Review articles
Rescuing and publishing archaeology in
Uppland, Sweden
Ole Grøn∗
NIKLAS STEINBÄCK (ed.). Stenåldern i Uppland:
uppdragsarkeologi och eftertanke [The Stone Age
in Uppland: rescue archaeology and afterthought]
(Arkeologi E4 Uppland–studier, volym 1). 560 pages,
numerous colour & b&w illustrations and tables.
2007. Uppsala: Riksantikvarieämbetet 978-91-7209-
465-9; Societas Archeologica Uppsaliensis 978-91-
976723-0-6; Upplandmuseet 978-91-85618-91-0
hardback.
MICHEL NOTELID (ed.). Att nå den andra sidan: om
begravning och ritual i Uppland [Reaching the other
side: burial and ritual in Uppland] (Arkeologi E4
Uppland–studier, volym 2). 538 pages, numerous
colour & b&w illustrations and tables. 2007.
Uppsala: Riksantikvarieämbetet 978-91-7209-466-6;
Societas Archeologica Uppsaliensis 978-91-976723-
1-3; Upplandmuseet 978-91-85618-92-7 hardback.
HANS GÖTHBERG (ed.). Hus och bebyggelse i Uppland:
delar av förhistoriska sammanhang [House and settle-
ment in Uppland: fragments of prehistoric context]
(Arkeologi E4 Uppland–studier, volym 3). 472 pages,
numerous colour & b&w illustrations and tables.
2007. Uppsala: Riksantikvarieämbetet 978-91-7209-
467-3; Societas Archeologica Uppsaliensis 978-91-
976723-2-0; Upplandmuseet 978-91-85618-93-4
hardback.
EVA HJÄRTHNER-HOLDAR, HÅKEN RANHEDEN &
ANTON SEILER (ed.). Land och samhälle i förändring:
Uppländska bygder i ett långtidsperspektiv [Land and
society in transformation: Uppland settlements in
a long-term perspective] (Arkeologi E4 Uppland–
studier, volym 4). 778 pages, numerous colour
& b&w illustrations and tables. 2007. Up-
psala: Riksantikvarieämbetet 978-91-7209-478-9;
Societas Archeologica Uppsaliensis 978-91-97672-
3-7; Upplandmuseet 978-91-85618-94-0 hardback.
EVA HJÄRTHNER-HOLDAR, THOMAS ERIKSSON &
ANNA ÖSTLING (ed.). Mellan himmel och jord:
Ryssgärdet, en guldskimrande bronseåldersmiljö i
∗
Langelands Museum, Jens Winthersvej 12, 5900 Rudkøbing, Denmark (Email: olegron.lmr@gmail)
ANTIQUITY 83 (2009): 1176–1178
1176
centrala Uppland [Between Heaven and Earth:
Ryssgärdet, a golden Bronze Age environment in
central Uppland] (Arkeologi E4 Uppland–studier,
volym 5). 556 pages, numerous colour & b&w
illustrations and tables. 2008. Uppsala: Riksantik-
varieämbetet 978-91-7209-479-6 hardback.
NICLAS BJÖRCK & EVA HJÄRTHNER-HOLDAR (ed.).
Mellan hav och skog: Högmossen, en stenåldersmiljö vid
en skimrande strand i Norra Uppland [Between sea
and forest: Högmossen, a Stone Age environment
at a glistening beach in Norra Uppland] (Arkeologi
E4 Uppland–studier, volym 6). 416 pages, numerous
colour & b&w illustrations and tables, CD-ROM.
2008. Uppsala: Riksantikvarieämbetet 978-91-7209-
498-7 hardback.
Strategy for dissemination of results obtained through
‘rescue’ (developer-led or contract) excavation
is a theme of in-
creasing importance
in archaeology. Be-
cause rescue excava-
tions are funded by
private and public
money it is impor-
tant that the results
are disseminated in
a way that makes
it possible for pri-
vate funders and
the public alike to
understand how exciting the results are. This may
demand that the funders invest in proper research-
based processing of the data as a basis for their
popular publication since technical archaeological
reports and colourful publications of a stereotypical
and repetitive character do not really convey the
message to non-specialists in the long run. Because the
majority of archaeological features excavated today
are investigated as part of rescue archaeology it is
 Review
equally essential that the research results obtained are
presented in a way that makes them useful to the
professional archaeological audience.
Arkeologi E4 Uppland-studier is the presentation of
results obtained through rescue campaigns carried
out in relation with the building of approximately
100km of motorway to the North-Northwest of
Uppsala in Sweden in the period 1995-2006. The
published work is impressive in size, consisting of six
A4-sized ‘bricks’ of about 400 to 800 pages each –
all between hard covers and of high graphical quality.
Its 136 contributions cover all thematic areas, from
general theoretical perspectives to concrete results
of local material-related analyses, organised in 25
sections. The six volumes are written in Swedish
but contain translations of the captions into English
in all six volumes and short English summaries
in the first four volumes. Unfortunately these are
absent from the last two. The work contains a large
amount of results of wide interest, briefly summarised
here:
Volume 1, ‘The Stone Age in Uppland: rescue
archaeology and afterthought’, contains results
concerning the organisation and interpretation of the
settlements; quartzite extraction and manufacturing
technology; Early Neolithic flint blade production;
Neolithic pottery style and use; Neolithic excavation
methodology; waste disposal behaviour on Neolithic
coastal sites; and clarification of the role and function
of local artefact types.
Volume 2, ‘Reaching the other side: burial and ritual
in Uppland’, has several contributions discussing
the concept of archaeological burial on the basis of
missing bodies (such as conditions of preservation,
cenotaphs or cremation practices) which focus on
the Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age; ritual and grave
structures on Neolithic sites and related ideological
dynamics; mound types and the prehistoric idea of
burial mounds; burial customs and the language of
burial rituals including the prehistoric robbing of
graves seen as related to reincarnation; the Viking
Age and medieval reclaiming of earlier burial grounds;
the use of cereal grains in Bronze Age ritual; Bronze
Age roads – cul-de-sacs – leading to ritual sites; the
continuity of cemeteries in relation to the continuity
of local settlements; and prehistoric offerings in the
post holes of houses.
Volume 3, ‘House and settlement in Uppland:
fragments of prehistoric contexts’, comprises
contributions on houses, other settlement structures
1177
and settlement organisation from the Mesolithic
to the medieval period including Early Iron Age
latrines, analysis of geochemical traces and plant
material from settlements.
