Robert M Chapple, Archaeologist

[** If you think the review is useful, please re-share via Facebook, Google+, Twitter etc. **] The PCC Lunchtime Seminar Series is run by the School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology at QUB in Belfast. I believe that they have been going for some time now and, although I’ve regularly been told about them and how I really should get along there, I’ve somehow not managed to make it. However, I promised myself that the next opportunity I got I would definitely attend – come hell or high water.  I spoke to a friend of mine who told me that the next one coming up (Tuesday 21st February 2012) was on Early Neolithic Farming. I liked the sound of that and I promised faithfully that I would be there. It only occurred to me the day before the lecture to enquire who the speaker was. When I was told that the speaker would be Prof. Stephen Shennan my heart just fell. I have nothing against the man, I truly don’t. Prof. Shennan is Director of the UCL Institute of Archaeology ...

Alasdair Whittle, Frances Healy, & Alex Bayliss. Oxbow books, Oxford, 2011. 2 Volumes, xxxviii+992pp. ISBN 978-1-84217-425-8. £45 ( via Oxbow ) or £50.07 ( via Amazon ). [** If you like this post, please make a donation to the IR&DD project using the button at the end.  If you think the review is useful, please re-share via Facebook, Google+, Twitter etc. **] For anyone with an interest in Irish and British prehistory and, specifically how the chronologies are assembled through radiocarbon dating, the publication of Gathering Time: Dating the Early Neolithic Enclosures of southern Britain and Ireland has been long anticipated and much, much desired. It is hard to overstate the importance of this book and how it has already rewritten our understanding of Neolithic enclosures, but it also stands as a template for other intensive studies to follow and emulate. The central importance of this study is not simply that it uses a lot of new radiocarbon dates for variou...