Sublime

The famous burial of a man known as the Amesbury Archer, not far from Stonehenge, is a case in point.2 His grave, which has been radiocarbon dated to between 2470 and 2280 BC, was carefully arranged with five complete Beaker pots, a large collection of fine flint and polished stone objects, and no fewer than three copper daggers, plus a pair of gol

During the following hundred years further excavations took place in the Paviland caves, and it became accepted that the Red Lady was a Palaeolithic man, and the first human fossil ever known to science.

Archaeologists approach prehistory through studying pottery, metalwork, flints, bones and other things that survive in the drier conditions found on most archaeological sites. But if through great good fortune you are able to work with waterlogged organic material, such as wood, you soon find yourself taking a rather different position from your co

In 1908, a Neanderthal skeleton was discovered during excavations of a cave in the Bouffia Bonneval, in La Chapelle-aux-Saints in southern France. The skeleton was fairly complete – the skull, most of the spine, some ribs, the long bones of the arms and legs, and some of the hand and foot bones, were there. The skull is ‘classic’ Neanderthal, with

The Amesbury Archer lived in a time when metal was brand new in northwest Europe. His copper knives and gold ornaments are the earliest known pieces of metal in Britain.

At Floreşti, on a tributary of the Seret River, the remains of a late Linear Pottery homestead, radiocarbon dated about 5200–5100 BCE, consisted of a single house with associated garbage pits, set in a clearing in an oak-elm forest—tree pollen was 43% of all pollen. Stratified above it was a late Pre-Cucuteni III village, dated about 4300 BCE, with

Archaeologists have seen how the flattish hierarchies of the fifth century, reflected in modest architectural and material displays of rank and wealth in cemeteries and settlements, became more differentiated during the following century. At settlements like Mucking and West Stow, where social rank was at first expressed within households, dominant

the population in Britain’s various regions had been steadily growing since the arrival of farming around 4000 BC.