For the past 15 years, the Beneath Hay Bluff project has investigated Neolithic activity in southwest Herefordshire, and has identified two remarkable complexes of monuments in the Golden Valley. At Dorstone Hill, three timber halls were replaced by long mounds on the same footprint, and later a causewayed enclosure. Nearby, the well known chambered tomb of Arthur's Stone has been demonstrated to have a long and complex structural sequence, and to have formed part of a complex including an avenue, a stone circle, and a cursus. In this presentation, I will reflect on the implications of these findings for our understanding of the Neolithic in western Britain.

Professor Julian Thomas is Chair of Archaeology at the University of Manchester. He was educated at the Universities of Bradford and Sheffield, and has held appointments at Lampeter, Southampton and Manchester. His books include Understanding the Neolithic, Archaeology and Modernity and Neolithic Britain: The Transformation of Social Worlds (with Keith Ray). He has directed field projects in southwest Scotland, the Stonehenge landscape, and southwest Herefordshire. He is presently a member of the Council of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and a Trustee of the Theoretical Archaeology Group.