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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<strong>The</strong> Neolithic period<br />
• 75 •<br />
importantly, the use <strong>of</strong> timber longhouses and novel artefacts. <strong>The</strong> long, slow interaction between<br />
the LBK and the south S<strong>ca</strong>ndinavian/north European plain Mesolithic led to a convergence <strong>of</strong><br />
lifestyles. <strong>The</strong> LBK also impacted on, and was influenced by, indigenous communities in northwest<br />
France and elsewhere. From these traditions much was adopted in <strong>Britain</strong>: ideas, memories, forms<br />
<strong>of</strong> monumental architecture, new styles and kinds <strong>of</strong> artefact, and new subsistence staples.<br />
<strong>The</strong> relationship appears not to have involved direct descent <strong>from</strong> any single area. <strong>The</strong> general<br />
character <strong>of</strong> Earlier Neolithic <strong>Britain</strong> has much in common with its contemporaries in western<br />
Europe: mobility and dispersal, broad-based subsistence practices, barrows, interrupted ditch<br />
enclosures, axes and round-based pottery styles. <strong>The</strong> repertoires vary <strong>from</strong> region to region. It<br />
seems that there were actively maintained and widely shared value and belief systems that helped<br />
to bring the Neolithic into existence and then to consolidate it. Particular horizons <strong>of</strong> contact,<br />
visible for example in the spread <strong>of</strong> passage grave monuments, may intimate this. In the Late<br />
Neolithic, while there was interaction with Ireland, much <strong>of</strong> the insular record is not matched on<br />
the Continent, including henges and Grooved Ware. <strong>The</strong> trajectories <strong>of</strong> change there were by<br />
now varied and complex (Whittle 1996), but the innovations <strong>of</strong> the Corded Ware horizon, <strong>from</strong><br />
c.2800/2700 BC onwards, occurred east <strong>of</strong> the Rhine, and northern France at least shared with<br />
<strong>Britain</strong> an archaic attachment to older monument forms. When contact with the Continent did<br />
come in the Beaker horizon (Chapter 5), this was a renewal rather than a total innovation.<br />
Key texts<br />
Barrett, J., 1994. Fragments <strong>from</strong> antiquity: an archaeology <strong>of</strong> social life in <strong>Britain</strong>, 2900–1200 BC. Oxford: Blackwell.<br />
Bradley, R., 1993. Altering the earth: the origins <strong>of</strong> monuments in <strong>Britain</strong> and continental Europe. Edinburgh: Society<br />
<strong>of</strong> <strong>An</strong>tiquaries <strong>of</strong> Scotland Monograph Series, 8.<br />
Hodder, I., 1990. <strong>The</strong> domesti<strong>ca</strong>tion <strong>of</strong> Europe. Oxford: Blackwell.<br />
Thomas, J., 1991. Rethinking the Neolithic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.<br />
Tilley, C., 1994. A phenomenology <strong>of</strong> lands<strong>ca</strong>pe: places, paths and monuments. Oxford: Berg.<br />
Whittle, A., 1996. Europe in the Neolithic: the creation <strong>of</strong> new worlds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.<br />
Bibliography<br />
Ashbee, P., Smith, I.F. and Evans, J.G., 1979. ‘Ex<strong>ca</strong>vation <strong>of</strong> three long barrows near Avebury, Wiltshire’,<br />
Proceedings <strong>of</strong> the Prehistoric Society 45, 207–300.<br />
Barclay, G.J., 1997. ‘<strong>The</strong> Neolithic’, in Edwards, K.J. and Ralston, I.B.M. (eds) Scotland: environment and<br />
archaeology, 8000 BC-AD 1000. Chichester: John Wiley, 127–149.<br />
Barrett, J., Bradley, R. and Green, M., 1991. Lands<strong>ca</strong>pe, monuments and society: the prehistory <strong>of</strong> Cranborne Chase.<br />
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.<br />
Bradley, R., 1992. ‘<strong>The</strong> ex<strong>ca</strong>vation <strong>of</strong> an oval barrow beside the Abingdon <strong>ca</strong>usewayed enclosure, Oxfordshire’,<br />
Proceedings <strong>of</strong> the Prehistoric Society 58, 127–142.<br />
Cleal, R.M.J., Walker, K.E. and Montague, R. 1995. Stonehenge in its lands<strong>ca</strong>pe: twentieth-century ex<strong>ca</strong>vations.<br />
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Coles, J. and Coles, B., 1986. Sweet Track to Glastonbury. London: Thames and Hudson.<br />
Darvill, T. and Thomas, J. (eds) 1996. Neolithic houses in northwest Europe and beyond. Oxford: Oxbow Monograph<br />
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Edmonds, M., 1993. ‘Interpreting <strong>ca</strong>usewayed enclosures in the past and present’, in Tilley, C. (ed.) Interpretative<br />
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Edmonds, M., 1995. Stone tools and society. London: Batsford.<br />
Entwhistle, R. and Grant, A., 1989. ‘<strong>The</strong> evidence for cereal cultivation and animal husbandry in the southern<br />
British Neolithic and Early Bronze Age’, in Milles, A., Williams, D. and Gardner, N. (eds) <strong>The</strong> beginnings<br />
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