The University of Sheffield

Department Member, Archaeology

Other Affiliations: Gwent- Glamorgan Archaeological Trust, Arfordir Coastal Archaeology
Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery, Human History
University College London, Institute of Archaeology

Lithic analyst and doctoral researcher

Thesis Title: Technology, chronology and archaeology: Lithic reduction and landscape organisation on late Neolithic and Bronze Age Dartmoor, southwest England

About

Having taught and developed learning programmes at Sheffield,  I'm now completing a doctorate on the organisation of later prehistoric Dartmoor; the most extensive and enigmatic archaeological landscape in Europe.  I also provide consultancy services to Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery. 

My thesis is developing a mathematical technique for characterising the trajectories of technical organisation that are preserved in Neolithic and Bronze Age lithics.  It also weaves the findings from these discoveries into critical narratives on agricultural adoption and the development of Bronze Age society. 

The entire region of Dartmoor is littered with some of the richest and most expansive archaeology to survive later prehistory. The landscape is inundated with standing ceremonial centres, settlement patterns and the remains of widespread prehistoric land-division.    It was one of the few regions to bear the tin that fuelled the cross-channel Bronze Age.  Dartmoor also commanded the land bearing and maritime trade routes over which ancient industry, exchange and culture flourished. 

Yet, our understanding of this enormously important and dynamic region is dominated by the grids of prehistoric enclosure that survive, so prominently, across its surface.  The chronology of the entire region rests on the mid-2nd millennium BC date for their layout, which is claimed to have been relatively synchronous, taking place over a single horizon.  This is a sequence that is also used to explain the arrival of agriculture and the appearance of divided landscapes across Bronze Age Europe.  However, less is known about the chronology and organisation of Dartmoor's alignments than we generally consider.  While widely accepted, the evidence supporting their dating is inadequate and little light has been cast on field-system sequence or broader chronologies in  recent research.

Moreover, these perspectives overlook the later prehistoric lithic technology that was deposited across the region and its pevidence of  occupational organisation between the late 3rd and 2nd millennia BC.  The circulation  of  lithic material, the spatial organisation of reduction and the efficiency, or expediency, of tool curation tell us much about community organisation in the landscape, in terms of the degree of mobility, the permanence of tasks allocation and developing commitment to place. Lithics also offer a  broad chronology for these historical processes.  Yet, their potential to cast light on the spread of enclosure has not been tested.  Nor has their capability to connect such developments to the technological transformations that were so important to the emergence of these landscapes' buildings, enclosures and ritual centres. 

Funded by the University of Sheffield, this research has three aims to: i) to map traditions in the organisation of tool reduction; ii) to characterise the mobility / sedentism of knappers, and iii) to use the chronologies and organisational regimes described to build on current explanations for the regional cultural sequence.

Collections have been carefully sampled from the variety of landscape categories known to comprise Dartmoor's Bronze Age agricultural landscape.  Recording from zones such as Shovel Down, Shaugh Moor, Legis Tor, Greyhound Marsh, Merripit, Stickepath, Brownberry and Fernworthy is complete. 

I'm now pioneering leading techniques in lithic analysis (mathematical modelling and multivariate analysis) to elucidate patterning in the collections, observe the drivers behind their formation and discern the organisational trajectories into which they resolved.

The project is situated in a historically contingent perspective on human experience and landscape.  Findings are being populated and interrogated in a regional GIS and published in leading journals.