Mike Parker Pearson
Biographic Data
| ID | 3584833 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mike Parker Pearson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mike Parker |
| FAMILY NAME | Pearson |
| SIGNATURE | PEARSON M P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Sheffield |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7341-121X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 92 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 723 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 89 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
A compound-specific radiocarbon dating protocol for archaeological pottery at the Orau
Radiocarbon dating is essential for establishing robust chronologies in archaeological and paleoenvironmental contexts spanning the last 55,000 years. Pottery, pervasive in the archaeological record, offers a crucial framework for dating human activity during the Holocene. Traditionally, radiocarbon dating of pottery has relied on targeting carbonaceous inclusions such as organic temper or measuring stratigraphically associated materials like bon…
Prehistoric Landscape Change Around the Sources of Stonehenge’s Bluestones in Preseli, Wales
The enigmatic ‘Newall boulder’ excavated at Stonehenge in 1924: New data and correcting the record
Sequential multi-isotope sampling through a Bos taurus tooth from Stonehenge, to assess comparative sources and incorporation times of strontium and lead
Local and exotic sources of sarsen debitage at Stonehenge revealed by geochemical provenancing
The application of novel geochemical provenancing techniques has changed our understanding of the construction of Stonehenge, by identifying West Woods on the Marlborough Downs as the likely source area for the majority of the extant sarsen megaliths at the monument. In this study, we apply the same techniques to saccharoid sarsen fragments from three excavations within and outwith the main Sarsen Circle to expand our understanding of the provena…
Stonehenge: The Little ‘Big Other’
Whilst Stonehenge cannot be considered urban, this famous stone circle was part of a much larger complex which included not only other monuments and significant topographic features but also extensive areas of late Neolithic and Chalcolithic settlement during 2500-2200 bc. The unusually large settlement at Durrington Walls, less than 3 km to the east of Stonehenge, appears to have been occupied primarily seasonally and by people who brought their…
Identification of the source of dolerites used at the Waun Mawn stone circle in the Mynydd Preseli, west Wales and implications for the proposed link with Stonehenge
How Waun Mawn stone circle was designed and built, and when the Bluestones arrived at Stonehenge: A response to Darvill
In response to Timothy Darvill's article, ‘Mythical rings?’ (this issue), which argues for an alternative interpretation of Waun Mawn circle and its relationship with Stonehenge, Parker Pearson and colleagues report new evidence from the Welsh site and elaborate on aspects of their original argument. The discovery of a hearth at the centre of the circle, as well as further features around its circumference, reinforces the authors’ original interp…
Funerary Diversity and Cultural Continuity: The British Beaker Phenomenon Beyond the Stereotype
The Beaker phenomenon in Britain is typically represented by a particular form of pottery and its inclusion in graves with flexed or crouched inhumations referred to as Beaker burials. Analysis of the full range of burial evidence, however, reveals a high degree of variability in funerary rites including cremation and skeletal disarticulation. Summed probability distribution analysis of radiocarbon dates provides evidence for continuity of these …
Reconstructing extraction techniques at Stonehenge’s bluestone megalith quarries in the Preseli hills of west Wales
A veritable confusion: Use and abuse of isotope analysis in archaeology
The expansion of isotope analyses has transformed the study of past migration and mobility, sometimes providing unexpected and intriguing results. This has, in turn, led to media attention (and concomitant misrepresentation) and scepticism from some archaeologists. Such scepticism is healthy and not always without foundation. Isotope analysis is yet to reach full maturity and challenging issues remain, concerning diagenesis, biosphere mapping res…
The original Stonehenge? A dismantled stone circle in the Preseli Hills of west Wales
Report from…Wales The Ever After Project: Considering theatre and performance in the era of Covid-19
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Constraining the provenance of the Stonehenge ‘Altar Stone’: Evidence from automated mineralogy and U–Pb zircon age dating
New Radiocarbon Dates Show Early Neolithic Date of Flint-Mining and Stone Quarrying in Britain
New radiocarbon ( 14 C) dates suggest a simultaneous appearance of two technologically and geographically distinct axe production practices in Neolithic Britain; igneous open-air quarries in Great Langdale, Cumbria, and from flint mines in southern England at ~4000–3700 cal BC. In light of the recent evidence that farming was introduced at this time by large-scale immigration from northwest Europe, and that expansion within Britain was extremely …
