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The deliberate destruction of Late Bronze Age swords and spearheads has been widely recognised across Europe. This observation has typically relied on the obvious nature of the destruction, such as the bending of blades or the crushing of sockets, and the association of multiple broken pieces. These obvious acts have been used to interpret the material in sacred or profane terms without due consideration of how the objects were destroyed. This paper presents experimental research exploring how swords and spearheads may have been intentionally damaged in the Bronze Age. The results of these experiments are compared with artefacts from across Britain, making it possible to better identify and analyse deliberately destroyed objects. A series of implications for how one may more accurately interpret the wider archaeological record is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The perforated stone battle-axes and axe-hammers of Early Bronze Age Britain have been used either to interpret the status of individuals they were buried with or have been overlooked; this is especially the case with axe-hammers. Previous understandings have assumed battle-axes were purely ceremonial, while the rougher axe-hammers were neither functional nor prestigious, being too large and too crude to be prestige items. Studies of the 20th century were focused on creating a typology and understanding the manufacture and petrological sources of the stone, concluding that haphazard exploitation of stone was used to create a variety of different shapes of both implements. This paper revisits the question of how these artefacts were used. It presents the results of the first large-scale application of use-wear analysis to British Early Bronze Age battle-axes and axe-hammers, from northern Britain and the Isle of Man. Combining the results of the wear analysis with experimental archaeology and contextual analysis, it is argued that these objects were functional tools, some of which saw prolonged use that might have spanned multiple users. The evidence shows that the few implements found in burial contexts were both functional and symbolic; their inclusion in burial contexts drawing upon relational links which developed through the itineraries of these objects. It is also apparent that use and treatment were similar across all types of battle-axe and axe-hammer, with some regional variation in the deposition of axe-hammers in south-west Scotland. It is concluded that battle-axes and axe-hammers had varied and multiple roles and significances and that it is possible to discover what each artefact was used for by deploying a use-wear analysis methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Roman period saw the empire expand across Europe and the Mediterranean, including much of what is today Great Britain. While there is written evidence of high mobility into and out of Britain for administrators, traders, and the military, the impact of imperialism on local, rural population structure, kinship, and mobility is invisible in the textual record. The extent of genetic change that occurred in Britain during the Roman military occupation remains underexplored. Here, using genome-wide data from 52 ancient individuals from eight sites in Cambridgeshire covering the period of Roman occupation, we show low levels of genetic ancestry differentiation between Romano-British sites and indications of larger populations than in the Bronze Age and Neolithic. We find no evidence of long-distance migration from elsewhere in the Empire, though we do find one case of possible temporary mobility within a family unit during the Late Romano-British period. We also show that the present-day patterns of genetic ancestry composition in Britain emerged after the Roman period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neolithic and Early Bronze Age rock carvings in the United Kingdom and Ireland represent an internationally unique rock art tradition as it is, to the best of our knowledge, the only wholly abstract global rock art tradition. This heritage resource is, however, under threat from an array of factors, such as increasing population densities and agricultural intensity. In this paper, we report on the Condition Assessment Risk Evaluation (CARE) project that had as one of its primary objectives the co-production of a user-friendly, non-invasive condition assessment risk evaluation Toolkit for gathering and organising information essential for the long-term conservation of open-air rock art. We describe the public involvement CARE process through co-experience participatory focus groups, which evaluated the Toolkit, concluding that we can have confidence in the results obtained from the public. Furthermore, the variables that form part of the Toolkit and related management recommendations are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bronze Age metal objects are widely viewed as markers of wealth and status. Items of other materials, such as jet, amber and glass, tend either to be framed in similar terms as 'prestige goods', or to be viewed as decorative trifles of limited research value. In this paper, we argue that such simplistic models dramatically underplay the social role and 'agentive' capacities of objects. The occurrence of non-metal 'valuables' in British Early Bronze Age graves is well-documented, but their use during the later part of the period remains poorly understood. We will examine the deposition of objects of amber, jet and jet-like materials in Late Bronze Age Britain, addressing in particular their contexts and associations as well as patterns of breakage to consider the cultural meanings and values ascribed to such items and to explore how human and object biographies were intertwined. These materials are rarely found in burials during this period but occur instead on settlements, in hoards and caves. In many cases, these finds appear to have been deliberately deposited in the context of ritual acts relating to rites of passage. In this way, the role of such objects as social agents will be explored, illuminating their