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The settlement at Bornais consists of a complex of mounds which protrude from the machair plain on the island of South Uist. The excavation of the settlement is a long-term project which has been going since 1994. This volume examines mound 1, thought to have been occupied from the late Bronze Age.
This report discusses the results of a programme of research in 1985 and 1986 into the history of the hillfort of Maiden Castle.
This excavation report is important for understanding the Early Historic Settlement of the Northern Isles. It contains results and analysis from the 1989-90 excavations on a ridge overlooking Scalloway on Shetland. They revealed a pattern of intense activity since the 1st century BC, and prior evidence of a cremation burial, probably Bronze Age. Successive phases of occupation were identified into the medieval period, including a broch occupied up to the 8th century, which seems to have been a mixed farming community which practised metalwork. No Viking settlement was found on site, but finds suggest one to have been situated nearby. A shortlived cemetery, probably medieval, and the 17th-century site which continues in use today complete the picture.
When we think of archaeology, most of us think first of its many spectacular finds: the legendary city of Troy, Tutankhamun's golden tomb, the three-million-year-old footprints at Laetoli, the mile-high city at Machu Picchu, the cave paintings at Lascaux. But as marvelous as these discoveries are, the ultimate goal of archaeology, and of archaeologists, is something far more ambitious. Indeed, it is one of humanity's great quests: to recapture and understand our human past, across vast stretches of time, as it was lived in every corner of the globe. Now, in The Oxford Companion to Archaeology, readers have a comprehensive and authoritative overview of this fascinating discipline, in a book t...
The settlement at Bornais in the Western Isles of Scotland is one of the largest rural settlements known from the Norse period in Britain. It spans the period from the fifth to the fifteenth century AD when the Atlantic seaboard was subject to drastic changes. The islands were systematically ravaged by Viking raiders and then colonised by Norse settlers. In the following centuries the islanders were central to the emergence of the Kingdom of Man and the Isles, played a crucial role in the development of the Lordship of the Isles and were finally assimilated into the Kingdom of Scotland. This volume explores the stratigraphic sequence uncovered by the excavation of Bornais mounds 2 and 2A. Th...
Britain's pagan past, with its astonishing number and variety of mysterious monuments, atmospheric sites, enigmatic artefacts, bloodthirsty legends and cryptic inscriptions, has always enthralled and perplexed us. 'Pagan Britain' is a history of religious beliefs from the Old Stone Age to the coming of Christianity. This ambitious book integrates the latest evidence to survey our transformed - and transforming - understanding of early religious behaviour; and, also, the way in which that behaviour has been interpreted in recent times, as a mirror for modern dreams and fears. From the Palaeolithic era to the coming of Christianity and beyond, Hutton reveals the long development, rapid suppression and enduring cultural significance of paganism. Woven into the chronological narrative are numerous case studies of sacred sites both well-known - Stonehenge, Avebury, Seahenge and Maiden Castle - and more unusual far-flung locations across the mainland and coastal islands.
This study documents excavations by Peter Gelling of Prehistoric, Pictish, Viking and later remains at Skaill from 1963-1981. The earliest evidence of occupation was provided by ard-marks cut into the subsoil, which relate to cultivation in the Early-Middle Bronze Age. Two stone-built structures were also found, dating to the Late Bronze Age.