Cycles in Stone Mining and Copper Circulation in Europe 5500–2000 bc: A View from Space
The authors of this article consider the relationship in European prehistory between the procurement of high-quality stones (for axeheads, daggers, and other tools) on the one hand, and the early mining, crafting, and deposition of copper on the other. The data consist of radiocarbon dates for the exploitation of stone quarries, flint mines, and copper mines, and of information regarding the frequency through time of jade axeheads and copper arte…
Ancient genomes indicate population replacement in Early Neolithic Britain
The Beaker People: Isotopes, Mobility and Diet in Prehistoric Britain
British Neolithic Axehead Distributions and Their Implications
Neolithic stone axeheads from Britain provide an unusually rich, well-provenanced set of evidence with which to consider patterns of prehistoric production and exchange. It is no surprise then that these objects have often been subject to spatial analysis in terms of the relationship between particular stone source areas and the distribution of axeheads made from those stones. At stake in such analysis are important interpretative issues to do wi…
Supply and demand in prehistory? Economics of Neolithic mining in northwest Europe
Strontium and oxygen isotope evidence for the origin and movement of cattle at Late Neolithic Durrington Walls, UK
The geographic origins of livestock found at the Late Neolithic site of Durrington Walls (Wiltshire, UK) is explored using strontium (87Sr/86Sr) and oxygen (δ18OcarbVSMOW) isotope analysis of tooth enamel as an archive of lifetime movement. The analysis of 49 cattle is augmented with data for small numbers of animals from the contemporaneous monumental centres of West Kennet Palisade Enclosures (4), Stonehenge (1), and Marden (1). Unburnt human r…
Megalith quarries for Stonehenge's bluestones
Afield
Reflections on and approaches to interdisciplinary collaboration in archaeology, cultural geography and performance. With the outline of a potential methodology and proposals for practice that draw upon experiences of creative endeavours in the field and in which scholarly and artistic are combined; and with reference to a series of performative outcomes
Supply and Demand in Prehistory? Economics of Neolithic Mining in NW Europe (Neomine)
Capel: The lights are on. A conversation
This article is a record of conversations held between Margaret Ames and Mike Pearson during the creation and performance of a site-specific theatre project made by Cyrff Ystwyth and directed by Ames. Cyrff Ystwyth are a company of people with and without learning disabilities. The performance, Capel: The Lights Are On, was made by Adrian Jones, a company member with learning disabilities and was his response to research questions that formed the…
Stonehenge for the ancestors: The Stones Pass on the Message
ANTIQUITY has had a long tradition of publishing pieces on Stonehenge, represented in our cover design. Here we present an intriguing and thought-provoking paper, which draws an analogy with Madagascar to help explain the meaning of the enigmatic monument
Cattle mobility in prehistoric Britain: Strontium isotope analysis of cattle teeth from Durrington Walls (Wiltshire, Britain)
The Powerful Dead: Archaeological Relationships between the Living and the Dead
The dead, collectively or individually, are sometimes powerful forces in human society. At other times they fade into relative insignificance. How archaeologists recover such ideological changes has repercussions for their interpretation of social organization and social change. Interpretations of status, gender, and ranking from funerary deposits are to a large extent dependent on archaeologists' abilities to interpret initially the relationship…
The age of Stonehenge
Stonehenge is the icon of British prehistory, and continues to inspire ingenious investigations and interpretations. A current campaign of research, being waged by probably the strongest archaeological team ever assembled, is focused not just on the monument, but on its landscape, its hinterland and the monuments within it. The campaign is still in progress, but the story so far is well worth reporting. Revisiting records of 100 years ago the aut…
Materializing Stonehenge: The Stonehenge Riverside Project and New Discoveries
This article reviews recent interpretations of Stonehenge in terms of contrasting uses of stone and timber in the mid-3rd millennium BC. It explores the relationship of this enigmatic monument with circles of wood at nearby Durrington Walls and Woodhenge, establishing how these various monuments might have been integrated into a single scheme in which these remarkable structures were linked by artificial avenues and the natural feature of the Riv…
The identification of prehistoric dairying activities in the Western Isles of Scotland: An integrated biomolecular approach
Strontium and oxygen isotope evidence for the origin and movement of cattle at Late Neolithic Durrington Walls, UK
The geographic origins of livestock found at the Late Neolithic site of Durrington Walls (Wiltshire, UK) is explored using strontium (87Sr/86Sr) and oxygen (δ18OcarbVSMOW) isotope analysis of tooth enamel as an archive of lifetime movement. The analysis of 49 cattle is augmented with data for small numbers of animals from the contemporaneous monumental centres of West Kennet Palisade Enclosures (4), Stonehenge (1), and Marden (1). Unburnt human r…
