Archaeological reconstructions
Archaeological reconstructions are based on detailed research of archaeogical sites, including site visits, advice from the archaeologists involved, artefacts found, the detailed archaeological investigation reports, aerial photographs and evidence gathered from other sites, and historical records and artwork. For example, for the Mam Tor illustrations, the research relates to the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age hillfort of Mam Tor ("The Mother Mountain"), at Castleton in the Derbyshire Peak District, with advice from the Peak District archaeologist Bill Bevan. Site visits, aerial photographs and archaeological digs and research show this to have been very large, with the remains of platforms for over 200 houses of the period, two earlier Bronze Age burial mounds, and impressive double ramparts and ditches, with a complex offset entrance structure, difficult to understand at the site. Much planning was needed to understand and interpret the visual and archaeological evidence in order to build up a 3D picture if the structure of the hillfort.
All of the individual images in the series of illustrations were researched from information about and experimental reconstructions of the period. The horses are Exmoor Ponies, the dogs similar to lurchers and wolf hounds. Jewellery and weapons are based on actual finds of that period. Clothing is mainly taken from the evidence of clothes preserved in peat bogs, particularly in Denmark (this includes the very fine hair net worn by the young woman). Part of my aim in representing the people was to show how similar to us they were, they just lived with different levels of technological development.
