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Peepz and Cultz > Neolithic > Flashcards

Neolithic Flashcards

1
Q

New Ideas in the Neolithic

A
  • Domesticated animals
  • Cereal cultivation
  • Flint mining, quarrying and trading
  • Long-houses
  • Ceremonial or ritual monuments
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2
Q

Early Neolithic houses

A

Few known until recently
– Lack of visibility?
– Mobile, transient nature of early Neolithic population?
- ‘Pre-monumental’ phase

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3
Q

‘Hall-houses’: Communal houses for ‘pioneer farmers’?

A 
• Meeting places: feasting or cult centres?
• Farm houses?
• Social cohesion in clearance
and construction
– Symbolic burning?
– Cereals and dairying
– Low numbers of artefacts
– Smaller oval/rectilinear structures nearby
– Other flimsier Neo structures
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4
Q

Ideologies behind the ‘houses’

A 
Broad similarities in template
• Structured deposition, e.g. arrowheads, axes, pottery sherds
• Lifecycles of houses and people
• Burning down
– Closure
– Arson/attack?
– Accidental?
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5
Q

Causewayed enclosures

A

Monument found across NW Europe, including northern France, Western Germany, southern Britain
• Discontinuous ring of ditch(es) and bank with causeways

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6
Q

Enclosure layout

A

Use of slopes, water courses as well as ditches
• Enclosing central area with
• England: shorter ditch segments

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7
Q

‘Tor’ enclosures

A

• Discontinuous drystone walls without ditches e.g.
Carn Brea, Cornwall
• 3700 – 3300 BC
• 14 House platforms
• Occupation debris
• Houses burnt down
• 700+ leaf shaped arrowheads around entrance

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8
Q

Causewayed enclosures purpose

A
  • Meeting places, defence, act of creation of monument?

- Similarities with Paris basin – continuing connections/migrations?

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9
Q

Neolithic Houses: Ritual or profane?

A

Ritual:
– Atypical butchery evidence: sporadic feasting?
– Structured depositions
– Little evidence for permanent settlements?
Domestic:
– Faunal evidence is comparable with other Neolithic domestic settlements

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10
Q

How mobile were Early Neolithic ‘farmers’?

A
  • Wild animals were still exploited
  • Dairying was intensively practiced
  • Aquatic animals seem to be largely ignored
  • Were causewayed enclosures meeting places?
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11
Q

Marine resources

A
  • In the Mesolithic, coastal dwellers had a marine-based diet
  • In the Neolithic, everyone seemed to have a terrestrial based diet
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12
Q

Cereal agriculture

A

-Cereal agriculture widespread, comparable with continent?
or
-Cereal agriculture sporadic; wild plants still major resource?
or
-Failed attempt, reemergence in Bronze Age?

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13
Q

Later development of the house

A
  • Houses become less regular and more diverse
  • Rectangular houses rare in later Neolithic
  • By 3300 BC things began to change, move towards circular houses
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14
Q

Orkney Isles: Habreck

A 
Early Neolithic (3300 – 3000 BC)
• Timber houses – only short-lived
• Followed by stone structures
• Raw resources – trees? Neolithic quarry.
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15
Q

Skara Brae

A 
(3100 – 2500 BC)
• Stone-built
• Circular
• Central hearth
• Stone furniture
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16
Q

Neolithic Britain and Ireland

A

Connectivity
– Comparisons with continent: causewayed enclosures, houses, pottery, introduction of domesticates to Ireland
– Around Britain and Ireland: spread of styles and ideas, e.g. Grooved Ware, house styles
• Regionality
– Regional pottery styles and uses of pots
– House styles and materials

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17
Q

Neolithic definition

A

The arrival of farming
A major social development
Move from reliance on hunting‐gathering‐fishing to food production

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18
Q

When and how does farming reaches Britain and Ireland?

