Halsted, J. 2005. Bronze Age Settlements in the Welsh Marshes. – Oxford, Archaeopress (BAR British Series 384)

Abstract

In precisely 100 pages (including an appendix with calibrated radiocarbon dates as oxcall-graphics), Halsted deals with settlements during the Bronze Age in a region that rightfully deserves closer attention: the Welsh Marshes. The publication is composed of an introduction with major themes related to the Bronze Age in the British Isles (chapter 1), a short outline of the physical environment of the area (chapter 2), three chapters on the Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age in this region (chapter 3-5) and the conclusions (chapter 6). The study does not contain a complete description of all known sites as the main objective is to look at settlement patterns and dynamics on a broad scale. It is therefore that the number of figures (only 22) is rather limited and mostly concerned with the distribution of archaeological sites and finds plotted on the geomorphological, geological or altitude maps of the different research areas. Also, very simple bar charts are depicted showing the numbers of metal objects during the three Bronze Age periods, as well as some overviews of radiocarbon dates.

The bar charts sometimes consume much space (e.g. figure 17 and 18). A minor, but annoying problem with some figures is that the text is not filled out properly (figure 2 and 20). The author may consider leaving out the lines in figure 20 and using an outline or box for the toponymes instead (cf. figure 6) or using numbers that are explained in a box below. For the sake of uniformity a north arrow should have been used in figure 3, 9, 16, 21 and if possible north arrows should be in the left top corner for carthographic reasons. There has been much freedom of choice in that respect. Read more...