Volume 4’s title is ‘Land and society in transforma-
tion: Uppland settlements in a long-term perspective’.
Here the settlements and communities from the dif-
ferent prehistoric phases and their changing cultural
and environmental context, available resources and
economy are studied not only from the archaeological
traces left behind but also from the perspective of
work on the vegetation, sea level changes, insect
remains from wells, osteology, place names and
natural transportation routes. One section is devoted
to the remains of recent charcoal production.
Volume 5, ‘Between Heaven and Earth: Ryssgärdet a
golden Bronze Age environment in central Uppland’,
consists of a study of the Late Neolithic–Roman Iron
Age settlement at Ryssgärdet and its organisation:
house types, graves, hearths, pits, waste disposal, gold
objects and weight systems are presented, together
with analyses of the bronze, gold, lithics and the
ceramic sherds and their organic content. Further
studies include osteology, analyses of the pollen and
crops, rock art, and the ritual and cosmological
implications of the Ryssgärdet cemetery and cult site.
Volume 6, ‘Between sea and forest: Högmossen,
a Stone Age environment at a glistening beach in
Norra Uppland’ is the study of the Neolithic coastal
site of Högmossen which examines its socio-spatial
organisation, and social and natural environment,
i.e. the dwellings, graves, waste disposal, osteological
and vegetable materials, ceramics, clay types and
distribution patterns.
The six volumes together show the opportunity
offered by the construction of a new motorway, where
a large amount of incoming archaeological data is used
to update the archaeology of Uppland and integrate
it into a national and partly international perspective.
There is a strong focus on understanding the cultural
elements within a landscape context, such as ritual
sites and cemeteries, settlements and their spatial
organisation, and economy and relationships to the
Review
prehistoric infrastructure.
The work reflects a Swedish archaeology that is
moving forward and striking a fine balance between
registered archaeological facts and a well-informed
theoretical/hypothetical stance. Some theoretical
contributions appear a little misplaced, such as, for
instance, the paper by Jan Apel (Vol.1. p. 31) which
 Review
postulates the existence of two ‘cultural traditions’
of pressure flaking of points, both observable in
the Swedish material and both originating in the
eastern Mediterranean around 5400 cal BC and
9000 cal BC respectively. But in general there is
a fine understanding of the importance of spiritual
and ideological aspects of the prehistoric societies
studied which avoids turning the archaeological
interpretations into neo-shamanistic nightmares. The
archaeological material is respected and incorporated
into realistic cultural models or reconstructions. Large
amounts of samples have been analysed to facilitate a
reasonable reconstruction of the relation between the
environmental dynamics and the cultural phenomena
and processes in focus. The results of this large-scale
research-based rescue operation are impressive!
Despite its interesting content, the work suffers from
a series of structural or editorial problems that make
it difficult to understand exactly what its aim is and
which user group is targeted. A decision in 2005,
by the county authorities involved, to publish four
volumes with ‘in-depth papers’ (1-4 in the series) and
two monographs on the specific sites of Högmossen
and Ryssgärdet (5-6), but to publish the primary
data and a large part of the analyses in separate
reports, seems to have placed the six volumes between
two chairs. Although the graphics are of very high
quality, the work is too large as well as thematically
and organisationally too complex to serve as popular
dissemination of these exciting archaeological results.
On the other hand its lack of documentation (the
primary data being published elsewhere) and lack
of referencing at the level expected from a scientific
publication makes it difficult to use as such. Excellent
graphics in nice colours and beautiful landscape
images are not a useful substitute.
For the brave reader, fighting his or her way through
the six heavy volumes, it is discouraging to meet
re-circulation of the data presented in different
sections. An example is the way different aspects
of the Neolithic site of Högmossen – a highly
interesting site whose spatial organisation, which
includes a line of dwellings and related activity areas
along an old shore line, can be recognised – are
1178
dealt with in a number of separate but overlapping
contributions: Vol.1. p. 467 (in a paper by Frederik
Larsson about waste deposal); Vol.3. p. 19 (in a paper
by Niclas Björck about Neolithic settlements with a
detailed publication of its dwelling structures); Vol.4.
p. 229 (in a paper by Niclas Björck again about
Uppland in the Stone Age, including its Neolithic
society); and then in Vol.6. which is a monograph of
the excavations in the Högmossen area.
Of course repeated presentations of the same data
in different thematic contexts may be relevant, but
one is left with the feeling that proper editing –
including a serious thematic re-organisation of the
whole thing – could have reduced the work to
one popular presentational and easy-to-understand
volume with the conclusions and the choice finds of
the campaign highlighted – in Swedish; and parallel
to that a number of focused and comprehensive
scientific publications with the heavier analysis and
documentation in a series of not necessarily colourful
volumes – in English. A large part of the material and
results presented in ‘Arkeologi E4 Uppland’ deserves
a coherent scientific publication in a language that
makes it accessible to researchers outside Sweden.
The six-volume Arkeologi E4 Uppland-studier series is
interesting because it demonstrates that the addition
of a proper research element to the processing of the
products of rescue archaeology can produce highly
interesting scientific results that could, if presented
in the right way, fascinate and attract the public
and maybe even demonstrate to public authorities
and private companies responsible for funding such
investigations that they are worth it. But the present
work also demonstrates the importance of a well
planned dissemination strategy with a clear distinc-
tion between different user groups. The work can be
strongly recommended to a large number of special-
ists: those with a professional interest in settlement
studies, especially Stone Age settlement studies; those
studying Bronze Age ritual sites and burial customs;
and those engaged with cultural landscape dynamics.
They will have to be fluent in Swedish and have the pa-
tience and capacity to put together intellectual jigsaw
puzzles.
 Review
Early Eurasia: pattern and process
among pastoralists
Adam T. Smith∗
E.E. KUZMINA, edited by VICTOR H. MAIR. The
prehistory of the Silk Road. xii+248 pages, 72
figures, tables. 2008. Philadelphia (PA): University
of Pennsylvania Press; 978-0-8122-4041-2 $65 &
£42.50.
MICHAEL D. FRACHETTI. Pastoralist landscapes and
social interaction in Bronze Age Eurasia. xviii+214
pages, 53 illustrations. 2008. Berkeley & Los Angeles
(CA): University of California Press; 978-0-520-
25689-7 hardback £26.95.
Over the last three years, the archaeology of
Bronze Age Eurasia has witnessed an explosion of
accomplished, syn-
thetic books in-
tended for English-
speaking audiences
– the fruit of
almost two decades
of collaborative re-
search since the
emergence of the region’s independent states.
