Prehistoric Settlement,Mobility and Societal Structure in the Peak District National Park: New Evidence from Ceramic Compositional Analysis

Detailed compositional and technological analysis of a large assemblage of prehistoric ceramics from numerous sites situated within the Peak District National Park has been used to explore the settlement patterns, societal structure, mobility and interaction of the populations that inhabited this area during the Early Bronze Age to Early Iron Age. A surprising pattern emerges of the widespread dominance of a single, geographically restricted temper type, which appears to have been transported and mixed with locally procured clay and used to produce pottery at numerous different sites. The distribution of this and several other compositional groups are defined via thin‐section petrography and compared to raw material field samples. The resulting patterns are used to assess the validity of previous theories about prehistoric life in this region during the third to first millennia bc .