Stonehenge remodelled
We are pleased to present the latest account of the sequence of burial and construction at the site of Stonehenge, deduced by its most recent excavators and anchored in time by the application of Bayesian radiocarbon modelling. Five prehistoric stages are proposed, of varied duration, and related by our authors to neighbouring monuments in the Stonehenge environs. While it may never be possible to produce a definitive chronology for this most com…
Site-Specific Performance
Chronology The Practice of the Book Prologue Introduction Models and Approaches Site Context Scenario After Effects Bibliography
Who was buried at Stonehenge
Stonehenge continues to surprise us. In this new study of the twentieth-century excavations, together with the precise radiocarbon dating that is now possible, the authors propose that the site started life in the early third millennium cal BC as a cremation cemetery within a circle of upright bluestones. Britain's most famous monument may therefore have been founded as the burial place of a leading family, possibly from Wales
An investigation of the origins of cattle and aurochs deposited in the Early Bronze Age barrows at Gayhurst and Irthlingborough
Evidence for mummification in Bronze Age Britain
Ancient Egyptians are thought to have been the only people in the Old World who were practising mummification in the Bronze Age (c. 2200-700 BC). But now a remarkable series of finds from a remote Scottish island indicates that Ancient Britons were performing similar, if less elaborate, practices of bodily preservation. Evidence of mummification is usually limited to a narrow range of arid or frozen environments which are conducive to soft tissue…
Age and season of pig slaughter at Late Neolithic Durrington Walls (Wiltshire, UK) as detected through a new system for recording tooth wear
Beaker people in Britain: Migration, Mobility and Diet
Close encounters of the worst kind: Malagasy resistance and colonial disasters in Southern Madagascar
The arrival of Europeans on the southern coasts of Madagascar in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries had profound if unusual consequences for indigenous societies. Certain of these, the Tandroy, Karembola and Mahafaly peoples, actively shunned contact and trade with the outsiders, although they imported large numbers of trade guns. The historical evidence indicates, however, that these slave‐based societies did not provide substantial numbers o…
Mummification in Bronze Age Britain
A first 'Wessex 1' date from Wessex
The furnished barrow burials of Wessex represent a maturation of the Beaker rite during the Early Bronze Age in Britain. Many of these burials were unearthed centuries ago, when archaeology was at its most eager and insouciant, but - happily for us - there were often a few careful recorders on hand. Thanks to their records, the modern scientists engaged in the Beaker People Project can still follow the trail back to a museum specimen and obtain h…
Feeding Stonehenge: Cuisine and consumption at the Late Neolithic site of Durrington Walls
A veritable confusion: Use and abuse of isotope analysis in archaeology
The expansion of isotope analyses has transformed the study of past migration and mobility, sometimes providing unexpected and intriguing results. This has, in turn, led to media attention (and concomitant misrepresentation) and scepticism from some archaeologists. Such scepticism is healthy and not always without foundation. Isotope analysis is yet to reach full maturity and challenging issues remain, concerning diagenesis, biosphere mapping res…
The dead of Stonehenge
Norse Settlement in the Outer Hebrides
Recent work on the Norse settlement of Scotland has focused on the settlements of the Northern Isles. In this article we present some new results from the less intensively studied Western Isles. A detailed survey of South Uist has revealed a large number of settlements on the machair plain on the west coast of the island. These settlements are closely related to the pre-existing native settlement pattern and suggest settlement continuity from the…
Tombs and monumentality in southern Madagascar: Preliminary results of the central Androy survey
This note reports the initial results of a joint multidisciplinary project between the University of Sheffield and the Musée d'Art et d'Archéologie in Antananarivo, which has concentrated on the investigation of the social and economic significance of the tombs that are an outstanding landscape feature in an area of southern Madagascar
Food, Sex and Death: Cosmologies in the British Iron Age with Particular Reference to East Yorkshire
The British Iron Age had an enduring set of traditions involving the east– west axis of the sun's path, the sunwise progression of movement and the classification of animals. Although these traditions were manifested regionally in slightly different ways and were modified, contested and restructured during the Iron Age, they provide us with a key to unlock aspects of the symbolism and practices of daily life. The significance of westerly orientat…