changing significance in the creation of social identities and systems of value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper is about Bronze Age round barrows and the ways in which they became caught up in human practices over an extended time period. At one level it belongs to a flourishing body of work that examines the ‘re-use’ or ‘biography’ of prehistoric monuments. Rather than treating the latter as a generic group, however, this study focuses on chronologies of one specific monument type—round barrows—over a 2600-year period from 1500 bc–ac 1086. By bringing together evidence and interpretations generated mainly within period specialisms, significant homogeneities are revealed in terms of how activities at prehistoric monuments have previously been understood. The possibilities for seeking out different interpretative ground are duly explored. Using a case study from the east of England and drawing on evidence and ideas from much more broadly, the approach taken places particular emphasis on examining relationships between round barrows and other aspects of landscape. The findings offer fresh insight into the temporality of activities undertaken at round barrows, question existing characterizations of past people's historical understandings, and explore the long-term coherence of ‘round barrows’ as a category. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper critically assesses the recent claim (Stevens and Fuller 2012) that cereal agriculture was abandoned in the Late Neolithic of the British Isles. The Scottish archaeobotanical dataset is considered in detail to test the universal applicability of the model proposed by Stevens and Fuller (2012) and a series of alternative hypotheses are suggested to explain the nature of the current evidence. It is argued that the importance of arable agriculture probably varied on a local as well as a regional scale and that caution should be exercised when attempting to apply unitary models to complex datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Bronze Age in Britain was a time of major social and cultural changes, reflected in the division of the landscape into field systems and the establishment of new belief systems and ritual practices. Several hypotheses have been advanced to explain these changes, and assessment of many of them is dependent on the availability of detailed palaeoenvironmental data from the sites concerned. This paper explores the development of a later prehistoric landscape in Orkney, where a Bronze Age field system and an apparently ritually-deposited late Bronze Age axe head are located in an area of deep blanket peat from which high-resolution palaeoenvironmental sequences have been recovered. There is no indication that the field system was constructed to facilitate agricultural intensification, and it more likely reflects a cultural response to social fragmentation associated with a more dispersed settlement pattern. There is evidence for wetter conditions during the later Bronze Age, and the apparent votive deposit may reflect the efforts of the local population to maintain community integrity during a time of perceptible environmental change leading to loss of farmland. The study emphasises the advantages of close integration of palaeoenvironmental and archaeological data for interpretation of prehistoric human activity. The palaeoenvironmental data also provide further evidence for the complexity of prehistoric woodland communities in Orkney, hinting at greater diversity than is often assumed. Additionally, differing dates for woodland decline in the two sequences highlight the dangers of over-extrapolation from trends observed in a single pollen profile, even at a very local scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper reports on the construction of a full-scale Bronze Age-type sewn-plank boat based on the Ferriby boats. The boat, which was named Morgawr, was constructed in the National Maritime Museum Cornwall in Falmouth, England, during 2012 and the first months of 2013, as part of a larger exhibition in the museum. This paper provides the background and context of the project, describes the process of building the craft, and reflects in particular on differences between Morgawr and the 'hypothetical reconstruction of a complete sewn-plank boat' published in 1990 by Ted Wright and John Coates which formed the basis for this project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Middens of the southern British late Bronze and Iron Age are vast accumulations of cultural debris that can be explained as refuse dumps linked with large periodic feasting events. A distinctive feature of these sites is that their faunal assemblages invariably comprise a considerably higher proportion of pig remains than contemporaneous settlement sites. This paper presents results from a programme of stable carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) isotope analysis of fauna from two major midden sites, Llanmaes in South Wales and Potterne in Wiltshire. The research aim is to reconstruct husbandry strategies and foddering regimes, particularly concerning pigs, to better understand how the challenges of raising large herds were met. Analysis produced exceptionally wide-ranging results for pigs and other domesticates at both sites, particularly in terms of δ15N values, demonstrating that diverse foddering strategies were employed. Diversity in the late Bronze Age pig foddering regimes indicates that the Neolithic husbandry practices (focusing on woodland fodder) had not been abandoned, but that new husbandry methods (consumption of household waste) were also being practised, which subsequently became more widely established in the Iron Age. The heterogeneity of signatures suggests that animals may have been husbanded in a piecemeal fashion at a local, household level. This in turn hints that fauna may have been brought to these sites from households across the surrounding landscape, rather than being husbanded by specialist producers in the vicinity of the middens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both cremation and inhumation were employed in the