Resinous Paying Materials in the French Atlantic, AD 1500–1800. History, Technology, Substances.

Resinous paying materials of the 16th−18th centuries are divided into pitch and tar products. In the 15th century a pitch industry developed in south-west France and a tar industry in the Baltic. The French Marine encouraged both industries in France and New France from the 1660s. Pitch products were derived from live pines, tar products from dead pinewood, both in a range of viscosity. To improve their paying quality, materials were often mixed before application. Archaeological examples from several wrecks, from the Landes, Normandy, Rochefort, Québec and the Basque Country, can provide evidence towards an identification scheme for paying materials.
© 2005 The Nautical Archaeology Society     

The Pre-Roman Iron Age in Britain and Ireland (ca. 800 B.C. to A.D. 100): An overview

Those communities that lived in Britain and Ireland ca. 800 B.C. to A.D. 100 represent particularly well-researched examples of the complex agrarian, nonurban, societies with high population densities that characterize the Pre-Roman Iron Age across temperate Europe. This paper provides a critical introduction to the extensive recent literature on the Pre-Roman Iron Age in Britain and Ireland. Evidence from the large number of salvage excavations and surveys, the application of a wide range of analytical techniques, and important changes in interpretative frameworks are transforming understandings of this period. After reviewing these developments, a chronological account of the period is outlined which attempts to integrate these new results. This suggests that current interpretations of social processes across Iron Age Europe in terms of state formation, urbanization, and core-periphery relations with Mediterranean civilization need revision.