Constraining the provenance of the Stonehenge ‘Altar Stone’: Evidence from automated mineralogy and U–Pb zircon age dating
New Radiocarbon Dates Show Early Neolithic Date of Flint-Mining and Stone Quarrying in Britain
New radiocarbon ( 14 C) dates suggest a simultaneous appearance of two technologically and geographically distinct axe production practices in Neolithic Britain; igneous open-air quarries in Great Langdale, Cumbria, and from flint mines in southern England at ~4000–3700 cal BC. In light of the recent evidence that farming was introduced at this time by large-scale immigration from northwest Europe, and that expansion within Britain was extremely …
Australian Heritage Commission
The article summarizes the different tasks performed by the different staff members of the Australian Heritage Commission
Mortuary Variability: An Archaeological Investigation
Lindow Man and the Danish Connection: Further Light on the Mystery of the Bogman
A propos de la decouverte d'un corps exceptionnellement bien conserve dans les marecages du Cheshire, Grande Bretagne. Comparaison avec l'homme de Lindow au Danemark. Probleme de l'origine de la mort violente que semblent avoir subie ces individus: guerre, meurtre, sanction sociale ou sacrifice humain
Tombs and monumentality in southern Madagascar: Preliminary results of the central Androy survey
This note reports the initial results of a joint multidisciplinary project between the University of Sheffield and the Musée d'Art et d'Archéologie in Antananarivo, which has concentrated on the investigation of the social and economic significance of the tombs that are an outstanding landscape feature in an area of southern Madagascar
The Powerful Dead: Archaeological Relationships between the Living and the Dead
The dead, collectively or individually, are sometimes powerful forces in human society. At other times they fade into relative insignificance. How archaeologists recover such ideological changes has repercussions for their interpretation of social organization and social change. Interpretations of status, gender, and ranking from funerary deposits are to a large extent dependent on archaeologists' abilities to interpret initially the relationship…
Theatre/Archaeology
The Iron Age Community of Osteria Dell'Osa: A Study of Sociopolitical Development in Central Tyrrhenian Italy. By A nna M aria B ietti S estieri
(1994). The Iron Age Community of Osteria Dell'Osa: A Study of Sociopolitical Development in Central Tyrrhenian Italy. By Anna Maria Bietti Sestieri. Archaeological Journal: Vol. 151, No. 1, pp. 447-449
Old Stones: New Words
L'auteur propose un rapide compte-rendu critique de trois ouvrages concernant les complesxes de megalithes du Neolitique et de l'Age du Bronze en Bretagne, Grande-Bretagne et Irlande et l'interpretation de leur fonction et de leur monumentalite
Return of the living dead: Mortuary analysis and the New Archaeology revisited
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
Reassessing Robert DRURY'S Journal as A Historical Source for Southern Madagascar
In 1729 a book entitled Madagascar: or Robert Drury's Journal During Fifteen Years Captivity on that Island was published in London. It describes the shipwreck of an East Indiaman on the south coast of Madagascar, the enforced stay of the crew at the royal capital of the Antandroy people, the crew's escape and massacre, the survival of the midshipmen, including Drury, as royal slaves, and Drury's eventual escape to the English colony of St. Augus…
Brochs and Iron Age society: A Reappraisal
The brochs, great stone towers of Iron Age Scotland, are famously puzzling. Who inhabited these strongholds (if habitations they were)? New fieldwork at the broch of Dun Vulan, on South Uist in the Western Isles, prompts reappraisal of the geographical and social context of the brochs, by developing untapped sources of social evidence
The Iron Age Enclosures and Prehistoric Landscape of Sutton Common, South Yorkshire
The Early Iron Age enclosures and associated sites on Sutton Common on the western edge of the Humberhead Levels contain an exceptional variety of archaeological data of importance not only to the region but for the study of later prehistory in the British Isles. Few other later prehistoric British sites outside the East Anglian fens and the Somerset Levels have thus far produced the quantity and quality of organically preserved archaeological ma…
Close encounters of the worst kind: Malagasy resistance and colonial disasters in Southern Madagascar
The arrival of Europeans on the southern coasts of Madagascar in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries had profound if unusual consequences for indigenous societies. Certain of these, the Tandroy, Karembola and Mahafaly peoples, actively shunned contact and trade with the outsiders, although they imported large numbers of trade guns. The historical evidence indicates, however, that these slave‐based societies did not provide substantial numbers o…
The beginning of wisdom
It is the best of times and it is the worst of times. On one hand, there are more resources and people involved in archaeology than ever before; there is considerable public and media interest in the subject; and there have been exciting developments in archaeologists' uses of social theory. On the other, competition is intense for locally scarce funding; most field research is constrained by non-archaeological considerations; and fragmentation, …
