Mark Edmonds

The Orcadian archipelago is a museum of archaeological wonders. Its largest island, Mainland, is home to some of the oldest and best-preserved Neolithic sites in Europe, the most famous of which are the passage grave of Maeshowe, the megaliths of Stenness, the Ring of Brodgar and the village of Skara Brae – evidence of a dynamic society with connections binding Orkney to Ireland, to southern Britain and to the western margins of continental Europe. Despite 150 years of archaeological investigation, however, there is much that we do not know about the societies that created these sites. What historical background did they emerge from? What social and political interests did their monuments serve? And what was the nature of the links between Neolithic societies in Orkney and elsehwere? Following a broadly chronological narrative, and highlighting different lines of evidence as they unfold, Mark Edmonds traces the development of the Orcadian Neolithic from its beginnings in the early fourth millennium BC through to the end of the period nearly two thousand years later. Juxtaposing an engaging and accessible narrative with beautifully evocative photographs of Orkney and its monuments, he uses artefacts, architecture and the wider landscape to recreate the lives of Neolithic communities across the region.

Land, Sea and Stone in Neolithic Orkney

Orcadia

An account of the prehistory and archaeology of the Orkney archipelago - a fusion of archaeological, historical and topographic writing.

The town of Buckleboo Creek in tropical North Queensland was known as a tropical paradise. But engineer Sam Gawler learned from the moment he hit the towns main street that the place had a seedy underbelly. Gawler was nominally a'Trouble Shooter for the giant mining corporation which dominated the town. But the unorthodox methods he used to sort out the company's problems were described by some who knew him as those of a 'Hitman'. He was the man the corporation called upon when sticky situations required an unorthodox solution. He was not an employee. He was a 'gun for hire'. The agreement Gawler had with the company guaranteed him that they would always provide all the support and resources he needed. And they expected him to do the job his way. The company wanted results from Gawler, but they didn't always want to know the details of how he got them. They understood that he cut corners and pushed boundaries. He was paid handsomely to get the job done. But Gawler always had no doubt that if he stepped over the line the company would deny all knowledge of him. He was comforted with the unwritten understanding he had with the company that they would always back him to the hilt behind the scenes. He preferred the anonymity the role offered him. Now the company needed him at their goldmine in Buckleboo Creek. Gawler had been their first and only choice. He had spent several years travelling to sort out difficult issues at the company's trouble spots in many parts of the world. He had always come up trumps.

Trouble Shooter Or Hitman

Turmoil in Paradise

A thorough examination of stone tools in the Neolithic and Bronze Age of Britain.

Working Stone in Neolithic and Bronze Age Britain

Stone Tools and Society

This book is filled with just what fans of Edmonds' first book, "Longrider," loved: pithy observations about what America has become, startlingly beautiful descriptions of America's roads and the people on them, and candid vignettes that find plenty of positive character traits in non-CEOs and other denizens of the economic downside--scootertrash, in Tiger's terms.

The Ghost of Scootertrash Past

Take a BMW motorcycle, one million miles, and Mark Edmonds. Combine and distill them for over forty years and you'll get an insightful, compassionate (and passionate!) view of America and what it means to all of us who are, after all, "only passing through." From a slum in Detroit to a backwoods church in Alabama, you'll breathe the air of what it means to be American -- the lovely and the not so lovely. Edmonds' assessment of America and the changes it's undergone is as unswerving as his assessment of himself. He is, after all, tiding his own pilgrimage -- just passin' through.

Longrider

Alan Garner

The Beauty Things is a record of conversations between Mark Edmonds and Alan Garner. Using objects that matter to Alan, including several that appear in his novels, it explores the power that things possess, the roles they play in the stories we tell, about the world and about ourselves -- publisher's website.

The Beauty Things

Vin Davis

This book builds upon the model of the first volume published in 1979. It explores how scholars from various parts of the world currently approach these distinctive items.

Stone Axe Studies III

James Moore

Jane Downes

Amanda Brend

Nick Card

This volume brings together several years of work devoted to the wider landscape of the Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site. It documents the results of a programme of geophysical and related survey across an area of c. 285 hectares between Skara Brae on the west Orkney coast and Maeshowe, by the Loch of Stenness. The project has made it possible to talk for the first time about the landscape context of some of the most remarkable and renowned prehistoric monuments in Western Europe. The aims are to synthesise the data from different forms of survey and to document the changing character and development of this landscape over time. The results are genuinely remarkable are presented in a manner which makes the material of interest and value to a relatively wide readership, with an array of images which fully document and interpret the evidence. Survey work at a landscape scale tends to deal with palimpsests. Here descriptive sections are set within a thematic structure designed to explore the changing use and significance of different areas over time. The results shed important new light on the character and extent of known prehistoric sites and ceremonial monuments. But they also document the afterlives of these and other places and their relation to the lived landscapes of the historic and more recent past. In tracing the changing configuration of the World Heritage Area, we can begin appreciate this landscape as an artefact of several millennia of dwelling, working land, attending to wider worlds and to the past itself.

