Kate Sharpe (2019) Review of "Making a Mark". The Prehistoric Society.

Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2021

This paper presents key results of the Making a Mark project (2014-2016), which aimed to provide a contextual framework for the analysis of mark making on portable artefacts in the British and Irish Neolithic by comparing them with other mark-making practices, including rock art and passage tomb art. The project used digital imaging techniques, including Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), and improved radiocarbon chronologies, to develop a new understanding of the character of mark making in the British and Irish Neolithic. Rather than considering this tradition in representational terms, as expression of human ideas, we focus on two kinds of relational material practices, the processes of marking and the production of skeuomorphs, and their emergent properties. We draw on Karen Barad's concept of 'intra-action' and Gilles Deleuze's notion of differentiation to understand the evolution and development of mark-making traditions and how they relate to other kinds of social practices over the course of the Neolithic.

European Journal of Archaeology, 2020

Neolithic Britain, 2018

It is just over sixty years since Stuart Piggott published his major work, Neolithic Cultures of the British Isles. This was the first comprehensive account of what was then known and assumed about the ‘New Stone Age’ in these islands, and it surveyed discoveries and summarized debates that had occurred over the previous century. This process of gradual accumulation of data and ideas has continued apace since Piggott was writing, not least owing to the precision with which we can now date much of the activity that characterizes the Neolithic. When Piggott was writing his book in the early 1950s an American, Willard Libby, was experimenting with the technique of radiocarbon dating as a by-product of the development of nuclear technology. This dating method uses the rate of decay of radioactive isotopes to measure the time that has elapsed since a sample of organic matter last exchanged carbon with its environment—in short, the time since an organism died. Application of the method ha...

The Archaeological Review from Cambridge (ARC) is a biannual journal of archaeology. It is run on a non-profit, voluntary basis by postgraduate research students at the University of Cambridge.

A Song in Stone. Exploring Scotland's Neolithic Rock Art, 2021

Our brand new learning resource has been developed in partnership with Historic Environment Scotland and Kilmartin Museum. The booklet is packed with fresh ideas, stunning photography and great illustrations. The team drew on the work of leading archaeologists and rock art researchers to describe a time and tradition far removed from today. The comprehensive resource is designed to provide background information and learning suggestions for teachers and practitioners to pass on to their learners. A fresh take on a fascinating subject, this resource will be of interest to teachers, archaeological educators and anyone with an interest in the presentation and interpretation of our ancient past. Like rings around a cupmark, the archaeology of Atlantic rock art is made of layers of evidence, analysis and interpretation. Each needs the others to make sense of the whole. Using advanced digital techniques our team were able to properly study and record rock art from several Scottish locations to enhance our understanding of this period in time. By studying and thinking about how rock art connects both within itself and with the natural world, we can explore the cultural ideas and meanings behind the abstract motifs and beautiful designs.

Review and analysis of the setting of the Neolithic monuments that make up the Orkney World Heritage Site to inform planning and management. Blended landscape archaeology, landscape architecture and GIS analysis to inform long term planning and management. Commissioned by Historic Scotland. Document informed later Management Plan and other local planning documents. Note: co-authors not currently on Academia.edu

O ver the last 25 years, research in British prehistory and in archaeology more broadly has clearly undergone a number of significant changes. It is not difficult to point to major shifts in the ways that we understand, approach, generate and record our data, or to important organizational, social and political upheavals. The number of people working in archaeology has increased hugely over this period, as have the roles that people play, and the relationships they build in producing archaeological knowledge. In the light of these substantial developments, it is perhaps surprising that few (if any) attempts have been made to produce an integrated narrative of this very important period in archaeology's history. Authoritative accounts have been presented of many of the theoretical, technological, organizational and methodological changes which have characterized the era (e.g. . However, these are typically produced in separate publications, with little endeavour being made to seek the interconnections between different aspects of these developments. Moreover, there has 80 Engaging with Change: Recent Transformations in British Prehistoric Research Practices A r c h a e o l o g i c a l R e v i e w f r o m C a m b r i d g e 2 3 . 1 : 7 9 -9 6

1997

Reports a site consisting of the remains of several structures, possibly small houses, and various pits and post-holes. Finds included a small assemblage of Grooved Ware which had been deposited in pits. This material, and the presence of cremated human bone in one of the Grooved Ware pits probably represents ritual activity on the site. A series of six radiocarbon dates was obtained, suggesting a sequence of activity stretching from the mid-fourth to the mid-third millennium BC. There are specialist reports on: `Ceramics' by Andrew Jones (89--96); `Flaked stone objects' (96--100) and `Coarse stone tools' (100--1), both by Tony Pollard; cup marked stones; `Burnt bone' by Jacqueline I McKinley (103); `Micromorphological analysis' by Stephen Carter (103--5); `Phosphate and magnetic susceptibility surveys' by Iain Banks (105--7); and finally, `Plant remains' by Sheila Boardman (107--9).

2013. ‘Experience and perception of memorable places and mapping the regional British Neolithic.’ In D. Gheorghiu and G. Nash eds., Place as Material Culture: Objects, Geographies and the Construction of Time, 86-122. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press., 2013

Three components are critical in understanding the human experience and meaning of regionally diverse Neolithic settlement patterns: artefacts, place and space. Space can be viewed as a context - the physical - the site and landscape or as human agency, a socially constructed world (Tilley 1994). Time is also worthy of consideration when thinking about a peopled landscape. However, archaeological time may be deemed too abstract, a framework obscuring understanding. A more useful concept is generational time: the inference of people’s perception of place as a signature constructed from episodic visits, abandonment and revisits over generations (Bond 2004a). These themes will be addressed in this chapter exploring what it meant to those who created earlier Neolithic and later Neolithic lithic scatters in two comparative regional topographies: the British Somerset Levels and the East Anglian Fen-edge.

Over the past decade, event-based narratives have become a norm in discussions of the British Neolithic. Statistical analyses of radiocarbon dates, combined with a detailed approach to individual contexts, have produced chronological resolutions that have enabled a greater understanding of the construction and use of some monuments. While these have been informative, they sometimes manifest exclusionary nomenclature, with terms such as ‘outliers' and ‘residuality' applied to data that does not agree with other data. In addition, theoretical approaches have seen a similar turn to examine individual contexts and artefacts with which to describe Neolithic life. This paper argues that the current dominance of event-based narratives, extrapolated from small-scale action, is inadvertently ignoring evidence of wider cultural understandings. In particular, evidence of the deliberate inclusion of already old bone in Neolithic deposits has been identified. It is argued that this bone represents a particular past focus on already old material that may have had social currency in British Neolithic symbolic practices.