The Avebury Landscape

by Brown, Graham; Field, David; McOmish, David; Cunliffe, Deborah

• ISBN13: 9781842171523
• ISBN10: 1842171526
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-07-29
• Publisher: Oxbow Books Ltd

Summary

It is over one hundred years since the publication of the wide ranging archaeological field investigation undertaken on the Marlborough Downs by the Rev AC Smith. As in most works of inventory the volume has certainly stood the test of time and is still one of the basic reference texts for students of the area. Since then, apart from a few notable exceptions, archaeological literature about the area has been largely sit-based and there has been little concerning the Marlborough Downs as a whole. In order to try and redress this imbalance, a day conferece was organised in April 2002 at the University of Bath, Swindon, where it was possible to acknowledge and mark the ongoing validity of Smith's work and where a number of papers on various aspects of recent research on the Marlborough Downs were presented. The results of the conference are presented in this volume, together with a number of other commissioned contributions from individuals who have undertaken research in the area during the lastdecade or so. Each essays stands alone, but they are connected by a common theme, that of the land and how it has changed over millennia

Table of Contents

List of contributors	viii
Preface	ix
Acknowledgements	xi
Foreword	xiii
Some observations on change, consolidation and perception in a chalk landscape	1	(11)
David Field
Graham Brown
David McOmish
Fieldwork in the Avebury area	12	(22)
David McOmish
Hazel Riley
David Field
Carenza Lewis
Recent Aerial Survey work in the Marlborough Downs region	34	(9)
Simon Crutchley
The investigation of sites on the Marlborough Downs using geophysical methods	43	(15)
Andrew David
The Geological History of the Marlborough Downs	58	(8)
Isobel Geddes
Helen Walkington
The Palaeolithic of the Marlborough Downs and Avebury area	66	(11)
Julie E Scott Jackson
Considering Prehistoric Environmental Changes on the Marlborough Downs	77	(10)
Michael J Allen
Some observations on perception, consolidation and change in a land of stones	87	(8)
David Field
Mesolithic hunter-gatherer exploitation of the Marlborough Downs	95	(8)
Stephen Allen
Memory, Monuments and Middens in the Neolithic landscape	103	(12)
Joshua Pollard
'The small compass of a grave': Early Bronze Age burial in and around Avebury and the Marlborough Downs	115	(18)
Rosamund Cleal
Bronze Age Land Allotment on the Marlborough Downs	133	(4)
David McOmish
``There wur a bit of ould brass'': Bronze Age metalwork and the Marlborough Downs landscape	137	(12)
Martyn Barber
Prehistoric linear ditches on the Marlborough Downs	149	(7)
Graeme Kirkham
The middle Iron Age on the Marlborough Downs	156	(8)
Mark Bowden
From pagus to parish: Territory and Settlement in the Avebury Region from the Late Roman Period to the Domesday Survey	164	(17)
Andrew Reynolds
Monastic Settlement and Land-use of the Marlborough Downs	181	(10)
Graham Brown
Medieval and Later Sheep Farming on the Marlborough Downs	191	(11)
Nicola Smith
'New myths at Swallowhead: the past and the present in the landscape of the Marlborough Downs'	202	(10)
Jon Cannon
Bibliography	212