Stonehenge for the ancestors: Part Two
We have identified a structuring principle of hardening in the passage from life to ancestorhood which can be found in contemporary Madagascar, Neolithic and Bronze Age Britain and, for that matter, contemporary Britain. The use of analogy that we have preferred is not the formal ethnographic parallel, nor is it crosscultural generalization, but a relational analogy; we did not intend to apply it as a 'universal' but as a 'What if ... 7' scenario…
Stonehenge for the ancestors: The Stones Pass on the Message
ANTIQUITY has had a long tradition of publishing pieces on Stonehenge, represented in our cover design. Here we present an intriguing and thought-provoking paper, which draws an analogy with Madagascar to help explain the meaning of the enigmatic monument
Chalk and cheese at Stonehenge
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
Norse Settlement in the Outer Hebrides
Recent work on the Norse settlement of Scotland has focused on the settlements of the Northern Isles. In this article we present some new results from the less intensively studied Western Isles. A detailed survey of South Uist has revealed a large number of settlements on the machair plain on the west coast of the island. These settlements are closely related to the pre-existing native settlement pattern and suggest settlement continuity from the…
Food, Sex and Death: Cosmologies in the British Iron Age with Particular Reference to East Yorkshire
The British Iron Age had an enduring set of traditions involving the east– west axis of the sun's path, the sunwise progression of movement and the classification of animals. Although these traditions were manifested regionally in slightly different ways and were modified, contested and restructured during the Iron Age, they provide us with a key to unlock aspects of the symbolism and practices of daily life. The significance of westerly orientat…
Excavations at Dun Vulan: A Correction
In June 1998, we published a discussion on the interpretation of Iron Age Scottish brochs and wheelhouses. Gilmour & Cook challenged the ideas published by Parker Pearson et al. in 1996. Here, that challenge is taken up
Eating money: A study in the ethnoarchaeology of food
This paper develops a case study of animal exploitation in Androy, in southern Madagascar, to demonstrate the exchange and depositional processes by which animal bones can eventually end up in the ground. It examines the central role of cattle as symbol, currency and foodstuff in Tandroy life and explores some of the contexts and complexities of livestock exchange and slaughter. The results of this case study are used to suggest that standard arc…
Is There Anybody Out There? A Reconsideration of the Environmental Evidence from the Breiddin Hillfort, Powys, Wales
Researchers have often assumed that the Iron Age hillforts of the Welsh borders were densely occupied centres of population. One of these is the Breiddin, occupied in the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age, which was excavated in 1969–76. At its centre was a natural water reservoir, Buckbean Pond, which provided a radiocarbon dated sequence of deposition contemporary with the later prehistoric occupation of the hillfort. The beetle assemblage from thes…
Chapter 9. Placing the Physical and the Incorporeal Dead: Stonehenge and Changing Concepts of Ancestral Space in Neolithic Britain
The abodes of the dead or the ancestors are not always those places where mortal remains are laid to rest. This chapter investigates how we might identify prehistoric monuments, ostensibly not funerary in character, as being places of the ancestors. It examines the case of Stonehenge within the context and landscapes of Neolithic Wessex to explore the symbolic significance of the wooden and stone materials out of which the great monuments of the …
Lecture Summaries 2000 - 2001
Six lecture summaries:Preparing for the afterlife: the human experience of deathThe circumnavigation of Scotland by Agricola’s fleet in the early AD 80s: possible evidence from Dun Ardtreck, SkyeThe genesis of photography in ScotlandArchaeological cinefilms by the late Anne S RobertsonA diet of limpets? New work by the Scotland’s First Settlers Project on the early settlement of the Inner Sound, West ScotlandEvent and process in the Scottish Viki…
No Joke in Petticoats”: British Polar Expeditions and Their Theatrical Presentations
By late March 1902, the British National Antarctic Expedition's ship Discovery was frozen in. Atop the ice, the explorers erected a hut, which was fitted with a stage, scenery, and footlights. The Royal Terror Theatre opened in June with Ticket-of-Leave and climaxed in August with a minstrel show. In the icy darkness white men played women and black men, parodied and critiqued structures of power, reinforced attitudes of racial prejudice, and lab…
Archaeology (73 works) · History (59 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (54 works) · Geography (54 works) · Art (28 works) · History (26 works) · Ancient history (23 works) · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology (22 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Geology (19 works)