Steve Dickinson
I directed a landscape archaeology programme in the English Lake District valley of Kentmere 1981-1990. I'm now writing up the results - working these into a comprehensive analysis of upland archaeology and its theoretical/knowledge base in the Lake District. I’m a member of the European Association of Archaeologists and also a member of The Prehistoric Society.
The programme team excavated radiocarbon-dated pre-Viking and Viking period upland structures at Bryant's Gill, Kentmere, and a medieval farmstead near Kentmere Hall. The publication of these excavations and the associated Kentmere valley archaeological survey is now being assessed for hard copy and online distribution via an international publisher, beginning with the Bryant’s Gill excavation and the Kentmere valley archaeological survey.
My other research and publication interests include the archaeology of the English Lake District and Cumbria. There's no decent up-to-date guide to this area, so I'm writing one! I’ve also conducted fieldwork on the Island of Rùm, in the Scottish Inner Hebrides, on pre-1828 upland structure complexes including deer traps and hundreds of ‘shielings’, the majority of which were more probably associated with island-wide deer hunting rather than what some believe to be upland seasonal transhumance.
I also directed a survey and excavation programme on a Roman military site, and an early medieval monastic site, at Urswick in Low Furness, Cumbria (2004-5) - assisted by local volunteers and archaeology students from Swansea University - following the publication of a monograph (‘The Beacon on the Bay’: First Light 2002) detailing results of a comprehensive analysis of the rune and sculpture face of a significant late 7th century AD Anglo-Saxon runestone in the church of St Mary and St Michael, Great Urswick.
My fieldwork in the Lake District between 2013 and 2016 has revealed evidence for prehistoric rock art on a stela, associated with evidence for complex social activities (such as monument creation) in relation to the high montane terrain of Upper Eskdale, well above medieval and modern cultivation limits. Satellite imaging has subsequently, additionally, revealed new details of an array of large Neolithic enclosures and cursus monuments in SW Cumbria; probably connected with large numbers of people accessing the axe stone of the central fells of the Lake District in the Neolithic. The initial publication of these is in PAST (The Newsletter of the Prehistoric Society) 100: Spring 2022. I have set up a long-term project to investigate these sites (the West Coast Neolithic Horizons Project).
I have presented papers on my montane fieldwork in Cumbria at Theoretical Archaeology Group conferences at Bradford (2015) and Southampton (2016), as well as in the Nomadic Spatialities session at the International Landscape Archaeology Conference at Uppsala (2016) and at the Images in Stone International Symposium at Braga, Portugal (2016).
I also presented a paper on some of the results from this fieldwork at the Neolithic Studies Group Autumn 2017 seminar: published in ‘Mining and Quarrying in Neolithic Europe’ by NSG/Oxbow in the summer of 2019. I presented a further paper on aspects of this fieldwork at the International Federation of Rock Art Organisations Congress 2018 held in Valcamonica, Italy. This has recently been published in BAR’s International Series: ‘Rock Art Research in the Digital Era’ (eds. Carrero-Pazos, M., Döhl, R., Jansen van Rensburg, J., Vázquez-Martínez, A. 2022).
I presented a paper about the Viking Age site at Bryant's Gill in its Cumbrian context at the 19th Viking Congress, held at the University of Liverpool in July 2022. This will appear in the Congress publication.
New archaeological information from Cumbria’s west coast, gathered as a result of satellite and LiDAR imaging, indicates a range of probable Viking Age and pre-VA sites there. These include a large (4.75 ha) enclosure incorporating the cropmarks for an (approx.) 64m x 13m hall and other buildings, and putative Viking Age fleet bases on the rivers Esk and Irt.
In August 2024, after consulting an early AD 12th century register, the monumental 'Cuningshou' (ON) = 'The King's Mound', was found to exist near the West Cumbrian Irish Sea coast, along with 39 smaller satellite mounds. The results from early surveys, backed up by finds analyses, strongly indicate that this 60m diameter, 5.80m high mound conceals a Viking Age ship burial.
