This paper was given as the Europa Lecture for 1997. It re-examines arguments concerning the early development of early Celtic (La Tène A) art and its relations with the Mediterranean world. Taking as a focus the recent spectacular discoveries below the hillfort of the Glauberg north-east of Frankfurt, the Celtic approaches to representations of the human form are analysed and the complex question of meaning and the relationship of early Celtic art to contemporary belief systems discussed. As a brief coda, the striking changes which took place in many parts of the early Celtic world after c. 400 BC are referred to in the context of the major population movements of the time, notably those which brought settlers from north of the Alps to Italy.

On the Significance of Acheulean Biface Variability in Southern Britain
By Mark J. White

The significance of morphological variation in Acheulean bifaces has been a central issue in Palaeolithic research for well over a century. For much of that period interpretation has been dominated by culture-historical models and it is only in the past 20 years that other explanatory factors have received adequate attention. This paper examines the combined role of several of these factors – namely raw materials, reduction intensity, and function – on biface variability in the British Isles, with special reference to the two major shaped-based `tradition' devised by Roe (1967; 1968). First-hand examination of bifaces from 19 assemblages suggests that final biface shape depends largely on the dimensions of the original raw materials and the techno-functional strategies designed to deal with them. Through these observations a new model is generated and tested. This suggests that the patterning in the British Acheulean simply reflects the nature of the resources available at a site and the hominid procurement and technological strategies used to exploit them. According to this model, well-worked ovates with all-round edges were preferentially produced wherever raw materials were large and robust enough to frequently support intensive reduction procedures, usually when obtained from primary flint sources. Assemblages characterised by partially-edged, moderately-reduced pointed forms were only manufactured when smaller, narrower blanks, that imposed restrictions on human technological actions regarding the location and extent of working, were exploited. such blanks were usually obtained from a secondary flint source, such as river gravel. Thus, Roe's pointed and ovate `traditions' are seen not as the products of different biface making populations, but as the same broad populations coping with the exigencies of a heterogeneous environment, using different resources in an adaptive, flexible manner.

Doggerland: a Speculative Survey
By B.J. Coles

Archaeologists tend to refer to the land that once existed between Britain and the continent as a landbridge. It was, however, a landscape as habitable as neighbouring regions, and here called Doggerland to emphasise its availability for settlement by prehistoric peoples. Evidence from the Geological Surveys undertaken by countries bordering the North Sea Basin, together with allied research, is drawn together to provide an overview of the possibilities. A range of interacting geological processes implies that the present-day relief of the North Sea bed does not provide a sound guide to the relief of the former landscape, nor to the chronology and character of its submergence. A series of maps accompanies the text to provide a speculative reconstruction of the topography, river systems, coastline, vegetation, fauna, and human occupation of Doggerland from the Devensian/Wiechselian maximum to the beginnings of the Neolithic.

Long Barrows and Neolithic Elongated Enclosures in Lincolnshire: An Analysis of the Air Photographic Evidence
By Dilwyn Jones

The long barrows of Lincolnshire have been the subject of long-term but intermittent interest. One aspect not investigated hitherto is the air photographic evidence for plough-levelled long barrows. Recently completed mapping work in the county by the Aerial Survey section of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (RCHME), as part of the National Mapping Programme, has made possible the analysis of the air photographic evidence. This article presents an evaluation of that evidence and considers its significance in terms of the Neolithic of the region.

A comprehensive survey of air photo collections has dramatically increased the number of long barrows known in the county, identifying over 50 examples of levelled sites. The majority are found on the chalk Wolds where the dozen surviving earthwork monuments are located. The distribution of long barrows in the county may now be extended onto the Jurassic Limestone ridge to the west where five examples have been recorded. The Lincolnshire long barrow enclosures have three categories of shape; oval, trapeziform, and oblong. The ditch plan is predominantly full-enclosing, and is found as the distinct form in the eastern region of England. The morphology and dimensions of two sites suggests they may have been a long mortuary enclosure or short cursus.

