Later Prehistoric Settlement In South East Scotland

This book provides a reassessment of the peoples who lived in Scotland from 1500BC to 200AD.

This book examines the nature of social relationships in later prehistoric Britain, taking, as a case study, the archaeology of the Wessex region of southern England in the first millennium BC. --

Scotland is unusually rich in field monuments and objects surviving from early times. This comprehensive survey of Scotland's prehistoric and early historic archaeology covers the full chronological range from the earliest inhabitants to the union of the Picts and Scots in AD 843. Fully illustrated throughout, this book will help both students and visitors to monuments to understand the lifestyles of Scotland's early societies.

Since its first publication in 1971, Barry Cunliffe's monumental survey has established itself as a classic of British archaeology. This fully revised fourth edition maintains the qualities of the earlier editions, whilst taking into account the significant developments that have moulded the discipline in recent years. Barry Cunliffe here incorporates new theoretical approaches, technological advances and a range of new sites and finds, ensuring that Iron Age Communities in Britain remains the definitive guide to the subject.

The Iron Age in Northern Britain examines the archaeological evidence for earlier Iron Age communities from the southern Pennines to the Northern and Western Isles and the impact of Roman expansion on local populations, through to the emergence of historically recorded communities in the post-Roman period. The text has been comprehensively revised and expanded to include new discoveries and to take account of advanced techniques, with many new and updated illustrations. The volume presents a comprehensive picture of the ‘long Iron Age’, allowing readers to appreciate how perceptions of Iron Age societies have changed significantly in recent years. New material in this second edition also addresses the key issues of social reconstruction, gender, and identity, as well as assessing the impact of developer-funded archaeology on the discipline. Drawing on recent excavation and research and interpreting evidence from key studies across Scotland and northern England, The Iron Age in Northern Britain continues to be an accessible and authoritative study of later prehistory in the region.

This volume presents the results of fieldwork on the East Lothian coastal plain in south-east Scotland investigating the nature of later prehistoric settlement around the hillfort of Traprain Law. Following geomagnetic surveys at thirty sites, six enclosures were excavated, three extensively. All six had complex occupation histories, involving multiple acts of enclosure, as well as phases of open settlement and use for other purposes such as burial. Their combined chronological span extends from the fourth millennium BC to the dawn of the Early Historic period. The four curvilinear enclosures were apparently constructed in the late second or early first millennium BC. The short-lived hillslope enclosure at Standingstone occupied the site of an earlier Bronze Age burial ground and open settlement. At Whittingehame, a later scoop within a ravine-edge enclosure was still a focus of agricultural activity as late as the sixth century AD. The two rectilinear enclosures were foundations of the later Iron Age, although a scooped settlement within the site at Knowes was inhabited well into the Roman Iron Age. Thanks to these excavations and the wider studies of the cropmark record and material culture from East Lothian presented here, we can now begin to reconstruct settlement dynamics in the Traprain Law area and relate this to the sequence of activity on the hilltop between the second millennium BC and the mid-first millennium AD.