Jutting out some thirty miles into the Irish Sea, from the western edge
of Snowdonia, the Llŷn Peninsula, in north-west Wales, is renowned for
its stunning beaches and countryside, with much of its landscape
designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The peninsula is
also home to a remarkable and abundant collection of archaeological
sites and monuments, some of national importance, which bear witness to
the ancient societies who once inhabited this narrow finger of land on
the western fringe of Britain.
This abundantly illustrated book examines this rich corpus of
archaeological evidence, beginning with the faint but fascinating traces
that Mesolithic hunter-gatherers have left in the landscape of the Llŷn
Peninsula and ending in the early medieval period, with about 9,000
years of human habitation thus covered in its pages. In the course of
the book, we will encounter a wealth of fascinating archaeological
evidence, which includes impressive megalithic tombs and an axe
'factory' from the Neolithic; burial mounds and mysterious standing
stones from the Early Bronze Age; rural settlements and magnificent
hillforts occupied in the Iron Age and Romano-British period; and
memorial stones erected by early Christian communities.
Much more besides will be found in the pages of this volume, which
throws considerable light on the ancient peoples of the Llŷn Peninsula,
and the rich archaeological heritage of this special part of the United
Kingdom, which has much to offer those who are interested in the distant
lives of our ancestors.