At Harlaxton in the southern Limestone a long barrow enclosure forms part of an extensive later Neolithic ritual complex which incorporates a multiple pit-alignment as a principal component. The form of the complex appears to be unique and underlines the importance of Harlaxton as an inter-regional link.

Arenas of Action? Enclosure Entrances in Neolithic Western France c. 3500–2500 BC
By Chris Scarre

Recent research has led to a re-evaluation of the defensive role formerly assigned to the Late Neolithic enclosures of western France. Excavation of the distinctive pince de crabe entrances which are a feature of many of these enclosures has suggested that these were not single but multi-phase structures, with a purpose which must have been monumental or ceremonial rather than protective. Human remains in the enclosure ditches underline their significance as symbolic as well as physical boundaries. The chronology of the elaborated entrances indicates that they belong to a period of social competition in which decorated pottery had a particular importance. This phase came to an end early in the 3rd millennium BC when the enclosure ditches were backfilled, and western France became integrated into a wider world of social and raw material exchange.

Parc le Breos Cwm Transepted Long Cairn, Gower, West Glamorgan: Date, Contents, and Context
By Alasdair Whittle and Michael Wysocki

First investigated in 1869, the transepted long cairn of Parc le Breos Cwm was re-excavated in 1960–61 but without a report being published. This account presents a number of radiocarbon dates and a detailed re-examination of the human bone assemblages, and attempts to put the monument in local and regional context. Radiocarbon dates place the long cairn in the later part of the earlier Neolithic, and support a fairly long span of time over which its mortuary deposits were accumulated; they also show secondary re-use of the passage, and perhaps also the deliberate incorporation of very old animal bone from nearby caves. The analysis of the human bone assemblages indicates prior exposure of the remains found in the chambers, in contrast to those in the passage. Variation in musculoskeletal stress markers may indicate a mobile lifestyle for at least some of the male mortuary population. Other lifestyle indicators are noted, and isotopic evidence is presented for a terrestrial and mainly meat-oriented diet in the sampled group. The isolated context and hidden setting of the Parc le Breos Cwm long cairn and the apparently low density of south Welsh monuments are stressed.

Constructing Houses and Building Context: Bersu's Manx Round-house Campaign
By Christopher Evans

Bersu's war-time excavation of three `great' Iron Age round-houses on the Isle of Man are considered. Their archive includes letters from colleagues (eg Hawkes and Childe) which offer unique insights into the construction of fieldwork context, particularly, in this case, a Celtic paradigm. Concerned with house studies and the possibility of `reconstruction', Bersu's methodology is analysed. Site documentation shows him to be a `graphic archaeologist', thinking and interpreting visually, and as such contrasts with concepts of `archaeology as text'.

The Public Forum and the Space Between: the Materiality of Social Strategy in the Irish Neolithic
By Shannon Marguerite Fraser

Framed within an interpretive, humanistic `archaeology of inhabitance', the study explores the means by which a social, intellectual order particular to time and place is embedded within the material universe. Through the mediation of the human body, natural and architectural space is considered to be a medium for the production and reproduction of social relations. The specific materiality of places inhabited in the past is explored in detail, focusing on possibilities for and constraints upon the body and the senses.

The phenomenon of monumentality at the Loughcrew passage tomb cemetery in east-central Ireland is considered in the context of changing narratives of place and biographies of person and landscape. In contrast to many previous studies, the focus is upon engagement with the exterior spaces of the complex: the more frequent and larger-scale involvement of the communal body in these 'public' spaces will have played a critical role in the validation of knowledges and claims to authority which a more restricted group will have articulated within the confines of tomb chambers and passages.

