Search results for ""Author Alasdair Whittle""

The First Stones brings together the results of recent research on the Neolithic long cairns lying in the shadow of the Black Mountains in south-east Wales, focusing upon Penywyrlod and Gwernvale, the two best known tombs within the group, previously excavated in the 1970s.Important results lie in both new site detail and reassessment of the wider context. Small-scale excavation, geophysical survey and geological assessment at Penywyrlod – the largest of the Welsh long cairns – gave further information about the distinctive external and internal architecture of the monument. In turn, this opened the opportunity to reassess the pre-monument sequence at Gwernvale, with re-examination of both Mesolithic and Neolithic occupations, including a timber structure and midden, lithic and pottery assemblages, and cereal remains. The frame for wider reassessment is given by fresh chronological modelling both of the monuments themselves, suggesting a sequence from Penywyrlod and Pipton to Ty Isaf and Gwernvale, probably spanning the 38th to the 36th or 35th centuries cal BC, and of early Neolithic activity in south Wales and the Marches, probably beginning in the 39th century cal BC. A detailed study of the major assemblages of human remains from the Black Mountains tombs includes evidence for diet, trauma and lifestyles of the populations represented. Recent isotope analysis of human remains from the tombs is also reviewed, implying social mobility and migration within local populations during the early Neolithic.The First Stones makes a significant contribution to the study of tomb building, treatment of the dead, place making, the relationship of monuments to landscape, local and regional identities, connections and affiliations across southern Britain and the adjacent continent, and Neolithisation in western Britain. Viewed within the context of tombs within the Cotswold-Severn tradition as a whole, it leads to an appreciation of the local and regional distinctiveness of architecture and mortuary practice exhibited by the tombs in this area of south-east Wales, emerging as part of the intake of a significant inland area in the early centuries of the Neolithic.

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Living Well Together investigates the development of the Neolithic in southeast and central Europe from 6500-3500 cal BC with special reference to the manifestations of settling down. A collection of reports and comments on recent fieldwork in the region, Living Well Together? provides 14 tightly written and targeted papers presenting interpretive discussions from important excavations and reassessments of our understanding of the Neolithic. Each paper makes a significant contribution to existing knowledge about the period, and the book, like its companion (Un)settling the Neolithic (Oxbow 2005) will be a benchmark text for work in this region. The reports in Living Well Together? play out the critical questions posed in the earlier volume: how should one interpret settlement; what of the difference between tells and flat sites; what do we mean by permanent occupation; can we avoid the assumptions that underlie claims for year-round residence or seasonal occupation; why, in some regions and at some times, did people maintain residence for so many generations that monumental tell settlements grew to dominate the visual and social landscape; what would a viewshed analysis of tells reveal; what are the dynamics of households in Neolithic Greece; how should we see the emergence of pottery in terms of material culture; and what were the origins of the LBK, and how can we understand its development? The volume's authors have succeeded in attacking existing thought, in provoking new discussion and in creating new paths to understanding the nature of human existence in the Neolithic. Together they set a new agenda for studying the Neolithic across and beyond southeastern and central Europe.

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The current paradigm-changing ancient DNA revolution is offering unparalleled insights into central problems within archaeology relating to the movement of populations and individuals, patterns of descent, relationships and aspects of identity – at many scales and of many different kinds. The impact of recent ancient DNA results can be seen particularly clearly in studies of the European Neolithic, the subject of contributions presented in this volume. We now have new evidence for the movement and mixture of people at the start of the Neolithic, as farming spread from the east, and at its end, when the first metals as well as novel styles of pottery and burial practices arrived in the Chalcolithic. In addition, there has been a wealth of new data to inform complex questions of identities and relationships. The terms of archaeological debate for this period have been permanently altered, leaving us with many issues.This volume stems from the online day conference of the Neolithic Studies Group held in November 2021, which aimed to bring geneticists and archaeologists together in the same forum, and to enable critical but constructive inter-disciplinary debate about key themes arising from the application of advanced ancient DNA analysis to the study of the European Neolithic. The resulting papers gathered here are by both geneticists and archaeologists. Individually, they form a series of significant, up-to-date, period and regional syntheses of various manifestations of the Neolithic across the Near East and Europe, including particularly Britain and Ireland. Together, they offer wide-ranging reflections on the progress of ancient DNA studies, and on their future reach and character.

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