CDA2325 - Working Stone and Making Places in Neolithic Wales

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The PhD project will investigate one of Europe's largest sources of Neolithic axe blades: Graig Lwyd, north Wales. New fieldwork and public outreach at Graig Lwyd led by Parc Eryri (the national park in Snowdonia and the project partner) is revealing an extensive and varied landscape of stone extraction, with exceptional potential for original research. Through fieldwork and artefact analysis, the PhD researcher will generate new knowledge about how stone working made places and landscapes in the Neolithic. It will benefit the project partner by providing evidence to better conserve the stone-working landscape and present Neolithic axe making in vivid and compelling ways.Stone axes were prolific, practical and potent objects in Neolithic Europe (4000-2200 BC). The axe heads (blades) derived their properties and potency from the stone from which they were fashioned. People selected sources of igneous rock and flint on the basis of the materials' properties and the places where the stone derived. One of the largest sources of blades was Graig Lwyd, north Wales. Craig Lwyd has received only piecemeal interest since its discovery due to the belief that the workings were lost to a modern quarry. Recent fieldwork disproved this belief. The rock (microdiorite) favoured in the Neolithic lies in screes of loose stone ignored by the modern quarries.Excavations and public outreach at Graig Lwyd led by Parc Eryri (the project's partner) has identified new sites and recovered large quantities (>500 kg) of Neolithic stone-working debris, representing most stages of blade making (introductory video on YouTube). It has extended the traces of stone working to areas within 5km of the original discoveries. Graig Lwyd is an extensive and varied landscape of stone extraction. The recently recovered assemblages of working debris offer exciting potential for original research that integrates materials and landscape investigation.Research on Neolithic axe blades has shifted from a narrow attention on the objects to studies of the making, movement, use and deposition of blades. Despite greater interest in quarries, no major igneous sources have received sustained, systematic investigation. Even at Langdale, the UK's most prolific source, research has been piecemeal and lacked integrated artefactual and landscape analyses. Theoretical research has generated compelling accounts of the social organisation of stone working. Yet the evidential basis remains dominated by old data and lacks landscape studies. The PhD project will investigate one of Europe's largest sources of Neolithic axe blades, capitalising on the discoveries made during Parc Eryri's ongoing fieldwork:1. Where did quarrying and blade making occur in the Graig Lwyd landscape?2. How did technologies of stone working vary in the landscape and what factors influenced these variations?3. How do stone-working technologies and placemaking at Graig Lwyd compare with other stone-working landscapes in NW Europe?