Monographs by Anthony (2007), Kohl (2007) and
Koryakova & Epimakhov (2007), as well as edited
volumes by Peterson et al. (2006), Popova et al.
(2007), Linduff & Rubinson (2008) and Hanks &
Linduff (in press) provide not only scholarly
discussions of a complex archaeological region, but
also a palpable sense of a field in the midst of a
substantive intellectual transition. On the one hand,
the robust interpretive apparatus established by the
Soviet (now Russian) archaeological school continues
to play a critical role in contemporary research,
a perspective most clearly visible in an emphasis
on the historically determinative role of productive
economies and an attention to tracking formal artefact
variation as evidence of culture groups and their
migratory paths. On the other hand, the waxing
influence of Anglo-American social archaeology can
be seen in studies of social heterogeneity and the more
micro-scale analytics that such thematic interests
require. While this transformation is clearly part of
∗
Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, 1126 E. 59th St., Chicago IL 60637, USA (Email:
atsmith@uchicago.edu)
ANTIQUITY 83 (2009): 1179–1182
1179
a wider shift, Eurasia is quite unique in that both
perspectives tend to thread their way through the
work of local and foreign scholars alike, one result of
research projects that are truly collaborative.
The two works under review here succinctly capture
this complex intellectual terrain. Elena Kuzmina’s The
prehistory of the Silk Road is a solid introduction
to the region by a distinguished scholar trained in
the Soviet school. The geographic reach of the work
is vast, embracing the entirety of central Eurasia
from the Pontic Steppe to eastern Central Asia. The
interpretive aspirations of the work are comparably
modest, restricted largely to the familiar spheres of
productive and trade economies situated within an
account of shifting ecological conditions. In contrast,
Michael Frachetti’s Pastoralist landscapes and social
interaction is a work by a member of a new generation
of American archaeologists who come to the region
from traditions of anthropological inquiry. Although
the broad context of the book is the Eurasian
continental space, the focal point of investigation
is restricted to eastern Kazakhstan. However,
the more limited geographic scope of Frachetti’s
analysis allows for a more extensive interpretive
agenda.
The Silk Road
Kuzmina opens her book with a brief historical
introduction to the Silk Road. These overland
exchange networks connecting China to western Asia
and Europe were under development as early as
the second century BC when the Han dynasty sent
emissaries into Central Asia to cultivate commercial
ties with Bactria, Ferghana and the Parthian Empire.
However, as Kuzmina notes, there is some evidence of
Review
much earlier long-distance exchanges that articulated
the Steppe and Central Asia: trade relationships that
brought, for example, lapis lazuli from Afghanistan to
the Urals and Bactrian turquoise to Siberia. Kuzmina’s
 Review
argument is that Bronze Age inter-regional connec-
tions, made possible by economies committed to mo-
bile lifeways and critical technologies like the chariot
and the camel, paved the way for the Silk Road.
Chapter 1 examines the ecology of the Eurasian
Steppe, working through current understandings of
palaeoclimatic fluctuations from the Neolithic to the
end of the Bronze Age. These climatic shifts are, for
Kuzmina, the motor of Steppe history, provoking
large-scale social transformations by forcing either
migrations to more favourable environments or
‘economic and cultural adaptations’ (p. 17) to
new climatic regimes. The author’s commitment to
ecological determinism is consistent throughout the
book, reflecting a key tenet of later Soviet archaeology.
Chapters 2 and 3 offer a summary of the economic
shifts that reshaped the societies of the Ponto-
Caspian Steppe from the Neolithic to the Bronze
Age in response to environmental shifts. Kuzmina
charts five key transformations in Steppe subsistence,
from small-scale mixed farming to extensive mobile
pastoralism. The majority of this narrative strays
rather far from long-distance exchange relationships,
but serves to establish the foundations of a regional
economy centred on mobility and possessed of
technologies that made long-distance movements of
both goods and people possible.
Chapter 4 regrettably abandons the unifying
economic prehistory of earlier chapters in favour
of an extended list of Central Asia’s primary
archaeological cultures. Kuzmina’s agenda here is
to set out the key culture groups that provide the
critical linkages between Central Asia and the Steppe.
But the list is not particularly effective in providing
a coherent sense of how the pieces fit together as
elements of a primordial Silk Road.
Chapter 5 is the capstone chapter, summarising the
archaeological and historical evidence for Bronze Age
relations between China and the Eurasian Steppe
across Central Asia. It describes various normative,
highly ethnicised archaeological cultures migrating
across the region and establishing ‘cultural relations’
with one another. However, these Bronze Age inter-
actions appear to differ substantially from the socio-
economic phenomena captured by the term ‘Silk
Road’. The latter was a complex network of routes for
the movement of goods across large distances carried
through locally mediated exchanges that allowed value
to be transformed with each shift in social, cultural
and political context. Kuzmina’s prehistoric Silk Road
1180
is really neither a road nor about silk or any other
commodity. It is instead a vague set of cultural
encounters made by peoples committed to mobility
along well-worn routes, but not driven by partici-
pation in an emergent commodity economy. While
Kuzmina provides a very useful account of long-term
shifts in Eurasia’s subsistence economy, the argument
that this constitutes a prehistory for later exchange
networks is not convincing. While there is no doubt
that long distance exchanges took place in the Bronze
Age, often over routes that would later become part
of the Silk Road, to conflate these two phenomena
is to obscure the very different social and economic
forces that motivated and structured exchange.
Even if the central argument fails to persuade, the
book is nevertheless a useful introduction to the
archaeology of Eurasia, a credit to both author and
editor. One missed opportunity in the editing of the
book should be noted. Kuzmina is an accomplished
scholar trained in the Soviet school and the book
could have served as an excellent introduction to one
of world archaeology’s most prominent traditions. So
it is regrettable that Victor Mair chose to camouflage
the particularities of the Soviet archaeological lexicon
through ‘circumlocutions’ (p. viii) in order to avoid
topics that might raise red flags with Western scholars
such as morphological discussions of human physical
types or Marxist-derived terms like ‘productive econ-
omy’. As a result, the work is drained of what might
have been a clear statement on the central themes and
premises of the Soviet tradition as presented by one
of its most distinguished practitioners.
