Supplementary Material: Isotopic Evidence for Landscape Use and the Role of Causewayed Enclosures During the Earlier Neolithic in Southern Britain (original) (raw)
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Here we report the recovery of a human tooth, radiocarbon dated to the Neolithic period, from Ash Tree Shelter, near Whitwell in Derbyshire, United Kingdom. The tooth bears scratches on the labial surface of the crown. The morphology and position of these scratches suggest they were produced ante mortem (during the life of the individual) by a stone tool used to process food or other materials held between the jaws. The dating of the Ash Tree Shelter tooth to the Neolithic period adds to the corpus of later prehistoric human remains from caves in the Cadeby Formation. Its Early Neolithic age reveals it to be older than at least some of the prehistoric human remains from the adjacent site of Ash Tree Cave.
A Middle Neolithic enclosure and mortuary deposit at Banbury Lane, Northampton: an interim report
Northamptonshire Archaeology, 2012
A triple-ditched circular enclosure, 23m in diameter with a central space 7.8m in diameter, was excavated in advance of new housing. The outer two ditches had single entrances to the north-west. A possible narrow entrance through the inner ditch had been blocked by an elongated pit, which was packed from bottom to top with a dense mass of disarticulated human bone, from perhaps 130 individuals. Only selected bones, particularly the femur with lesser quantities of the other major limb bones, had been collected for deposition in the pit. Fragments of skull are present in some quantity but vertebra and ribs are rare, and there are no hand or foot bones. Initial examination of the bone has recorded the presence of frequent lesions around the major limb joints, suggesting that the deposited material may have come from partially decayed corpses that had been forcibly dismembered to separate the major long bone joints. However, it will require much further analysis before the full story of the burial rite and the treatment of the individuals will be more fully understood. Initial radiocarbon dates indicate that the bone deposit was the product of a single event occurring in the Middle Neolithic (3360-3100 cal BC), although a more extensive programme of dating will be needed to establish the chronology of the whole monument in relation to the mortuary deposit.
Time and Mind, 2008
In terms of geography, the distribution of Welsh Neolithic burial monuments and their setting has recently been discussed by Tilley (1994), Children and Nash (2002), Cummings and Whittle (2004), Burrows (2006) and Nash (2006). Tilley has applied an ancestral geography, its roots embedded in the Mesolithic, to a number of Neolithic ritual/burial monuments occupying the core areas of south-west and central Wales. Cummings and Whittle have approached monument location using the concept of view sheds. (i.e., the landscape features that can be seen from each monument). Children and Nash, and recently Nash, have explored similar approaches, focusing on intervisibility between neighboring monuments and monument, chamber, and passage orientation. Although some of these approaches have been seen as flawed (e.g. Fleming 2005), the interaction between burial, monument construction, and landscape must be considered as being important to a monument’s builders and users. Steve Burrows has provided a good introduction to the construction and use of Neolithic burial-ritual monuments using the excellent archive recourses of the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff. Children and Nash (2002) identify a number of clusters within south-west Wales that appear to conform to a number of architectural and landscape rules; one of these groups, the Fishguard Group, is located on Strumble Head (Nash 2006). Nash has recognized that elements of this group form a linear distribution comprising up to ten monuments. This paper discusses in detail the architecture of each of the Strumble Head monuments and explores the concept of linearity, a trait that is common in the siting of European Bronze Age barrows and cairns but limited in respect of Neolithic ritual/ burial monuments. It is clear that there is intentionality in the distribution of the Strumble Head monuments, which utilize a series of jagged peaks along the uplands. Keywords: linearity, monument, landscape grammar, uplands, visibility
Excavations at four prehistoric rock carvings on the Ben Lawers Estate, 2007–2010
2012
How were Neolithic rock carvings related to the areas around them? Were they associated with structures or deposits of artefacts, and did that relationship differ between landscapes with earlier prehistoric monuments, and places where they were absent? This paper discusses the results of excavation around four decorated surfaces at All Coire Phadairlidh on the National Trust for Scotland's Ben Lawers Estate. They are compared with fieldwork around two conspicuous rocks on the same site, neither of which had been carved. No monuments were present in the vicinity, although there was a 'natural' standing stone. Excavation showed that all the decorated surfaces were associated with deposits of artefact, some of them on top of the rocks and others at their base. The more complex carvings were associated with the largest collections, and the control sample of undecorated rocks was not associated with any finds. The excavated material included two pieces of Arran pitchstone, a ...