Geophysical Survey in the Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Area 2002–2011

Landscapes Revealed

Better Red than Dead was a phrase used during the cold war by some people opposed to nuclear weapons meaning that it would be better being controlled by a Communist government than to be killed in a nuclear war. It was one side of a competing slogans battle. The other side's slogan, the anti-Communist side, used the phrase: Better Dead than Red. Born into a communist family which he describes as a cult. Mark Edmonds grew from newspaper delivery boy and model aero plane-tragic to become a student at the International Communist School in Moscow. t was true. They were a communist family. Mark's father Lloyd had fought against the army of the Spanish fascist General Franco who had launched a civil war in Spain against the popularly elected Republican government. He had gone to England to study at the London School of Economics where he learned about the creation of the International Brigade which comprised volunteers from around the world. They were preparing to go to fight against the Spanish fascists. Lloyd was a pacifist and knew nothing about fighting or the military, but he was anti-fascist. He joined the International Brigade. But Mark chose to not live as a red rebel on the fringes of our society. He decided to get out into the real world and mix it with the best and the worst. But he retained some of his inherited rebelliousness. He worked as a taxi driver in Melbourne and a Rookie Journalist on a Communist party newspaper. He was a photographer, bookshop owner and community radio program presenter. He ultimately achieved his dream career as a mechanical design engineer. He became a high-flying engineering project manager and family man. He was called a "Hit Man" when he was tasked to protect his employer's financial interests against the manipulations of a bullying construction site manager. his is the story of the peaks and troughs Mark Edmonds experienced during his lifetime journey. He speaks of the people he met and loved and the people he crossed swords with along the way. Mark quotes the saying "You can never run away from your past, but it doesn't hurt to get a good start."

You Couldn't Make This Stuff Up

Better Red Than Dead

Born into a communist family which he describes as a cult, Mark Edmonds went on to study at the International Communist School in Moscow. His father, Lloyd, had fought against the army of the Spanish fascist, Gen. Francisco Franco, who launched a civil war in Spain against the popularly elected Republican government. But Mark chose to not live as a red rebel on the fringes of society. Instead, he went out into the real world while keeping some of his inherited rebelliousness. He worked as a taxi driver in Melbourne and as a rookie journalist on a Communist party newspaper. He was a photographer, bookshop owner, and community radio program presenter. He ultimately achieved his dream career as a mechanical design engineer, becoming a high-flying engineering project manager and family man. Eventually, he earned the nickname “hit man” for protecting his employer’s financial interests against the manipulations of a bullying construction site manager. Join the author as he looks back at how he escaped a political cult, the people he’s met and loved, and those he’s crossed swords with along the way.

A Suitable Case for Treatment

They Called Me a Hitman

Archaeological evidence suggests that Neolithic sites had many different, frequently contradictory functions, and there may have been other uses for which no evidence survives. How can archaeologists present an effective interpetation, with the consciousness that both their own subjectivity, and the variety of conflicting views will determine their approach. Because these sites have become a focus for so much controversy, the problem of presenting them to the public assumes a critical importance. The authors do not seek to provide a comprehensive review of the archaeology of all these causewayed sites in Britain; rather they use them as case studies in the development of an archaeological interpetation.

Landscapes, Monuments and Memory

Ancestral Geographies of the Neolithic

Richard Bradley

Interpreting the Axe Trade documents the changing character and context of stone axe production and exchange in the British Neolithic. Drawing on a variety of studies, the authors explore some of the problems and potentials that attend archaeological discussions of exchange at both a theoretical and a methodological level. Out of this critique arises an argument for an integrated approach to the production, circulation and consumption of past material - an approach which acknowledges the subtle and complex roles that 'things' may play in the reproduction of social life. These arguments provide the basis for a case study which explores the links between the social contexts within which Neolithic stone axes circulated in Britain, and the social and material conditions under which those objects were originally produced. Field survey, excavation and detailed technological studies at the largest stone axe source in Britain are set alongside analyses of the changing character and social context of axe circulation and deposition across the country as a whole. These different analytical threads are then woven together in the final section of the book, where the authors suggest that the patterns explored in the course of their work reflect major changes in the nature of social life during the Neolithic.

Production and Exchange in Neolithic Britain

Interpreting the Axe Trade

Bill Bevan

John Barnatt

Gardom's Edge is an area of gritstone upland situated on the Eastern Moors of the Derbyshire Peak District. Like other parts of the Eastern Moors, Gardom's Edge has long been renowned for the wealth of prehistoric field systems, cairns and other structures which can still be traced across the surface. Drawing on the results of original survey and excavation, An Upland Biography documents prehistoric activity across this area, exploring the changing character of occupation from the Mesolithic to the Iron Age. It also tacks back and forth between local detail and regional patterns, to better understand the broader social worlds in which Gardom's Edge was set.

Landscape and Prehistory on Gardom's Edge, Derbyshire

An Upland Biography

WEB SLEUTH TEACHERS - GUIDE EVERDAY INVENTIONS.

Stone tools are the most durable and, in some cases, the only category of material evidence that students of prehistory have at their disposal. Exploring the changing character and context of stone tools in Neolithic and Bronze Age Britain, Mark Edmonds examines the varied ways in which these artefacts were caught up in the fabric of past social life. Key themes include:stone tool procurement and production * the nature of technological traditions * stone tools and social identity * the nature of exchange and the significance of depositional practices. As well as contributing to current debate about the interpretation of material culture, Dr. Edmonds uses the evidence of stone tools to reconsider some of the major horizons of change in later British prehistory.From the production of tools at spectacularly located quarries to their ceremonial burial or destruction at ritual monuments, this well-illustrated study demonstrates that our understanding of these varied and sometimes enigmatic artefacts requires a concern with their social, as well as their practical dimensions.

Mark Edmonds

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