Pastoralist landscapes
Michael Frachetti also opens his study by invoking
the Silk Road, but with quite different interpretive
ambitions. By centring the book on the results of
his fieldwork in Semirech’ye and the Dzhungar
Mountains in eastern Kazakhstan, Frachetti eschews
the broad brush strokes that are the central
preoccupations of most work in Eurasia. Instead, the
author adopts a more intimate scale that allows him to
detail everyday herding strategies which establish the
contexts for social interactions. The central argument
of the book, set out in chapter 1, is that pastoral groups
in central Eurasia were invested in local migrations
that produced bounded socio-economic landscapes.
Such landscapes were constantly re-inscribed by
movements amongst historically enduring places
(p. 30). Frachetti’s introduction makes a spirited
 Review
defence of this scalar shift, overturning the ‘highway
of grass’ model of Eurasia in favour of a complex
mosaic of ‘eco-social spheres or landscapes’ (p. 7) that
empowers local historical processes.
Chapter 2 provides a useful account of the intellectual
and archaeological context of the work, explaining
some of the theoretical framework of (post-)Soviet
archaeology and orienting the reader to regional
trends from the Eneolithic to the Bronze Age.
Chapter 3 presents a detailed account of pastoral
ecology in the eastern Steppe that is both readable
and rigorous. Yet despite its obvious merit, the
chapter stands out from the remainder of the book in
that, as ecology takes centre stage, landscape recedes
from view. Frachetti argues, from the ecological data,
that the area under study has substantial capacities for
pastoral production and can support only small-scale
agriculture, leading to the obvious conclusion that
the region is not just well-suited as pastureland but
optimally exploited by pastoral strategies. This kind
of argument, from a theoretical optimal standpoint
but divorced from particular socio-historical contexts,
is contrary to the more persuasive landscape approach
adopted elsewhere in the book which emphasises
human strategic decision-making.
Chapter 4, which embarks on a comparative ethno-
graphic study of pastoral strategies and the contexts of
social interaction, is one of the book’s more interesting
chapters. Frachetti glosses over the challenges of
making ethnographic analogies too quickly yet avoids
the trap of slotting local pastoralists into a global type
by making the general pattern serve local analytical
interests. The larger point of the chapter is important:
it highlights the historical potency of the ‘coincidental,
opportunistic, or even passively organized interactions’
(p. 122) that framed the social lives of pastoralists in
the Dzhungar Mountains.
Chapter 5 brings us to the data Frachetti collected
during his survey in eastern Kazakhstan, tracking
transformations in site distributions over some 4000
years of regional prehistory. The data are remarkably
rich and testify to the potential of systematic regional
survey in Eurasia. What emerges is a landscape largely
shaped by internal political and social forces. As chap-
ter 6 makes clear, economic decisions loomed quite
large in framing broad site distributions, but Frachetti
opens considerable room for the impact of sacred and
social forces on the landscape. That said, there is some
tension in the analytical results. On the one hand,
there is at times an eternal quality to the local pastoral
landscape of the Dzhungar Mountains, the product
1181
of sedimented practices that ‘reproduce an embedded
sense of social history’ over millennia (p. 172). On the
other hand, Frachetti is clearly aware of the dangers of
reducing the pastoralist landscape to an unchanging
set of people and places removed from history, hence
his focus on key shifts in migratory patterns over
time.
The book concludes by moving to wider Eurasian
phenomena that bear reconsideration in light of the
results obtained from the Dzhungar Mountains. Fra-
chetti singles out the ‘Seima-Turbino phenomenon’
of the Late and Final Bronze Age as particularly open
to re-examination. Here the central issue is the rapid
dispersal of metal objects which originated in the Altai
Mountains to archaeological contexts as distant as
the Urals. Rather than the mass migration suggested
by Chernykh (1992) to explain the phenomenon,
Frachetti proposes that slight shifts in local migration
networks might have created the conditions for new
interaction and exchange networks. The suggestion
is cogently reasoned, and forces us to abandon vague
accounts of cultural interaction or contact to specify
how such encounters took place.
In sum, both books provide important insights into
the current state of Eurasian archaeology. Frachetti’s
book is a thoughtful study that augurs important
transformations in the intellectual focus of the field.
It is appropriate for both scholars of the region and
students looking for an orientation to the eastern
Steppe, as well as for archaeologists and ethnographers
interested in pastoralism more generally. Kuzmina’s
book is a valuable introduction for students looking
for a well-defined summary of the critical phases in
the development of Eurasia’s prehistoric economy, but
is less convincing as an argument for a primordial Silk
Road. In fact, it is Frachetti’s book which, perhaps
inadvertently, makes the more compelling case for
a prehistoric Silk Road by clearly defining the socio-
economic practices that articulated distinct pastoral
groups within a wider sphere of exchange relations.
Both Kuzmina’s continental-scale prehistory and
Frachetti’s detailed local models advance the
conversation and the two works together signal
that the archaeology of Eurasia is in the midst of a
Review
vibrant era.
References
ANTHONY, D.W. 2007. The horse, the wheel, and
language: how Bronze-Age riders from the Eurasian
steppes shaped the modern world. Princeton (NJ):
Princeton University Press.
 Review
CHERNYKH, E.N. 1992. Ancient metallurgy in the USSR:
the early metal age. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
HANKS, B. & K. LINDUFF (ed.). In press. Social
complexity in prehistoric Eurasia. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
KOHL, P.L. 2007. The making of Bronze Age Eurasia.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
KORYAKOVA, L.N. & A.V. EPIMAKHOV. 2007. The Urals
and western Siberia in the Bronze and Iron Ages.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
New light on early Insular monasteries
Tomás Ó Carragáin∗
HEATHER F. JAMES & PETER YEOMAN with numerous
contributors. Excavations at St Ethernan’s monastery,
Isle of May, Fife (Tayside & Fife Archaeological
Committee Monograph 6). xii+220 pages, 103
illustrations, 8 colour plates, 66 tables. 2008. Perth:
Tayside & Fife Archaeological Committee; 1360-
5550 paperback £15.
CHRISTOPHER LOWE. Inchmarnock: an Early Historic
island monastery and its archaeological landscape.
xxii+314 pages, 156 b&w & colour illustrations,
34 tables. 2008. Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of
Scotland; 978-0-903903-37-0 hardback £30 (Fellows
£25).
THOMAS MCERLEAN & NORMAN CROTHERS.
Harnessing the tides: the Early Medieval tide mills
at Nendrum monastery, Strangford Loch. xx+468
pages, 344 b&w & colour illustrations, tables. 2007.
Norwich: Environment & Heritage Service/The
Stationery Office; 978-0-08877-3 hardback £25.
MARTIN CARVER. Portmahomack: monastery of the
Picts. xvi+240 pages, 94 illustrations, 16 colour plates.