A 
Cultivated cereals
Domesticated animals – cow, sheep, goat…
Pottery
Leaf‐shaped arrowheads; ground axeheads
Monuments
Flint mines
Rectangular timber buildings
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19
Q

Long tradition of studying Neolithic monuments

A
  • Very visible!
  • Initial antiquarian interest
  • Early 20th century, beginnings of modern archaeology
  • A Mediterranean origin, especially Mycenae, Crete
  • Megalithic monuments (mega, lithos = big stone) could only have been erected by skilled masons from advanced civilisations
  • e.g. Newgrange, Edward Llwyd, 1699
  • Stonehenge and Avebury landscape, William Stukely,, 18th century
20
Q

Range of Neolithic monuments across Britain and Ireland

A

Some are mortuary monuments – associated with human remains = ‘tombs’
Others gathering spaces for ceremony, movement, performance
Ways of bringing people together (male/female? Hierarchy? Coercion?)
• Shape/form (typology)
• Landscape setting
• Mortuary practice
• Radiocarbon age
• Social structure in prehistory

21
Q

Classification of megalithic monuments

A

By shape or form (typology)
e.g. long mounds/long cairns versus chambered tombs; simple&raquo_space;» complex
By date
e.g. early&raquo_space;» late Neolithic

22
Q

Dating megalithic monuments

A

Very often, not easy to determine –
• Secondary re‐use in prehistory
• Excavated/dug out in 18th/19th centuries
• Stone – lack of organics to radiocarbon date construction phases
• Emptied of material, modern tourist attractions

23
Q

Portal tombs

A
  • Also called portal dolmens, quoits (Cornwall)
  • Widely spread – north & west Wales, Ireland, Cornwall
  • Over 230 examples in total
  • Shared maritime cultural tradition – Irish Sea Zone
24
Q

Features of portal tombs

A

• ‘Closed‐off boxes’; rectangular chamber
• Usually one chamber
• Sometimes surrounding low stone cairns
• Completely covered or capstone visible?
-Distinctive large capstone
-Capstone often sloping to back, heavier part to front
-Brownshill capstone c. 120 tonnes
-Portal stones, usually in line with sidestones
-Often a doorstone fully or partly blocking the entrance

25
Q

Human remains from portal tombs

A

e. g Poulnabrone portal tomb, Clare, SW Ireland
- Monument constructed c. 3800 BC and in use for up to 600 years OR
- Older, skeletal material gathered up and placed in a later monument?
- Dates of human bone span 390‐660 years
- Starting – 3885‐3720 cal BC
- Ending – 3335‐3115 cal BC

26
Q

Other functions of portal ‘tombs’?

A
  • ‘Raising stones to sky’
  • Performance rather than burial the key issue?
  • Quarrying of capstone
  • ‘Quick architecture’?
27
Q

Long cairns/long barrows

A 
Ireland – called ‘court tombs’
Scotland – called ‘Clyde tombs’
• Elongated shape (usually trapezoidal)
• Court feature
• Gallery/chambers of stone orthostats (originally roofed)
• Surrounding stone cairn and kerb
28
Q

Variation in long barrow features

A 
• Open courts
• Single Court
• Dual courts
• Central courts
-Function of the court?
-A place for ceremonies?
29
Q

Long barrows

A
  • Mostly eastern Britain
  • South‐central England ‘heartland’
    e. g. Severn‐Cotswold, Wessex, Thames Valley
  • Also Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Eastern Scotland
30
Q

The ‘classic’ long barrow (Kinnes 1992)

A
  • Elongated mound (rectangular, oval, trapezoidal) that is higher to east
  • Monumental forecourt or façade, usually facing east
  • Porches/avenues of posts approaching entrance
  • Stone/wooden revetments supporting mound edges
  • Ditches running along sides of mound
  • Burial chamber/s approached through forecourt OR inserted into sides of mound
  • Timber/stone blocking when monument closed
31
Q

Five southern British long barrows

A

West Kennett, Wayland’s Smithy, Ascott‐under‐Wychwood, Fussell’s Lodge, Hazleton North
-Most dating between 3750‐3550 BC
-However, construction and use short‐lived
-Rare events in any one locality
-Variation in treatment of human remains:
-Unburnt, but articulated dis‐articulated
-Relatively small numbers‐ 15‐40 people
-Successive deposition over max 5 generations, usually fewer
=Little evidence for very old/ancestral remains

32
Q

Long barrow histories: West Kennett

A

Excavated partially 19th c, John Thurnam
Long ditches, transeptal chamber
Forecourt blocked in Late Neo/Early Bronze Age
36 individuals in primary deposits
Sealing layer chalk rubble, sarsens, earth
Secondary human deposits
Conventional thought – open for centuries
Construction of monument 3670‐3635 cal BC
A surprisingly short span of use –
10‐30 years (68% probability)
1‐55 years (94% probability)
Not a long history of accumulation
of human remains

