Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 64

The significance of morphological variation in Acheulean bifaces has been a central issue in Palaeolithic research for well over a century. For much of that period interpretation has been dominated by culture-historical models and it is only in the past twenty years that other explanatory factors have received adequate attention. This paper examines the combined role of several of these factors -- namely raw materials, reduction intensity, and function -- on biface variability in the British Isles, with special reference to the two major shaped-based `tradition' devised by Roe (1967; 1968). First-hand examination of bifaces from nineteen assemblages suggests that final biface shape depends largely on the dimensions of the original raw materials and the techno-functional strategies designed to deal with them. Through these observations a new model is generated and tested. This suggests that the patterning in the British Acheulean simply reflects the nature of the resources available at a site and the hominid procurement and technological strategies used to exploit them. According to this model, well-worked ovates with all-round edges were preferentially produced wherever raw materials were large and robust enough to frequently support intensive reduction procedures, usually when obtained from primary flint sources. Assemblages characterised by partially-edged, moderately-reduced pointed forms were only manufactured when smaller, narrower blanks, that imposed restrictions on human technological actions regarding the location and extent of working, were exploited. such blanks were usually obtained from a secondary flint source, such as river gravel. Thus, Roe's pointed and ovate `traditions' are seen not as the products of different biface making populations, but as the same broad populations coping with the exigencies of a heterogeneous environment, using different resources in an adaptive, flexible manner

Archaeologists tend to refer to the land that once existed between Britain and the continent as a landbridge. It was, however, a landscape as habitable as neighbouring regions, and here called Doggerland to emphasise its availability for settlement by prehistoric peoples. Evidence from the Geological Surveys undertaken by countries bordering the North Sea Basin, together with allied research, is drawn together to provide an overview of the possibilities. A range of interacting geological processes implies that the present-day relief of the North Sea bed does not provide a sound guide to the relief of the former landscape, nor to the chronology and character of its submergence. A series of maps accompanies the text to provide a speculative reconstruction of the topography, river systems, coastline, vegetation, fauna, and human occupation of Doggerland from the Devensian/Wiechselian maximum to the beginnings of the Neolithic.

First investigated in 1869, the transepted long cairn of Parc le Breos Cwm was re-excavated in 1960--61 but without a report being published. This account presents a number of radiocarbon dates and a detailed re-examination of the human bone assemblages, and attempts to put the monument in local and regional context. Radiocarbon dates place the long cairn in the later part of the earlier Neolithic, and support a fairly long span of time over which its mortuary deposits were accumulated; they also show secondary re-use of the passage, and perhaps also the deliberate incorporation of very old animal bone from nearby caves. The analysis of the human bone assemblages indicates prior exposure of the remains found in the chambers, in contrast to those in the passage. Variation in musculoskeletal stress markers may indicate a mobile lifestyle for at least some of the male mortuary population. Other lifestyle indicators are noted, and isotopic evidence is presented for a terrestrial and mainly meat-oriented diet in the sampled group. The isolated context and hidden setting of the Parc le Breos Cwm long cairn and the apparently low density of south Welsh monuments are stressed.

Framed within an interpretive, humanistic `archaeology of inhabitance', the study explores the means by which a social, intellectual order particular to time and place is embedded within the material universe. Through the mediation of the human body, natural and architectural space is considered to be a medium for the production and reproduction of social relations. The specific materiality of places inhabited in the past is explored in detail, focusing on possibilities for and constraints upon the body and the senses.\r\n The phenomenon of monumentality at the Loughcrew passage tomb cemetery in east-central Ireland is considered in the context of changing narratives of place and biographies of person and landscape. In contrast to many previous studies, the focus is upon engagement with the exterior spaces of the complex: the more frequent and larger-scale involvement of the communal body in these `public' spaces will have played a critical role in the validation of knowledges and claims to authority which a more restricted group will have articulated within the confines of tomb chambers and passages. \r\n The earlier tombs draw out qualities latent within the landscape, placing particular emphasis on prior, natural boundaries. Through time, the regionalisation of the Loughcrew hills acquires increasing architectural definition, by means of which a series of interconnecting spaces emerge at a much more human scale. The latest architectural and spatial developments may well form part of material strategies through which were engendered particular structures of authority carrying the potential for substantially heightened individual prominence within increasingly exclusive kinship solidarities. Ultimately, mediation between the physical and metaphysical elements of existence may be controlled with reference to distinct lines of descent rather than to a more generalised ancestral community. At the same time, the range of hills is gradually transformed from a meaningful locus which conceals within it the human efforts of monumental construction, to a landscape that derives its significance from massive summit cairns visible from considerable distances. This appropriative transformation may be seen as a material strategy which moves communities' conceptions of existence from an integrated, cultural whole in which people and landscape are embedded in each other, towards a vision of individuals and places as increasingly separate and self-contained.

Fieldwork east of Oakham, Rutland has located evidence of prehistoric settlement, land use patterns, and ceremonial monuments. Part of this included the excavation of a cropmark site which has revealed an unusual sequence of Neolithic/Early Bronze Age pit circles and a burial area. This is complemented by a fieldwalking survey of the surrounding areas, allowing consideration of the relationship of juxtaposed flint scatters and the excavated ceremonial area.

This paper describes the find, in 1994, of an isolated Late Iron Age burial near the oppidum of Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester). The burial consisted of the cremated remains of an adult of about 30 years together with a child of under 5 years, buried in a pottery jar of a type familiar from Calleva. The jar also contained cremated pig bone. The burial was accompanied by fragments of at least two fibulae and a very finely decorated bronze mirror, for which no close parallels are known. The burial dates to the first century BC, possibly before 50 BC.