This impressive tome represents the happy medium between compendium and academic treatise and is the result of a six-year Leverhulme Trust research project involving the careful examination of some 5,665 objects from 780 individual graves. Temporally comparing the Beaker and Early Bronze Age material, this project involved a bevy of experts whose thorough notes and material analyses from the entire country (with concentrations in Wessex, East Yorkshire and the Peak District) produced an archive of 5,860 photographs accompanied by detailed descriptions and systematic material identifications and analyses.
Perhaps the greatest advantage to this work is that it is organisationally very user-friendly. After discussing the range and scope of the project and its scientific methodology, Ritual in Early Bronze Age Grave Goods goes on to include six chapters that address items of grave equipment (eg belt fittings, daggers and objects made from bone or antler) and personal adornment (such as buttons, dress pins, gold and necklaces). Each chapter is very clearly subdivided by type of object or object material and is addressed within the text by the specific specialist for that artefact/material category (ie Stuart Needham for copper alloys and Alison Sheridan for jet). Extant typologies were expanded upon or devised as needed.
The authors also took on the much-needed task of systematically examining necklaces by region as well as by material. This investigation accounts for nearly 200 pages of the text and is truly awe-inspiring in terms of the painstaking care and amount of detail that were required in its production. (To put this in the proper perspective, of the 5,665 items examined in this treatise, 4,778 were individual beads contained within a series of eighty-one necklaces.) However, this volume is a far cry from being ‘merely’ an expert and exhaustive compendium of English Beaker and Early Bronze Age (EBA) grave goods. The last portion of the book places the findings in context, addressing chronology, object life stories, object function and regional variation. Then comes a concluding chapter, though this takes more the form of project overview and assessment than in-depth consideration of major Chalcolithic and Bronze Age thematic trends.
Aside from the advances made by the investigation of copper alloys and the identification of various raw materials (including, notably, the use of Whitby jet in Wessex and Sussex within both the Beaker period and the EBA), some interesting conclusions were drawn in relation to the specific uses to which various categories of artefacts were put. Use-wear analysis indicated that many objects hitherto interpreted as tools seem in actuality to have been used as special costume elements (eg bone tweezers were more some kind of clip than a depilatory device). Indeed, ritual costume seems to have been the major overarching conclusion drawn from the book. The investigation of the use of heirlooms suggests that not only were they already present in Beaker times, but that their use remained fairly stable throughout the entirety of the periods under investigation. Although some trends were noted for specific kinds of heirloom necklaces (or parts thereof), the authors recommend that further experimental research be conducted for their fascinating conclusions to be ratified.
Although Ritual in Early Bronze Age Grave Goods does not delve into the body of theory involved in Bronze Age studies, the conclusions it draws are an excellent stepping-off point for future material-based research in that vein both within England and abroad. Although it would perhaps have benefited from more maps, Woodward and Hunter’s volume will nonetheless both enable and engender a wealth of upcoming cross-Channel comparison studies, especially with the easy access (cd) of the data from the appendices. Chalcolithic and Bronze Age scholars will thrill to the new paper tool in their analytical repertoire. My copy is on order!
