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The rise of social zooarchaeology and the so-called ‘animal turn’ in the humanities both reflect a growing interest in the interactions of humans and non-human animals. This comparative archaeological study contributes to this interdisciplinary field by investigating the ways in which successive human cultures employed religion to conceptualise and interact with their ecological context across the longue durée. Specifically, we investigate how the Iron Age, Romano-British, early medieval English, medieval Welsh, and Information Age populations of Great Britain constructed and employed supranatural female figures – Andraste, Diana, Ēostre, St. Melangell, and the modern construct ‘Easter’ – with a common zoomorphic link: the hare. Applying theoretical concepts drawn from conservation ecology (‘shifting baselines’) and the study of religion (‘semantic centres’) to a combination of (zoo)archaeological and textual evidence, we argue that four distinct ‘hare goddesses’ were used to express their congregations’ concerns regarding the mediation of violence between the human in-group and other parties (human or animal) across two millennia.

This article is dedicated to John Morton Coles (1930-2020), Professor of European Prehistory at Cambridge University between 1980 and 1986, Fellow of the British Academy, author of the highly regarded scientific works, teacher and editor. He dealt with several archaeological periods and was involved in different field projects and conducted numerous excavations. At Cambridge, in the Department of Archaeology, John Coles collaborated with such significant figures as Professors Grahame Clark and Glyn Daniel. John Coles devoted much of his time to experimental and wetland archaeology as well as to prehistoric rock carvings in Sweden and Norway. John Coles was awarded an honorary doctorate by Uppsala University. He was the advisor of Biskupin’s archaeological open-air Museum in Poland.

This article is dedicated to John Morton Coles (1930-2020), Professor of European Prehistory at Cambridge University between 1980 and 1986, Fellow of the British Academy, author of the highly regarded scientific works, teacher and editor. He dealt with several archaeological periods and was involved in different field projects and conducted numerous excavations. At Cambridge, in the Department of Archaeology, John Coles collaborated with such significant figures as Professors Grahame Clark and Glyn Daniel. John Coles devoted much of his time to experimental and wetland archaeology as well as to prehistoric rock carvings in Sweden and Norway. John Coles was awarded an honorary doctorate by Uppsala University. He was the advisor of Biskupin’s archaeological open-air Museum in Poland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the location and context of archaeological investigations in England between 1938 and 1945. The analysis of sources, including national inventories and contemporary journals, dispels any notion that archaeological practice was suspended during World War II, despite the absence of some leading practitioners, and reveals that a surprising amount of salvage and research fieldwork took place. Fieldwork was primarily in the south of the country; it reflects pre-war investigative trends, contemporary knowledge, opinion of the archaeological resource, and the increased threat of war-related construction work, but also the impact of immediate post-war concerns such as housing and infrastructure. Although primarily undertaken by established excavators employed by the Ministry of Works, a substantial amount of rescue work was carried out by small groups, local societies, and individuals often outside State funding, which reflects an independent culture of fieldwork that continues to the present day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeologists’ excavation practices vary significantly from country to country and site to site. But variation in the most fundamental, ‘common-sense’ excavation practices is ‘black-boxed’ - it is not discussed outside casual, informal contexts, and is treated as having no effect on higher-level interpretation. These practices can, however, be a source of conflict when archaeologists from different communities of practice work together. In this paper, I explore what variation in excavation methodology reveals about the nature of archaeological knowledge itself. By comparing methodologies and the organization of labour on British and Andean excavations, I argue that archaeologists in different communities of practice have divergent understandings of what the object of archaeological investigation is, and of how it can be known, and by whom. This results in contrasting understandings of the nature of material/archaeological objects, as well as contrasting conceptualizations of excavation as an ‘expert’ practice – one requiring skills, knowledge and bodily practices that are specific to trained archaeologists. Situating these concerns in historical and ethnographic context, this paper suggests that archaeological excavation is, in fact, a far more complex, nuanced and variable practice than the lack of attention paid to it implies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Acclaimed archaeologist, Colin Renfrew, remembers the exciting and momentous academic changes which dominated archaeology in Britain and the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. Describing his experiences as a student and young academic at the University of Cambridge, Renfrew argues that basic philosophical questions (What is the nature of explanation? What are we doing as archaeologists?) underlay the emergence of a ‘New Archaeology’ in the 1960s and that young ‘New Archaeologists’ successfully used scientific and computer research methods to answer innovative environmental and economic questions about prehistory. He feels that this new academic development went seriously wrong in the United States when archaeologists relied too heavily on Carl Hempel’s analysis of scientific explanation. Consequently, Renfrew suggests, the New Archaeology was already in decline by the early 1970s.

This article analyses the effect that ideology may have in the relationships established between archaeologists of opposing political persuasions. It is argued that modern historiographers' assumption that archaeologists holding different ideologies could not possibly support each other needs urgent revision. It is proposed that, for the decades immediately before and after World War 11, the disregard of the political aspect when dealing with colleagues can partly be explained by the widely held belief in the absolute value of science, especially at a time when, in the case of prehistoric archaeology, the discipline was being professionalized. In this article the links established between prehistoric archaeologists of opposing political ideologies is framed within the discussion of invisible colleges, the professional networks which form unofficial power bases within academia. It is suggested not only that they seem to be more interested in the control of academic resources than in political convictions, but that invisible colleges also operate at an international level. Thus, invisible colleges in each country may be linked with others elsewhere, even when their members live under completely different political regimes. As the basis for the discussion this article uses the correspondence between [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of undergraduate teaching materials for Archaeology and History of Art are considered. Two projects are described, part of the Teaching and Learning Technology Programme's Archaeology Consortium and a collaboration between Birkbeck College and the Open University on cubist collage. Both development of teaching materials and programming concepts using ToolBook are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]