Barrett's interest in archaeology came from encountering excavations at St Albans around the age of 12.
[3] Barrett had contributed a section on Early Bronze Age hoards and metalwork to the 1985 book Symbols of Power: At the Time of Stonehenge, written by D.V.
Cowie and Andrew Foxon which had been published by the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland.
[2] In 1994, also during his tenure at Glasgow, Barrett wrote Fragments from Antiquity: An Archaeology of Social Life in Britain, 2900-1200 BC which became an influential text amongst archaeologists studying British prehistory.
He therefore accepts the role that post-processual theory plays in the book, but argued that "this is not a book about archaeological theory", and instead "an empirical study aimed at building a history of the period between about 2900 and 1200 BC in southern Britain".