The Undiscovered Country: The Earlier Prehistory of the West Midlands

This is the first volume in a series - The Making of the West Midlands - that explores the archaeology of the English West Midlands region from the Lower Palaeolithic to the Industrial Revolution. These books, based on the West Midlands Research Framework seminars held in 2002-3, aim to transform perceptions of the nature and significance of the archaeological evidence across a large part of central Britain, in an area extending from the plains of eastern England to the Cambrian Mountains and from the Cotswolds to the southern Pennines. The earlier prehistory of the region, in particular, has been neglected at a national level and deserves far wider recognition in research terms. This first volume reveals the scale, richness and diversity of the evidence from all earlier prehistoric periods in the West Midlands, from the Lower Palaeolithic to the Bronze Age, and considers its research significance and potential. The book is copiously illustrated, and includes a large number of colour maps and plans.Table of ContentsPreface 1. Introduction: the undiscovered country (Paul Garwood) 2. Lost but not forgotten: the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic occupation of the West Midlands (Alex Lang and Simon Buteux) 3. The Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic archaeology of the West Midlands (Andy Myers) 4. Priorities in Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age environmental archaeology in the West Midlands (James Greig) 5. The Neolithic in the West Midlands: an overview (Keith Ray) 6. The Blank Country? Neolithic enclousures and landscapes in the West Midlands (Martyn Barber) 7. Later lithics in the West Midlands counties (Laurence Barfield) 8. Pits, pots, places and people: approaching the Neolithic at Wellington Quarry (Robin Jackson) 9. Recent Work on the Neolithic and Bronze Age in Warwickshire (Stuart C. Palmer) 10. Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age funerary monuments and burial traditions in the West Midlands (Paul Garwood) 11. Bronze Age settlement in Shropshire: research potential and frameworks for settlement studies in the West Midlands (John Halsted) 12. Ceremonial landscapes and ritual deposits in the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods in the West Midlands (Ann Woodward) 13. Regions, cultural identity and social change, c.4500-1500 BC: the West Midlands in context (Paul Garwood) Index