Bronze Age Settlement and Subsistence Flashcards
1
Q
Celtic Fields
A
- Recognised in 1920s through aerial photography
- Appear as earthworks in the southern English downlands e.g. Charlton or Overton Down
- Created in the Middle Bronze Age (1700-1500 BC) but reworked in the Iron Age and Romano-British period
2
Q
Evidence of Field Systems
A
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3
Q
Gwithian, Cornwall
A
- 1800 BC, earliest evidence of bounded fields in Britain
- Criss-cross patterns of ard marks associated with terraced fields
- Also a wooden building within a stake built enclosure
- Earliest phases of occupation associated with distinctive pottery decorated with slate combs
- Finds include decorated stone, perforated whelk shell, a copper awl, bases of pots and fragmented querns- deliberately placed?
- Open fields farmed for barley and other cereal with woodland used for roofing and bedding and seaweed used to maintain soil
- Fields worked for hundreds of yeares
- Later phase (1500-1200 BC), 4 cremation pits found at edge of field boundary
- Spade cultivation and livestock farming became more important
- Six wooden buildings, 3 with pebble-lined hearths belonged to this phase
- Child remains under the floor of one building
- Buildings later destroyed
4
Q
EngLald
A
- Looking at field systems in England 1500-1200 BC
- Most orientated to NE or SE
5
Q
Deverel-Rimbury pottery
A
- became widespread across central-southern England from 1600 BC-1100 BC
- Overlapped with other forms such as Collared Urns
6
Q
Bronze Age Roundhouses
A
-Substantial roundhouses appeared in Middle Bronze Age
7
Q
Intensification or extensification?
A
- Cranbourne Chase- no evidence of intensification in agriculture within BA field systems around settlements such as South Lodge
- This suggests field systems were not about economic intensification in response to rising populations but were related to widespread change in tenure and how land was viewed - extensification, rather than intensification
8
Q
Cosmology of Field Systems
A
- Marked degree of co-axiality e.g. at Salisbury Plain: Social or cosmological significance to this?
- Clocks - because they structured people’s daily activities, mvoements and practices
- Calendars - because people’s seasonal and annual routines were played out through fields (spring plantings, autumn harvests and culling)
- Compasses- because the physical structures of fields, ditches, trackways and hedges were a means by which people orientated themselves and navigated around landscapes and claimed familiarity over the world
9
Q
Trethellan Farm
A
- Cornwall
- Evidence of deliberate abandonment deposits and other related practices associated with a series of MBA roundhouses
- Houses may have had life cycles
- Foundation or ‘closure’ deposits - often involved metal objects, loom weights etc
10
Q
Brean Down
A
- Rocky Limestone peninsula in Somerset near Weston-super-Mare
- Preserved earthworks of a prehistoric field system and round barrows
- Earliest activity - palaeosoil with flints and 3 bealer sherds
- Oval stone building later constructed - associated with some Beaker but also later sherds
- Building dated to 1730-1515 BC
- Possible a craft or storage structure
- Next major phase of occupation included at least two roundhouses with stone footings, 1420-1000 BC, indicating occupation for many generations
- Objects associated with salt production in which brine is boiled down in small trays on pedestals
11
Q
Down Farm Bronze Age settlement, Dorset
A
- MBA roundhouses and domestic finds assemblages from this site on Cranbourne Chase are typical of Bronze Age settlements in C and S England
- The rectangular building in one phase less common
12
Q
Reaves
A
- Low stone walls incorporating earth and turf
- Sometimes visible on the surface of low banks - ephemeral
- Some are more prominent, as they are formed of granite boulders - sinuous
- Watershed reaves may have been significant boundaries in prehistory
- Often formed part of extensive prehistoric field systems
- Some form coaxial field systems, where fields, smaller enclosures & roundhouses are visible from the air, in low light or snow
13
Q
Roundhouses or ‘hut circles’
A
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14
Q
Darmoor settlement types
A
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15
Q
The Shoveldown Project
A
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16
Q
Cairnfields – clearance & cultivation?
