The Undiscovered Country: The Earlier Prehistory of the West Midlands

by Garwood, Paul

• ISBN13: 9781842172827
• ISBN10: 1842172824
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-02-28
• Publisher: David Brown Book Co

Summary

This is the first volume in a series - The Making of the West Midlands - that explores the archaeology of the English West Midlands region from the Lower Palaeolithic to the Industrial Revolution. These books, based on the West Midlands Research Framework seminars held in 2002-3, aim to transform perceptions of the nature and significance of the archaeological evidence across a large part of central Britain, in an area extending from the plains of eastern England to the Cambrian Mountains and from the Cotswolds to the southern Pennines. The earlier prehistory of the region, in particular, has been neglected at a national level and deserves far wider recognition in research terms. This first volume reveals the scale, richness and diversity of the evidence from all earlier prehistoric periods in the West Midlands, from the Lower Palaeolithic to the Bronze Age, and considers its research significance and potential. The book is copiously illustrated, and includes a large number of colour maps and plans.

Table of Contents

Introduction: the undiscovered country	p. 1
Lost but not forgotten: the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic occupation of the West Midlands	p. 6
The Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic archaeology of the West Midlands	p. 23
Priorities in Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age environmental archaeology in the West Midlands	p. 39
The Neolithic in the West Midlands: an overview	p. 51
The Blank Country? Neolithic enclosures and landscapes in the West Midlands	p. 79
Later lithics in the West Midlands counties	p. 97
Pits, pots, places and people: approaching the Neolithic at Wellington Quarry	p. 109
Recent Work on the Neolithic and Bronze Age in Warwickshire	p. 123
Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age funerary monuments and burial traditions in the West Midlands	p. 134
Bronze Age settlement in Shropshire: research potential and frameworks for settlement studies in the West Midlands	p. 166
Ceremonial landscapes and ritual deposits in the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods in the West Midlands	p. 182
Regions, cultural identity and social change, c. 4500-1500 BC: the West Midlands in context	p. 194
Index	p. 217
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.