Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Map present in folder at back. Pages in excellent condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> On Saturday 11 February 1989 we organised a one-day Seminar at Sheffield University entitled ‘Recent Developments in the Archaeology of the Peak’. We formulated the need for such a meeting as we debated between ourselves the future of archaeology in the Peak District. Ten years of fieldwork at Roystone Grange by the University of Sheffield had raised many new questions as indeed had the excavations by the Trent & Peak Archaeological Trust of the neolithic settlement at Lismore Fields and the work of John Barnatt and his associates on the gritstone East Moors. All in all the archaeology of the Peak District seemed to be coming of age. This was more than demonstrated at the seminar. The theme attracted a packed hall. The lectures were extremely well-received and above all when the moment for general discussion arrived instead of a deadly silence there was an astonishingly animated debate. All present concluded that a publication of the papers was worthwhile if nothing else this might serve to set the direction for research in the coming deceade. This collection of essays then stems directly from the lectures given two years ago. We have also invited a few further contributions to augment areas of interest such as the later bronze age and iron age occupation of the Peak District. Disappointingly it was not possible to secure papers on the late glacial and early post-glacial occupation of the area. We should like to thank those who did contribute for their patience as we sought out a publisher for this work. We should also like to thank David Crossley and the Division of Continuing Education at the University of Sheffield for organising the day-seminar. We are grateful to the Peak Park Joint Planning Board for providing a grant towards the cost of the publication of this volume. Finally we are grateful to Catherine Coutts and Sally Martin for assisting in the production of the volume. In preparing these essays it will be noticeable that most contributors have referred to two outstanding archaeologists who laid the foundations for our modern discipline in the Peak: Thomas Bateman and Jeffrey Radley. Bateman of course has been well-served by his biographer. Barry Marsden and we can be in little doubt of his importance in the history of Peak District archaeology. Jeffrey Radley on the other hand who like Bateman died at an early age was active just before the great boom in British archaeology in the seventies. Radley’s essays and reports in for example the Derbyshire Archaeological Journal and the Transactions of the Hunter Archaeological Society have been no less instrumental than those of Bateman in setting the course that present research is taking. (SP)