Christopher Evans
Biographic Data
| ID | 3642041 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christopher Evans |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christopher |
| FAMILY NAME | Evans |
| SIGNATURE | EVANS C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| ORCID | 0009-0000-5778-6858 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 53 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 165 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 52 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1967 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
The impact of neighbourhood-level marginalization on risk of opioid overdose
Fostering interdisciplinarity and collaboration
This paper explores the innovative dynamics established through the European Universities Initiative (EUI) and their role in steering collaborative, challenge-driven research with societal impact. The EUI fosters the creation of university alliances aimed at aligning education and research with societal needs within the European Research Area. These alliances are designed to enhance transnational cooperation, particularly via developing common sc…
King Arthur’s Round Table, Eamont Bridge, Cumbria
In 1937 the philosopher Robin Collingwood excavated a henge monument in Cumbria and identified the postholes of a series of timber buildings, which he compared with those at other sites. These structures at Eamont Bridge were replaced by a stone circle. He planned to continue the work for a second season, but was prevented by illness. His project was completed by the famous German scholar Gerhard Bersu, who concluded that many of the features ide…
Excavating Alcatrazes, Santiago Island, Cape Verde
Dense pasts
Cyril Fox's publication The archaeology of the Cambridge region (1923) is celebrated as a milestone in the development of landscape archaeology. Its centenary invites reflection on Fox's approach to landscape and on the development of knowledge about the archaeology of the Cambridge region over the intervening years. Here, the authors compare the evidence available to Fox with the results of three decades of development-led archaeology. The latte…
Small Island Developing States in a post‐pandemic world
Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have been impacted by and responded to COVID‐19 in ways that give us clues about vulnerabilities under climate change, as well as pathways to resilience. Here, we reflect on some of these experiences drawing on case study examples from the Caribbean, Pacific, and Indian Ocean SIDS, exploring how SIDS have responded to COVID‐19 and considering the potential for coping mechanisms enacted for the pandemic to sup…
Digging with the Pen 1
The influence of post-structural critique has caused archaeology to acknowledge the textuality of its discourse and has prompted questions concerning how the the discipline 'writes' itself. This chapter not directly addresses problems of written discourse within the discipline, but rather the manner in which prehistory and 'archaeology' have been variously employed in recent novels. The higher public profile of archaeology since the Second World …
The Beaker phenomenon and the genomic transformation of northwest Europe
Neuropathic pain
BACKGROUND: Neuropathic pain (NP) is a complex, chronic pain state initiated by a primary lesion or dysfunction of the nervous system and presents as a variety of symptoms across multiple disease states. OBJECTIVE: To develop a patient-centred conceptual model of symptoms and impacts in subjects with diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) or post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN) that can inform the measurement strategy in clinical trials. METHOD: Thirty su…
H. Fokkens , B.J.W. Steffens & S.F.M van As . Farmers, fishers, fowlers, hunters
H. Fokkens , B.J.W. Steffens & S.F.M van As . Farmers, fishers, fowlers, hunters: knowledge generated by development-led archaeology about the Late Neolithic, the Early Bronze Age and the start of the Middle Bronze Age (2850–1500 cal BC) in the Netherlands (Nederlandse Archeologische Rapporten 53). 2016. 345 pages, numerous colour and b&w illustrations. Amersfoort: Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands; 978-90-5799-263-6 hardback. - Volume …
Finding Alcatrazes and early Luso-African settlement on Santiago Island, Cape Verde
After the Portuguese discovered the Cape Verde Islands in AD 1456 they divided its main island, Santiago, into two governing captaincies. The founding settlement in the south-west, Cidade Velha, soon became the Islands' capital and a thriving trade centre; in contrast, that in the east, Alcatrazes, only lasted as an official seat from 1484-1516 and is held to have 'failed' (see Richter 2015
Disappearance Beyond Recall
The interest which attaches to the history of extinct British animals can only be equalled by the regret which must be felt, by all true naturalists, at their disappearance beyond recall from our fauna (Harting 1880, 3; emphasis added). The implications of pit-deposits containing aurochs/ Bos primigenius skulls dating to the Bronze Age, found in two recent excavations in Bedfordshire are outlined. Involving a review of related findings in south-e…
Forum
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Wearing environment and making islands
Dating the Dead
