Hugo Anderson-Whymark – författare

The prehistories of Britain and Ireland are inescapably entwined with continental European narratives. The central aim here is to explore ‘cross-channel’ relationships throughout later prehistory, investigating the archaeological links (material, social, cultural) between the areas we now call Britain and Ireland, and continental Europe, from the Mesolithic through to the end of the Iron Age. Since the separation from the European mainland of Ireland (c. 16,000 BC) and Britain (c. 6000 BC), their island nature has been seen as central to many aspects of life within them, helping to define their senses of identity, and forming a crucial part of their neighbourly relationship with continental Europe and with each other. However, it is important to remember that the surrounding seaways have often served to connect as well as to separate these islands from the continent. In approaching the subject of ‘continental connections’ in the long-term, and by bringing a variety of different archaeological perspectives (associated with different periods) to bear on it, this volume provides a new a new synthesis of the ebbs and flows of the cross-channel relationship over the course of 15,000 years of later prehistory, enabling fresh understandings and new insights to emerge about the intimately linked trajectories of change in both regions.

The rise to prominence of pits within narratives of the British and Irish Neolithic is well-documented in recent literature. Pits have been cropping up in excavations for centuries, resulting in a very broad spectrum of interpretations but three main factors have led to the recent change in our perception and representation of these features: a broad shift in people's expectations as to what a Neolithic settlement should be; the development of the concept of 'structured deposition', within which pits have played a key role; and a dramatic rise in the number of pits actually known about. Development-led archaeology, and the often very large areas its excavations expose, has simply revealed many more pits. The 15 papers in this volume explore these inter-related factors and present new thoughts and interpretations arising from new analysis of Neolithic pits and their contents.