Miniliths of Exmoor Project:

The earliest archaeological monuments to be identified on Exmoor are settings of local sandstone and slate, taking the form of circles, rows, solitary/paired stones and geometric and semi-geometric arrangements. The latter, of which over 50 examples are known, appear unique to Exmoor. They take a variety of forms, from rectangular settings and quincunxes, to apparently random arrangements of stones. Many are concentrated around the headwaters of valleys, in areas of moorland which lie beyond the limits of medieval and later cultivation.

Two features of these settings are worthy of note: their diminutive size, with individual stones rarely exceeding 0.5m, leading to their being termed ‘minilithic’; and the lack of basic archaeological knowledge beyond suggested morphology and general distribution. Their assumed late Neolithic/early Bronze Age date is based on loose analogy (i.e. that they are comparable to features such as stone circles and rows), and their physical proximity to round barrows and cairns. Poorly dated and without immediate analogy, it is not surprising that their function remains unknown.

Miniliths of Exmoor project

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions regarding the work reported in the interim reports listed below:

• Report on the 2005 fieldwork (download 1.1MB)
• Report on the 2007 fieldwork (download 3.1MB)
• Report on the 2009 fieldwork (download 3.7MB)

NEW: Report on the 2010 fieldwork (download 5.2MB)

GIS, Phenomenology, Chorography and Geosophy - exploring the potential of a 'Geosophical Information System'

Much of my GIS-based research has focused upon the relationship between archaeological appplications of GIS and developments in archaeological theory. This has involved a number of critical studies of GIS-based Viewshed and Visibility studies in archaeological landscape research. Recent work has explored the notion of the perceptual catchment and is currently studying visibility (and non-visibility) as active affordances of given animal-landscape relationships. The latter work has focused upon the analysis of a series of neolithic monuments on the island of Alderney through an appropriation of the cumulative and total viewsheds of Wheatley, Lake and Llobera termed the 'affordance viewshed'. I am currently seeking to consolidate my work on experiential landscape theory and GIS through the development of what might be termed a 'Geosophical-Information-System'.

• Copy of the rcva_final.aml used in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology 28(4) paper
• A brief user-guide for the above 

Work between 1997-2003 at the WHS of Avebury has culminated in the publication of a major monograph - Landscape of the Megaliths - by Oxbow books. New work at Avebury is in the pipeline, in the meantime one of the earliest outputs of the project (a virtual sarsen stone surveyed and constructed in 1998) has been rediscovered in a dark corner of the digital aether and can be accessed below:

virtual stone 4  

Topics available for Supervision

• All aspects of Landscape Archaeology
• Experiential landscape theory
• Application and development of Geographical Information Systems within Archaeology
• Critical historiographies of the Antiquarian tradition