While Celtic art includes some of the most famous archaeological artefacts in the British Isles, such as the Battersea shield or the gold torcs from Snettisham, it has often been considered from an art historical point of view. Technologies of Enchantment? Exploring Celtic Art attempts to connect Celtic art to its archaeological context, looking at how it was made, used, and deposited. Based on the first comprehensive database of Celtic art, it brings together current theories concerning the links between people and artefacts found in many areas of the social sciences. The authors argue that Celtic art was deliberately complex and ambiguous so that it could be used to negotiate social position and relations in an inherently unstable Iron Age world, especially in developing new forms of identity with the coming of the Romans. Placing the decorated metalwork of the later Iron Age in a long-term perspective of metal objects from the Bronze Age onwards, the volume pays special attention to the nature of deposition and focuses on settlements, hoards, and burials -- including Celtic art objects' links with other artefact classes, such as iron objects and coins. A unique feature of the book is that it pursues trends beyond the Roman invasion, highlighting stylistic continuities and differences in the nature and use of fine metalwork.

Technologies of Enchantment?: Exploring Celtic Art: 400 BC to AD 100

Arts & Photography

Garrow, Duncan

Gosden, Chris

History & Criticism

Oxford University Press

Stonehenge is one of the best known, but most misunderstood, monuments in the world. Contrary to common belief, it was not a static, unchanging structure built by shadowy figures or druids. Rather it represents the cumulative achievement of numerous generations who were woven into a complex and widespread network of cultural interactions, environmental change, and belief systems. This publication, which accompanies the first exhibition about Stonehenge ever staged in London, uses the monument as a gateway to explore the communities and civilizations active at the time of its construction and beyond, between 4,000 and 1,000 BCE.\nRecent archaeological findings regarding the origin of Stonehenge’s striking ‘bluestones’ have re-ignited interest in this ancient wonder, the people who built it, and the beliefs they held. Through the ‘iconic’ structure, spectacular objects of precious and exotic material and more humble, personal objects, authors Duncan Garrow and Neil Wilkin examine the dramatic cultural and societal shifts that characterized the world of Stonehenge, including the introduction of farming and development of metalworking.\nCovering a period of thousands of years, the publication traces the appearance of the first monuments in the landscape of Britain around 4,000 BCE, the arrival of the bluestones from the Preseli Hills in Pembrokeshire 1,000 years later, all the way up to a remarkable era of cross-Channel connectivity and trade between 1,500 and 800 BCE.\nThrough a new study of the enigmatic and beautiful objects made and circulated during the age of Stonehenge, connections are charted in the shared religious practices and beliefs of communities from across Britain, Ireland, and continental Europe. The presence of other stone and wooden circles hundreds of miles from Salisbury Plain – including Seahenge, discovered on a beach in Norfolk in 1998 – is further evidence of these shared ways of thinking.\nAt a critical moment in the narrative of Stonehenge, around 2,500 BCE, the significance of the cosmos and the heavens expressed through the construction of stone circles and megalithic passage tombs began to wane and portable objects gained increasing importance. This key transformation is demonstrated by a highlight object from Germany: the Nebra Sky Disc, a bronze disc inlaid with gold symbols believed to represent the Sun, a crescent moon and the Pleiades constellation. More modest items found in tombs, burials and settlements are no less important in shedding light on the development of ideas relating to identity, religious practices, and relationships between the living and dead.\nMonuments such as Stonehenge cannot be understood in isolation. Stonehenge was not always a static, monolithic structure: over generations it was adapted and added to by communities that changed and developed the landscape on which it still stands today.\nTable of Contents\nIntroduction – introduces the connections between people and nature, people and the heavens above, and between different peoples. Explores the relevance of Stonehenge and other stone circles to the wider world at the time.\n1. Working with Nature – before Stonehenge; the first farmers; grave goods and belief 
2. Sermons in Stone – major developments at Stonehenge and the surrounding landscape c. 3,000–2,500 BCE; other sites in Britain and Ireland; artistic expression 
3. Under One Sky – the relationship of Stonehenge to the sun; the sun, moon and the cosmos 
4. New Horizons: People and Pilgrims – modifications at and the significance of Stonehenge c. 2,500–2,000 BCE; new burial traditions; 
5. Facing the Ocean: Cosmological Travellers – transformation around and across the Stonehenge landscape; cross-Channel connections; metalwork and its links to the natural world; economic and social change at the end of the early metal age.\nConclusion – highlights the need to consider ‘iconic’ monuments and objects within a broader context to counter the narrative

