Neolithic Monuments and Rituals Flashcards
Neolithic long mounds
- Some long mounds are amongst earliest known Neolithic constructions in Britain, some dating back to c. 3800 BC.
- They were linear mounds of stone, chalk &/or earth, sometimes subdivided with radial lines of fences or stone walls.
- Some, but not all, contained axial chambers of timber or stone in which human remains were deposited.
- Most have flanking ditches, often containing placed deposits of artefacts & human and animal bone.
Earliest Neolithic monuments
- Long barrows were probably not the earliest funerary monuments though
- Portal dolmens such as Sweyne’s Howe South and the Whispering Knights were possibly earlier in SW England and Wales.
- Several long barrows such as Notgrove, Sale’s Lot and Ty Isaf also had earlier passage or rotunda graves beneath them
- Most of these are poorly dated.
Long barrows and long houses
- Long barrows have been considered to be architectural reference to NW European longhouses – ‘ancestral houses for the dead’.
- But recent 14C dating shows long barrows were built several centuries after most long houses on Continent had gone out of use.
- Typological schemes such as Darvill’s 2004 example may now be questionable.
- Excavators such as Piggott & Atkinson considered that each one may have been in use by a community for many generations, possibly centuries.
- This now also seems unlikely. Recent 14C dating & Bayesian modelling suggests that their main phases were used for decades, rarely longer.
Wayland’s Smithy
- At Wayland’s Smithy, primary mortuary structure a wooden box or chamber, accessible over a period of time in earlier 36th C. BC – deposition lasted for a generation.
- After hiatus of 40-100 years, small mound built in 3520-3470 BC (Wayland’s Smithy I).
- After a short gap of < 35 years, the second phase (Wayland’s Smithy II) was constructed in 3460– 3400 BC, and its use probably extended to mid-34th C. BC.
West Kennet
- West Kennet –Recent Bayesian modelling of 14C dates indicates construction in 3670–3635 BC, with last interments of initial use of chambers in 3640–3610 BC.
- Primary mortuary activity may have only lasted 10-30 years.
- After at least a century, infilling of chambers began in 3620–3240 BC & continued into later 3rd millennium BC.
- Remains of at least 36 people represented by primary & secondary deposits
Long mounds in the landscape
-Recent research has also focused on the landscape
settings of long mounds & dolmens, & relationships with
natural features, as with Pen-y-Wyrlod & the mountain of
Mynydd Troeth; & with other monuments such as Thickthorn Down & the Dorset Cursus
Portal tombs & dolmens
- Viewshed analyses
- For dolmens such as Din Lligwy & Pentre Ifan, it is usually argued that there were mounds originally covering the stones, subsequently robbed. But was this the case?
- Cummings & Richards proposed that balancing of capstones on pinnacles of uprights may have been intentional, & designed to be seen.
Causewayed enclosures
- Causewayed enclosures, ‘causewayed camps’ or ‘interrupted ditch enclosures’, are earliest known examples of enclosure of open spaces, & with pottery etc were conventionally dated to the early Neolithic (c. 4000–3300 BC).
- Nearly 80 known, majority in England south of River Trent, with outliers in Wales, Scotland, Ireland & Cumbria -The Gathering Time project used thousands of existing & new 14C dates, coupled with Bayesian analyses, to place these monuments in a better chronological framework with one another.
Ditches of Causewayed Enclosures
- The ditches of causewayed enclosures, were discontinuous stretches of varied length separated by short ‘causeways’.
- Not all gaps were entrances, & most enclosures ‘permeable’, not defensive.
- Little evidence for permanent occupation – may have been inhabited only seasonally, during social gatherings involving feasting, defleshing, rituals, &/or animal trading.
- Ditches & pits of causewayed enclosures often featured deposits of animal & human bone, artefacts & plant remains; some apparently deliberate & structured, as at Windmill Hill, & Hambledon Hill
Windmill Hill
- The construction of Windmill Hill can now be dated to 3700– 3640 cal. BC.
- The inner ditch circuit was probably dug first; then the outer, then the middle circuit, each one over a 5-75 year period.
Social Significance of Causewayed Enclosures
- At causewayed enclosures, people were probably gathering together on a seasonal basis, to meet, work communally to renew the digging of ditch segments, & to exchange or trade artefacts.
- There were feasts & other ceremonies, some of them perhaps to do with excarnation & disarticulation of the dead
Cursus monuments
- The Dorset Cursus – the longest Neolithic monument in Europe.
- Cursus monuments now thought to mostly date to the period 3600–3200 cal. BC. There is nothing like them in Europe.
- Earlier & later monuments referenced by or referencing the line of the Dorset Cursus.
- Many of these have only recently become apparent through aerial photography.
- Tilley argued in Phenomenology of Landscape that the Cursus was a ritual pathway, & certain natural and human features incorporated along its length were designed to have specific impacts, such as the incorporation of the earlier Thickthorn Down long mound, where the sun sets behind the skylined long mound if approached from E,
- Tilley however thought that features such as the Pleistocene relic river cliff were also deliberately incorporated within it. But was it an ‘empty path?
Landscape choreography in Orkney
- On Orkney, the Neolithic settlements of Barnhouse and Ness of Brodgar were located close to the Stones of Stenness stone circle, and referenced some of its architectural features.
- A standing stone stood between Barnhouse and the tomb of Maes Howe.
- Colin Richards sees this as deliberate, monumental ‘choreography’.
Standing stones in the landscape
- Many standing stones are located in specific areas of landscape – at heads of valleys, along possible routeways, & on plateaus.
- They often appear designed to view from, rather than to be viewed.
The Stonehenge Riverside Project at Durrington Walls
-At Durrington, under later henge bank, remains of 7 buildings have been found – houses?
-Buildings small, with central hearths, & evidence for beds & ‘dressers’
-Similarities with Late Neo. stone buildings in Orkney.
-Two Durrington Walls buildings (top right) were set within rings of posts & outer circular ditches – for people of higher status, or ritual specialists? 14C dates for Durrington Walls settlement place start at 2525–2470 BC & end in 2480–2440 BC, consistent with dates for sarsen trilithons & circle at Stonehenge. May have been
hundreds of buildings!
-Large amounts of Grooved Ware and butchered & burnt cattle & pig bone were found at Durrington Walls; the latter suggesting feasting in winter (midwinter solstice?). -Some bones had tips of flint arrowheads imbedded in them. These might have been deliberately formal killings, as in parts of Papua New Guinea