2008. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press; 978-
0-7486-2441-6 hardback £75; 978-0-7486-2442-3
paperback £24.99.
The institution of monasticism was instrumental in
the Christianisation of the Insular peoples and in
forging their identities, yet its study poses major
challenges for archaeologists and historians alike.
As historian Colmán Etchingham has concluded, ‘it
cannot be stressed too strongly that the Irish evidence, both
Latin and vernacular, reveals no systematic distinction
∗
Archaeology Department, University College Cork, Ireland (Email: t.ocarragain@ucc.ie)
ANTIQUITY 83 (2009): 1182–1186
1182
LINDUFF, K.M. & K.S. RUBINSON. 2008. Are all
warriors male? Gender roles on the ancient Eurasian
Steppe. Lanham (MD): AltaMira.
PETERSON, D.L., L.M. POPOVA & A.T. SMITH (ed.).
2006. Beyond the steppe and the sown: proceedings of
the 2002 University of Chicago conference on
Eurasian archaeology. Leiden: Brill.
POPOVA, L.M., C.W. HARTLEY & A.T. SMITH. 2007.
Social orders and social landscapes. Newcastle:
Cambridge Scholars.
between monastic and non-monastic churches’ (Church
Organisation in Ireland, AD 650 to 1000, 1999:
457). This accords well with the Irish archaeological
evidence: there is a
wide spectrum of ec-
clesiastical sites, which
are broadly similar in
overall layout (usu-
ally delimited by two
concentric enclosures),
but only a minority
of them were monas-
teries in the primary
sense of the term.
Though abundant ev-
idence for learning,
sculpture with monas-
tic themes and in some cases a deliberately remote
location are suggestive, the surest archaeological
indicator of monasticism is probably segregated
burial. It is only in the last few years that ecclesiastical
cemeteries in Ireland and Scotland have been analysed
to a high enough standard to allow monastic ones
to be identified with certainty (e.g. Illaunloughan,
Co. Kerry). We have barely begun to look beyond
the skin-deep uniformity suggested by the concentric
enclosures to explore the diverse expressions of
monasticism that must surely have existed. The four
excellent books under consideration here bring us
significantly closer to realising this goal. They all
provide fresh insights into several aspects of the
monastic life, and each of them illuminates one aspect
 Review
with particular clarity, be it the role of monasteries
as places of cereal processing (Nendrum), primary
education (Inchmarnock), manuscript production
(Portmahomack) or healing (Isle of May).
The Isle of May
The Isle of May, on the Firth of Forth, is traditionally
known as the burial place of St Ethernan who,
according to an Iona annalist, died ‘among the Picts’ in
AD 669. A Benedictine priory was established there in
1145 and James & Yeoman’s excavations were focused
primarily on the area occupied by the later medieval
church and cloister. They uncovered some evidence
for early medieval farming and metalworking but
within the excavated area evidence for early medieval
occupation was limited, leading them to conclude
that before the tenth century ‘any settlement on the
island was small-scale and probably seasonal’ (p. 174).
One wonders, though, if enough of the site has
been excavated to be confident of this conclusion.
Assuming occupation was seasonal, the community
presumably spent the winter months at a mainland
site such as nearby Kilrenny which is also associated
with St Ethernan (p. 3). It is a pity that a model
along these lines is not developed in this report,
as this would give us a clearer picture of the
relationship of the May to other ecclesiastical sites in
the area.
The excavations uncovered the remains of two stone
churches, probably of tenth- or eleventh-century date,
under the Benedictine one. These in turn may have
replaced one or more wooden churches (pp. 176-7).
The churches and associated cemetery were located on
a raised cobble beach, which had been augmented and
reveted with drystone walling to consolidate it and
to provide further space for burial (p. 173). Among
the earliest burials (fifth to seventh century) was a
cluster of males who may well have been monks.
These graves were not marked with cross-slabs, nor
is there any other sculpture on the island (p. 174).
This does not, of course, undermine the argument
that this was a monastery, for sculpture is absent from
many monasteries, including for example Emly, Co.
Tipperary, chief monastery of the kings of Cashel.
By the eighth century women were also buried in
the cemetery but the overall ratio of men to women
was 4:1. In the case of a disproportionate number
of burials in a seventh- to tenth-century cluster there
was osteological evidence for serious disease, and a
high proportion of later medieval burials also had
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evidence for chronic diseases (pp. 176-7). James &
Yeoman argue that these individuals had come to the
site in search of healing. They make a convincing
case, though it would have been strengthened by a
wider discussion of the role of monasteries (including
Whithorn for example) as centres of physical as well as
spiritual therapy. This is a well produced volume with
very good illustrations and clear colour plans. At one
or two points in the text additional illustrations would
have been welcome: for example a map to illustrate the
excellent discussion of Scottish sites associated with St
Ethernan (pp. 3-4). This is however a minor criticism
of a book which makes an important contribution to
the subject.
Inchmarnock
Moving westwards, Inchmarnock outlines the results
of Chris Lowe’s investigations at a minor island
monastery in the estuary of the river Clyde. The
volume is beautifully designed and handsomely
produced in full colour. The illustrations are superb,
though it would have been nice if more photographs
of the cross-slabs were included. The report includes
a painstaking reconstruction of the pre-improvement
landscape and contains the results of a number of
excavations, including the partial excavation of a
cave which seems to have served as a hermitage (p.
226). The largest trench was at the main monastic
settlement around a ruined Romanesque church. The
outer enclosure (c .50m across) was identified through
geophysical survey and test trenches, and there was
also limited evidence for an inner enclosure separating
the church and cemetery from an iron-working area to
the north. Bone did not survive in most of the early
burials so the proportion of men to women could
not be determined, but there is a vague tradition
of a separate women’s cemetery (p. 257). Quartz
pebbles were found only in later medieval burials,
but the author’s suggestion that this represents a
general pattern is incorrect, for quartz has been found
in early medieval burials at several sites including
Illaunloughan, Co. Kerry and the Isle of May
(James & Yeoman pp. 169 & 176).
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Traces of a single-cell stone church were found
under the Romanesque one (p. 255). There is little
discussion here or in the Isle of May volume about
what the churches at these sites looked like. This
is understandable given that only foundations were
found, but they are unlikely to have resembled the
churches shown in the reconstruction drawings. In
 Review
Figure 9.7 of the Inchmarnock volume the ninth-
century predecessor of the first stone church is
imagined as having a round-headed doorway, a west
window and two north windows: features never found
in Irish pre-Romanesque architecture and therefore
unlikely to have existed at a site with such strong
Irish links. Irish influence was not as strong on the
Isle of May, but in Figure 9.1 of that report the first
stone church is depicted as a stone-roofed building,
apparently of Gallarus-type. In fact such churches
are largely confined to peninsular Kerry and are of
drystone construction rather than clay-bonded like
the Isle of May church.
