The Sweet Track, Somerset, and lithic scatters: walking the land, collecting artefacts and, discovering the earliest Neolithic community.’ (original) (raw)
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The coming of the earlier Neolithic, pottery and people in the Somerset Levels.
2003
This paper will discuss the reinterpretation of the pottery assemblages excavated by the Somerset Levels Project and associated with the wooden tracks, for example the Sweet Track and an unpublished assemblage from a track at Burtle Bridge. Previous research produced limited statements on the motives behind individual discard events. Pottery assemblages are discussed with other material culture to highlight the character of the earlier Neolithic settlement in the Brue Valley in central Somerset during the first part of the fourth millennium Cal BC. Attention is drawn to the part played in pottery production, exchange and purposeful discard in a wet landscape. The concept of domestic activity, as inferred by pottery distributions is questioned.
Neolithic and bronze-age Somerset: a wetland perspective
A brief inspection of the Somerset Sites and Monuments Record (SMR) shows that the county abounds in archaeological sites of the neolithic and bronzeage periods. However, this masks the paucity of detailed knowledge concerning these sites. The majority of entries on the SMR refer to scatters of flint or pottery recorded from field-walking. While these may represent occupation sites, the only extensive excavation of a settlement was Martin Bell’s work on the sand cliff at Brean Down (Bell, M 1990). The numerous prehistoric funerary monuments in the county have had a long history of “archaeological” investigation but also lack the modern excavations of such structures which have taken place elsewhere in England. Only two elements of the county’s archaeological record of these periods are of more than regional significance; the metalworking evidence of the Bronze Age, and the wetland archaeological evidence from the peat moors. The discoveries of prehistoric waterlogged remains and the...
The Archaeological Journal, 2012
An early Neolithic causewayed enclosure, a middle Neolithic long enclosure and an earlier Bronze Age open enclosure were among a group of prehistoric features discovered and examined by excavation at Netherfield Farm, South Petherton during archaeological mitigation work ahead of the construction of a natural gas pipeline between Illchester and Baringtom, Somerset, in 2006. Of particular interest were burnt deposits within the long enclosure ditches and a possible Bronze Age field system. Assemblages of pottery and flintwork contribute to the understanding of these features and a programme of radiocarbon dating has amplified the chronology of activity on the site. Evidence from a group of burnt and unburnt pits and a partial enclosure reveal the reuse of the site between the fifth and eighth centuries AD.
Neolithic and Early Bronze Age lithics in South East England: some preliminary notes
2008
Nothing is to be gained from a ‘resource assessment’ that simply quantifies HER or other data in the absence of a series of research questions or frameworks. Consequently, this brief contribution is structured as a series of such questions which can be profitably addressed via the lithic ‘resource’ existing in south-east England. Research frameworks for Holocene lithics exist (Lithics Studies Society 2004), and these have been incorporated into this document where applicable.
The results of a programme of geophysical survey, test pitting and excavation at Rough Leaze, immediately to the east of the Avebury henge, are here described. Intended to examine evidence for settlement and other activities pre-dating or contemporary with the henge, the fieldwork revealed a moderate density scatter of mostly Neolithic flintwork, colluvial build-up against the henge bank, stake-holes, and a series of Neolithic tree-related features, one of which had been modified. Molluscan analysis indicates that activity here during the early and middle Neolithic took place within a woodland setting. Other evidence relating to the pre-henge settlement history and environment is reviewed. Wiltshire archaeological & natural history Magazine, vol. 05 (202), . archaeology, university of southampton, southampton, so7 bf; 2. aea, redroof, codford, Warminster, ba2 0nW; 3. alexander Keiller Museum, avebury, sn8 rf; 4. taLits, the crown inn, 60 Wilcot road, Pewsey, sn9 5eL; 5. archaeology, university of central Lancashire, Preston, Pr 2he the Wi L t s h i r e a r c h a e oL o g i c aL a n D n a t u r aL h i s t o r y M a g a z i n e
A Neolithic Trackway within Peat Deposits at Silvertown, London
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 2002
Excavations at Fort Street, Silvertown, London revealed a short length of a prehistoric trackway constructed within the floodplain of the Thames. Two pollen profiles were obtained through peat together with four radiocarbon dates; two from the trackway itself, one from near the bottom and one from near the top of the peat. These dates indicate that the trackway was constructed in the Early Neolithic and that peat formation took place in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages. The trackway is of considerable importance in that it represents the earliest known structure of this kind yet discovered in the London area.
Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory
Environmental reconstructions from pollen records collected within archaeological landscapes have traditionally taken a broadly narrative approach, with few attempts made at hypothesis testing or formal assessment of uncertainty. This disjuncture between the traditional interpretive approach to palynological data and the requirement for detailed, locally specific reconstructions of the landscapes in which people lived has arguably hindered closer integration of palaeoecological and archaeological datasets in recent decades. Here we implement a fundamentally different method for reconstructing past land cover from pollen records to the landscapes of and around the Somerset Levels and Moors—the Multiple Scenario Approach (MSA)—to reconstruct land cover for a series of 200-year timeslices covering the period 4200–2000 cal BC. Modelling of both archaeological and sediment chronologies enables the integration of reconstructed changes in land cover with archaeological evidence of contempo...
