Continental Connections: Exploring cross-channel relationships - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1782978097 ISBN 13: 9781782978091

Publisher: Oxbow Books, 2015

Synopsis

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 neighborly 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.

Table of Contents

1. Continental connections: introduction
Duncan Garrow & Fraser Sturt

2. From sea to land and back again: understanding the shifting character of Europe’s landscapes and seascapes over the last million years
Fraser Sturt

3. Attitudes and latitudes to seafaring in prehistoric Atlantic Europe
Robert Van De Noort

4. Britain and Ireland inside Mesolithic Europe
Graeme Warren

5. Seaways and shared ways: imagining and imaging the movement of people, objects and ideas over the course of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition, c. 5000-3500 BC
Hugo Anderson-Whymark & Duncan Garrow

6. Parallel Lives? Neolithic funerary monuments and the Channel divide
Chris Scarre

7. What was and what would never be: changing patterns of interaction and archaeological visibility across North West Europe from 2500 to 1500 cal. BC
Neil Wilkin & Marc Vander Linden

8. Rethinking Iron Age connections across the Channel and North Sea
Leo Webley

9. Connections and separation? Narratives of Iron Age art in Britain and its relationship with the Continent
Jody Joy

10. Continental connections: concluding discussion
Fraser Sturt & Duncan Garrow

About this title

About the Author

Hugo Anderson-Whymark is a Researcher at the University of York, based in Stromness, Orkney. He is a prehistorian specialising in flint and stone artefacts.

Duncan Garrow is a lecturer in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Reading. He specialises in European prehistory (with a particular focus on Britain) and archaeological theory.

Fraser Sturt is a senior lecturer in the Department of Archaeology at Southampton University specialising in maritime prehistory and geoarchaeology.

Review

This really is a highly recommended, must-read volume that moves the debate forward in interesting directions. * Landscape History *

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1782978097
• ISBN 13: 9781782978091
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 176
• Editor: Anderson-Whymark Hugo, Garrow Duncan, Sturt Fraser