Geophysics and other remote sensing to assess some of these sites is currently being arranged for 2025+. I gave a paper: ‘Unweaving the Viking Age Hall’, incorporating the hall sites, at the EAA Belfast 2023 conference.
I organised the first Castlerigg Connections Festival, held in Keswick 1-9 June 2024, celebrating and sharing knowledge about stone circles. I have participated in the University of the Highlands and Islands’ ‘The Norse and the Sea’ fieldwork project on Colonsay, October 2024.
The programme team excavated radiocarbon-dated pre-Viking and Viking period upland structures at Bryant's Gill, Kentmere, and a medieval farmstead near Kentmere Hall. The publication of these excavations and the associated Kentmere valley archaeological survey is now being assessed for hard copy and online distribution via an international publisher, beginning with the Bryant’s Gill excavation and the Kentmere valley archaeological survey.
My other research and publication interests include the archaeology of the English Lake District and Cumbria. There's no decent up-to-date guide to this area, so I'm writing one! I’ve also conducted fieldwork on the Island of Rùm, in the Scottish Inner Hebrides, on pre-1828 upland structure complexes including deer traps and hundreds of ‘shielings’, the majority of which were more probably associated with island-wide deer hunting rather than what some believe to be upland seasonal transhumance.
I also directed a survey and excavation programme on a Roman military site, and an early medieval monastic site, at Urswick in Low Furness, Cumbria (2004-5) - assisted by local volunteers and archaeology students from Swansea University - following the publication of a monograph (‘The Beacon on the Bay’: First Light 2002) detailing results of a comprehensive analysis of the rune and sculpture face of a significant late 7th century AD Anglo-Saxon runestone in the church of St Mary and St Michael, Great Urswick.
My fieldwork in the Lake District between 2013 and 2016 has revealed evidence for prehistoric rock art on a stela, associated with evidence for complex social activities (such as monument creation) in relation to the high montane terrain of Upper Eskdale, well above medieval and modern cultivation limits. Satellite imaging has subsequently, additionally, revealed new details of an array of large Neolithic enclosures and cursus monuments in SW Cumbria; probably connected with large numbers of people accessing the axe stone of the central fells of the Lake District in the Neolithic. The initial publication of these is in PAST (The Newsletter of the Prehistoric Society) 100: Spring 2022. I have set up a long-term project to investigate these sites (the West Coast Neolithic Horizons Project).
I have presented papers on my montane fieldwork in Cumbria at Theoretical Archaeology Group conferences at Bradford (2015) and Southampton (2016), as well as in the Nomadic Spatialities session at the International Landscape Archaeology Conference at Uppsala (2016) and at the Images in Stone International Symposium at Braga, Portugal (2016).
I also presented a paper on some of the results from this fieldwork at the Neolithic Studies Group Autumn 2017 seminar: published in ‘Mining and Quarrying in Neolithic Europe’ by NSG/Oxbow in the summer of 2019. I presented a further paper on aspects of this fieldwork at the International Federation of Rock Art Organisations Congress 2018 held in Valcamonica, Italy. This has recently been published in BAR’s International Series: ‘Rock Art Research in the Digital Era’ (eds. Carrero-Pazos, M., Döhl, R., Jansen van Rensburg, J., Vázquez-Martínez, A. 2022).
I presented a paper about the Viking Age site at Bryant's Gill in its Cumbrian context at the 19th Viking Congress, held at the University of Liverpool in July 2022. This will appear in the Congress publication.
New archaeological information from Cumbria’s west coast, gathered as a result of satellite and LiDAR imaging, indicates a range of probable Viking Age and pre-VA sites there. These include a large (4.75 ha) enclosure incorporating the cropmarks for an (approx.) 64m x 13m hall and other buildings, and putative Viking Age fleet bases on the rivers Esk and Irt.
