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This paper presents 45 radiocarbon dates demonstrating International Bell Beaker cultural contact and interaction with the Island of Mallorca, c. 2500 cal BC to 1300 cal BC. The radiocarbon documentation is accompanied by supporting artefactual and architectural evidence that demonstrates long-range seaborne exchange and a high degree of social complexity outside the Iberian Peninsula. The evidence has been collected over a thirty-four year period from a number of sites which include cave, rock shelter, open-air settlement and ritual contexts. These demonstrate social, religious and economic activities which show an unusually rich variation and complexity, giving indications of social differentiation and local technological skills, such as water-and animalmanagement, architectural construction, as well as lithic, ceramic, metallurgical and other production, over some twelve hundred years.ß
The Bronze Age, roughly 2500 to 750 BC, was the last fully prehistoric period in Europe and a crucial element in the formation of the Europe that emerged into history in the later first millennium BC. This book focuses on the material culture remains of the period, and through them provides an interpretation of the main trends in human development that occurred during this timespan. It pays particular attention to the discoveries and theoretical advances of the last twenty years that have necessitated a major revision of received opinions about many aspects of the Bronze Age. Arranged thematically, it reviews the evidence for a range of topics in cross-cultural fashion, defining which major characteristics of the period were universal and which culture and area-specific. The result is a comprehensive study that will be of value to specialists and students, while remaining accessible to the non-specialist.
The complex of sites that forms the subject of this account lies in the extreme north-east corner of England, about 10 km south-east of the river Tweed in the parishes of Kirknewton, Ewart, Akeld and Milfield, district of Berwick-upon-Tweed, county of Northumberland (fig. 1). The sites have mainly been discovered by means of air photography, but some were recorded as earthworks in the last century while two standing stones survive to this day. The modern discovery of the complex can be attributed to St Joseph during aerial surveys in the late 1940s, when a henge monument 1 km south-south-east of Milfield was located; this was subsequently included by Atkinson (1949–50, 64–5; 1951, 105–6) in his list of henges. It was recorded as a class II monument, and the presence of a pair of roughly parallel ditches (a ‘droveway’) passing through the site was noted. Further aerial survey work revealed that this site was one of several in the area around Milfield. In 1971 McCord and Jobey published further sites of henge type at West Akeld Steads, Ewart Park, East Marleyknowe and Milfield North (1971, 123–4), bringing the total of hengiform sites to five, and recording the full known extent of the ‘droveway’. The remaining sites were located by St Joseph and McCord but not published; they were noticed by the present author (among others) in the course of examination of all air photographs of the area, and appear on the plots of air photographs in the archives of the Northern Air Photography Committee, held in the Department of Archaeology, University of Newcastle upon Tyne (fig. 2).
Neural network cost models have been developed using data collected from nearly 300 building projects. Data were collected from predominantly primary sources using real-life data contained in project files, with some data obtained from the Building Cost Information Service, supplemented with further information, and some from a questionnaire distributed nationwide. The data collected included final account sums and, so that the model could evaluate the total cost to the client, clients' external and internal costs, in addition to construction costs. Models based on linear regression techniques have been used as a benchmark for evaluation of the neural network models. The results showed that the major benefit of the neural network approach was the ability of neural networks to model the nonlinearity in the data. The 'best' model obtained so far gives a mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of 16.6%, which includes a percentage (unknown) for client changes. This compares favourably with traditional estimating where values of MAPE between 20.8% and 27.9% have been reported. However, it is anticipated that further analyses will result in the development of even more reliable models.Cost Modelling, Neural Networks, Linear Regression Analysis,
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