Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 75

This paper seeks to re-examine the long-held view that the Celtic language developed somewhere in west central Europe and was carried westwards to the Atlantic zone, eventually reaching Ireland. An overview of the archaeological evidence for Atlantic connectivity illustrates the longue durée of community interactions along the seaways, beginning around 9000 BC, to the second quarter of the 3rd millennium. At this time mobility increased dramatically and it has been shown clearly that the Maritime Bell Beaker package spread eastwards to impact on and interact with the Battle Axe/Corded Ware tradition. Connectivity was at its most intense during the subsequent Atlantic Bronze Age until, from the 8th century BC, what had been a unified zone began to fragment into a series of regional systems. This broad archaeological scenario, with its firm chronological framework, receives more support from recent DNA studies than does the previous view, which drew heavily on ancient and (now) antiquarian views of Celticness and invasion hypotheses. It is posited that the Celtic language could in fact have emerged in the Atlantic zone and spread eastwards.

Mount Sandel has long been an iconic site for the Irish Mesolithic, having produced evidence for a sequence of occupation huts and pits and the earliest radiocarbon dates for the Mesolithic on the island. This paper presents details of a recent programme of redating whereby the application of Bayesian modelling has confirmed the early date for the site but also helped to refine its internal chronology. The major phase of hut building at Mount Sandel took place within a much shorter period of time than had previously been thought, perhaps only a generation or two. The dating of pits of differing sizes suggests that many of them were created during other slightly later visits to the area. The implications of the dating programme for the place of Mount Sandel in the Irish Mesolithic, and for the chronology of the period and its relations with that on the British mainland, are discussed.

This paper presents the results of excavations at an Upper Palaeolithic site that was discovered at Rookery Farm, Great Wilbraham, Cambridgeshire in 2002. Diagnostic lithic material '“ three penknife points '“ indicates that the site was probably occupied between 12,000 and 11,000 BP, a time of deteriorating climatic conditions. Excavations discovered a small task site, located to take advantage of water and a lithic raw material source. The paper discusses Rookery Farm in relation to other sites of this date and patterns of mobility and settlement across north-west Europe.

An open-area excavation conducted in advance of development at Marne Barracks, Catterick, in 2004 identified a relatively rare Late Neolithic 'palisaded' enclosure and other features. Approximately 55% of the enclosure was exposed. It consisted of two concentric sub-circular palisades with diameters up to 175 m and 200 m respectively. Each palisade consisted of a double circuit of posts, with the posts being c. 1 m apart from centre to centre. Many of the posts on the western side of the monument had been sufficiently carbonised for the remains of individual posts to be identifiable. Twenty-one radiocarbon ages were determined and Bayesian modelling has produced a date estimate of 2530'“2310 cal BC for the start of construction of the monument. This date matches well with new dates for the construction of Silbury Hill, the appearance of Beaker pottery in graves, the Amesbury Archer, and the timber circles at Durrington Walls, for example. The Marne Barracks monument exhibits significant differences to other known examples of this type, and is in some respects unique. In particular the 'paired post' arrangement of a double circuit of posts in each palisade is unparalleled in any other known example. The apparent width of the entrances to the Marne enclosure is also at variance with other known sites, though this may in part be an artefact of post-depositional survival. The monument sits in a ritual landscape and, like a few others of its type, is close to water and a hill or large mound from where the activities taking place within the enclosure might have been observed. Do the nearby hill, the entrances, and the arrangement of the uprights all relate to control of physical and visual access into, or out of, the monument? A number of broadly contemporary monuments, all within 5 km of Marne Barracks, contribute to a significant Neolithic ritual focus on the River Swale gravels. The complex of cursus and henge monuments at Thornborough and the henges at Nunwick, Hutton Moor, and Cana Barn all lie less than 25 km to the south, in the Swale-Ure interfluve.