At Inchmarnock the distribution of incised slates led
Lowe to postulate that there was a schoolhouse in an
unexcavated area west of the church (p. 255). Only
further excavation could confirm this, but the slates
themselves show beyond doubt that this was a centre
of primary education. Over 100 pieces were found,
including eight with early medieval inscriptions. The
island does not appear in early documentary sources
but its name means Island of Mo Ernóc. How
wonderful, therefore, to discover a slate incised no
less than three times with the name Ernán! As the
author states (p. 249), this cannot be taken as absolute
proof that an Irishman called Ernán founded the
monastery around AD 600, but in combination with
the place-name evidence it points very strongly in that
direction. The early inscriptions include a Latin and
an ogham alphabet as well as copying exercises by
novices, most likely children. The full implications
of this important assemblage are expertly explored.
In particular there is a fascinating discussion of the
organisation of education within monastic networks:
in addition to this new archaeological evidence,
hagiography is cited to show that relatively minor
sites like Inchmarnock served as feeder schools for
major centres of learning and manuscript production,
in this case probably Kingarth on nearby Bute
(pp. 258-63). Lowe also points out that the depictions
of ships, people, animals and buildings on some of
the other slates, along with the 35 gaming boards,
remind us that monks and novices were allowed some
respite from physical, intellectual and spiritual toil
(p. 264).
Nendrum
Continuing westwards across the Irish Sea, Harnessing
the tides outlines the discovery and excavation of two
tidal mills at the important monastery of Nendrum,
1184
Co. Down. A relatively large number of early
watermills have been found in Ireland, but very few of
them are tidal mills. The earlier of the two Nendrum
mills dates to AD 619-21 making it the earliest known
Irish watermill. These unique monuments receive
the attention they deserve in this hefty volume. The
book is superbly designed, meticulously researched
and very well written. It is also lavishly illustrated
with numerous colour photographs and exceptional
drawings. The use of colour in the plans to convey
complex information is particularly effective.
Remarkably the dams of both mills survive
in reasonably good condition on the foreshore
immediately adjacent to the monastery. The first
dam is 110m long and creates a large triangular
millpond. Excavation showed that it incorporated a
series of timber and wattle revetments and a palisade
breakwater (p. 47). By contrast the second dam (125m
long) encloses a smaller, more linear millpond which
was better-protected and easier to manage (pp. 128-
9). The first mill was damaged when the second was
built, but there was some evidence to suggest it had
two wooden penstocks and therefore two waterwheels
(pp. 37-9). The second mill was far better preserved
and features an unusual and skilfully constructed
stone penstock. The waterwheel hub from the first
mill was recovered, along with three wooden paddles
and a number of millstones from the second mill.
All of these features are described and discussed with
admirable clarity and there is also an interesting
analysis of the energy which could potentially be
extracted from the second mill (pp. 208-20). In
addition, the volume includes an exhaustive treatment
of Nendrum’s history, which documents that the
monastery was in decline by the tenth century.
Significantly, the second mill seems to have fallen
out of use around then and was not replaced
(p. 113). Finally there is a major reassessment of
the rich archaeology of the site as a whole, including
its enclosures, church, round tower and impressive
collection of artefacts, many of which were found
during Lawlor’s extensive excavations in the 1920s.
Portmahomack
Unlike the other volumes considered here,
Portmahomack is not a definitive publication but a
preliminary statement aimed at the general reader as
well as the professional archaeologist. This project
is particularly important for two reasons. The first
 Review
relates to the position of Portmahomack on the
Moray Firth in the heart of Pictland. There is meagre
enough historical evidence for the establishment of
Christianity and literacy in pre-Viking Pictland, but
the sculpture in and around Portmahomack, with its
sophisticated iconography and inscriptions, suggested
that this was an important centre of learning. By
showing beyond doubt that this was so, Martin Carver
has made a major contribution to early Scottish
history. Furthermore, though he wisely stops short
of making a definitive judgement on the issue, by
showing that the monastery was probably established
in the sixth century he has strengthened the case that
it was founded by Columba of Iona who carried out
missionary work among the Picts in the 560s (p. 196).
Secondly, this project is particularly important
because of the unprecedented size of the area
excavated. Apart from towns, major monasteries were
the largest and most complex settlements in early
medieval Europe. The D-shaped outer enclosure
at Portmahomack delimited an area probably more
than 250m by 150m. As Jerry O’Sullivan showed
in his review of archaeological interventions on Iona
(in Church Archaeology 2 (1998): 5-18), small-scale
excavations usually tell us very little about the overall
organisation of sites like these: rather, they deplete a
precious and finite resource. Instead it is essential to
secure major funding (the Portmahomack project was
financed with almost £2 million in Heritage Lottery
Funding) so that large areas can be excavated to a
high standard. At Portmahomack it proved possible
to ‘strip-and-map’ large areas during the evaluation
stage, giving a general picture of the site’s layout
and providing targets for full excavation later on
(p. 29). Two areas 100m or more long by 25m
wide were investigated in this way: the Southern
and Northern Sectors. The fact that (according to
my rough calculations) these constitute about a fifth
of the site’s area illustrates the great challenge major
monasteries pose for the archaeologist. Nevertheless,
as a result of Carver’s excavations we now know
considerably more about the layout and organisation
of Portmahomack than that of any other comparable
site in Scotland or Ireland.
Before the monastery was established the site seems
to have been ‘a kind of waste that a king might be
happy to grant to an itinerant community of spiritual
eccentrics’ (p. 75). Within the excavated areas, most
of the evidence suggests that during Period 1 (c .550-
650) the monastery was established on a relatively
modest scale (p. 76), although the Period 1 enclosure
1185
delimited an area only marginally smaller than its
successor. There was much more extensive evidence
for occupation during Period 2 (c . 650-780). The
Southern Sector was for fine metalworking, perhaps
including altar plate. Carver ingeniously argues that
the large, bow-shaped ‘Smith’s Hall’ excavated in
this area was laid out using ratios belonging to
‘the Fibonacci series that tends to the Golden Section’
(p. 130). In the Northern Sector there was a road
and, parallel to it, a dam which turned a marshy
area into a pond. This may well have been for a mill,
though no mill-house was found within the excavated
area (p. 118). The most significant discovery of the
whole excavation was west of these features: through
careful detective work, Carver and Cecily Spall have
shown that, for a hundred years or more, this area was
used for the production of vellum (p. 124). This is
the only definite parchmenterie identified at an Insular
monastery to date.