This paper outlines the results of a programme of radiocarbon dating and Bayesian modelling relating to an Early Bronze Age barrow cemetery at Over, Cambridgeshire. In total, 43 dates were obtained, enabling the first high-resolution independent chronology (relating to both burial and architectural events) to be constructed for a site of this kind. The results suggest that the three main turf-mound barrows were probably constructed and used succe…
Making time work
The expansion of large-scale excavation in Britain and parts of Continental Europe, funded by major development projects, has generated extensive new datasets. But what might we be losing when surfaces are routinely stripped by machines? Investigation by hand of ploughsoils and buried soils in the Fenlands of eastern England reveals high densities of artefacts and features that would often be destroyed or overlooked. These investigations throw ne…
Delivering Bodies unto Waters
This paper describes a Late Bronze Age midden settlement and a later Iron Age ritual complex on Godwin Ridge, a sand ridge that formerly lay mid-stream within the lower reaches of the River Great Ouse, in the Cambridgeshire fens. Numerous ritual deposits and significant quantities of human remains were recovered; some of the latter show signs of having been modified or dismembered. The ritual focus of the ridge was a riverside platform; associate…
Small devices, memory and model architectures
Documenting instances of model-rendering amongst the Gurung communities of central Nepal (and, also, now in London), the article considers issues relating to information-transfer in non-/subliterate and past archaeological circumstances. It variously reflects upon 'play', craft reproduction and the limitations of memory, as well as scientific/technological representation and, particularly, Himalayan modes of ritual substitution
Communicating Climate Knowledge
This forum article is the product of interdisciplinary discussion at a conference on climate histories held in Cambridge, United Kingdom, in early 2011, with the specific aim of building a network around the issue of communicating cultural knowledge of environmental change. The lead articles, by Kirsten Hastrup as an anthropologist and Simon Schaffer as a historian of science, highlight the role of agents and proxies. These are followed by five i…
The Challenges and Potentials of Archaeological Heritage in Africa—Cape Verdean Reflections
An 'Imperial Philosophical Machine
Commercial excavators often find that their way back to the past runs through relatively recent structures. What should we do with them? Intellectually sensitive modern excavators, like our authors, are beginning to convince us that these recent constructions not only matter in themselves, but may have interesting links to what lies beneath. Here they introduce us to the foundations of an early telescope, a monument that takes its context both fr…
Cognitive maps and narrative trails
Small agencies and great consequences
Recent years have seen renewed interest in Darwinian concepts as an inspiration for evolutionary theory in archaeology (for example Barton & Clark 1997; Hart & Terrell 2002). This is not, however, the thrust of this paper, whose aims are more historiographic than programmatic. It will not focus upon Darwin's 'big book',The Origin... of 1859 (or evenThe Descent... of 12 years later), but rather his last volume, the wonderfully curiousThe formation…
Celebrating the annus mirabilis
We are grateful to Chris Evans for convening and introducing this imaginative archaeological tribute to the work of Charles Darwin, 150 years after the publication of his On the origin of species - the inspiration for an evolutionary concept of history in so many fields. June 2009 is also the 150th anniversary of a yet more momentous event in the history of archaeology, the endorsement of the antiquity of human tool-making by observations in the …
Marking time
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Communicating Climate Knowledge
This forum article is the product of interdisciplinary discussion at a conference on climate histories held in Cambridge, United Kingdom, in early 2011, with the specific aim of building a network around the issue of communicating cultural knowledge of environmental change. The lead articles, by Kirsten Hastrup as an anthropologist and Simon Schaffer as a historian of science, highlight the role of agents and proxies. These are followed by five i…
Life in the Woods
The deposition of Early Neolithic material within tree‐throw hollows in described, and the possible role of fallen trunks as places of occupation, settlement foci and landscape markers is discussed. Having implications for the interpretation of ubiquitous later Mesolithic pit dwellings, the evidence suggests a continuity of forest ‘identity’. Accordingly, patterns of clearances are also explored in relationship to modes of occupation, and the emp…
Historicism, chronology and straw men
Christopher Hawkes was one of the leading British archaeological theorists in the middle decades of this century. Much underrated, Hawkes is reassessed here in the broader development of processual archaeology in Britain
Dating the Dead
