The Natural History Museum took over the excavations at Westbury Cave in Somerset in 1976 to try to resolve issues raised by earlier work carried out by Michael Bishop. These included the dating of the sequence of deposits, the presence of evidence for human occupation of the site and the position of the cave evidence within the British Pleistocene sequence. This volume assesses the new evidence produced by excavations between 1976 and 1984: sedimentary sequence, soil micromorphology, faunal assemblages, small mammal fauna, fossil ruminants, larger carnivores, palaeoecological reconstruction, flint finds.

Westbury Cave

History

Stringer, Chris

Cook, Jill

Andrews, Peter

Currant, Andrew

Europe

Western Academic & Specialist Press

The richest Early Upper Palaeolithic site in Britain, Paviland Cave on Wales’ Gower Peninsula, was discovered in 1823 by Reverend William Buckland. He unearthed the remains of a young adult male, covered with red ochre, but the body soon became the subject of debate, not least because of its early mis-identification as the ‘Red Lady’ of Paviland. Ceremonially buried, with ivory ornaments and perforated seashells, the circumstances hint at a ritual or shamanic use of the site. The recent re-excavation of the site, a new study of previously excavated artefacts, and a suite of radiocarbon dates, have enabled reconstruction of the phases and nature of human use of the cave. Set in the context of climatic and environmental change, this has allowed new, intriguing interpretations to be made of Paviland. The dating evidence suggests that the Aurignacian appeared relatively late in Britain, towards 28,000 BP, and that Britain was only infrequently visited by task groups or - more controversially - pilgrims during the climatic downturn from 27,000 BP until the onset of the Last Glacial Maximum.  contributors include:  A Brookes, DQ Bowen, P Bull, D Case, N Debenham, A Eastham, T Holliday, M Ivanovich, R Jones, A Latham, DJ Lowe, R Mourne, PB Pettitt, M Richards, S Swainston, BC Sykes, E Trinkaus, A Turner, EA Walker and T Young.

Paviland Cave and the 'Red Lady'

Aldhouse-Green, Stephen

<p>Sixteen papers taken from a `Human Roots' meeting held in Bristol in 2000 that focused on the question of `how different were humans and human behaviour in Africa and the Far east during the Middle Pleistocene'? The contributors draw on evidence from recent archaeological fieldwork and represent different schools of thought concerning the Out-of-Africa or Multi-Regional origins of man. Among the regions or countries discussed are southern, central and eastern Africa, China, the Yangtze River, Australasia and India.</p>

Human Roots*: Africa and Asia in the Middle Pleistocene

Politics & Social Sciences

Barham, Larry

Robson-Brown, Kate

Archaeology

The 'ghost' of this book is Derek Roe himself. In January 1983 he embarked on his first journey to Tanzania as a ghost writer for an autobiography for Mary Leakey, a name linked for ever in the minds of archaeologists with the famous palaeolithic site of Olduvai Gorge. This diary covers Derek Roe's three trips to visit Mary and also includes correspondence between them both before and after 1983, as well as snippets from their earlier meetings. It is an honest, at times intimate and frank record of the ups and downs of their relationship, of Mary's work in Africa, of the site of Olduvai Gorge and the impact that the discoveries made there have had on the archaeological world. The finished autobiography, drafted by Derek, but much altered before publication, was published in 1984 as Disclosing the Past ; it is now out of print, but this personal account of its creation is a story in its own right.

The Year of the Ghost: An Olduvai Diary

Roe, Derek A.

Africa

A detailed study of prehistoric sequences in south central Africa, largely based around the results of investigations at the sites of Mumbwa and Twin Rivers, excavated in 1993-96 and 1999. An introductory chapter provides the background context to the prehistory of Zambia followed by studies of the Mumbwa Caves and their chronology, faunal, micro-fauna and human remains, ecological and environmental evidence. These sites are seen as representative of the wider region and attest to a long sequence of prehistoric cultural deposits.

The Middle Stone Age of Zambia, South Central Africa

It is fair to say that warrior ideology was rife in Bronze Age Europe but all too often it is discussed in generalised and overly simplistic terms. This detailed study of the imagery and ideology of Bronze Age Spain and Portugal draws on a corpus of more than one hundred stelae. Describing them as `multi-vocal monuments' Richard Harrison examines how they embody ideological codes centred around militarism, masculinity and hierarchy, reflected in the symbolism of the imagery, the geographical location of stelae and their function. In Harrison's opinion the stelae contain a `treasure-trove of well-preserved ideas' of a society seeking to mark physical possession of territory, commemorate their great leaders and warriors and, in some cases, mark their burial. Discussion of examples and particular types of symbolism and imagery from Iberia lead to broader discussions of stelae practices, social evolution and warrior ideology in Bronze Age Europe as a whole.

Symbols and Warriors: Images of the European Bronze Age

Harrison, Richard J.

Between 1903 and 1905 Miss Nina Frances Layard conducted exemplary excavations of an outstanding Palaeolithic site on plateau gravels above Ipswich. Here, Palaeolithic humans gathered around the edges of an erstwhile lake and/or river, leaving behind stone tools and manufacturing waste. Many remarkable pictures emerge from this book: of the excavator, an Edwardian lady of great determination and skill; of the site itself, which might well have been on a par with Boxgrove had it been discovered today; of the piecing together of Miss Layard's lost archive by Steven Plunkett; of the meeting of two enthusiasts and their decision to write this book - and last but by no means least - of the remarkable archaeological evidence. The authors have assembled a jigsaw of magnificent proportions: their detective work has enabled them to return a neglected but truly significant site to its rightful place in the canon of British Palaeolithic archaeology.Table of Contents'Too early for its own archaeological good': Foxhall Road 1902-2002; Nina Frances Layard (1853-1935): a short biography of an archaeologist; An account of the Ipswich palaeolithic discovery of 1902; Palaeolithic archaeology in 1902: Foxhall Road in context; Two winters' work at the Ipswich palaeolithic site: the excavations of 1903-1904 and 1904-1905; The geology of Foxhall Road and the surrounding area; The artefacts from Miss Layard's excavation; Further excavations at the Ipswich palaeolithic site: the investigations and collections of Reginald Smith and James Reid Moir; Summary and discussion: reconstructing the distant past from the recent past; Appendices; Bibliography.

Miss Layard Excavates: the Palaeolithic site at Foxhall Road, Ipswich, 1903-1905

White, Mark

Plunkett, Steven

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