In August 2024, after consulting an early AD 12th century register, the monumental 'Cuningshou' (ON) = 'The King's Mound', was found to exist near the West Cumbrian Irish Sea coast, along with 39 smaller satellite mounds. The results from early surveys, backed up by finds analyses, strongly indicate that this 60m diameter, 5.80m high mound conceals a Viking Age ship burial.
Geophysics and other remote sensing to assess some of these sites is currently being arranged for 2025+. I gave a paper: ‘Unweaving the Viking Age Hall’, incorporating the hall sites, at the EAA Belfast 2023 conference.
I organised the first Castlerigg Connections Festival, held in Keswick 1-9 June 2024, celebrating and sharing knowledge about stone circles. I have participated in the University of the Highlands and Islands’ ‘The Norse and the Sea’ fieldwork project on Colonsay, October 2024.
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Books by Steve Dickinson
Examination of the landscape around the church, and the church itself, allows a presentation of new and emerging archaeological evidence for a major late and/or sub-Romano British church and monastic foundation; subsequently influenced by Irish and Anglo-Saxon activity. A context for this early church and monastic foundation is suggested that includes the 5th century AD British St.Ninian, and the early life of the British-born and educated St.Patrick.
Papers by Steve Dickinson
Drafts by Steve Dickinson
Current theoretical archaeological perspectives on rock art and its contexts stress the importance of material engagement, (Tilley et.al. 2013, Malafouris 2013), alongside engagement with landscape (Tilley 2010). Despite the wealth of evidence for widespread nationwide axe blade distribution, attempts to both reengage with and reposition Neolithic Cumbria incorporating these perspectives have yet to come to full fruition. Much work has been conducted on the diversity of what are often defined and presented as ‘regional’ Neolithics, (Brophy and Barclay 2009, Brophy, MacGregor and Ralston 2016); yet the construction of various Neolithic monument ‘types’ such as chambered or passage tombs and henges transcends such regional boundaries. None of the ‘Neolithic’ stone circles in the Lake District have been radiocarbon dated. However, recent dating evidence from the large stone circle known as Long Meg and Her Daughters, which is 45km north-east of Langdale, demonstrates an origin for its associated enclosure in the Mesolithic, and dates in the fourth millennium cal BC for the erection of some of its stones (Archaeological Services Durham University / Altogether Archaeology 2016).
Overlooking Upper Eskdale to its north-west is the highest mountain in England, Scafell Pike (978m); its summit guarded by crags and half a square kilometre of blockfield and boulders. Survey in 1984/5 mapped axe blade production sites running in an arc from the south through to the west of the summit amongst the blockfield (Claris and Quartermaine 1989). Interestingly, some of these sites had clearly been reinterred in prehistory. Scafell Pike is one summit on a ridge running for over three kilometres at an altitude over 800m. The ridge’s axis, like that of Stonehenge post 2500 cal BC, runs from the north-east to the south-west. When the midsummer sun rises, the Pike’s prehistoric stone sources are gradually illuminated from the north-east, and when the midwinter sun sets over the mass of Scafell Crag to the south-west, the sources are gradually plunged into darkness. Small stone-founded oval or D-shaped structures near the Pike’s summit have been associated with walkers’ bivouac shelters; yet some are clearly aligned along the axis of the ridge and exist at often stone-and-turfed foundation levels only (indicating their antiquity).
In 2015 and 2016, rock art was found high in Upper Eskdale. This art, comprising both a figurative and an abstract panel, was found associated with stone cairns and megaliths at the focus of a dramatic 13 square kilometre mountain and river-girt sanctuary containing convoluted, complex and huge geological features that in some cases are undoubtedly ambiguous, yet they both mimic and absolutely transcend those discernible in many Neolithic stone prehistoric monuments. The recent Upper Eskdale art and cairn discoveries, whilst non have been dated, are above medieval and post-medieval cultivation limits in an apparently ‘natural’ environment, though this is completely illusory since trees have been removed from large elements of it since prehistoric times (Pennington 1997). The rock art and its archaeological associations find best parallels in Neolithic, and possibly earlier, contexts. They can be set alongside others from Orkney to the Boyne that indicate the builders of major monuments in Neolithic Britain and Ireland c.3800-2500 cal BC were drawing upon concepts of legendary sacred landscapes; in the design of their monuments, the reiteration of cycles of memory, remembrance and performance, (Thomas 2013), and in the acknowledgement of the power of the sources of their stone axe blades (Bradley 1997, Bradley 2004, Bradley 2008, Jones et.al. 2011, Cochrane and Jones 2012, Richards 2013, Hensey 2015).
