A lively and authoritative investigation into the lives of our ancestors, based on the revolution in the field of Bronze Age archaeology which has been taking place in Norfolk and the Fenlands over the last twenty years, and in which the author has played a central role.

A lively and authoritative investigation into the lives of our ancestors, based on the revolution in the field of Bronze Age archaeology which has been taking place in Norfolk and the Fenlands over the last twenty years, and in which the author has played a central role. One of the most haunting and enigmatic archaeological discoveries of recent times was the uncovering in 1998 at low tide of the so-called Seahenge off the north coast of Norfolk. This circle of wooden planks set vertically in the sand, with a large inverted tree-trunk in the middle, likened to a ghostly 'hand reaching up from the underworld', has now been dated back to around 2020 BC. The timbers are currently (and controversially) in the author's safekeeping at Flag Fen. Francis Pryor and his wife (an expert in ancient wood-working and analysis) have been at the centre of Bronze Age fieldwork for nearly 30 years, piecing together the way of life of Bronze Age people, their settlement of the landscape, their religion and rituals. The famous wetland sites of the East Anglian Fens have preserved ten times the information of their dryland counterparts like Stonehenge and Avebury, in the form of pollen, leaves, wood, hair, skin and fibre found 'pickled' in mud and peat. Seahenge demonstrates how much Western civilisation owes to the prehistoric societies that existed in Europe in the last four millennia BC.

Based on new archaeological finds, this book introduces a novel rethinking of the whole of British history before the coming of the Romans. So many extraordinary archaeological discoveries (many of them involving the author) have been made since the early 1970s that our whole understanding of British prehistory needs to be updated. So far only the specialists have twigged on to these developments; now, Francis Pryor broadcasts them to a much wider, general audience. Aided by aerial photography, coastal erosion (which has helped expose such coastal sites as Seahenge) and new planning legislation which requires developers to excavate the land they build on, archaeologists have unearthed a far more sophisticated life among the Ancient Britons than has been previously supposed. Far from being the woaded barbarians of Roman propaganda, we Brits had our own religion, laws, crafts, arts, trade, farms, priesthood and royalty. And the Scots, English and Welsh were fundamentally one and the same people.

In the spring of 1998 a circle of prehistoric timbers, exposed by the receding tide, was found projecting from the sands of a Norfolk beach. This site, soon to become known as "Seahenge", would prove to be the most remarkable, controversial and highly publicized archaeological find in Britain for many years. The beach was known to eroding fast, and the timbers were threatened with imminent destruction. Something had to be done. This book is the story of the operation to save the Seahenge timbers; but more than that, it is the story of the archaeologist Francis Pryor's personal quest in search of prehistoric Britain.--Book jacket.

In this volume, Harding examines the deposition of Iron Age human and animal remains in Britain and challenges the assumption that there should have been any regular form of cemetery in prehistory, arguing that the dead were more commonly integrated into settlements of the living than segregated into dedicated cemeteries.

In this book, which accompanies and expands on his Channel 4 television series, leading archaeologist Francis Pryor retells the story of King Arthur, legendary king of the Britons, tracing it back to its Bronze Age originsThe legend of King Arthur and Camelot is one of the most enduring in Britain's history, spanning centuries and surviving invasions by Angles, Vikings and Normans. In his latest book Francis Pryor -- one of Britain's most celebrated archaeologists and author of the acclaimed Britain BC and Seahenge -- traces the story of Arthur back to its ancient origins. Putting forth the compelling idea that most of the key elements of the Arthurian legends are deeply rooted in Bronze and Iron Ages (the sword Excalibur, the Lady of the Lake, the Sword in the Stone and so on), Pryor argues that the legends' survival mirrors a flourishing, indigenous culture that endured through the Roman occupation of Britain, and the subsequent invasions of the so-called Dark Ages.

Francis Pryor has been working at the late Bronze Age site of Flag Fen, near Peterborough, for over thirty years and, during that time, it has emerged as one of the most important and most understood prehistoric landscapes in Britain.