This paper outlines the results of a programme of radiocarbon dating and Bayesian modelling relating to an Early Bronze Age barrow cemetery at Over, Cambridgeshire. In total, 43 dates were obtained, enabling the first high-resolution independent chronology (relating to both burial and architectural events) to be constructed for a site of this kind. The results suggest that the three main turf-mound barrows were probably constructed and used succe…
Archaeology and modern times
Fifty years ago this month there began the second Great European War of the century, a war that followed an uncomfortable decade of tensions and persecutions. It is a fitting time to remember the work of Gerhard Bersu, the most distinguished of archaeological refugees into Britain from that persecution
Histories of Archaeology
1. Introduction: Writing Histories of Archaeology 2. Brixham Cave and the Antiquity of Man 3. Introduction and Polemic 4. Perspectives of a Sentimental Journey: V. Gordon Childe in Australia 1917-1921 5. The Burden of Tribalism: The Social Context of Southern African Iron Age Studies 6. Uses of the Past: Archaeology in the Service of the State 7. The Past as Propaganda: Totalitarian Archaeology in Nazi Germany 8. The History, Philosophy and Socio…
The backwater economy of a fen-edge community in the Iron Age
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Finding Alcatrazes and early Luso-African settlement on Santiago Island, Cape Verde
After the Portuguese discovered the Cape Verde Islands in AD 1456 they divided its main island, Santiago, into two governing captaincies. The founding settlement in the south-west, Cidade Velha, soon became the Islands' capital and a thriving trade centre; in contrast, that in the east, Alcatrazes, only lasted as an official seat from 1484-1516 and is held to have 'failed' (see Richter 2015
Constructing Houses and Building Context
Bersu's war-time excavation of three ‘great’ Iron Age round-houses on the Isle of Man are considered. Their archive includes letters from colleagues (eg Hawkes and Childe) which offer unique insights into the construction of fieldwork context, particularly, in this case, a Celtic paradigm. Concerned with house studies and the possibility of ‘reconstruction’, Bersu's methodology is analysed. Site documentation shows him to be a ‘graphic archaeolog…
Small Island Developing States in a post‐pandemic world
Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have been impacted by and responded to COVID‐19 in ways that give us clues about vulnerabilities under climate change, as well as pathways to resilience. Here, we reflect on some of these experiences drawing on case study examples from the Caribbean, Pacific, and Indian Ocean SIDS, exploring how SIDS have responded to COVID‐19 and considering the potential for coping mechanisms enacted for the pandemic to sup…
Making time work
The expansion of large-scale excavation in Britain and parts of Continental Europe, funded by major development projects, has generated extensive new datasets. But what might we be losing when surfaces are routinely stripped by machines? Investigation by hand of ploughsoils and buried soils in the Fenlands of eastern England reveals high densities of artefacts and features that would often be destroyed or overlooked. These investigations throw ne…
Total Archaeology’ and Model Landscapes
This paper presents the results of fieldwork and archive ‘excavation’ relating to the causewayed enclosure at Great Wilbraham near Cambridge. Initiated in 1975 by David Clarke and John Alexander, the project effectively ceased after one further season following Clarke's untimely death. Combining original data with new results from geophysical and environmental surveys, a reappraisal of the site and its landscape context is offered. ‘The archive p…
Small devices, memory and model architectures
Documenting instances of model-rendering amongst the Gurung communities of central Nepal (and, also, now in London), the article considers issues relating to information-transfer in non-/subliterate and past archaeological circumstances. It variously reflects upon 'play', craft reproduction and the limitations of memory, as well as scientific/technological representation and, particularly, Himalayan modes of ritual substitution
Power on silt
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Delivering Bodies unto Waters
This paper describes a Late Bronze Age midden settlement and a later Iron Age ritual complex on Godwin Ridge, a sand ridge that formerly lay mid-stream within the lower reaches of the River Great Ouse, in the Cambridgeshire fens. Numerous ritual deposits and significant quantities of human remains were recovered; some of the latter show signs of having been modified or dismembered. The ritual focus of the ridge was a riverside platform; associate…
Small agencies and great consequences
Recent years have seen renewed interest in Darwinian concepts as an inspiration for evolutionary theory in archaeology (for example Barton & Clark 1997; Hart & Terrell 2002). This is not, however, the thrust of this paper, whose aims are more historiographic than programmatic. It will not focus upon Darwin's 'big book',The Origin... of 1859 (or evenThe Descent... of 12 years later), but rather his last volume, the wonderfully curiousThe formation…
History, Timelessness and the Monumental
