Objects of the Past in the Past: Investigating the Significance of Earlier Artefacts in Later Contexts

Matthew Knight is the curator of the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age collections at National Museums Scotland and Chair of the Later Prehistoric Finds Group. He specialises in the production, use and deposition of Bronze Age metalwork and completed his PhD on the deliberate destruction of metalwork in south-west England in 2018.Dot Boughton originates from Germany and is a prehistoric metalwork specialist who now works as a freelancer and translator in Cumbria. Dot did her undergraduate degree at the Freie Universität Berlin and moved to England in 1999, where she completed an MSt (2000) and MPhil (2001) in Anglo-Saxon Archaeology at the University of Oxford. In 2015 she completed her PhD dissertation on Early Iron Age socketed axes in Britain at the University of Central Lancashire.Rachel E. Wilkinson is an archaeologist and numismatist and her AHRC-funded PhD examined the Iron Age metalwork object hoards from Britain (800 BC – AD 100), creating a national database for Iron Age object hoards which examined their contents, regional distribution and interaction with coin hoards.

• Chapter 1. Objects of the Past in the Past – by Matthew G. Knight, Dot Boughton and Rachel E. WilkinsonChapter 2. Doubtful associations? Assessing Bronze Age ‘multi-period’ hoards from northern England, Scotland and Wales – by Matthew G. KnightChapter 3. Connecting with the past: Earliest Iron Age multi-period hoards in Wessex – by Dot BoughtonChapter 4. The Devil or the Divine? Supernatural objects and multi-period hoards in later prehistory – by Alex DaviesChapter 5. Iron Age antiques: Assessing the functions of old objects in Britain from 400 BC to AD 100 – by Helen ChittockChapter 6. The Antique Antique? – by Mark LewisChapter 7. Rethinking heirlooms in early medieval graves – by Brian Costello and Howard WilliamsChapter 8. Medieval engagements with the material past: some evidence from European coin hoards, AD c. 1000–1500 – by Murray AndrewsChapter 9. Deep Time in the ruins of a Tudor Palace? Fossils from the Palace of Placentia, Greenwich – by Peter J. LeemingChapter 10. A shifting chronology of combat damage: Reassessing the evidence for use and reuse on Irish Bronze Age swords – by David R. Bell