Amber Roy

Current project: Battle-Axe Technoligcal Lifeways

 

The aim of the project is to determine the lifeways of Battle Axe Culture battle-axes, including how stone properties affected the way people manufactured and used battle-axes; what did these people experience? 

This project is essential to reveal how the material properties of battle-axes influenced human action and to assess how the itineraries or lifeways of battle-axes reflect social change and networks of movement.

 

Past and ongoing projects

 

• Tentney Golf Course burial, York Archaeological Trust, 2021-ONGOING

Working in collaboration with Historic England and the York Archaeological Trust, Amber completed use-wear analysis of the miniature battle-axe discovered during the rescue excavation of an early Bronze Age burial at Tetney, Lincolnshire. Disturbed accidentally by the landowner, the mounded burial contained an exceptionally rare log coffin, hafted axe and well-preserved organic remains. Research is ongoing, including the precise dating of the burial, isotope analysis, detailed archaeobotanical study and reconstruction of the wider environment 4,000 years ago.

• Round Mounds of the Isle of Man excavation and post-excavation, 2017-ONGOING

Amber has contributed to the Round Mounds project as site supervisor and outreach officer and continues to contribute as stone specialist. She will apply use-wear analysis to the projects ground stone assemblage. The project is the first comprehensive modern study of neolithic and bronze age burial mounds on the Isle of Man. It aims to investigate sites known as “round mounds” on the Isle of Man (and their associated burials, people and artefacts) and what they can tell us about life on the Island and interaction with other communities across Britain and Ireland (and potentially beyond) in the Neolithic (c.3500 BC) and Bronze Age. Funded by both Culture Vannin and Manx National Heritage, the project is being led by Drs Chris Fowler at Newcastle University and Rachel Crellin at Leicester University.

 

• Understanding Axes pilot project, Leicester University, May-June 2022
• The Amara West Project, British Museum, Jan-Mar 2019
• The role of stone-ard-points and flaked-stone-bars in Prehistoric Orkney, collaboration with Dr Rob Leedham

PhD

I completed my Phd at Newcastle Unviersity, 2015-2019. This research explored the uses and significance of ground and polished stone battle-axes and axe-hammers from the Early Bronze Age in the northern British Isles, through use-wear analysis, experimental archaeology, and theoretical contextual and relational assessments. The success of my research produced key refinements to existing methodologies and innovative approaches to physical analysis. My doctorate has challenged the received wisdom of both object types. They were both functional and symbolic, with the potential for prolonged use by multiple users. 

Roy, A.S. 2019. The use and significance of perforated ground and polished stone implements from the Early Bronze Age, Unpublished PhD Thesis (Newcastle University)