Neolithic Britain by Ray Keith; Thomas Julian; & Julian Thomas

Author:Ray, Keith; Thomas, Julian; & Julian Thomas [Ray, Keith & Thomas, Julian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2018-05-11T00:00:00+00:00

Some generations later, a cluster of pits was created close by, whose rectilinear arrangement seemed to echo that of one of the buildings. The pits are suggestive of temporary occupation, and at Wellington Quarry in Herefordshire it has been suggested that the activities represented in pit contents are indicative of a stay of two or three months at a time. But neither houses nor pit locations need have been inhabited year-round, although both might have fulfilled the role of tethering and channelling human lives. At Kilverstone in Norfolk, meticulous analysis by Duncan Garrow, Emma Beadsmoore, and Mark Knight has illuminated the formation of the contents of 226 Earlier Neolithic pits, which formed a series of discrete clusters (Fig. 4.4). Both burned and unburned sherds of pottery that could nonetheless be refitted with each other were found to have been buried in different pits. The fact that they had also been affected by differential degrees of abrasion indicates that they had been subject to a range of different processes between breakage and deposition. Along with food debris and flintworking residues, they formed part of the gathered-up mess from what was a perhaps a seasonal settlement. This gradual accumulation of residues was punctuated by the digging and filling of more pits. Although the refitting exercise conducted by the archaeologists showed that there was material from the same items located in different pits within the same groups, the contents of the groups of pits overall were found to have been mutually exclusive. In turn this suggests that each set of pits related to the activities of a distinct group of people, possibly those who occupied the ephemeral structures implied by the layout of each cluster, just as at Horton. The overwhelming impression was of repeated returns to a particular location, over a period of possibly fifty to a hundred years, by a community composed of a number of distinct segments, or households.

Fig. 4.4 Neolithic pit-group at Kilverstone, Thetford, Norfolk

The photograph shows pit cluster K at the centre of Area E at Kilverstone, prior to their excavation and viewed from the east (scale is 1 m long). This was one of eighteen clusters of pits in Area E (with ten such clusters in area A), with the overall activity dated to the period 3650–3350 cal bce. The pits produced quantities of flaked flint and pieces of broken pottery. Careful post-excavation study and the fitting together (‘re-fitting’) of flakes struck from the same flint core and pieces from the same pots showed a complex pattern of distribution between the different pits across the site, the discrete patterning of the pits in clusters nonetheless suggesting ‘repeated and persistent’ but not continuous occupation, with the scale and duration of these episodes varying widely. The finds, which included charred cereal grains, indicate that cultivation took place close to the site, probably in woodland clearings.

Photograph: © and courtesy of Duncan Garrow.

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