Identity is relational and a construct, and is expressed in a myriad of ways. For example, material culture and its pluralist meanings have been readily manipulated by humans in a prehistoric context in order to construct personal and group identities. Artefacts were often from or reminiscent of far-flung places and were used to demonstrate membership of an (imagined) regional, or European community. Earthworks frequently archive maximum visual impact through elaborate ramparts and entrances with the minimum amount of effort, indicating that the construction of identities were as much in the eye of the perceivor, as of the perceived. Variations in domestic architectural style also demonstrate the malleability of identity, and the prolonged, intermittent use of particular places for specific functions indicates that the identity of place is just as important in our archaeological understanding as the identity of people. By using a wide range of case studies, both temporally and spatially, these thought processes may be explored further and diachronic and geographic patterns in expressions of identity investigated.

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Foreword (Jim Mallory)
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• Material culture of the dead
  • 2 Identity lies in the eye of the beholder: a consideration of identity in archaeological contexts
  • 3 Exceptional or conventional? Social identity within the chamber tomb of Quanterness, Orkney
  • 4 Is it possible to access identity through the osteoarchaeological record? Hindlow: a Bronze Age case study
• Material culture of the living
  • 5 Human bone as material culture of the living: a source of identity in the Irish Middle-Late Bronze Age?
  • 6 High and low: identity and status in Late Bronze Age Ireland
  • 7 Who lives in a roundhouse like this? Going through the keyhole on Bronze Age domestic identity
  • 8 Potty about pots: exploring identity through the prehistoric pottery assemblage of prehistoric Malta
  • 9 The Bronze Age smith as individual
• Architectural and ritual expressions
  • 10 Under the same night sky - the architecture and meaning of Bronze Age stone circles in mid-Ulster
  • 11 Reference, repetition and re-use: defining 'identities' through carved landscapes in the north of Ireland
  • 12 'Think tanks' in prehistory: problem solving and subjectivity at Nämforsen, northern Sweden
  • 13 Going through the motions: using phenomenology and 3D modelling to explore identity at Knowth, County Meath, during the Middle Neolithic
• Our construct or theirs?
  • 14 The trowel as chisel: shaping modern Romanian identity through the Iron Age
  • 15 Broken mirrors? Archaeological reflections on identity
  • 16 Concluding thoughts. Expanding identity: archaeology, the humanities, and the social sciences
• Colour Plates