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

The Neolithic period
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broad-based spectrum of cultivation, gathering, herding, hunting and sea fishing is indicated.
There is sporadic evidence for scratch ploughs or ards, from the Earlier Neolithic onwards,
including the marks preserved under the South Street long barrow, Wiltshire (Ashbee et al. 1979).
There have been claims for permanent plots or arable fields. The most extensive, the stonewalled
systems of western Ireland, appear rather to have contained livestock; and their age remains
fully to be established by radiocarbon dating. Irregular stone-walled plots on the Shetland Islands
may be Bronze Age or later rather than Neolithic, and the ditched paddocks of Fengate and
other sites on the western margin of the East Anglian Fens are now better seen as Later Bronze
Age than Late Neolithic.
Regional, topographic and other biases hinder reconstruction. Northern areas have been
relatively neglected in terms of major research projects, though that is changing (Barclay 1997;
Sharples in Sharples and Sheridan 1992). Much research has concentrated on monuments,
both for their interest and importance and because they are generally more easily identifiable
than residential occupations. The search for residential sites by means of surface survey, looking
principally for lithic scatters, has intensified since the mid-1980s: projects have concentrated
on heavily cultivated, thin soils, mainly on the chalk downland of southern England, where
monuments also occur. Much less research has been done on coasts, in wetlands and in river
valleys. Wetland research, for example in the Somerset Levels (Coles and Coles 1986), has
produced spectacular results, not in the identification of domestic sites but in the discovery of
successive wooden walkways across fen, fenwood and raised bog, showing organized routes
across wet places and wide use of the landscape. Large-scale rescue projects under way in
advance of gravel extraction in the Thames and Ouse river valleys promise to reveal much
more about valley use.
CHANGING PERSPECTIVES IN NEOLITHIC STUDIES
Archaeologists have become more reflective of the ways in which assumptions about the Neolithic
period are formed. In terms of dominant theory, Neolithic studies reflect post-war trends rather
well, and indeed for some 15 years have been in the forefront of theoretical debate.
Initially, the culture-historical model prevailed, best encapsulated by Piggott’s classic synthesis
The Neolithic cultures of the British Isles (1954). The Neolithic was marked by an intrusive agricultural
population, arranged in various regional cultural groups, whose artefacts, monuments and
development form much of the substance of the book. This was an era of relatively small-scale
excavations, for example by Piggott and Atkinson at West Kennet and Wayland’s Smithy long
barrows and Stonehenge, or by Grahame Clark at the camp at Peacock’s Farm, Shippea Hill, on
the Cambridgeshire fen-edge. Subsequently, Clark set up larger-scale research excavation at an
occupation site at Hurst Fen, Mildenhall, and thereafter large-scale rescue excavations, for example
at Durrington Walls henge (Wainwright 1989), were mounted. The application of radiocarbon
dating began to lengthen the period, and aerial photography to extend distributions of ploughedout
sites including causewayed enclosures. Fieldwork was concentrated in southern parts of Britain.
This bias, created by contemporary perceptions and assumptions as much as by the apparent
archaeological richness of the south, persisted for a long time.
In the heyday of processual archaeology, from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, the concern
with culture decreased, though research into individual monument and artefact types remained
plentiful. A focus on a combination of expansive economy, growing population and changing
social structure dominated research. Interpretation of monuments was revived (e.g. Renfrew
1973): these became the territorial markers of sedentary populations concerned with land and