REVIEW BY JACQUELINE A NOWAKOWSKI
Mount’s Bay, west Cornwall, hosts a major drowned landscape. This attractive and well-produced monograph successfully integrates results of the excavation of a Bronze Age enclosure barrow, east of Penzance in the littoral zone, with excellent geoarchaeological data sampled from nearby Marazion Marsh. A longue durée approach is taken to examine how prehistoric communities responded to major land loss: the drowning of more than 20km2 of land included two freshwater rivers that disappeared over thousands of years. Meditations on social responses to this tale of land-loss and dramatic environmental change run as a narrative thread throughout, and various themes are explored: social resilience, persistent places, marked social practices (particularly the deposition of late Bronze Age metalwork) in locale, and place-making. It is ambitious in scope, as the subtitle suggests, providing food for thought on not only the fragility of our coastlines but also their potential as rich repositories of knowledge.
Just Out and Coming Soon
St Peter-on-the-Wall: landscape and heritage on the Essex coast
Johanna Dale (ed.)
UCL Press, £50
ISBN 978-1800084377
Prehistoric Flint Mines in Europe
Françoise Bostyn et al. (eds)
Archaeopress, £75
ISBN 978-1803272214