The monastic character of Portmahomack is also
confirmed by the fact that most of the early graves
under the multi-period parish church contained male
skeletons. No traces of wooden churches were found,
but the thirteenth-century crypt incorporates fabric
from a pre-1100 semi-subterranean church. Carver
argues that this was built during the eighth-century
boom at the site. If he is correct, the building probably
represents Anglo-Saxon or Frankish influence for, as
he points out, some pre-Viking churches in these
regions have crypts (p. 88). He also leaves open the
possibility that it represents Irish influence, stating
that it ‘would not have been out of place in the Ireland or
North Britain of the eighth century’ (p. 90). However,
mortared stone churches were very rare in Ireland
before 900 and there is no evidence for crypts in
Ireland before the twelfth century.
In the 1920s Lawlor found evidence for a fire at
Nendrum which, on shaky grounds, he attributed to
Viking marauders. In Harnessing the Tides McErlean
convincingly dismisses this interpretation, though,
as he comments himself, ‘it seems a shame that [in
doing so he has taken] some of the romance and
drama’ out of the site’s history (p. 332). Carver
has been able to conjure up drama of this sort at
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Portmahomack, but this time on the basis of sound
archaeological evidence. He found that sometime
between 780 and 830 there was a catastrophic raid
in which the Northern Sector was burned, at least
one monumental cross-slab destroyed and at least one
member of the community put to the sword. This
is a vivid reminder that, while (in Ireland at least)
 Review
most monasteries continued to prosper throughout
the Viking Age, the initial impact of the Vikings must
have been devastating. Equally interesting, though, is
the fact that agriculture and metalworking resumed
at Portmahomack immediately. According to Carver
from the ninth to the eleventh century the site
was ‘an industrially active farmstead ’ (p. 142). There
were fewer burials in the excavated area and vellum
production ceased. Carver suggests that the church
was ruinous throughout this period (pp. 142 & 147),
but the evidence for this seems equivocal and we
should consider the possibility that the site continued
to function as an ecclesiastical centre, even if it was
no longer a monastery.
One hopes that this exemplary project will
inspire further large-scale investigations of major
monasteries. This preliminary publication is a joy to
Under the same sky: two British settlements in
early colonial Australia
Alistair Paterson∗
JIM ALLEN. Port Essington: the historical archaeology of
a north Australian nineteenth-century military outpost
(Studies in Australasian Historical Archaeology 1).
xvi+142 pages, 111 illustrations, 95 tables. 2008.
Sydney: Sydney University Press/Australian Society
for Historical Archaeology; 978-1-920898-87-8
paperback AUS$ 49.95 + p&p.
GRAHAM CONNAH. The same under a different sky? A
country estate in nineteenth-century New South Wales
(British Archaeological Reports International Series
1625). x+270 pages, 174 illustrations. 2007. Oxford:
John & Erica Hedges; 978-14073-0059-7 paperback
£45.
The publication of two archaeological monographs
on key Australian colonial sites of the first half of the
nineteenth century is a significant event in Australian
archaeology. The books will also be of interest to those
interested in British settlement and colonial societies
more generally.
∗
Archaeology, School of Social and Cultural Studies, University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA 6008 , Australia
(Email: paterson@arts.uwa.edu.au)
ANTIQUITY 83 (2009): 1186–1188
1186
read and should be considered a model for presenting
the results of a major research project in an accessible
yet scholarly manner. It begins with an engaging,
personal account of how the project came about and
finishes with a useful (albeit preliminary) digest of
evidence. In one or two of the plans different phases
could have been distinguished a little more clearly
(Figures 3.11 & 4.3), but most of the illustrations
are excellent. There are very occasional slips and
other errors in all four books under discussion, but
in general the standard of copy-editing is high. In
any case I do not consider it the purpose of a review
article to enumerate minor blemishes: these do not
detract from the terrific scholarship in evidence here.
Along with a few other recent and forthcoming
publications, these books will set the agenda for the
archaeological study of Insular monasticism for some
time.
Port Essington
In 1969 Jim Allen completed the first PhD
dissertation in historical archaeology in Australia
with his study of this British military outpost. Port
Essington is the thesis published largely as submitted,
with new useful pref-
aces by Tim Murray
and the author. In
Allen’s ‘Retrospective
Introduction’ we learn
that when a Pleistocene
topic fell through, Port
Essington was pro-
posed by John Mul-
vaney as a suitable
project – which it was.
The British settlement
of Victoria located on Port Essington in far northern
Australia was established in 1838 and abandoned
 Review
in 1849. It was a significant part of the story
of the colonisation of northern Australia and of
British ambitions, successes and failures. The site was
historically significant, relatively undisturbed, and
largely abandoned by Europeans after its use as a
fort. This was remote fieldwork, and one imagines
the tropical challenges which confronted the British
also affected the field team: isolation, poor supply
lines and troublesome insects. Allen’s thesis was
seminal in the then nascent discipline of historical
archaeology. While Allen’s distinguished career was
devoted largely to Australian and Pacific prehistory, he
made further contributions to historical archaeology
by publishing the results of his PhD with respect to
British colonisation (Allen 1973), wrote on methods
and theory (Murray & Allen 1986) and contributed
to the development of the Australian heritage sector.
This is covered in greater detail in Tim Murray’s
introduction to Port Essington and in Anderson &
Murray (2000). In his introduction Allen is downbeat
about his own contribution to historical archaeology;
however Port Essington is not only a significant
historical document, it is a good study and reveals
a critical and capable historical archaeologist.
The book begins with a detailed description of
the excavations and recording of the site, which
included building remains as well as rubbish
deposits and Aboriginal middens. Allen considers
how architecture reflected British building traditions,
and their adaptations to the local tropical conditions
and the threat of white ants. Separate chapters
describe the ceramics, glass, metal, stone and bone.