British Early Bronze Age, and the significance of the distinction between these practices has long been a matter of debate. Many authors have argued that the choice of mortuary treatment reflects differences in status. Inhumation burials often occupied central positions in Early Bronze Age barrows, while cremations were placed in satellite locations. In turn, the apparent gender differences between these mortuary rites - men tended to be inhumed while women were frequently cremated - is seen as indicating that women were of lower status than men. This paper will challenge this model, arguing that cremation was a strategy designed to facilitate the retention and circulation of ancestral relics by fragmenting the human body. As such, the differential treatment of men and women was not the result of status distinctions, but reflects their different positions and roles within Early Bronze Age kinship structures. In particular, the circulation of the cremated remains of the female dead played an important role in facilitating social, material and biological reproduction through the maintenance of inter-group relationships. The practice of cremation resulted in the construction of particular concepts of the self - concepts that underpinned the transformations in the technological practices and social landscapes that took place at the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age. As such, women's roles in these changes must be considered afresh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers how people were compellingly engaged with, and drew upon, their elemental world in the Bronze Age (c. 2000 - 800 bc). It takes into account the production, circulation and deposition of metalwork and presents a number of themes concerned with the social construction of objects, places and people in the Bronze Age, while exploring how elements are drawn upon to facilitate this. The case study focuses on evidence from Britain and Ireland, although the interpretative themes presented can be applied to a wider geographical dataset. In particular, it considers how elements are interplayed in order to bring about and articulate wider social and material transformations taking place in the Bronze Age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the influences on the survival of Bronze Age round barrows in two regions of southern Britain, the Upper Thames Valley and the Stonehenge Environs. It is clear that persistent arable farming in the medieval period had a highly destructive effect on these burial mounds. This can be seen despite later agricultural activity. Other factors such as the type of barrows can also be important factors in the survival and destruction of these burial mounds. Nevertheless, when analysing the distribution of these Bronze Age monuments, later historic land use must be considered as well as the contemporary prehistoric landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses an interdisciplinary research project testing the efficiency of European Bronze Age axes through experiments with replica tools and the usewear analysis of prehistoric axe-heads from the collections of the Great North Museum, Newcastle upon Tyne (UK). The project explores whether changes in axe-head design and hafting arrangement from early to late Bronze Age might have been motivated by a desire to improve tool efficiency. The team, comprising researchers with backgrounds in archaeology, engineering, and statistical data modelling, carried out several field and laboratory tests to address the research problem. They subsequently validated the test results through the microscopic analysis of original Bronze Age axe-heads. The data suggest that hafting technology, and especially the resilience of the haft-blade assembly, is more important than axe-head design per se in determining the efficiency and working performance of Bronze Age axes. The research provides a fresh answer to a question rooted in 19th century archaeology and charts an innovative multidisciplinary pathway for studying human technology through the ages. • Axes changed their head designs and hafting technologies throughout the Bronze Age. • The resilience of the haft-blade assembly is more important than axe-head design per se in determining axe efficiency. • Experimental archaeology, usewear analysis, and tribology can be used to test the working parameters of ancient tools. • Statistical methods can be used to validate the results of these tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Butser Ancient Farm has been at the forefront of experimental archaeology in Britain for more than 45 years. The pioneering work of its first director Dr Peter Reynolds in the evaluation of Iron Age structures and agriculture demonstrated beyond doubt the importance of experiment in archaeology in the UK and international experimental archaeology work. Butser Ancient Farm has focused particularly on archaeological reconstructions in more recent years, while both expanding and extending its scope beyond the Iron Age. The expansion began in 2003 with a Romano-British villa and has proceeded since 2014 to encompass the Neolithic and Anglo-Saxon periods. The site now has 12 major experimental buildings with numerous ancillary structures. The pace of expansion has necessitated the careful consideration of strategies to document, record and store key information about the archaeology from which the buildings were derived; the rationale and processes involved in their construction; practical and financial aspects of construction; interpretation and usage of the buildings; recording of subsequent phases of research including the documentation of their decay and of archaeology derived from their demise. Beyond the obvious material considerations, we are also developing methodologies for capturing the experiential impressions of those involved in the construction and later use of the buildings. Key to this process is our newly implemented digital storage file protocol, the objective is to allow users to store data with consistency, clarity, ease of use and organised in such a way that search and retrieval is intuitive and efficient. This