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The following paper reiterates the importance of studying past visibility patterns within the context of landscape archaeology. In spite of the many difficulties and criticisms revolving around this topic, efforts aimed at reconstructing these patterns and exploring their possible roles are considered to be central to the reconstruction of social landscapes. This paper extends previous GIS work done on inter-visibility by making reference to the concept of "co-visibility," by exploring the way in which visibility of any monument or set of monuments is shared with that of other monuments. A subset of round barrows from the Yorkshire Wolds (northern England) is used to illustrate this work. The study also underlines the need to address the variability which is often present in archaeological data, variability, in this case, of visibility patterns associated with the barrows due to our lack of precise chronological information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past decade has seen many calls for the development of unified ‘world historical archaeologies’ of the past 500 years. While the field benefits from growing international exchanges and collaborations, retaining the diversity of regional traditions is a major and emerging challenge. As the field increasingly tests the temporal, geographical and interdisciplinary limits of archaeological perspectives, engaging with the diversity of modern material, these complexities remain little discussed, and the situations and contingencies of disciplinary narratives, priorities and interactions remain unproblematized. Exploring these matters, this paper considers transatlantic interactions between British and North American traditions of historical archaeology over the past two decades, journeying between two garden landscapes – in Annapolis and Bristol. After considering Mark Leone's 1984 study of the William Paca garden in Annapolis, Maryland, and its subsequent reinterpretations, the paper discusses an eighteenth-century ‘eclectic’ garden at Goldney in Bristol. The paper argues that situational and ‘symmetrical’, rather than interpretative, approaches to archaeological material would aid the development of multi-vocal and inclusive ‘world historical archaeologies’, acknowledging and celebrating the archaeological complexities that are encountered in the past and the disciplinary present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a well-known twentieth-century monument to examine contradictions in the material record and how they might be accommodated in protection and interpretative schemes at this and similar sites where contested space is represented. The archaeology of the later twentieth century at, and immediately outside, Greenham Common Airbase (Berkshire, England) is described as unconventional and atypical in its associations, mysterious and disquieting in its later Cold War context, as well as outlandish and unorthodox in what it can hope to achieve in terms of public perception and interpretation. Protest is the stuff of everyday life, yet it is rarely and barely recognised in heritage interpretation, particularly where opposition was directly aimed at the establishment view or government policy. This paper explores these related issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The World Archaeology volume 'The Cultural Biography of Objects' (Marshall and Gosden 1999) retains its currency ten years after its publication and the ideas highlighted in it continue to be developed. However, the relative success of biographical studies which rely on anthropological or historical information compared with biographical studies of prehistoric objects is evident. Through the example of a British Iron Age mirror this paper explores ways of redressing the difficulties of applying a biographical approach to prehistoric objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The wetlands of medieval Britain represented a valuable regional resource, and contributed to the success of some of the wealthiest monasteries in Britain. Drainage systems and transport mechanisms created an interdependent regional economic environment that needed administrative elites to manage and maintain its resources and ensure the continued survival of urban communities. This paper will compare recent excavations at Swavesey and Burwell and demonstrate that, while the letter of Wittfogel's classification of a 'hydraulic society' is not applicable to medieval England, aspects of it can be used to understand regional communities and wetland environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has a central place in the identification and definition of World Heritage Sites, and increasingly in their ongoing management and conservation. Using the example of Stonehenge in central southern England, attention is drawn to the formulation of a research framework as a means of providing a transparent and structured approach to the planning and execution of high quality research. Ultimately, however, research has to be useful and socially relevant in terms of the outputs produced. In the second part of the paper some of the wider issues of knowledge creation are explored and a scheme proposed for the conceptualization of archaeological knowledge or scientia as four overlapping fields: narrative knowledge, strategic knowledge, indigenous knowledge and contemplative knowledge. It is suggested that World Heritage Sites should not only be exemplary situations for the pursuit of research but also be closely identified with the creation and maintenance of different kinds of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Avebury is one of the largest Neolithic monuments in the British Isles. Enormous earthworks define a vast enclosure on the Wessex chalkland, and within its boundaries are settings of standing stones which reach into the sky. The sheer size of this place is difficult to comprehend on the ground, and to enter the enclosure is to move into a space that contrasts entirely with the surrounding landscape. On one level, Avebury is a monument of chalk and stone. On another, these materials served to define spaces and create experiences which are less often the subject of archaeological analysis. This paper will consider how an appreciation of aesthetics might begin to dissolve these differing approaches to the material evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers some of the circumstances associated with the archaeological study of the Thames river system in south-east England. It focuses on work related to the 95km reach of the river below Teddington, examining Holocene archaeological issues in the floodplain, on the urban waterfront and on the foreshore. Plotting the complex development dynamics of the river system itself, over a 10,000-year period, and the correlation of that information with an understanding of the changes in the patterns of settlement, encroachment and exploitation calls for an integrated multi-agency, multidisciplinary approach if further progress is to be made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an exploration of the relationship between topographic features of the landscape, agency and power in small-scale societies. In it I argue that topographic features of the landscape constitute a series of symbolic resources of essential significance in the formation of personal biographies and the creation and reproduction of structures of power. I attempt to explore these ideas through a discussion of the prehistoric landscapes of Bodmin Moor from the Neolithic to the end of the Bronze Age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many Anglo-Saxon cremations contain some animal bone from funeral offerings, but often this material is not systematically identified or studied. This means that an important bias is present in the study of grave goods from most English cremation cemeteries, and that an important data set, which could offer insights into a people's view of life and death, and their relationship to their animals, is being lost to us. After explaining some of the factors which could affect interpretation, the paper examines data from two cremation cemeteries, Spong Hill and Sancton I, where detailed and systematic work on the animal bone was carried out, and shows the sort of information which can be retrieved from this material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationships between urban consumers and rural producers of animal products during the period when the earliest post-Roman urban sites first appear in eastern England. The mammal and bird faunas from a Middle Saxon emporium (Ipswich), two Middle Saxon rural sites (Brandon and Wicken Bonhunt) and an Early Anglo-Saxon village (West Stow) are examined in order to determine how early urban sites were supplied with animal products and the effect that this early urban growth had on systems of rural animal production. The data indicate that the urban emporium of Ipswich was provisioned with meat from a limited range of domestic animal species. Contemporary rural sites show evidence for increasing specialization in some aspects of animal production -- pork production at Wicken Bonhunt and wool production at Brandon -- when compared with the faunal remains from the Early Saxon village of West Stow. The data suggest that there is a integral relationship between the development of the emporia as centres of craft production and trade and the appearance of increasing specialization in certain animal products at rural sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]