33
Q

Causewayed enclosures

A
  • A non‐megalithic ‘monument’
  • Earthen bank and ditched enclosure; gaps or causeways
  • Palisade fences, wooden ramparts/revetments
  • Concentrated in southern Britain, but in smaller numbers across other parts England, Wales and Ireland
  • Peak in construction 3700 BC onwards, i.e. after long barrow construction starts
  • Labour required for enclosure construction – how/why were people involved?
  • Some enclosures with ‘ritual’ or purposeful deposits e.g. Windmill Hill
  • Animal & human bone, pottery across three circuits.
  • Density; whole/parts. Symbolic order?
34
Q

Cursus monuments

A
  • Parallel‐sided linear earthen monuments
  • Ditches and banks
  • Often running for long distances
  • Notoriously difficult to date!
  • Lack of associated material
  • Stratigraphy – relationship to other monuments, e.g. causewayed enclosures
  • Mid‐4th millennium BC but continuing into Bronze Age
35
Q

Passage tombs

A

Irish Sea area

Middle Neolithic – 2nd half of 4th mill. BC

36
Q

Passage tomb features

A 
A passage (!)
That opens up into a chamber
• Cruciform
• Polygonal
• Undifferentiated
A covering mound or cairn ‐ sometimes layered (stone, earth, turves)
37
Q

Passage tombs in the landscape

A
  • Just off the summits of mountains, ridges
  • Intervisibility
  • Commanding attention?
  • Connecting larger communities than earlier monuments?
  • Dense clusters or complexes of passage tombs
38
Q

Human remains in passage tombs

A
  • Multiple burials

- New interest in cremation, although unburnt bone/inhumed bone still present

39
Q

Grave goods from passage tombs

A
  • Chalk & stone balls
  • Stone & bone beads
  • Pendants
  • Bone & antler pins
  • Carrowkeel pottery
  • Stone basins
40
Q

Passage tomb art

A
  • Mostly abstract or non‐representational
  • Concentration in Boyne Valley, Ireland, esp. Knowth and Newgrange
  • Key points in tomb architecture – entrance, thresholds, lintels
41
Q

Passage tombs and astronomical alignments

A 
Passages of some tombs aligned on astronomical events, e.g. shortest and longest days of year
Midwinter solstice –
• Newgrange, Ireland
• Maes Howe, Orkney
Midsummer solstice –
• Bryn Celli Ddu, Anglesey
42
Q

Late Neolithic monumental landscapes

A

3000/2900 BC, passage tombs coming to end of their primary use
New types of monument appear:
• Henge (open‐air enclosure defined by earthen banks and ditches)
• Stone circles
• Timber circles
• Wooden palisades

43
Q

Passage tomb dating

A

-Bone pins
c. 3600 BC onwards
-Quanterness- Deposition probably
starts
3450–3350 BC
-Big eastern tombs
3300‐3000 BC
-Cellular or Maes Howe‐type tombs
-Progression? Simple to more elaborate? West to East?

44
Q

Henge monuments

A

Definition:

  • Circular area surrounded by ditch and (normally) an outer bank
  • Stone/wooden uprights standing within
  • Before 3000 BC right up to c.2000 BC
  • Part of ‘ceremonial’ landscapes – with lots other monuments
  • Low lying, set within dished landscapes
  • Framing landscape around?
  • An ‘amphitheatre’?
45
Q

To recap…

A

Earlier Neolithic monuments
-Portal tombs/dolmens – Irish Sea distribution
-Long mounds – court tombs/Clyde tombs (mostly stone) long barrows (earth, stone chambers/timber structures)
-Stalled cairns – Orkney‐Cromarty tombs
-Causewayed enclosures – ‘heartland’ in south‐central Britain
Middle Neolithic
-Passage tombs – across Irish Sea zone
– related to Maes Howe‐type (cellular) tombs on Orkney
-Cursus monuments
Late Neolithic
-Henges
-Stone circles (mostly in Scotland; stone circles further south are later in date)
-Timber circles and settings (large open‐air spaces or arenas)
-Cursus/linear monuments continuing

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