brief paper aims to provide an illustration of the system with the ambition of contributing to the discussion of implementing a system to store and share information on a broad, consistent, international platform. It is vital to document the process and the methods of construction thoroughly. In effect this creates a future use instruction manual, as well as a resource to draw from for later publications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South-west Britain--Cornwall, Devon and west Somerset--has featured little in discussions of British rock art. However, although it lacks the complex motifs found in northern Britain or the rich ornamentation of the Irish passage graves, it has a growing number of sites with simple cup-marks and stands at a pivotal location in the wider distribution of this form of rock art within north-west Europe. This paper considers the cup-mark tradition in south-west Britain and its wider European context, drawing attention to comparable traditions in western France, Wales, and south-west Ireland where simple cup-marks occur in analogous contexts. We propose a chronology for cup-marks in the south-west, from suggested Neolithic origins associated with rock outcrops and chambered tombs through to their use in Bronze Age barrows and subsequently roundhouses in the second millennium BC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author comments on the article of Joanna Brück regarding the burial patterns in Early Bronze Age (EBA) in Great Britain. The author look into the burial patterns including cremations of men and women, period of burials, and mortuary which Brück noted and evaluate its possible statistical significance by using Bayesian analysis. The author says that the mode of British burials in EBA is independent of the sex of the dead.

A number of examples where authors have invoked the concept of an underworld in explaining various prehistoric activities are catalogued and considered. In drawing this material together it is hoped that the case for exploring the underworld as a general theme in pre-Iron Age Britain is made. In addition, the usefulness of looking at various prehistoric activities from the perspective of the underworld is considered. In particular, the phenomenon of inversion is examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prehistoric field systems sometimes encompass excavated, pit‐like features which are difficult to classify due to the complex stratigraphies resulting from reuse, infilling and collapse. They are frequently classified as wells and watering holes, but other potential uses for excavated depressions are rarely cited. We argue the need for environmental archaeology in the interpretation of features of this nature, and present a case study from a Bronze Age site at Pode Hole, near Peterborough (UK), where fossil insect material clearly contradicts the archaeological interpretation. We present empirical evidence for a sealed context filled with dung which cannot be interpreted as a water source. This evidence strongly contrasts with other superficially similar features at the site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A sixteenth-century manuscript in the Lancashire Archives casts light both on fourteenth-century dairying practices and a post-Dissolution property dispute in Malham, Craven, North Yorkshire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Excavation at Heatherstone Grange, Bransgore, Hampshire, investigated features identified in a previous evaluation. Area A included ring ditches representing two barrows. Barrow 1.1 held 40 secondary pits, including 34 cremation-related deposits of Middle Bronze Age date, and Barrow 1.2 had five inserted pits, including three cremation graves, one of which dated to the earlier Bronze Age, and was found with an accessory cup. A number of pits, not all associated with cremation burials, contained well-preserved urns of the regional Deverel-Rimbury tradition and occasional sherds from similar vessels, which produced a closely-clustered range of eight radiocarbon dates centred around 1300 BC. Of ten pits in Area C, three were cremation graves, of which one was radiocarbon-dated to the Early Bronze Age and associated with a collared urn, while four contained only pyre debris. Barrow 1.3, in Area E, to the south, enclosed five pits, including one associated with a beaker vessel, and was surrounded by a timber circle. Area F, further to the south-west, included two pits of domestic character with charcoal-rich fills and the remains of pottery vessels, together with the probable remains of a ditched enclosure and two sets of paired postholes. Area H, located to the north-west of Area E, partly revealed a ring ditch (Barrow 1.4), which enclosed two pits with charcoal-rich fills, one with a single Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age potsherd, and the other burnt and worked flint. A further undated pit was situated to the east of Barrow 1.4. The cremation cemetery inserted into Barrow 1.1 represents a substantial addition to the regional record of Middle Bronze Age cremation burials, and demonstrates important affinities with the contemporary cemeteries of the Stour Valley to the west, and sites on Cranborne Chase, to the north-west. