Time Periods

The chronological framework that is employed here follows broadly the period divisions of the 2006 Regional overview[1]. Minor revisions to this scheme have been made to take account of more recent prehistoric research, notably the chronology of early hominin colonisation[2] and reassessment of the Bronze Age-Iron Age transition[3]. For simplicity, the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ period of the earlier study[4] has been subsumed into an ‘Early Medieval’ period embracing the imposition of the Danelaw from AD 793-1042 and the re-establishment of the Anglo-Saxon monarchy prior to the Norman Conquest of AD 1066. To permit closer correlation with commonly used and widely understood historical chronologies, we have linked the inception of the Post-Medieval period to the establishment by Henry VII of the Tudor dynasty after the defeat of Richard III at Bosworth Field in 1485 – one of several pivotal battles which have left enduring traces in the archaeological record of the East Midlands[5], and one which has attracted significant renewed interest following the recent discovery at Leicester of the remains of the last Plantagenet monarch.[6] Details of the nine periods that form the framework of this study are provided in the table below.

Table of time periods and date ranges for the East Midlands region

References

  • [#1] Cooper, N and Clay, P 2006 ‘The national and regional context of the research framework’ in The Archaeology of the East Midlands, 3
  • [#2] Parfitt, S A et al 2010 ‘Early Pleistocene human occupation at the edge of the boreal zone in northwest Europe’. Nature 466, 229-33; see also Parfitt, S, Ashton, N and Lewis, S 2010 ‘Happisburgh’. British Archaeology 114, 15-23
  • [#3] Needham, S 2007 ‘800 BC, The Great Divide’, in Haselgrove, C and Pope, R (eds) The Earlier Iron Age in Britain and the Near Continent, Oxford: Oxbow Books, 64
  • [#4] Vince, A G 2006 ‘The Anglo-Saxon period’ in The Archaeology of the East Midlands, 161-84
  • [#5] See Strategic Objective 7H
  • [#6] Kennedy, M and Foxall, L (eds) 2015 The Bones of a King. Wiley-Blackwell
  • [#7] As employed by McNabb, J 2006 ‘The Palaeolithic’ in The Archaeology of the East Midlands, 13
  • [#8] For radiocarbon dating, see eg Buteux, S, Chambers, J and Silva, B (eds) 2009 Digging Up the Ice Age. Oxford: Archaeopress, 107-8; also Renfrew, C and Bahn, P 2004 Archaeology: Theories, Methods and Practice. London: Thames and Hudson, 141-149
  • [#9] McNabb, J 2006, 13-15.
  • [#10] McNabb, J 2006, 12-17; see also Buteux, S (ed) 2009, 9-11, Fig 11
  • [#11]Parfitt, S A et al 2010
  • [#12] Myers, A M 2006 ‘The Mesolithic’ in The Archaeology of the East Midlands, 53
  • [#13] See Needham, S 2007 for current dating of Late Bronze Age-Iron Age transition
  • [#14] See e.g. Moorhead, S 2010 ‘410-2010: Rome and Britain’. British Archaeology 111, 17-21

2 thoughts on "Time Periods"

  1. John Walford says:

    The heading to the date range column explains kya and calBC but doesn’t explain that MIS is Marine Isotope Stage or say anything about what these stages are. Perhaps a brief comment about this would help non-specialist readers?

  2. James Fairclough says:

    Could link period names to region overviewsReference

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