The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca
The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca
The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca
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• 70 • Alasdair Whittle<br />
inter- or intra-group rivalry. One trend suggested for Orkney is <strong>from</strong> dispersed small monuments,<br />
with modest accumulations <strong>of</strong> human remains, which served s<strong>ca</strong>ttered communities, to the<br />
grander monuments, more centrally placed, in which the idea <strong>of</strong> a larger community was<br />
expressed by very considerable deposits <strong>of</strong> bone, some perhaps even robbed <strong>from</strong> earlier<br />
structures (Sharples 1985).<br />
By the Late Neolithic, few if any such constructions were being built, though many were still<br />
actively regarded. In terms <strong>of</strong> mortuary rites, the emphasis began to pass <strong>from</strong> generalized<br />
ancestries to remembered or invented genealogies, intimated by the occurrence <strong>of</strong> more individual<br />
graves with grave goods. How should this be interpreted? It is <strong>of</strong>ten seen as witness to greater<br />
social differentiation or glossed as ‘the rise <strong>of</strong> the individual’, but this should not be seen as a<br />
simple process. Individual funerals occurred throughout the Neolithic, and veneration <strong>of</strong> ancestral<br />
pasts continued into the Late Neolithic, in respect for existing monuments and in the enclosure<br />
tradition. Genealogi<strong>ca</strong>l reckoning within the frame <strong>of</strong> the ancestral order suggests as much a<br />
more interdependent, as a more individualized or atomized society.<br />
Enclosures: bounding the world<br />
When the first enclosures <strong>ca</strong>me to be built, their impact, both physi<strong>ca</strong>l and conceptual, must have<br />
been considerable. <strong>The</strong> outer circuit <strong>of</strong> the <strong>ca</strong>usewayed enclosure on Windmill Hill, for example,<br />
had a diameter <strong>of</strong> some 350 m (Figure 4.5). It belonged to the later Earlier Neolithic or the<br />
Middle Neolithic. <strong>The</strong> evidence indi<strong>ca</strong>tes that this enclosure was set in open woodland or scrub;<br />
it constituted a ‘monumental intervention in nature’ (Hodder 1990, 260). Moreover, encircling a<br />
place with ditches and embankments was a new idea, since earlier monuments here took the<br />
form <strong>of</strong> barrows and related structures. Its source may have lain in earlier ditched enclosures <strong>of</strong><br />
the continental LBK, and the new practice may have stood for older concepts <strong>of</strong> community and<br />
ancestral order.<br />
As with other monuments, there are variations and unities in the use <strong>of</strong> <strong>ca</strong>usewayed enclosures<br />
(Edmonds 1993), which seem to be a mainly southern phenomenon. <strong>The</strong>y consist <strong>of</strong> circuits <strong>of</strong><br />
interrupted ditch, with internal banks, generally low and informal; some ditches are backed by<br />
palisades, as at Orsett, Essex, or Haddenham, Cambridgeshire. Windmill Hill had three circuits,<br />
Figure 4.5 Ex<strong>ca</strong>vation <strong>of</strong> bone deposits in the middle ditch <strong>of</strong> the <strong>ca</strong>usewayed<br />
enclosure at Windmill Hill (Alasdair Whittle).<br />
possibly contemporaneous,<br />
possibly successive. Others range<br />
<strong>from</strong> one to four, and there are<br />
regional variations in spacing <strong>of</strong><br />
circuits and enclosed areas. Some<br />
sites have seemingly incomplete<br />
circuits and others ones that link<br />
natural features such as streams and<br />
the sides <strong>of</strong> promontories. On the<br />
chalklands, many are set on hilltops<br />
or s<strong>ca</strong>rps, but there are numerous<br />
examples in southern and Midland<br />
river valleys, and near the fen-edge<br />
<strong>of</strong> East <strong>An</strong>glia. Stone-walled<br />
enclosures in the south-west, such<br />
as Carn Brea, Cornwall, may be an<br />
equivalent form.<br />
<strong>The</strong>se sites do not seem on the<br />
whole to have been settlements,