Ann Woodward – författare

The exotic and impressive grave goods from burials of the ‘Wessex Culture’ in Early Bronze Age Britain are well known and have inspired influential social and economic hypotheses, invoking the former existence of chiefs, warriors and merchants and high-ranking pastoralists. Alternative theories have sought to explain the how display of such objects was related to religious and ritual activity rather than to economic status, and that groups of artefacts found in certain graves may have belonged to religious specialists. This volume is the result of a major research that aimed to investigate Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age grave goods in relation to their possible use as special dress accessories or as equipment employed within ritual activities and ceremonies. Many items of adornment can be shown to have formed elements of elaborate costumes, probably worn by individuals, both male and female, who held important ritual roles within society. Furthermore, the analysis has shown that various categories of object long interpreted as mundane types of tool were in fact items of bodily adornment or implements used in ritual contexts, or in the special embellishment of the human body.Although never intended to form a complete catalogue of all the relevant artefacts from England the volume provides an extensive, and intensively illustrated, overview of a large proportion of the grave goods from English burial sites.

This volume is the first of two reports on archaeological excavations undertaken ahead of the eastern expansion of Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal (DIRFT) which lies in the northern watershed region of Northamptonshire at its border with Warwickshire.The excavations, covering 178 hectares, recorded one of the most extensive Iron Age farming settlements yet discovered in the British Isles. It comprised at least five individual sites of house clusters and enclosures, spread around the rim of a shallow valley overlooking around 100 hectares of open pasture. At its peak between 400 BC and 100 BC the settlement would have contained up to 100 circular buildings.Volume 1 describes the excavation of the largest of these individual sites, that at Covert Farm, Crick, excavated by the Birmingham University Field Archaeology Unit. From the outset the excavations adopted an innovative approach to examine social themes in Iron Age studies, such as relationships with rubbish, fire and water, and the way life in the settlement may have been experienced by its inhabitants - themes that are presented and discussed in this book.

Prehistoric barrows were not only monuments to the dead but mounds for the living - making out land, defining pathways, acting as powerful symbols, and forming a major part of perceived landscapes which welded nature and human history together.