A
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17
Q
Ring and Boulder Cairns
A
- In some parts of upland Britain such as Cumbria, there are also small ring cairns & boulder cairns (stone placed on natural earthfast boulders).
- A response to the landscape?
18
Q
Late Bronze Age major enclosures
A
-e.g. Mucking North Ring, Carl Wark or Carlshalton
19
Q
Springfield Lyons
A
- Large LBA enclosure with a prominent wooden gatepost structure and a probable palisade as well as a bank and ditch
- Site later reused as an Anglo-Saxon settlement and cemetery
- Perforated clay slabs and pottery found
- Evidence for bronze smelting with bronze slag and broken sword moulds deposited near enclosure entrance in ditch terminals
20
Q
Pit alignments
A
- Seem to have deliberately incorporated & physically referenced the positions of earlier MBA round barrows
- Even extensive excavation of pit alignments, as at Ling Hall Quarry in Warks. rarely finds much artefactual material.
- Most pits are empty, or with only scraps of bone and pottery. A small number contain placed deposits, however.
21
Q
Gardom’s Edge, Derbyshire
A
-LBA & EIA cairns & boundaries
-Although created by clearance, cairns were often semi-formal in design
-Some associated with flint & chert artefacts & in a few instances handfuls of cremated bone.
-Linear boundaries often incorporated earthfast boulders, sometimes changing course to do this.
-Larger earlier stones followed by smaller clearance.
-Several roundhouses
also excavated
-The roundhouse had 6 large postholes forming its entrance, & surrounding stakeholes. LBA pottery found in some PHs
-In a later phase, possibly after the use of the building as a commemorative act, a low stone rubble bank was constructed around it, with large boulders and a metalled surface later placed on top of where the 6 large entrance postholes had been
22
Q
The Gray Hill Landscape Research Project
A
- Robbed stone-lined cists
- Several types of stone boundary
- Possible later prehistoric, co-axial field boundaries
23
Q
Ceramics
A
- Only from the Middle Bronze Age that substantial differentiated assemblages of ceramics appear, with various different forms used in everyday cooking, eating and storage
- Some ‘domestic’ Beaker Assemblages are known
24
Q
Fengate
A
- Pryor interpreted field systems in functional terms, for handling ships-There were also human and animal burials from the ditches & unusual artefact deposits including metalwork
- Flag fen basin - thousands of hoof prints and piss mire more likely to be herds of cattle than flocks of sheep
- Bradley Fen - extensive MBA-LBA field system and associated settlement
- Field blocks associated with one or two roundhouses each, along with granaries, watering holes & animal burials, including one person placed tightly crouched in a large posthole
- Person placed head down in pit with their hands bound, placed deposits in waterholes including the sawn off prow of a dugout canoe
- Complete but buried skinned female aurochs buried tightly crouched in a pit and cattle bone deposits in pits
25
Burnt Mounds
- Common across Britain and Ireland from the Bronze Age onwards
- Characterised by sometiems extensive deposits of burnt and fire-cracked stone
- Usually found close to watercourses and can survive as earthworks in upland parts of Britain and Ireland
- Sometimes found associated with central stone, timber or wicker-lined troughs or with pits
- Main uses proposed for them are cooking/feasting, or as saunas/ritual 'sweat lodges'
- Brewing and animal hide/fleece preparation are also possibilities
- Sometimes butchered and burnt animal bone is found in burnt mounds
26
LBA abandonment
- Some upland settlements and field systems appear to have been abandoned by LBA -result of Europe wide climatic change?
- Climate got wetter and colder in Britain and Ireland, and pear formation increased significantly
- Others argue that although changes occurred, impact on settlement is exaggerated
- C14 dates suggest that populations began to decline before climatic deterioration and that social and economic shifts can explain changes