This paper explores the implications of the new discoveries in the stone contexts of two of the best-known Neolithic monuments in Britain; Avebury and Stonehenge. Currently considered to be at the heart of a landscape of death and the ancestors, (Parker Pearson et.al. 2012), Stonehenge in particular is repositioned as a microcosm of several montane environments, including a principal source area in Upper Eskdale. Implications for the understanding of the monument are explored in a modelled context of an animate landscape-world, (Ingold 2000, Descola 2014), where legendary beings and animals, including humans, coexisted in connection with solar and lunar events, and where the materiality of stone took first awareness into transitions of power across the Neolithic of Britain and Ireland.
References
Archaeological Services Durham University and Altogether Archaeology 2016. Long Meg and Her Daughters, Little Salkeld, Cumbria post excavation full analysis. Report 4043.
Beckensall, S. 2002. Prehistoric Rock Art in Cumbria: Landscapes and Monuments. Tempus.
Bradley, R. 1997. Rock Art and the Prehistory of Atlantic Europe: Signing the Land. Routledge.
Bradley, R. 2004. An Archaeology of Natural Places. Routledge.
Bradley, R. and Edmonds, M. 2005. Interpreting the axe trade: Production and exchange in Neolithic Britain. Cambridge University Press.
Bradley, R. 2008. The Significance of Monuments. Routledge.
Brophy, K. and Barclay, G. (eds.) 2009. Defining a Regional Neolithic: The Evidence from Britain and Ireland. Neolithic Studies Group Seminar Papers 9. Oxbow Books.
Brophy, K., MacGregor, G. and Ralston, I., 2016. The Neolithic of Mainland Scotland. Edinburgh University Press.
Claris, P. and Quartermaine, J. 1989. The Neolithic Quarries and Axe Factory Sites of Great Langdale and Scafell Pike: A New Field Survey, in Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 55, 1-25.
Cochrane, A. and Meirion Jones, A. (eds.) Visualising the Neolithic. Neolithic Studies Group Seminar Papers 13. Oxbow Books.
Cooney, G. 2000. Landscapes of Neolithic Ireland. Routledge.
Descola, P. 2014. Beyond Nature and Culture. The University of Chicago Press.
Edmonds, M. 1995. Stone Tools and Society: Working Stone in Neolithic and Bronze Age Britain. Batsford.
Hensey, R. 2015. First Light: The Origins of Newgrange. Oxbow Insights In Archaeology: Oxbow Books.
Ingold, T. 2000. The Perception of the Environment. Routledge.
Malafouris, L. 2013. How Things Shape the Mind: A Theory of Material Engagement. The MIT Press.
Meirion Jones, A. Freedman, D. O’Connor, B. Lamdin-Whymark, H. Tipping. R. and Watson, A. 2011. An Animate Landscape: Rock Art and the Prehistory of Kilmartin, Argyll, Scotland. Windgather Press: Oxbow Books.
Parker Pearson, M. and the Stonehenge Riverside Project. 2012. Stonehenge: Exploring the Greatest Stone Age Mystery. Simon & Schuster.
Pennington, W. 1997. Vegetational history. In Halliday, G. (ed.) A Flora of Cumbria. Centre for North-West Regional Studies, University of Lancaster. Bolton/Shanleys.
Richards, C. (ed.) 2013. Building the Great Stone Circles of the North. Windgather Press: Oxbow Books.