During the months of June, July and August of 2015, our fieldschool staff and students excavated a wedge tomb on Roughan Hill. The tomb in question was CL017-180002, a very dilapidated wedge tomb missing its capstone and one of its side-stones. The excavation aimed to address questions and theories set out in a paper by this author, our academic director and Thor McVeigh (Jones et al. 2015). Prior to the excavation, relatively little was visible. The site had only been discovered during an intensive survey in the 1990s (Jones et al. 1996, Site E). A surrounding mound and some possible kerb remnant were also noted during that survey. Removal of the sod revealed a substantial circular stone cairn, approximately 7 m in diameter, surrounding the chamber (Fig. 1). Where surviving, the outer edge was neatly kerbed with large slabs up to 1 m in length. A second inner kerb-line, most obvious to the rear of the chamber and around 4 m in diameter, was concealed within the cairn (Fig. 2). In terms of sequence, the chamber must have been built first and then the cairn would seem to have been added in two stages; however, it is not clear how much time, if any, there was between these stages. The chamber was approximately 2 m long and 1 m wide and orientated to the west-southwest. While one side-stone was missing, judging from the front blocking stone and the size of rear of the chamber, the tomb was wider to the front than the rear. The alignment of a possible pinning stone, for the missing side-stone and similar to the stone pinning the extant side-stone, would support this supposition. It would appear that, internally, the chamber was c. 0.9 m wide at the rear and c. 1.1 m wide at the front. The extant side-stone and the front blocking-stone were carefully knapped into shape and the side-stone rose noticeably toward the front of the chamber (Fig 3); at the rear it was c. 0.5 m high and at the front 0.75 m high. The entire contents of the chamber, the area to the front of the chamber and a section through the cairn, to the northeast of the chamber, were excavated. A substantial amount of cremated and unburnt human bone was retrieved. The majority of the bone came from within the chamber, where it was retrieved from within a layer of soil underlying a layer of stone. There were few notable concentrations that could be interpreted as individual ii deposits; rather, the bone appeared mixed throughout the layer of soil. The bone is currently being analysed by Osteoarchaeologist Dr Linda Lynch and Zooarchaeologist Dr Fiona Beglane. There were no obvious grave goods within the chamber; however, some partially articulated sheep/goat bones, retrieved from under the front of the sidestone, may represent the remains of an offering. An unburnt, and at least partially articulated, adult was uncovered within the stones stacked up against the north-northwestern outside of the chamber. It sat largely within the voids among the stones; however, some elements that had fallen to the base of the cairn were suspended within soil. Several lithics were retrieved from and around the cairn. These were mostly debitage and cannot be stratigraphically tied to the burial depositions within the tomb. The assemblage does include one particularly fine flint blade and several other stuck lithics that are not of a local geology. These are being analysed by lithics specialist Dr Killian Driscoll. Once, the osteological and zooarchaeological analyses are complete a comprehensive program of radiocarbon dating, aDNA and isotope analyses are planned. Two petrous bones have already been forwarded for aDNA analyses and the initial results are promising. The aDNA work is being carried out by Lara Cassidy and Professor Dan Bradley at Trinity College Dublin, and the isotope analysis is being carried out by Dr Rick Schulting’s team at the School of Archaeology, Oxford University. It is intended to get all radiocarbon dates through Queen’s University Belfast.