Assemblage 11 has been long in the pipeline and over the course of its compilation the journal has undergone some major changes. Amongst these various revisions, however, our principal aim has remained unchanged: to continue the assemblage tradition of publishing high quality academic content from archaeological researchers at various stages in their careers.

This issue of assemblage is loosely based around the themes of landscape and conflict: a growing contemporary area of research, and one that prompts interesting questions concerning the exercise of power over landscapes, the perception of landscapes themselves, and the role of specific environments during conflicts. In exploring such questions, the articles found in assemblage 11 embrace a diversity of periods, regions, methodologies and theories. The result is four papers that tackle a variety of cross-cutting issues in terms of how landscapes affect and are affected by people’s attitudes to place, and how these can be suppressed, accentuated or transformed in conflict situations.

Over the past three years, assemblage has continued to thrive as an internet-based archaeology journal. It was one of the earliest of such ventures (the first issue was published in 1996), and it has recently undergone some major changes to ensure its position at the cutting edge of electronic media. An overhaul of our website and the addition of rolling content and a blog to assemblage’s output has significantly increased our visibility (the website currently generates around 4500 unique visits a month), as well as the vibrancy and quality of the journal and its related content. These developments have found assemblage a growing voice within the online archaeological community. In particular, our recent embrace of social media (find us on twitter @assemblageshef) has also allowed the editorial team to engage with a wide array of people within the heritage sector in discussions regarding current events and academic debates.

One of our aims in setting up the new website was to become a hub for archaeology on the internet, and this is a role into which assemblage finds itself expanding. We would like to thank all those who regularly visit our website, and especially those who actively engage with our content. The more we facilitate links between academic and public archaeology, the greater reason and reward there is for our hard work.

Sadly, last year saw the tragic death of a member of our editorial team, Jenna Higgins. Jenna was an invaluable member of the team, and a close friend to us all who is sorely missed. It is therefore to Jenna Higgins that we would like to dedicate assemblage 11, so that this remarkable individual, as well as the work she put into assemblage, should not be forgotten.

 The roll-call of acknowledgements for the last couple of years is a long one. Toby Martin and Alison Bestwick have been principally responsible for the journal content and were assisted by most members of the team, but in particular by Jenna Higgins and Jessie Slater. The peer-reviewers of these articles, whose expertise and criticism are fundamental to the quality of assemblage, deserve a very large portion of our gratitude. The outgoing team of 2008 also had significant input, including Danae Dodge, Kate Harrell, and Lorraine Seymour. Book reviews were compiled primarily by Jenna Higgins, and more recently by Rachel Sites. The new website was conceived, constructed and administered by Toby Pillatt. Shannon Kennedy, Robert Woodward and Ryan Eldridge complete the list of assemblage warriors, without whose collective help little of the above would have been possible.

We hope that our readership has enjoyed our content over the last couple of years, and it is with great pleasure that the outgoing assemblage team bids farewell and hands over the controls to a brand new team of editors. We have every confidence that this next generation will uphold and enhance assemblage’s status as a prominent graduate archaeology journal, as well as further developing our growing role in the online archaeological community.

The Papers

Ross Wilson considers a range of evidence to explore how perceptions of the 1st World War battlefield landscape were developed by, and shaped the experience of, British soldiers. This original approach to conflict archaeology is not only historically illuminating, but also demonstrates the utility of archaeological approaches to landscape in a period where they are rarely applied.

Ross Wilson completed his doctoral research at the University of York in 2007 on the history, memory and heritage of the Western Front (1914–1918). From 2007 to 2009 he worked as a Research Assistant on the ‘1807 Commemorated’ project in the collection and analysis of data regarding museum representation, audience responses and curatorial experiences. He has published research in the fields of history, archaeology and heritage studies and he is currently researching themes within the history, material culture and memory of the twentieth century.

Against a backdrop of rapid political upheaval and ongoing martial conflict, Letty Ten Harkel explores how the commoditisation of land altered late Anglo-Saxon perceptions of landscape. In doing so, Letty examines a period of considerable historical importance through the lens of landscape archaeology and material culture (dress-accessories and stone sculpture).

Letty Ten Harkel is a freelance archaeologist currently involved in illustration and editorial work. She completed a PhD in archaeology at the University of Sheffield in September 2010, during the course of which she wrote the present paper. Prior to that, she worked as a supervisor for the Cambridge Archaeological Unit. During her first degree in medieval studies at the University of Utrecht (the Netherlands) she specialised in Old English and Medieval Latin literature and early medieval history.

Javier Martínez Jiménez makes available this English-language account of an important early Medieval Ostrogothic site in Italy, and also provides a stimulating assessment of this enigmatic site’s potential functions. Javier rejects Monte Barro’s sometimes proposed Roman origins, suggesting instead that this site was an Ostrogothic foundation forming part of Theoderic’s north Italian defences, which perhaps also acted as an administrative centre.

Javier is currently studying for a DPhil at Lincoln College, Oxford. His research, under the supervision of Bryan Ward-Perkins, investigates the continued use of Roman aqueducts in late antique and post-Roman Spain, which also formed part of MPhil thesis on late antique urbanism in Spain. Javier, thanks to a scholarship from the BSR, has spent time studying Ostrogothic Rome and its aqueducts, and is currently organising the survey of a Visigoth-built aqueduct at Reccopolis in Spain alongside Prof Lauro Olmo. This paper is an updated version of Javier’s BA thesis, which he studied while at Worcester College at the University of Oxford.

Our final paper in Issue 11 is a detailed analysis of the door-orientations of brochs and duns in Iron Age Scotland. Thomas Crowther argues for an analysis that takes regionality and different architectural forms into account. The paper considers the potential practical, as well as cosmological or symbolic causes, of various orientations and finds that a more regionally differentiated approach is a necessity to understanding these otherwise enigmatic structures, as well as separating the probably functionally distinct brochs and duns.

Thomas Crowther obtained his undergraduate degree at the University of Chester, and this paper is based on his BA thesis. Thomas has since gained an MA in socio-cultural anthropology at Durham University and is about to begin a PhD at the same institution. The PhD will be an archaeological and anthropological exploration of the influence of light in Iron Age Scotland. His wider research interests include prehistoric British archaeology, modern commemoration and the role of dreams and the imagination in society.