Thomas, J. 2013. The Birth of Neolithic Britain: An Interpretive Account. Oxford University Press.
Tilley, C. 2010. Interpreting Landscapes: Geologies, Topographies, Identities. Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology 3. Left Coast Press.
Tilley, C. Keane, W. Küchler, S. Rowlands. M and Spyer, P. (eds.) 2013. Handbook of Material Culture. Sage Publications.
Examination of the landscape around the church, and the church itself, allows a presentation of new and emerging archaeological evidence for a major late and/or sub-Romano British church and monastic foundation; subsequently influenced by Irish and Anglo-Saxon activity. A context for this early church and monastic foundation is suggested that includes the 5th century AD British St.Ninian, and the early life of the British-born and educated St.Patrick.
Current theoretical archaeological perspectives on rock art and its contexts stress the importance of material engagement, (Tilley et.al. 2013, Malafouris 2013), alongside engagement with landscape (Tilley 2010). Despite the wealth of evidence for widespread nationwide axe blade distribution, attempts to both reengage with and reposition Neolithic Cumbria incorporating these perspectives have yet to come to full fruition. Much work has been conducted on the diversity of what are often defined and presented as ‘regional’ Neolithics, (Brophy and Barclay 2009, Brophy, MacGregor and Ralston 2016); yet the construction of various Neolithic monument ‘types’ such as chambered or passage tombs and henges transcends such regional boundaries. None of the ‘Neolithic’ stone circles in the Lake District have been radiocarbon dated. However, recent dating evidence from the large stone circle known as Long Meg and Her Daughters, which is 45km north-east of Langdale, demonstrates an origin for its associated enclosure in the Mesolithic, and dates in the fourth millennium cal BC for the erection of some of its stones (Archaeological Services Durham University / Altogether Archaeology 2016).
Overlooking Upper Eskdale to its north-west is the highest mountain in England, Scafell Pike (978m); its summit guarded by crags and half a square kilometre of blockfield and boulders. Survey in 1984/5 mapped axe blade production sites running in an arc from the south through to the west of the summit amongst the blockfield (Claris and Quartermaine 1989). Interestingly, some of these sites had clearly been reinterred in prehistory. Scafell Pike is one summit on a ridge running for over three kilometres at an altitude over 800m. The ridge’s axis, like that of Stonehenge post 2500 cal BC, runs from the north-east to the south-west. When the midsummer sun rises, the Pike’s prehistoric stone sources are gradually illuminated from the north-east, and when the midwinter sun sets over the mass of Scafell Crag to the south-west, the sources are gradually plunged into darkness. Small stone-founded oval or D-shaped structures near the Pike’s summit have been associated with walkers’ bivouac shelters; yet some are clearly aligned along the axis of the ridge and exist at often stone-and-turfed foundation levels only (indicating their antiquity).
In 2015 and 2016, rock art was found high in Upper Eskdale. This art, comprising both a figurative and an abstract panel, was found associated with stone cairns and megaliths at the focus of a dramatic 13 square kilometre mountain and river-girt sanctuary containing convoluted, complex and huge geological features that in some cases are undoubtedly ambiguous, yet they both mimic and absolutely transcend those discernible in many Neolithic stone prehistoric monuments. The recent Upper Eskdale art and cairn discoveries, whilst non have been dated, are above medieval and post-medieval cultivation limits in an apparently ‘natural’ environment, though this is completely illusory since trees have been removed from large elements of it since prehistoric times (Pennington 1997). The rock art and its archaeological associations find best parallels in Neolithic, and possibly earlier, contexts. They can be set alongside others from Orkney to the Boyne that indicate the builders of major monuments in Neolithic Britain and Ireland c.3800-2500 cal BC were drawing upon concepts of legendary sacred landscapes; in the design of their monuments, the reiteration of cycles of memory, remembrance and performance, (Thomas 2013), and in the acknowledgement of the power of the sources of their stone axe blades (Bradley 1997, Bradley 2004, Bradley 2008, Jones et.al. 2011, Cochrane and Jones 2012, Richards 2013, Hensey 2015).