2006: Ph.D.: ‘Prehistoric Settlement in Somerset. Landscapes, Material Culture and Communities 4300 to 700 cal. BC.’ vol. I (Director of Studies: Dr. I. J. N. Thorpe)
This thesis combines a landscape archaeology and artefact-based study, synthesising a range of evidence; sites, settlements and artefacts, but with a central focus on multi-period lithic scatter assemblages. It includes a primary analysis of previously unstudied private collections and museum collections, together with the lithics recovered as part of the Somerset Levels Project and the Shapwick Project totalling c.20,000 stone tools and waste. This is analysed alongside pottery assemblages, some from primary analyses and bronze and stone artefacts. These artefacts provide the basis for a landscape synthesis enabling the reconstruction of a socially constructed landscape in central Somerset. The time-frame for the study covers the Mesolithic to later Bronze Age and processes of settlement, c.4300 to c.700 cal. BC. The author has identified four themes that also extend backwards in time representing the unique character of the archaeological record in the study area. These themes are linked to the specific regional nature and social identity of communities in the study area; • Cave use for the living and the dead, • Lithic scatters as socially constructed places, • A diachronic regional settlement pattern, Mendip to the Somerset Levels, • Changing perceptions of place, embedded in cultural memory and cosmology. These four themes interrelate and extend into the late Upper Palaeolithic, c.13000 cal. BC when they first appeared. The emerging notion of belief, as part of a localised cosmology is argued as central in understanding how this landscape was perceived by successive generations of past peoples. The landscape is argued to have been occupied, perhaps only seasonally over generations. A sacred landscape emerged in the later Neolithic and earlier Bronze Age followed by a depopulated landscape in the middle to later Bronze Age. This settlement and demographic collapse is timed with the onset of increasingly wetter conditions in the Brue Valley and a shift regionally in political and economic alliances. Hence, this thesis identifies prehistoric communities within the study area and central Somerset as a cultural ‘fulcrum.’ These prehistoric communities were balanced between the peoples and influences of the South-Western peninsula, the western seaboard and the chalkland communities of central southern England: the political economy of Wessex.
Griffith, F, Healy, F, Lawson, A, Lewis, J, Mercer, R, Mullin, M, Nowakowski, J, Pollard, J, Wickstead, H, and Woodward, P, 2008
Overview of the Neolithic and the Bronze Age in South West England. http://www1.somerset.gov.uk/archives/hes/downloads/swarfweb.pdf
2006: Ph.D.: ‘Prehistoric Settlement in Somerset. Landscapes, Material Culture and Communities 4300 to 700 cal. BC.’ Vol 1. (Director of Studies: Dr. I. J. N. Thorpe)
This thesis combines a landscape archaeology and artefact-based study, synthesising a range of evidence; sites, settlements and artefacts, but with a central focus on multi-period lithic scatter assemblages. It includes a primary analysis of previously unstudied private collections and museum collections, together with the lithics recovered as part of the Somerset Levels Project and the Shapwick Project totalling c.20,000 stone tools and waste. This is analysed alongside pottery assemblages, some from primary analyses and bronze and stone artefacts. These artefacts provide the basis for a landscape synthesis enabling the reconstruction of a socially constructed landscape in central Somerset. The time-frame for the study covers the Mesolithic to later Bronze Age and processes of settlement, c.4300 to c.700 cal. BC. The author has identified four themes that also extend backwards in time representing the unique character of the archaeological record in the study area. These themes are linked to the specific regional nature and social identity of communities in the study area; • Cave use for the living and the dead, • Lithic scatters as socially constructed places, • A diachronic regional settlement pattern, Mendip to the Somerset Levels, • Changing perceptions of place, embedded in cultural memory and cosmology. These four themes interrelate and extend into the late Upper Palaeolithic, c.13000 cal. BC when they first appeared. The emerging notion of belief, as part of a localised cosmology is argued as central in understanding how this landscape was perceived by successive generations of past peoples. The landscape is argued to have been occupied, perhaps only seasonally over generations. A sacred landscape emerged in the later Neolithic and earlier Bronze Age followed by a depopulated landscape in the middle to later Bronze Age. This settlement and demographic collapse is timed with the onset of increasingly wetter conditions in the Brue Valley and a shift regionally in political and economic alliances. Hence, this thesis identifies prehistoric communities within the study area and central Somerset as a cultural ‘fulcrum.’ These prehistoric communities were balanced between the peoples and influences of the South-Western peninsula, the western seaboard and the chalkland communities of central southern England: the political economy of Wessex.