The Thames through Time: the archaeology of the gravel terraces of the upper and middle Thames. The formation and changing environment of the Thames Valley and early human occupation to 1500 BC [Hardback]

A review of the rich and diverse evidence for understanding past climate and environmental change in the Thames Valley, and the effects on plant and animal populations and the challenges and opportunities these presented to early humans. Part 1 of this volume covers the Pleistocene, the epoch of the Ice Ages, in an integrated review of the geological, palaeontological and archaeological data for the last half million years and more. Part 2 takes up the story from the beginning of the Holocene, the warm period in which we are still living, which began around 11,500 years ago. The authors review the evidence for early hunter-gatherer populations in the Mesolithic, the gradually increasing impact of humans in the region in the Neolithic and early Bronze Age and their rich social lives and belief systems. Much of the evidence has been recovered during extensive gravel quarrying. The volume is excellently illustrated with colour and line illustrations and maps.

"The result is a major work of synthesis - not just of local interest, for the authors constantly weave local examples of, say, causewayed enclosures into the national picture, contributing to such wider debates as whether, for example, earlier monuments tend to attract later monuments, resulting in monument clusters, or whether causewayed enclosures were built in frontier territory on newly cleared land, or whether they are associated with the sites of earlier ritual activity.'"
Christopher Catling
SALON - The Society of Antiquaries Online Newsletter, No. 259 (1 August 2011)