This paper explores the implications of the new discoveries in the stone contexts of two of the best-known Neolithic monuments in Britain; Avebury and Stonehenge. Currently considered to be at the heart of a landscape of death and the ancestors, (Parker Pearson et.al. 2012), Stonehenge in particular is repositioned as a microcosm of several montane environments, including a principal source area in Upper Eskdale. Implications for the understanding of the monument are explored in a modelled context of an animate landscape-world, (Ingold 2000, Descola 2014), where legendary beings and animals, including humans, coexisted in connection with solar and lunar events, and where the materiality of stone took first awareness into transitions of power across the Neolithic of Britain and Ireland.
References
Archaeological Services Durham University and Altogether Archaeology 2016. Long Meg and Her Daughters, Little Salkeld, Cumbria post excavation full analysis. Report 4043.
Beckensall, S. 2002. Prehistoric Rock Art in Cumbria: Landscapes and Monuments. Tempus.
Bradley, R. 1997. Rock Art and the Prehistory of Atlantic Europe: Signing the Land. Routledge.
Bradley, R. 2004. An Archaeology of Natural Places. Routledge.
Bradley, R. and Edmonds, M. 2005. Interpreting the axe trade: Production and exchange in Neolithic Britain. Cambridge University Press.
Bradley, R. 2008. The Significance of Monuments. Routledge.
Brophy, K. and Barclay, G. (eds.) 2009. Defining a Regional Neolithic: The Evidence from Britain and Ireland. Neolithic Studies Group Seminar Papers 9. Oxbow Books.
Brophy, K., MacGregor, G. and Ralston, I., 2016. The Neolithic of Mainland Scotland. Edinburgh University Press.
Claris, P. and Quartermaine, J. 1989. The Neolithic Quarries and Axe Factory Sites of Great Langdale and Scafell Pike: A New Field Survey, in Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 55, 1-25.
Cochrane, A. and Meirion Jones, A. (eds.) Visualising the Neolithic. Neolithic Studies Group Seminar Papers 13. Oxbow Books.
Cooney, G. 2000. Landscapes of Neolithic Ireland. Routledge.
Descola, P. 2014. Beyond Nature and Culture. The University of Chicago Press.
Edmonds, M. 1995. Stone Tools and Society: Working Stone in Neolithic and Bronze Age Britain. Batsford.
Hensey, R. 2015. First Light: The Origins of Newgrange. Oxbow Insights In Archaeology: Oxbow Books.
Ingold, T. 2000. The Perception of the Environment. Routledge.
Malafouris, L. 2013. How Things Shape the Mind: A Theory of Material Engagement. The MIT Press.
Meirion Jones, A. Freedman, D. O’Connor, B. Lamdin-Whymark, H. Tipping. R. and Watson, A. 2011. An Animate Landscape: Rock Art and the Prehistory of Kilmartin, Argyll, Scotland. Windgather Press: Oxbow Books.
Parker Pearson, M. and the Stonehenge Riverside Project. 2012. Stonehenge: Exploring the Greatest Stone Age Mystery. Simon & Schuster.
Pennington, W. 1997. Vegetational history. In Halliday, G. (ed.) A Flora of Cumbria. Centre for North-West Regional Studies, University of Lancaster. Bolton/Shanleys.
Richards, C. (ed.) 2013. Building the Great Stone Circles of the North. Windgather Press: Oxbow Books.
Thomas, J. 2013. The Birth of Neolithic Britain: An Interpretive Account. Oxford University Press.
Tilley, C. 2010. Interpreting Landscapes: Geologies, Topographies, Identities. Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology 3. Left Coast Press.
Tilley, C. Keane, W. Küchler, S. Rowlands. M and Spyer, P. (eds.) 2013. Handbook of Material Culture. Sage Publications.