These reveal that, in the absence of comparative
studies, Allen had to rely on research in Europe and
North America, mainly in historical and industrial
archaeology. The data is presented in sufficient detail
to allow comparisons to be made today. The final
chapters contextualise the findings by considering
the sequence of British settlements in northern
Australia, and argue that Port Essington was never
intended to be commercially successful but was a
political manoeuvre designed to secure British claims
of sovereignty over the whole continent. Allen states
in his retrospective introduction that the historical
sources and archaeology could have been better
integrated in his analysis; however the assessment of
life at Port Essington (chapter 8) is quite an effective
synthesis. Since 1969 many historical archaeologists
have struggled with the Sisyphean challenge posed by
integrating data, and this, to a degree, encapsulates
how historical archaeologists define themselves.
1187
The study stands out as an early investigation into
culture contact and Aboriginal history, a theme that
would become popular from the 1980s onward. Allen
considers the archaeological evidence for Aboriginal
uses of the site before, during and after the fort
phases. His analysis of the glass (chapter 4) provides
a detailed account of the evidence for flaked glass
artefact production and defines a range of artefact
types in a classification that remains extremely useful
to contemporary studies of glass tool production. In
addition, Allen excavated Aboriginal middens close
to the fort; these were first used at least 500 years
ago, and appear to have been more intensively used
while the fort was occupied. There is also evidence
for post-abandonment use of the site as a quarry for
resources. Allen also considers the evidence for British
interaction with Macassan trepangers (fishermen from
Sulawesi exploiting trepang or sea cucumber) who
visited northern Australia well prior to the arrival of
Europeans, and were reported as visitors to the site.
Macassan ceramics found in the excavations support
accounts of this interaction. These aspects of the book
will be useful to those interested in the sequence
of culture contacts in northern Australia over recent
centuries.
Lake Innes
If Jim Allen largely left Australian historical
archaeology behind, the reverse is true for Graham
Connah whose career in African archaeology preceded
one in historical archaeology in Australia where for
several decades he has been actively involved. ‘Of the
hut I builded’, first published in 1983, was the first
accessible textbook on the archaeology of Australia’s
history. The same under a different sky? reports on
fieldwork at Lake Innes, coastal northern New South
Wales, conducted between 1993 and 2001. The book
has many contributors, marshalled into a coherent
whole by Connah.
Lake Innes was a rural property established in the
1830s by Archibald Charles Innes, a Scot who aspired
to wealth and status in the antipodes he probably
could never have achieved in Britain. His aspirations
Review
are reflected in the title of the publication, a loose
translation of sidere mens eadem mutato. Innes used
assigned convict and paid free labour to build an
estate, the remains of which include the brick-
built main house and stables, two nearby servants’
cottage blocks, a convict village, a small farm for
workers, brick-making sites, roads and a boathouse.
 Review
With the cessation of convict transportation Innes’
unfree labour force dried up while the colony
fell into recession. By the mid-nineteenth century
Innes’ venture was washed up, and the complex was
eventually abandoned. Connah was interested in this
early convict-based colonial enterprise as a reflection
of one man’s aspirations and as an Australian version
of the plantation economy that developed over the last
millennium, and which was often based upon unfree
labour.
Connah begins with a historical overview of Innes
and the estate, as well as the many archaeological
field seasons and participants. Then, similar to
Allen’s monograph, Connah describes the individual
field investigations before discussing key material
culture. Chapters 2 to 9 describe (with detailed
descriptions of the buildings and key assemblages)
the investigations at the main house, the stables, at
worker’s cottages and work sites. As these are based
on reports by various workers over the years, each
chapter stands alone as a mini-report of part of
the estate. Chapters 8 to 12 include the analysis of
ceramics (Alasdair Brooks; a summary by Brooks &
Connah appeared in Antiquity 81 (2007): 133-47),
glass (Jean Smith), metal (Rob Tickle), buttons (Sylvia
Yates), sewing items (Beryl Connah), clay pipes (Kris
Courtney), coins, the faunal material (Catherine
Tucker) and geomorphic and sedimentary history
(Robert Haworth & Brian Tolagson). These reports
do not cross reference each other. In Chapter 13
David Pearson discusses a painting by the Renaissance
painter Paolo Veronese that apparently once hung
in the Innes house and which, he argues, revealed
the family’s status and taste. In the final chapter
Connah considers whether the historically known
socio-economic differences at the estate – Innes
family, assigned convict servants and free servants –
are reflected in the archaeological record. Perhaps
unsurprisingly the best places in the landscape were
used by the Innes family, while the least comfortable
structures were used for servants (both free or
convict). This evidence could be compared with that
presented in the growing archaeological literature
on social differentiation, power and labour. The
way people organised themselves in the landscape
and manipulated material culture and the built
environment – revealed by room sizes and the
spatial organisation of sites across the estate – could
be compared with plantations, particularly those
established in the Americas since 1492.
1188
Conclusion
What is the significance of these publications? They
are both works that future archaeologists will mine for
methods and comparative data. Given the relatively
small number of published historical sites in Australia
these are useful. Both also are useful examples
of archaeological description and illustration,
particularly of architectural remains (regrettably some
images in the BAR publication are too dark). Allen’s
study will be of particular relevance to those working
on British military sites, early Australian colonial
settlements, European colonisation, and culture
contact. Connah’s study invites comparisons with
other contexts where status in colonial circumstances
was deliberately manipulated.
Allen’s monograph is a historical document in its own
right, and despite the author’s reservations he and the
publishers must be commended for publishing it. The
dissertation was a pioneer project and is now the first
in the Studies in Australasian Historical Archaeology
series. Reading it reminded me of reading the
Australian anthropologist Jeremy Beckett’s Masters
thesis (1958, now published as Beckett 2005), a
landmark study which like Allen’s has been ‘out there’
and always turned up in reference lists, but was not
easy to find. It is encouraging to see landmark studies
in press for a current generation of researchers, as well
as new studies. Connah has been a strong advocate for
getting the results of historical archaeology published,
and we welcome the publication of the results of this
long-running archaeological project.
References
ALLEN, J. 1973. The archaeology of nineteenth-century
British imperialism: an Australian case study. World
Archaeology 5: 44-60
ANDERSON, A. & T. MURRAY (ed.). 2000. Australian
archaeologist: collected papers in honour of Jim Allen.
Canberra: Coombs Academic Publishing,
Australian National University.
BECKETT, J. 2005. A study of Aborigines in the pastoral
west of New South Wales: 1958 MA thesis with new
introduction and preface. Sydney: University of
Sydney.
CONNAH, G. 1988. ‘Of the hut I builded’: the
archaeology of Australia’s history. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
MURRAY, T. & J. ALLEN. 1986. Theory and the
development of historical archaeology in Australia.
Archaeology in Oceania 211: 85-93.