The World of Stonehenge

History

Wilkin, Neil

Ancient Civilizations

BRITISH MUSEUM

Excavations by the Cambridge Archaeological Unit near Kilverstone revealed an occupation sequence spanning the Neolithic to the post-medieval periods. Extensive Early Neolithic activity was evidenced by 236 clustered pits containing quantities of pottery, worked and burnt flint, charred hazelnuts and seeds and other material. The site is of national importance, with the number of pits discovered placing it alongside the type-sites of Hurst Fen and Broome Heath. A smaller number of Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age pits, along with six cremations and a Middle Iron Age structure, attests to intermittent further activity. In the mid 1st century BC a settlement was established which was occupied until the 4th century AD. Initially, the later Iron Age/Roman settlement is evidenced by boundary and enclosure ditches, and a number of pits, but the area then saw construction of a series of square and rectangular structures. In the later 2nd century AD, activity appears to have been focused around a large aisled building. In the 3rd and 4th centuries, these buildings were replaced by three circular buildings, one of which is tentatively interpreted as a metallurgical workshop (with a double-acting force pump associated). Outside was a series of pits containing a blacksmiths hoard: a stack of pewter plates and a selection of metalworking and agricultural tools. Activity at the site was again intermittent until perhaps the 6th century, when a small Anglo-Saxon settlement, consisting of at least ten buildings associated with sunken features and four post-built halls, was established. This was probably associated with a small number of burials to the south, four of which were furnished with weapons (though, unusually, none with jewellery), and there was a further urned cremation. No subsequent activity was recorded at the site except for medieval and later field ditches and a Suffolk-type brick kiln probably associated with the nearby village of Kilverstone.

Excavations at Kilverstone, Norfolk: An Episodic Landscape History (East Anglian Archaeology, 113)

Politics & Social Sciences

Gibson, David

Lucy, Sam

Archaeology

East Anglian Archaeology

The 'western seaways' are an arc of sea extending from the Channel Islands in the south, through the Isles of Scilly around to Orkney in the north. This maritime zone has long been seen as a crucial corridor of interaction during later prehistory. Connections across it potentially led, for example, to the eventual arrival of the Neolithic in Britain, almost 1000 years after it arrived on the near continent. This book's primary focus is Early Neolithic settlement on islands within the 'western seaways' - sites that offer significant insight into the character of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in this particular maritime zone. It also explores a series of directly related, wider themes: the nature and effects of 'island-ness' in later prehistory; the visibility of material connections across the sea; the extent of Neolithic settlement variability across Britain; and the consequences of geographical biases in research for our understanding of the prehistoric past. At the heart of the book lie the results of three substantial excavations at L'Erée, Guernsey; Old Quay, St Martin's (Isles of Scilly); and An Doirlinn, South Uist. Key findings include: the first major Mesolithic flint assemblage recovered from Scilly; one of the most extensively excavated and long-lasting Neolithic/Bronze Age occupation sites in the Channel Islands; the first substantial Neolithic settlement on Scilly; and the longest sequence of Neolithic/Early Bronze Age occupation on a single site from the Outer Hebrides. In order to contextualise the significance of these findings, we also present an extended discussion and broad synthesis of Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age archaeology on each island group.

Neolithic Stepping Stones: Excavation and Survey Within the Western Seaways of Britain, 2008-2014

Sturt, Fraser

Europe

Oxbow Books

Britain is internationally renowned for the high quality and exquisite crafting of its later prehistoric grave goods (c. 4000 BC to AD 43). Many of prehistoric Britain's most impressive artefacts have come from graves. Interred with both inhumations and cremations, they provide some of the most durable and well-preserved insights into personal identity and the prehistoric life-course, yet they also speak of the care shown to the dead by the living, and of people's relationships with 'things'. Objects matter. This book's title is an intentional play on words. These are objects in burials; but they are also goods, material culture, that must be taken seriously. Within it, we outline the results of the first long-term, large-scale investigation into grave goods during this period, which enables a new level of understanding of mortuary practice and material culture throughout this major period of technological innovation and social transformation. Analysis is structured at a series of different scales, ranging from macro-scale patterning across Britain, to regional explorations of continuity and change, to site-specific histories of practice, to micro-scale analysis of specific graves and the individual objects (and people) within them. We bring these different scales of analysis together in the first ever book focusing specifically on objects and death in later prehistoric Britain. Focusing on six key case study regions, the book innovatively synthesises antiquarian reports, research projects and developer funded excavations. At the same time, it also engages with, and develops, a number of recent theoretical trends within archaeology, including personhood, object biography and materiality, ensuring that it will be of relevance right across the discipline. Its subject matter will also resonate with those working in anthropology, sociology, museology and other areas where death, burial and the role of material culture in people's lives are key contemporary issues.

Grave Goods: Objects and Death in Later Prehistoric Britain

Giles, Melanie

Cooper, Anwen

Gibson, Catriona

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