Concerned with the ‘meaning’, variability and material transformation of the sacred oboo cairns of Inner Asia, this study focuses upon four of these stone settings within the environs of Mergen Monastery. Two have been rebuilt since their destruction during the Cultural Revolution, and one markedly registers its recent history. The layout of these complex monuments (involving diverse ancillary elements) reflects the processes of Buddhicization of…
Natural wonders and national monuments
A key place in the 19th-century view of the British prehistoric landscape was taken by an ancient wonder which was was not a human or artificial device at all. An account of this anomaly is called for
Perishables and Worldly Goods — Artifact Decoration and Classification in the Light of Wetlands Research
Archaeology has long operated from the premise that there was a diverse and ornate organic ‘clothing’ on the ‘dry skeleton’ of the past which evades excavation. This paper evaluates the evidence from recent wetlands excavations and considers the implications of the paucity of organic containers found, and the lack of decoration on recovered organic materials, in Britain. It is argued that this negative evidence has important ramifications for our…
Megalithic Follies
The context of, and sources for, illustrations produced by Soane's studio on the theme of prehistoric monuments are explored. Reflecting upon the 'embedding' of style within the distant past (i.e. the 'project of origins'), these tell of the changing configuration of the nation's cultural landscape and provide further insight into the role of ruination in the architect's work. Two out of the three images considered have 'fantastic' attributes and…
The Institutional Façade
The results of architectural recording within the North Range of the University's Old Schools are described. Argued to have stood independently as a hall in the later fourteenth century, the progressive development of the Schools' quadrangle, and extensive alterations to it – culminating in Wright's neo-classical facade of 1754–58 – reflects upon the historical development of academic architecture. The prestigious display of the complex in the mi…
After-Lives of the Mongolian Yurt
The Mongolian yurt, now abandoned as a dwelling in much of Inner Mongolia (China), has an after-life in architecture, especially in public buildings in cities. We discuss the case of a failed tourist camp, constructed of brick 'yurts', which was built to exploit the exoticism of the Mongolian culture for the Han Chinese. This is an example of skeuopmorphic architecture, with deliberate slippage between the original and the copy, and we describe h…
Sentimental Prehistories
(1997). Sentimental Prehistories: The Construction of the Fenland Past. Journal of European Archaeology: Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 105-136
The Challenges and Potentials of Archaeological Heritage in Africa—Cape Verdean Reflections
Marking time
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Sleeping and dreaming—a new, ‘functional’ theory
Towards a Psychology of Art, Collected Essays
Cults of Unreason
The Micro Millennium
A ‘Matrix” Technique for the Analysis of Interrupted Ditch Enclosures
A method is presented for the graphic display of data reflecting the physical form of neolithic interrupted ditched enclosures
The backwater economy of a fen-edge community in the Iron Age
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Perishables and Worldly Goods — Artifact Decoration and Classification in the Light of Wetlands Research
Archaeology has long operated from the premise that there was a diverse and ornate organic ‘clothing’ on the ‘dry skeleton’ of the past which evades excavation. This paper evaluates the evidence from recent wetlands excavations and considers the implications of the paucity of organic containers found, and the lack of decoration on recovered organic materials, in Britain. It is argued that this negative evidence has important ramifications for our…
Archaeology and modern times
Fifty years ago this month there began the second Great European War of the century, a war that followed an uncomfortable decade of tensions and persecutions. It is a fitting time to remember the work of Gerhard Bersu, the most distinguished of archaeological refugees into Britain from that persecution
Power on silt
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Natural wonders and national monuments
A key place in the 19th-century view of the British prehistoric landscape was taken by an ancient wonder which was was not a human or artificial device at all. An account of this anomaly is called for
John Coles & Stephen Minnitt. Industrious and fairly civilized
John Coles & Stephen Minnitt. Industrious and fairly civilized: the Glastonbury lake village. 213 pages, 83 illustrations, 24 tables. 1995. Taunton: Somerset Levels Project & Somerset County Council Museums Service; 0-9507122-2-1 hardback £8 - Volume 69 Issue 266
Sentimental Prehistories
(1997). Sentimental Prehistories: The Construction of the Fenland Past. Journal of European Archaeology: Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 105-136
Constructing Houses and Building Context
Bersu's war-time excavation of three ‘great’ Iron Age round-houses on the Isle of Man are considered. Their archive includes letters from colleagues (eg Hawkes and Childe) which offer unique insights into the construction of fieldwork context, particularly, in this case, a Celtic paradigm. Concerned with house studies and the possibility of ‘reconstruction’, Bersu's methodology is analysed. Site documentation shows him to be a ‘graphic archaeolog…
