The Iron Age settlements excavated by Headland Archaeology (UK) Ltd at Morley Hill and Lower Callerton lie within the rich later prehistoric landscape of the Northumberland coastal plain. This monograph presents the results of the excavation, specialist analyses and provides a key dataset upon which to discuss regionally and nationally important later prehistoric research themes. The excavations at Morley Hill and Lower Callerton offer two large-scale new datasets to compare within the corpus of enclosed Iron Age settlement sites across the region, allowing for an increased understanding of settlement patterns, architectural forms and farming practices. These include settlement development, longevity and tempo; the relationship between lowland and upland sites; settlement organization and identity; roundhouse architecture and the impact of contact with the Roman world. At Morley Hill, work revealed two later Iron Age settlements defined by rectilinear enclosures surrounding groups of roundhouses with evidence for earlier phases of activity. The settlements at Morley Hill are comparable to many such distinctive settlements identified across the region and explored in recent years largely through developer-funded excavations. Lower Callerton represents a less explored form of extensive settlement with the excavation revealing evidence of earlier prehistoric activity overlain by a large Iron Age enclosure with over 53 structures, multiple sub-enclosures and boundaries. Comprehensive Bayesian modeling at Lower Callerton has provided a robust chronological framework indicating complex and continual settlement development from the middle Iron Age. The implications of this in terms of wider settlement development, tempo and longevity are explored. While the monograph focuses on the Iron Age, the identification and influence of earlier prehistoric activity is also explored. The discussion is again enhanced by the program of radiocarbon dating and isotopic analysis of cereal grains from Neolithic pits at Lower Callerton.

Enclosures are among the most widely distributed features of the European Iron Age. From fortifications to field systems, they demarcate territories and settlements, sanctuaries and central places, burials and ancestral grounds. This dividing of the physical and the mental landscape between an ‘inside’ and an ‘outside’ is investigated anew in a series of essays by some of the leading scholars on the topic. The contributions cover new ground, from Scotland to Spain, between France and the Eurasian steppe, on how concepts and communities were created as well as exploring specific aspects and broader notions of how humans marked, bounded and guarded landscapes in order to connect across space and time. A recurring theme considers how Iron Age enclosures created, curated, formed or deconstructed memory and identity, and how by enclosing space, these communities opened links to an earlier past in order to understand or express their Iron Age presence. In this way, the contributions examine perspectives that are of wider relevance for related themes in different periods.

The Northumberland Archaeological Group’s (NAG) Wether Hill project spanned the years 1994–2015 and was located on the eponymous hilltop overlooking the mouth of the Breamish Valley in the Northumberland Cheviots. The project had been inspired by the RCHME’s ‘Southeast Cheviots Project’ that had discovered and recorded extensive prehistoric and later landscapes. The NAG project investigated several sites. Over the 11 seasons of excavation, NAG recorded evidence of residual Mesolithic activity (microliths), a burial cairn containing two Beakers in an oak coffin, which was superseded by a stone-built cist containing three Food Vessels, Iron Age cord rig cultivation and clearance cairns, a series of Middle/Late Iron Age timber-built palisaded enclosures, a cross-ridge dyke, which protected the southern approach to the Wether Hill fort, and sampled the multi-period bivallate hillfort. The hillfort sequence on Wether Hill began with a succession of palisaded enclosures, which were later replaced by bivallate earth and stone defenses; both phases appear to have been associated with timber-built houses. Eventually the fort was abandoned, and three stone-built roundhouses were constructed in the fort. The 18 radiocarbon dates obtained from various contexts in the hillfort makes this site one of the better dated forts in the Borders. The chronology of the Wether Hill fort spanned the Middle/Late Iron Age, which corresponded with dates from palisaded enclosures excavated elsewhere on the hilltop spur. Taken together, this evidence provides a snapshot of settlement hierarchies and agricultural practices during the later Iron Age in this part of the Northumberland Cheviots. The excavations also help contextualize some of the RCHME survey evidence, providing data to model chronology, potential prehistoric settlement density and land-use patterns at different time periods in the well-preserved archaeological landscapes of the Cheviots.

This fully revised fourth edition maintains the qualities of the earlier editions whilst taking into account the significant developments that have moulded the discipline in recent years.

The county's remarkable and richly varied military architecutre, from Hadrian's Wall to Warkworth, contrasts with monastic ruins buried deep in the valleys of the Coquet and the Aln or standing proudly by the sea at Holy Island and Tynemouth. Newcastle upon Tyne has the most elegant nineteenth-century city centre in England. Elsewhere the distinctive smaller towns include Alnwick, dominated by its castle, Hexham with its priory, brick-built Morpeth, and Berwick-upon-Tweed, ringed with exceptional sixteenth-century fortifications. Great country houses range from Vanbrugh's theatrical Seaton Delaval to Sir Charles Monck's austere Belsay and Norman Shaw's romantic Cragside. Monuments of a great industrial past, as well as a wealth of smaller buildings, such as bastle houses (peelhouses or stronghouses unique to the Border country), are all vividly described in this revised guide to Northumberland's architectural pleasures.

The Till-Tweed river catchment areas in Northumberland contain outstanding archaeological and palaeoenvironmental remains which have been in general only poorly understood. This study has assembled detailed data that will provide a platform for future landscape-based research and site-based investigation. Written from a landscape, or geoarchaeological perspective, this study develops a methodology and management tool that will allow planners, curators and developers working in the region to to easily access information across sectors, and provide a transparent and easily comprehended record of sensitive archaeological and palaeoenvironmental sites.

A detailed archaeological landscape survey which investigates the purpose, design and function of Iron Age hillforts in Northumberland National Park.