Environmental Archaeology Bibliography (EAB)
University of York, 2004. (updated 2008) https://doi.org/10.5284/1000225. How to cite using this DOI
Data copyright © University of York unless otherwise stated
This work is licensed under the ADS Terms of Use and Access.
Primary contact
University of York
King's Manor
Exhibition Square
York
YO1 7EP
England
Tel: 01904 323954
Fax: 01904 323939
Resource identifiers
- ADS Collection: 385
- DOI:https://doi.org/10.5284/1000225
- How to cite using this DOI
Introduction
The Environmental Archaeology Bibliography (EAB) is a compilation of bibliographic references to reports on environmental archaeology from the whole of the British Isles (including the Channel Islands). It is primarily concerned with reports attached to or included within archaeological excavation reports and dealing with macroscopic and microscopic remains of plants, fungi and animals of all kinds (and including biomolecules and organic residues), or with sediments, or with artefacts of biological origin. It also includes reports on dating by dendrochronology. As well as the bibliographic information, the EAB includes fields which record the kind of report, the date of the material studied, and a crude indication of the size of the report.
The Environmental Archaeology Bibliography records - available here as a searchable database through a web interface - comprise information on over 11,000 separately distinguished 'sites'* with nearly 21,000 individual specialist reports. Click on Query to begin your search.
Note on this version: These EAB records represent the first major update since the original web launch in 2005. With regard to the published literature, some 3000 reports for nearly 1500 sites have been added, many of them related to analyses of natural deposits of interglacial and Late-glacial/Holocene date, but also with the addition of many reports on organic artefacts which were not included in entries for sites in the 2005 edition. In addition, a large volume of so-called 'grey literature' reports has been included - more than 6500 reports relating to over 4800 sites - of which only English Heritage's Ancient Monuments Lab., Centre for Archaeology and Research Department Reports were previously included. Coverage here is patchy; only those reports brought to the compiler's attention by workers in the developer-funded sector have been included, and then only when sufficient information was available about the nature of the material studied, its dating, and the location of the excavation. (More than 1000 further sites are present in the 'master' copy of the EAB but lack sufficient information concerning dating, location or publication details to permit inclusion in this release.)
Naturally, many of the entries in the previous version have been checked and errors amended where found. There remain certain pieces of missing information, however - typically references to page numbers, marked in the entries by asterisks.
* The definition of 'site' for the purpose of the EAB varies as much as it does in any conventional archaeological sense. Generally speaking, where an excavation report considers material from separately named but closely associated areas these are usually only included as separate sites where they have distinct area names, e.g. Platts Bottom Farm, Windy Hill... but NOT Bloggs Field Site A, Site B,Site C. These distinctions are, of course, somewhat arbitrary. Note that there may be a multitude of reports of various kinds relating to one 'site' - an evaluation or assessment document (or perhaps several relating to different aspects of the environmental archaeology), then a published account with multiple reports embedded within one excavation narrative, and later a synthetic work in which the site's data are revisited. It has not always been either possible or convenient to accommodate changes of site name, although in general site names which reflect location have been preferred to those which relate to ownership or popular usage (thus, for example, '24-30 Tanner Row' is used in preference to 'General Accident').
