Defining a Regional Neolithic: Evidence from Britain and Ireland (Neolithic Studies Group Seminar Papers)

Description

This book is the ninth published collection of papers from a Neolithic Studies Group day conference, and it continues the Group's aim of presenting research on the Neolithic of all parts of the British Isles. The topic - regional diversity - is an important theme in Neolithic studies today, and embraces traditions of monumentality, settlement patterns and material culture. The contributors to this volume address issues of regionality through a series of case-studies that focus not on the traditional 'cores' of Wessex and Orkney, but rather on other areas - the 'Irish Sea Zone', Ireland, Scotland, Yorkshire and the Midlands. The volume commences with an introduction (Gordon Barclay) that expands on the initial impetus and research questions behind the 2001 conference this volume is based on. This is followed by a more abstract contribution analysing that most familiar of tools for the display of 'regional' archaeological data, the distribution map (Kenneth Brophy). Two papers follow that address the role material culture plays in both defining and characterising regional trends, one addressing the distinctive regionality of querns in the Neolithic (Fiona Roe), the other a wide-ranging analysis of high status material culture and monumentality in Yorkshire (Roy Loveday). A series of regional studies follows, with three papers focusing explicitly on a range of evidence from the 'Irish Sea zone (Vicki Cummings, Tom Clare and Aaron Watson and Richard Bradley). A large and detailed body of evidence from the East Midlands is also considered (Patrick Clay) and the volume is completed by two papers considering very different regional scales in Ireland. At a more localised level, a series of islands off the east coast of Ireland are discussed in a local and wider context (Gabriel Cooney) and a still wider scale approach is taken to landscape and routeways across Ireland as a whole (Carleton Jones). These papers do not simply set up 'rival' distinctive regions, but rather suggest that local, regional and national traditions cross-cut and combine in different ways in different places. The interaction between regions is as significant as intra-regional distinctiveness. This volume addresses how we might begin to develop a more nuanced vision of the Neolithic of the British Isles. Cover Title Page Copyright Page Foreword Contents Preface and Acknowledgements List of Contributors Section 1: Defining regional Neolithics Chapter 1: Introduction: a regional agenda? Chapter 2: The map trap: the depiction of regional geographies of the Neolithic Section 2: Material culture Chapter 3: Corn grinding in southern England: what can the querns tell us? Chapter 4: From ritual to riches – the route to individual power in later Neolithic Eastern Yorkshire? Section 3: Regional and local studies Chapter 5: Building monuments at the centre of the world: exploring regional diversity in south-west Wales and south-west Scotland Chapter 6: On the edge of England: Cumbria as a Neolithic region Chapter 7: No-man’s land revisited: some patterns in the Neolithic of Cumbria Chapter 8: Core or periphery? The case of the Neolithic of the East Midlands Chapter 9: The role of islands in defining identity and regionality during the Neolithic: the Dublin coastal group Chapter 10: Coasts, mountains, rivers and bogs. Using the landscape to explore regionality in Neolithic Ireland