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It is the slippery assemblages and the social traditions they represent, that we are trying to precipitate from the mass of beaker data'. Clarke 1970, 33 The pottery we collectively call 'Beakers' is united by the thread of a potting and style tradition, trapped up in that tradition are also expressions concerning what such a pot is for and who it may represent. Both style and those embedded meanings mutate through the long currency of British Beakers. Indeed, the newly emerging chronology for Beaker grave groups suggests that there was one critical point of rapid mutation in both pot form and associated artefacts. This phase is referred to as a fission horizon, c. 2250-2150 cal BC, and it underlines the difficulties that past schemes of steady evolution have run into. In reviewing the continental background for Beaker-carrying cultures, a corridor of Bell Beaker/Corded Ware fusion is perceived along the southern flanks of the Channel. This created a modified spectrum of Beaker culture which stands at the head of the insular phenomenon. The long ensuing currency of Beaker pottery and Beaker graves in Britain does not hold up as a unified, steadily evolving entity. Instead, three 'phases of meaning' can be suggested: 1) Beaker as circumscribed, exclusive culture; 2) Beaker as instituted culture; 3) Beaker as past reference. The fission horizon initiates phase 2.

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The prodigious quantities of refuse recovered from excavations at Runnymede Bridge, Berkshire, England — and at other late prehistoric British sites — highlight those archaeological entities we call ‘rubbish’ and ‘middens’. What is a ‘midden’? General thoughts on an archaeology of refuse are applied to the specific case of these 1st-millennium BC sites in southern England in an attempt to comprehend their origin and scale in terms of the period's social geography.

Understanding of the nature and significance of connections between Armorica and southern Britain in the Early Bronze Age has been inhibited by poorly refined chronologies. The Armorican grave series is now believed to span seven to eight centuries (c. 2300/2200–1500 BC) and association patterns are used to suggest five assemblages (series 1–5). In the absence of many skeletal remains, structural and organisational evidence is gleaned to suggest that some tombs were not immutably sealed and were used more than once. It is suggested that the accumulation of successive grave groups, primarily in series 2 and 4, is one factor blurring signs of chronological progression, whilst added complexity derives from regional shifts.A review of specific artefact types and burial rites on the two sides of the western Channel gives little credence to the migration of more than occasional individuals. On the contrary, an essential autonomy in the way that materials and artefacts are employed by elites comes through, yet this is set against some important material connections. The conundrum is resolved by suggesting that inter-dependence was actually limited and that the procurement of exotic materials/goods was driven by ‘cosmological acquisition’ needs which, if anything, maintained real differences between distant participating societies. In Wessex, however, the growth of this mode of extracting ideological capital from long-range contacts was to have profound consequences for superordinate centres based around Late Neolithic ceremonial complexes – their ultimate transformation and eclipse.

The current interpretation of Bronze Age metalwork deposits relies on an opposition between deposits made ritually and those made with the utilitarian objective of temporary safe keeping. Tied to this distinction were the intentions, respectively, to leave buried in perpetuity, or to retrieve. Contrasts in the character and burial location of hoard deposits are used to support the dichotomous interpretation. The article challenges this bipolar model by showing that hoard characterization often reflects a more complex spectrum and by disputing that the recovery of valuables by depositors would invalidate ritual objectives. Furthermore, in considering the flow of metal through the exchange systems of Bronze Age Europe, it is argued that flexibility of intention at and after deposition would have been an invaluable strategic device, enabling greater control over the local metal stock. To extract the full meaning locked up in these crucial archaeological deposits for the period, their interpretation is better centred on new questions relating to expression, occasion, enactment, and the social conditions triggering recovery.

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