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 25 years, new evidence has emerged of the scale of prospection for copper and its mining during the Early-Middle Bronze Age in Britain. We know of 12 mines worked in the period 2100-1600BC, whilst the largest mine on the Great Orme continued until the Late Bronze Age, with perhaps its maximum output which may have been equivalent to 30+ tons of copper metal sometime between 1500 and 1300 BC. Bronze Age copper ores represent the now missing oxidized zones of many ore deposits, the enriched ores being easier to smelt. In this respect, the reasons why the richest ores in Cornwall were apparently not worked are discussed. The earliest tin extraction in Cornwall probably occurred during the Early Bronze Age, given the evidence for smelted tin and cassiterite; yet support for the antiquity of tin mining might be provided through the dating of some of the earliest mining artifacts, such as the antler pick from the Carnon streamworks. Yet other lines of research include paleoenvironmental investigations carried out within the tin streaming areas and isotopic provenancing of the tin in Bronze Age bronze. Alluvial gold may have been extracted from the Cornish tin streams more than 4000 years ago and could have been the main source of the gold used in Ireland and Britain during the Copper-Early Bronze Ages, a theory supported by recent lead isotope work carried out on gold artifacts and sources. However, finds of gold artifacts in areas with alluvial gold suggest that one source would not have been exclusive, particularly during the later Bronze Age. Although it sometimes tends to be invisible, lead has been used in small amounts since the Early Bronze Age, first for jewelry, and then from the Middle Bronze Age as rare artifacts, and for alloying in bronze to assist in casting. The earliest silver artifact also dates to this period. The Mendips in Somerset may have been a Late Bronze Age source of lead. Various models are examined for the exploitation of metals from the Copper Age to the Late Bronze Age, looking at the status of miners, the nature of exchange, resource protection, experimentation, prospection, and the discovery of ores. It seems possible also that the rapid development of the Bronze Age in Britain owes much to the early extraction of gold in South-West England and the discovery of tin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Time and temporality have been at the centre of a number of accounts of burial practices in the Bronze Age of Britain in the last twenty years. Up to now, however, the temporality of practice has been taken as an indication of past understandings of time and/or the ancestors. In this article I wish to argue that the temporality of mortuary practices was not merely reflective of understandings of time, but in fact was constitutive of them, and that through the changing temporality of mortuary practices, people's engagement with monuments themselves was changed. These changing temporalities were driven by the transition from inhumation to cremation as the dominant mode of disposal of the dead. By invoking chaînes opératoires for each mode, I will demonstrate the underlying similarities and differences of the two rites, showing how cremation led to a fundamental change in the temporality of mortuary behaviour, and as such created new understandings of funerary monuments and place. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores how the ways in which we as archaeologists view material culture – as being constituted of many parts or attributes, as complete, as dynamic, as unchanging – can affect the ways we interpret it. In doing so, it addresses the inherent conflict of object classification: while individual objects vary in significant and observable ways, to be included in broader research agendas they must be approximated to normative and idealized types, effectively effacing the actions of the individuals who made and used them. This conflict is explored through the study of beaded ornaments of jet and jet-like material found in Early Bronze Age burials across Britain. Although each bead assemblage comprises a variety of bead forms, types and materials, archaeologists and curators continue to treat them as singular, whole objects. I argue that tacking back and forth between the scale of the whole assemblage and that of the individual part allows us to make use of the variety of singular objects and make sense of their broader similarities to create a more nuanced and highly novel model of the social context in which they were worn, circulated and deposited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines a range of practices involving the deliberate fragmentation of human bodies and objects in Middle and Late Bronze Age Britain. Focusing on evidence from settlements and mortuary sites, it is suggested that metaphorical links were drawn between people and things, and that productive processes such as potting and metallurgy provided potent metaphors for the construction of the human self. Building on these points, it is argued that current models which posit the rise of an ideology of the ‘individual’ during the Bronze Age may be inappropriate in this cultural context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the evidence for gardens in the Bronze Age landscapes of northern and western Britain. It offers an alternative perspective on the small field plots and unbounded areas of cultivated land by treating them as spaces that people inhabited with plants and animals, where environmental knowledge was learnt and controlled, and where social roles and identities were defined, maintained and contested. The excavated evidence shows that the biographies of houses are closely associated with those of the adjacent field plots. It also highlights the need to consider the ‘in-between places’ around the edges of buildings, along boundaries and in unkempt corners of fields. The coexistence of both domesticated and other plants demonstrates that gardens were not spaces dedicated to economic production in the terms that we understand today; rather they were places where people engaged closely with the botanical world and so gave it cultural value. The occupations of gardens and settlements were long-lived, if not necessarily continuous, and so provided the conditions in which more intensive strategies could be adopted, developing towards a more permanent and long-lasting commitment to place and landscape. Relations between people were structured through the contribution of gardening to activities such as the preparation and consumption of food, the provision of plants for medicinal and ritual purposes and the use of plots for keeping animals and as disposal areas for household refuse. These activities were closely controlled and, because of their cultural value, gardens were defined and their link to houses expressed as a means of negotiating social roles and identities within co-resident groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]