Synopsis
Berkeley Castle Tales presents the outcomes of the 15-year-long University of Bristol excavations and landscape research at the Berkeley Castle estate in South Gloucestershire. The project, which in 2016 won the prestigious Current Archaeology award for the Archaeology Project of the Year, aimed at writing, through material culture and extensive archival and geophysical research, the narrative behind the construction of Berkeley Castle, the corresponding town, and the area of the Severn valley that overlooks the borders with Wales. By combining the results of archaeological fieldwork with information contained in the castle's impressive collection of 20,000 historical documents, the project adds greatly to our knowledge and understanding of the early medieval period and the subsequent changes in landscape and society that occurred with the coming of the Normans, with the erection of a castle on the former minster site. Throughout the publication the advances that the Berkeley Castle project offered to archaeological practice, to excavation and geophysics methodology, and to the community and public archaeology are evident, since the editors intend the volume to be a milestone not only for the study of a castle landscape but also for archaeological method and practice.
About the Author
Stuart J Prior is Reader in Archaeological Practice at the University of Bristol. His research focuses on medieval archaeology and castle studies, while he also has interests in ancient technology, warfare, and experimental archaeology. He was the director of the Berkeley Castle Project between 2005 and 2019. Mark Horton is Director of Research at the Royal Agricultural University. He has an interest in field methods in archaeology, especially in extreme and difficult environments. His fieldwork extends to East Africa, Sri Lanka, Mongolia, the Caribbean, Panama, Eastern US, France and the UK. He was the co-director of the Berkeley Castle Project between 2005 and 2019. Konstantinos P. Trimmis is Lecturer in Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Bristol. He is interested in landscape archaeology methods for the study of human societies past and present, and has conducted archaeological fieldwork in Greece, Croatia, and the UK. He was the geomatics specialist for the Berkeley Castle Project between 2018 and 2019 and is currently managing the curation and archiving of BCP data.
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