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Proc Prehist Soc 32
Title
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Title:
Proc Prehist Soc 32
Series
The series the publication or report is included in
Series:
The Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society
Volume
Volume number and part
Volume:
32
Publication Type
The type of publication - report, monograph, journal article or chapter from a book
Publication Type:
Journal
Year of Publication
The year the book, article or report was published
Year of Publication:
1966
Note
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Note:
Date Of Issue From: 1966
Source
Where the record has come from or which dataset it was orginally included in.
Source:
BIAB (British Archaeological Abstracts (BAA))
Created Date
The date the record of the pubication was first entered
Created Date:
05 Dec 2008
Please click on an Article link to go to the Article Details.
Article Title
Access Type
Author / Editor
Page
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Abstract
Ritual monuments at Rudston, E Yorkshire, England
David P Dymond
86 - 95
Three cursuses near Rudston Village are described and illustrated. Air photographs and fieldwork show that the ditches of Cursus A, 70-80 yards apart, are traceable somewhat intermittently for over 1000 yards. A ½-mile gap follows where long ploughing has destroyed traces, but across a stream the two parallel ditches reappear. A narrow plantation intersects the ditches further north and thereafter Cursus A is so far untraceable. Its total presumed length is 1½ miles, with the extremities intervisible. Cursus C also crosses the stream and runs into the plantation to meet Cursus A at right angles, but only excavation could reveal their relative dates. Neolithic and EBA material has been found in the barrows close to the S end of Cursus A, and Greenwell, who mistook this earthwork for three contiguous long barrows, turned it over very thoroughly, finding two Beaker burials and several fragmentary inhumations. When the ditch of Cursus A was recognised in 1958 a small cutting yielded fragments of Beaker pottery, some in the primary silt, and a few worked flints. The third cursus noted here, B, has a squared end and ditches 700 yards long. The ditches of B and C are much less regular than those of A. Some circular cropmarks near Cursus B, one with a ring of pits, may be barrows, and there is considerable evidence for an important religious centre here, perhaps comparable with that of Ripon; two miles away is a henge monument, another is suspected near Rudston Beacon, and a monolith in the churchyard was quarried ten miles away. There is a short discussion of the relation of the monuments to the patterns of known Neolithic and Bronze Age settlement in the area, and suggestions for further detailed fieldwork are made.
Excavation of a round barrow on Overton Hill, N Wiltshire
Isobel F Smith
Derek D A Simpson
122 - 155
The excavation of West Overton 6b revealed a complex sequence. Pre-funerary activity was indicated by Neolithic and Beaker sherds on and in the old land surface later to be covered by the mound. The first structural phase was marked by the building of an annular bank of flint and sarsen, covering two child inhumations and enclosing a central Beaker grave containing objects which suggested the interment was that of a leather-worker. Subsequent burials by inhumation and cremation, two in urns, were deposited in this central area, the interval between interments in some cases being of sufficient duration for the positions of earlier graves to have been forgotten. Grave-goods and other evidence, however, indicated that this period of deposition of burials belonged to the first phase of the Wessex Culture. Following the final deposit, the central area was covered by a layer of grey clay and a rough setting of sarsen boulders and subsequently by a primary turf stack and scraped-up mound. The barrow was re-used for the insertion of a number of pagan Saxon inhumations and evidence of more modern disturbance was discovered, particularly in the north-east quadrant. Information on bone and antler spatulae and 'sponge-finger stones' is collated and discussed. Au
The battle-axe series in Britain
Fiona E S Roe
199 - 245
A partly-illustrated corpus of 488 known battle-axes is given and metrical analyses detailed from which a developmental system is deduced. As a preliminary step, 100 examples each of 'axe-hammers' and 'battle-axes' (as distinguished by Ashbee in 1960) were measured and analysed, and the reality of the distinction was confirmed; in general, axe-hammers are large and clumsy, with perforation near the butt, while battle-axes are small and neat, with perforation near the centre. The class 'battle-axe' so determined is then considered in detail, using 320 provenanced complete specimens, and determining three main factors - degree of blade expansion, length of implement and butt shape. Five stages of development in blade expansion are deduced, with Stage I representing battle-axes with convex profiles, Stage II those with slightly expanded ends, and so on to Stage V in which butt and blade ends are fully expanded. The stages have some chronological reference, but running through them are nine groups distinguished by butt-form and developing concurrently. Four of these reflect differences between N and S Britain, the English examples tending to be longer and thinner than the Scottish ones. The regional variants are most clearly seen by Stage IV, and Stage V contains some of the finest examples of craftsmanship in the class. Petrological grouping and asscciations are noted where known, and forty-five battle-axes with usable associations are tabulated to show that Stages I/II belong to a Longnecked Beaker/Food Vessel horizon, while Stages III to V have Food Vessel and Wessex Culture associations. Future work should include the tracing of Continental sources.
The experimental earthwork on Overton Down, Wiltshire, England: the first four years
313 - 342
Surface observations have been made and sections excavated two and four years after construction of the earthwork, and some of the recovered objects have been analysed. The method of excavation is described and the progressive weathering of the ditch sides is detailed. Morphological and textural changes have occurred in the bank. Size analyses of the rubble show its considerable comminution since 1960; in the fine fraction (< 2 mm) the amount of contained organic matter is high. In the textiles and other materials buried during construction, bacterial activity had been strong, especially in the turf core; there was considerable decay and staining in the textiles, but wood and leather samples had deteriorated less. The bone material had suffered high loss of nitrogen, and it remains to be seen how long this rate of loss is maintained. Blood group tests on the bone were only partially successful, but the analytical techniques are being refined. Potsherds had as yet undergone no detectable changes. Lycopodium spores which had been scattered during construction to simulate pollen rain had been moved upwards and downwards. Vegetation colonisation of the bank is slow, for reasons not yet fully understood, and some plants which established themselves early on the ditch bottom were overwhelmed by scree. Several general archaeological implications can be seen, including confirmation that original ditch profiles can be confidently restored from the slope of their lowest portions. The effect of berm width on bank slip and the readily detectable seasonal alternation of layers of ditch-fill are notable. A valuable lesson is drawn from the turves which fell to the centre bottom of the ditch as the lip weathered back; on an ordinary site these could contain pottery dropped long before the ditch was constructed and would threfore mislead on the date of the work. More reliable evidence is however supplied by sherds found near the ditch sides and covered by the earliest silt. Finally, moles and earthworms are arraigned as energetic disturbers of original stratification.