part of the Northumberland Cheviots. The excavations also help contextualise some of the RCHME survey evidence, providing data to model chronology, potential prehistoric settlement density and land-use patterns at different time periods in the well-preserved archaeological landscapes of the Cheviots.
£45.00
Liverpool University Press The Neolithic Flint Mines of England
£32.00
Archaeopress From Mine to User: Production and Procurement Systems of Siliceous Rocks in the European Neolithic and Bronze Age: Proceedings of the XVIII UISPP World Congress (4-9 June 2018, Paris, France) Volume 10 Session XXXIII-1&2
From Mine to User: Production and Procurement Systems of Siliceous Rocks in the European Neolithic and Bronze Age presents the papers from Session XXXIII of the 18th UISPP World Congress (Paris, June 2018). 23 authors contribute nine papers from Parts 1 and 2 of the Session. The first session ‘Siliceous rocks: procurement and distribution systems’ was aimed at analysing one of the central research issues related to mining, i.e. the production systems and the diffusion of mining products. The impact of extraction on the environment, group mobility and the numbers involved in the exploitation phase were considered; mining products were also examined with a view to identifying local and imported/exported products and the underlying social organization relating to the different fields of activity. The second session ‘Flint mines and chipping floors from prehistory to the beginning of the nineteenth century’ focused on knapping activities. The significance of the identification of knapping workshops in the immediate vicinity of mine shafts and of their presence in villages as well as in intermediary places between the two was considered in the analysis of chaîne opératoire sequences. The potential of product quality and artefact distribution to contribute to the understanding of the social organisation of the communities being studied was also examined.
£41.67
