The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

• 60 • Alasdair Whittle
graves in Ireland appear to have been. Regional sequences are not synchronized, however, and
construction of chambered tombs may have continued in the north-west after the building of
long barrows and chambered tombs in the south had ceased. The strongly linear cursus monuments
mostly belong here, representing in some instances elaborations of ideas to do with pre-existing
barrows, probably in the realms of the dead and the circulation of spirits (Tilley 1994). The first
single or limited-number burials under small barrows or in small ring-ditches date to the end of
the Middle Neolithic, while some stone circles could belong this early. Round-based pottery
styles include the Ebbsfleet variant of the Peterborough tradition, while in the north, flat-based
Grooved Ware may have appeared on Orkney by the end of the Middle Neolithic, perhaps
alongside the round-based Unstan Ware.
To the Late Neolithic (c.3000/2900–25/2200 BC) belong the end of the Peterborough pottery
tradition and the full development of Grooved Ware, now present over the whole country. Late
Neolithic monuments include henges and their internal settings, stone and timber circles, and
some cursus monuments. Stone rows, some perhaps erected earlier, were incorporated into the
layout of ceremonial complexes, such as the West Kennet Avenue attached to Avebury henge in
Wiltshire or those at Callanish on Lewis. The monumental mound of Silbury Hill appears to be
the north Wiltshire equivalent of the developed phases of Stonehenge. Also pre-Beaker are the
palisade enclosures of West Kennet (Whittle 1997), and perhaps too some other examples, though
that at Mount Pleasant, Dorchester, Dorset, has later radiocarbon dates but Beaker pottery in
deposits contemporary with its decay (Wainwright 1989). A variety of single burials and cremation
areas are also known. The date of introduction of Beaker pottery and associated material culture
and practices is uncertain; it may well not be as high as 2600 BC (contra Chapter 5). If a simple
distinction is made between earlier and later Beaker assemblages, only the earlier series can belong
with the end of the Late Neolithic. This material is discussed in Chapter 5.
Disappointingly few dendrochronological dates are available for the period, and few radiocarbon
dates are of high precision. While the scientific methods await refinement or application, interim
goals include monument and artefact sequences (e.g. Kinnes 1979), and studies of regional
development.
Both the Earlier-Later and Early-Middle-Late schemes are employed here, although neither
does full justice to the regional patterns of landscape and subsistence change across the country,
nor to artefact- or site-specific sequences. The general trend seen in pollen and molluscan evidence
is one of gradually increasing forest clearance, both in terms of the scale of clearings and their
duration, but with considerable local and regional variation. In at least some sequences there are
phases of regeneration; the decline of woodland was not relentlessly uninterrupted. In the south,
clearance may have been greatest in the vicinity of monument complexes, so that environmental
evidence associated with monuments large and small may not be representative of wider landscapes.
In some localities, open country may be a by-product of ceremonial activity connected with
monument construction, rather than the outcome of an ever-intensifying agricultural economy
and a growing population.
Sites with good assemblages of subsistence data are rare from any phase. Causewayed enclosures
emphasize domesticated cattle and large southern henges domesticated pigs, but it is not certain
that evidence from such special contexts truly reflects contemporary stock keeping. There is little
evidence for intensification of cereal cultivation through time. On Orkney, for example, the
range of subsistence residues in the distinctive small, nucleated Later Neolithic settlements such
as Skara Brae does not seem greatly different to that seen in earlier structures at Knap of Howar,
Papa Westray; those apparent may relate in large part to the nature of group composition and to
varying tactics for the intake of new land (Sharples in Sharples and Sheridan 1992). Even where
stone-built, nucleated houses have been examined, evidence for extensive agriculture is lacking; a