The Flag Fen Basin has been the subject of nearly continuous archaeological research since about 1900. This research sheds new light on the Neolithic landscape, on the Iron Age and Roman landscapes, and on the changing environmental conditions since the earlier Neolithic.

Geoarchaeology in Action provides much-needed 'hands on' methodologies to assist anyone conducting or studying geoarchaeological investigations on sites and in landscapes, irrespective of date, place and environment. The book sets out the essential features of geoarchaeological practice and geomorphological processes, and is deliberately aimed at the archaeologist as practitioner in the field. It explains the basics - what can be expected, what approaches may be taken, and what outcomes might be forthcoming, and asks what we can reasonably expect a micromorphological approach to archaeological contexts, data and problems to tell us. The twelve case studies are taken from Britain, Europe and the Near East. They illustrate how past landscape change can be discovered and deciphered whether you are primarily a digger, environmentalist or soil micromorphologist. Based on the author's extensive experience of investigating buried and eroded landscapes, the book develops new ways of looking at conventional models of landscape change. With an extensive glossary, bibliography and more than 100 illustrations it will be an essential text and reference tool for students, academics and professionals.

From antiquity onwards people have opted to live near rivers and major watercourses. This volume explores rivers as facilitators of movement through landscapes, and it investigates the reasons for living near a river, as well as the role of the river in the human landscape.

This book charts and explains how human activities have shaped and altered the development of soils in many parts of the world, taking advantage of five decades of soil analytical work in many archaeological landscapes from around the globe. The core of this volume describes and illustrates major transformations of soils and the processes involved in these that have occurred during the Holocene and how these relate to human activities as much as natural causes and trajectories of development, right up to the present day. This is done in two ways: first by examining a number of major processes and impacts on the landscape such as Holocene warming and the development of woodland, clearance and agricultural activities, and second by examining the trajectories of these changes in soil systems in different palaeo-environmental situations in several diverse parts of the world. The transformations identified are relevant to prevalent themes of today such as over-development and soil, land and environmental degradation and resilience. The studies articulated relate to Britain, southeastern Europe, the Mediterranean basin, East Africa, northern India and Peru in South America.

A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. 'Francis Pryor brings the magic of the Fens to life in a deeply personal and utterly enthralling way' TONY ROBINSON. 'Pryor feels the land rather than simply knowing it' GUARDIAN. Inland from the Wash, on England's eastern cost, crisscrossed by substantial rivers and punctuated by soaring church spires, are the low-lying, marshy and mysterious Fens. Formed by marine and freshwater flooding, and historically wealthy owing to the fertility of their soils, the Fens of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire are one of the most distinctive, neglected and extraordinary regions of England. Francis Pryor has the most intimate of connections with this landscape. For some forty years he has dug its soils as a working archaeologist – making ground-breaking discoveries about the nature of prehistoric settlement in the area – and raising sheep in the flower-growing country between Spalding and Wisbech. In The Fens, he counterpoints the history of the Fenland landscape and its transformation – from Bronze age field systems to Iron Age hillforts; from the rise of prosperous towns such as King's Lynn, Ely and Cambridge to the ambitious drainage projects that created the Old and New Bedford Rivers – with the story of his own discovery of it as an archaeologist. Affectionate, richly informative and deftly executed, The Fens weaves together strands of archaeology, history and personal experience into a satisfying narrative portrait of a complex and threatened landscape.

Peatlands are regarded as having exceptional archaeological value, due to the fact the waterlogged conditions of these wetlands can preserve organic remains that are almost entirely lost from the majority of dryland contexts. This is certainly true, although the remarkable preservation of sites and artifacts is just one aspect of their archaeological importance. Peatlands are ‘archives’ of past environmental changes: the palaeoenvironmental or palaeoecological record. The waterlogged conditions preserve pollen, plant remains, insects and other proxies that can be used to reconstruct past patterns and processes of environmental change, critical records of long term ecological processes for wetland and also adjacent dryland areas. The potential to integrate and combine records of cultural and environmental change, represents the distinguishing feature of peatland (and wetland) archaeology, what we might describe collectively as the ‘archaeo-environmental record’. When these records are analyzed in conjunction, exceptional interpretative synergy can be achieved; but this relies on the development and implementation of integrated excavation and analytical strategies and approaches. This new title in our highly successful Studying Scientific Archaeology series provides an accessible introduction to the ecology and formation processes of peatlands, and to the different archaeological and palaeoenvironmental techniques that have been developed and adapted for the study of these environments. It provides an outline of the major themes and methods and as a guide to other more detailed and technical literature concerning peatland archaeology. The case studies have been selected to illustrate, as far as possible, examples of 'best practice'. Processes such as drainage, agriculture, peat-cutting, afforestation, and climate change threaten peatlands and by extension, the survival of archaeological sites and deposits in situ. On the other side of this environmental coin, healthy, functioning peatlands are important for biodiversity, hydrology and as ‘carbon sinks’ with the potential to mitigate global heating. Recent years have thus seen increasing efforts to stop destruction and damage and rehabilitate peatlands with a view to restoring these 'ecosystem services'. The book considers these issues in terms of the past loss and damage of archaeological sites and the future protection of the resource in the Anthropocene.

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.