Historicism, chronology and straw men
Christopher Hawkes was one of the leading British archaeological theorists in the middle decades of this century. Much underrated, Hawkes is reassessed here in the broader development of processual archaeology in Britain
Life in the Woods
The deposition of Early Neolithic material within tree‐throw hollows in described, and the possible role of fallen trunks as places of occupation, settlement foci and landscape markers is discussed. Having implications for the interpretation of ubiquitous later Mesolithic pit dwellings, the evidence suggests a continuity of forest ‘identity’. Accordingly, patterns of clearances are also explored in relationship to modes of occupation, and the emp…
The Hinxton Rings – A Late Iron Age Cemetery at Hinxton, Cambridgeshire, with a Reconsideration of Northern Aylesford-Swarling distributions
The excavation of a 1st century BC cremation cemetery having ring-ditch surrounded interments is reported. One of its two richly accompanied burials included an unparalleled drapery-cast stud/knob – an extraordinary object found within a cemetery with uniquely delineated graves. Given its location on the northern fringe of the distribution of Aylesford-Swarling cremation burials, the site prompts questions of core/periphery interrelationships, re…
The Institutional Façade
The results of architectural recording within the North Range of the University's Old Schools are described. Argued to have stood independently as a hall in the later fourteenth century, the progressive development of the Schools' quadrangle, and extensive alterations to it – culminating in Wright's neo-classical facade of 1754–58 – reflects upon the historical development of academic architecture. The prestigious display of the complex in the mi…
Francis Pryor, Etton
Francis Pryor, Etton: excavations at a Neolithic causewayed enclosure near Maxey, Cambridgeshire, 1982–7 (English Heritage Archaeological Report 18). xxi + 429 pages, 255 figures, 96 tables, 77 microfiche tables. 1999. London: English Heritage; 1-85074-681-8 paperback £70. - Volume 74 Issue 284
Megalithic Follies
The context of, and sources for, illustrations produced by Soane's studio on the theme of prehistoric monuments are explored. Reflecting upon the 'embedding' of style within the distant past (i.e. the 'project of origins'), these tell of the changing configuration of the nation's cultural landscape and provide further insight into the role of ruination in the architect's work. Two out of the three images considered have 'fantastic' attributes and…
After-Lives of the Mongolian Yurt
The Mongolian yurt, now abandoned as a dwelling in much of Inner Mongolia (China), has an after-life in architecture, especially in public buildings in cities. We discuss the case of a failed tourist camp, constructed of brick 'yurts', which was built to exploit the exoticism of the Mongolian culture for the Han Chinese. This is an example of skeuopmorphic architecture, with deliberate slippage between the original and the copy, and we describe h…
History, Timelessness and the Monumental
Concerned with the ‘meaning’, variability and material transformation of the sacred oboo cairns of Inner Asia, this study focuses upon four of these stone settings within the environs of Mergen Monastery. Two have been rebuilt since their destruction during the Cultural Revolution, and one markedly registers its recent history. The layout of these complex monuments (involving diverse ancillary elements) reflects the processes of Buddhicization of…
Captain Nemo/Lt-General Pitt Rivers and Cleopatra’s Needle — A Story of Flagships
Recently re-reading Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea for our children I was struck by the marked similarities between the novel’s elusive protagonist, Captain Nemo, and the renowned later 19th century British archaeologist, Lt.-General Pitt Rivers. Could they have been the same person? How could something so seemingly blatant have gone unnoticed? These questions are, of course, only raised in a spirit of academic tongue-in-check. Yet, in an…
Total Archaeology’ and Model Landscapes
This paper presents the results of fieldwork and archive ‘excavation’ relating to the causewayed enclosure at Great Wilbraham near Cambridge. Initiated in 1975 by David Clarke and John Alexander, the project effectively ceased after one further season following Clarke's untimely death. Combining original data with new results from geophysical and environmental surveys, a reappraisal of the site and its landscape context is offered. ‘The archive p…
Engineering the past
Exploring parallels between the careers of Lt.-General Pitt Rivers and Verne's Captain Nemo, this essay is concerned with time and disciplinary flagships. It considers how their respective collection activities propelled their very personal projects of science and, in the case of the General, its interrelationship with the institutionalisation of archaeology in the later nineteenth century. In particular, the implications of his renowned excavati…
Histories of Archaeology
History (36 works) · Archaeology (33 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (21 works) · Geography (21 works) · History (20 works) · Art (19 works) · Philosophy (15 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Computer Science (9 works)