This book provides a bird’s-eye look at the monumental achievements of Britain’s earliest inhabitants. Britain had been occupied by prehistoric communities for over half a million years before the Roman Conquest. During this time many changes were wrought in the landscape, some of them so indelibly scored that they are still visible today. The unique bird’s-eye perspective offered by the aerial camera brings to life many of the familiar sites and monuments that prehistoric communities built, and exposes to view many thousands of sites that simply cannot be seen at ground level because they have become buried or levelled by centuries of ploughing and cultivation. In this book, Timothy Darvill introduces the ways in which aerial photographs reveal traces of the prehistoric past, illustrating and describing a wide selection of archaeological sites and landscapes, and, for the first time, applying social archaeology to the field of aerial photography.
• Highly illustrated with the very best aerial photographs of a wide selection of prehistoric monuments • Interesting thematic arrangement which provides discussion of changing approaches and trends • This is the first extensive application of social archaeology to the field of aerial photography, emphasising the three interconnected dimensions of space, time, and society
Contents
Preface and acknowledgements; Glossary; List of photographs; 1. Prehistory from the air; 2. Hunting, gathering and fishing communities; 3. Camps and gathering places; 4. Farmsteads and fields; 5. Villages and towns; 6. Forts and strongholds; 7. Frontiers, boundaries and trackways; 8. Tombs, burial grounds and cemeteries; 9. Ritual and ceremonial monuments; 10. Industrial sites; 11. Mounds, rings and hill-figures; 12. Continuity and change: prehistory and the landscape; Notes; Sources and references; Index.
Review
‘Timothy Darvill demonstrates the value of aerial photography in social archaeology throughout, and the candid style of the text thoroughly complements the visual impact of the images … anyone with an interest in the prehistory of Britain will marvel at this wonderful collection of photographs and ideas.’ 3rd Stone
Printer friendly version
Email a colleague