The earlier tombs draw out qualities latent within the landscape, placing particular emphasis on prior, natural boundaries. Through time, the regionalisation of the Loughcrew hills acquires increasing architectural definition, by means of which a series of interconnecting spaces emerge at a much more human scale. The latest architectural and spatial developments may well form part of material strategies through which were engendered particular structures of authority carrying the potential for substantially heightened individual prominence within increasingly exclusive kinship solidarities. Ultimately, mediation between the physical and metaphysical elements of existence may be controlled with reference to distinct lines of descent rather than to a more generalised ancestral community. At the same time, the range of hills is gradually transformed from a meaningful locus which conceals within it the human efforts of monumental construction, to a landscape that derives its significance from massive summit cairns visible from considerable distances. This appropriative transformation may be seen as a material strategy which moves communities' conceptions of existence from an integrated, cultural whole in which people and landscape are embedded in each other, towards a vision of individuals and places as increasingly separate and self-contained.

Bryn Eryr: An Enclosed Settlement of the Iron Age on Anglesey
By David Longley

Excavations on the site of a rectangular earthwork at Bryn Eryr, Angelsey, have identified a sequence of occupation. In the Middle Iron Age a single clay-walled round-house stood within a timber stockade. By the later Iron Age a second house had been added, adjacent to the first, and these two houses became the focus of a planned settlement. A rectangular bank and ditch enclosure was established of 0.3 ha internal area. A yard developed in front of the houses, at the head of a trackway leading from the entrance. Rectangular post-built structures, perhaps granaries, were built and pits were dug to provide clay flooring and, perhaps, wall plastering for the houses. By the early 1st millennium AD the perimeter ditch had become choked with silt and the bank was eroding badly. A third house, with stone footings, was added to the south of the original two, one of which was by now out of use. Romano-British pottery, in small quantities but of good quality, was in use on the site. The farm appears to have been abandoned, after perhaps 700 years of development, during the late 3rd or 4th century AD.

The Changing Provenance of Red Ochre at Puritjarra Rock Shelter, Central Australia: Late Pleistocene to Present
By M. A. Smith, B. Fankhauser, and M. Jercher

In this paper we apply geochemical sourcing methods to an assemblage of ochre from archaeological excavations at the Puritjarra rock shelter in western central Australia. Our work indicates that the red ochre in Late Pleistocene contexts at this rock shelter is from Karrku, a subterranean ochre mine still worked today by Walbiri people. Archaeological finds at Puritjarra indicate that exploitation of this source of high-grade red ochre had begun by 32,000 BP and has continued without significant interruption since then. Changes since the Late Pleistocene in the type and quantity of red ochre reaching the Puritjarra shelter, from various sources including Karrku, provide means to test current models of regional prehistory in this part of arid Australia and illustrate some of the potential of this approach for regional studies.

Neolithic/Early Bronze Age Pit Circles and their Environs at Oakham, Rutland
By Patrick Clay

Fieldwork east of Oakham, Rutland has located evidence of prehistoric settlement, land use patterns, and ceremonial monuments. Part of this included the excavation of a cropmark site which has revealed an unusual sequence of Neolithic/Early Bronze Age pit circles and a burial area. This is complemented by a fieldwalking survey of the surrounding areas, allowing consideration of the relationship of juxtaposed flint scatters and the excavated ceremonial area.

A Late Iron Age Mirror Burial from Latchmere Green, near Silchester, Hampshire
By Michael Fulford and John Creighton

This paper describes the find, in 1994, of an isolated Late Iron Age burial near the oppidum of Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester). The burial consisted of the cremated remains of an adult of about 30 years together with a child of under 5 years, buried in a pottery jar of a type familiar from Calleva. The jar also contained cremated pig bone. The burial was accompanied by fragments of at least two fibulae and a very finely decorated bronze mirror, for which no close parallels are known. The burial dates to the 1st century BC, possibly before 50 BC.

A Late Iron Age Burial from Chilham Castle, near Canterbury, Kent
By Keith Parfitt

An isolated Late Iron Age burial was discovered by a metal detectorist near Chilham Castle, Kent in 1993. The cremated remains of a single, probably female, adult under 30 years old were contained in a pottery jar of 'Belgic' style. The burial was accompanied by at least two, almost identical, brooches of La Tène II Knotenfibeln type and a bronze mirror and probably dates to 70–50 BC. The mirror is simply and rather crudely decorated.