Keith Ray is an Archaeological consultant and writer. He has been actively involved in field archaeology since 1970, when he worked with Dr Geoffrey Wainwright at the major later Neolithic henge site at Mount Pleasant, Dorchester, Dorset. He has been involved in fieldwork and research elsewhere in southern and western England and in Scotland, Wales, France, and Norway, as well as in West Africa. In 2007 he was awarded an MBE for services to archaeology in Herefordshire. He was a collaborator on the 'Gathering Time' Neolithic chronologies project, having co-organised the excavation of the early Neolithic enclosure at Hill Croft Field, Bodenham, in Herefordshire in 2006. His publications include The Archaeology of Herefordshire: An Exploration (Logaston Press, 2015) and Offa's Dyke: Landscape and Hegemony in Eighth-Century Britain (with Ian Bapty; Oxbow/Windgather, 2016). Julian Thomas is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Manchester. Early in his career, Julian worked on a number of key Neolithic sites, including the early Neolithic Hazleton North long barrow in the Cotswolds with Alan Saville, and the Hambledon Hill causewayed enclosure with Roger Mercer. He was appointed Professor of Archaeology at Manchester University in 2000. He was a co-director of the Stonehenge Riverside Project (2005-9), and is a Vice-President of the Royal Anthropological Institute. He is the author of The Birth of Neolithic Britain An Interpretive Account (OUP, 2013).
Includes some first-rate analysis of Stonehenge and the Neolithic structures of the Orkney islands. Contains many beautiful colour photographs and illustrations. * Liza Llewellyn, The Newsletter of the Network of Ley Hunters * This is a really attractive, well-paced, current book ... it is a jolly good, novel read, full of well-dated, timeless data * Rob Ixer, The Fortean Times * Neolithic Britain is extensively and excellently illustrated by photos, drawings, paintings, and engravings ... Recommended * CHOICE * [An] immensely valuable and stimulating book...a book of ideas. Specialist will be familiar with many of them, but Ray & Thomas have done more than round up their greatest hits (good and bad), instead creating a substantial new narrative that will be appreciated by colleagues, students, and interested public alike * British Archaeology * A very readable and persuasive book, full of interesting observations and ideas that draw together and make sense of apparently disparate and puzzling archaeological phenomena * The Prehistoric Society * A book rich in detail and ideas ... Ray and Thomas have produced a narrative that, rather like the cursus monuments they describe, connects up places and offers an engaging and immersive prehistoric journey * Jonathan Last, Archaeological Journal *