Dinosaur Wrote:For an indication of how ephemeral Neo structures can be see that site in Bridlington that was published recently, not in office so can't remember title/author of monograph (A place by the Sea, or sonething like that). Site I'm on at the moment has a strip of preserved Neo ground surface across it (joys of upstanding earthworks) and its really quite a revelation as to how much lower the rest of the site to either side is, and this is on a level gravel terrace! Where did all the landscape go in the last 5000 years? (hopefully supported shortly by a suite of OSL and C14 dates, before PP spots another nit-picking opportunity) - so I'm with Jack, mostly. A suspiciously high percentage of Neo 'houses' have been recorded under later earthwork monuments. Sites like Balbridie have benefitted from particularly deeply-dug structural features...but I've been wondering what happens when you strip away the shallower parts (the external wall-trench) - you end up with something looking in plan almost exactly like the mysterious series of parallel short linear cropmarks forming the north-east end of the Thornborough postpit-alignment, so maybe Balbridie isn't as 'domestic' as Jack's suggesting, particularly since large buildings like that do not seem to represent the norm in British Neolithic vernacular architecture. I've got half a dozen neolithic 'houses' lurking in my backlogue, and they're all pathetic little huts or, in a couple of cases, suggested as being more tent-like structures

P Prentice Wrote:............. and the observable phenomena of survival under earthworks might well have something mnore to do with the locale than it is evidence for the destruction of them elsewhere - dont ya think?

P Prentice Wrote:also agree about the trees on the other thread though banana shaped gullies are usually genuine features with a particular function

P Prentice Wrote:banana gullies are widely published and are easily recognised as bona fide features often containing the same kind of material culture as one often finds in the terminal ends of penannular gullies - quite different to the crescent shaped features left by trees - although the jury is still out as to their actual use and meaning

Dinosaur Wrote:Hate to say I'm with Jack on the banana gullies - they tend to have a gently-sloping side and a really messy vertical side, which upon further investigation invariably turns into the rest of the tree-hole - people tend to give up digging them too soon since the bit in the middle of the tree-hole does, to be fair, usually look like clean natural unless you have the benefit of seriously stripey natural. You're right about the finds though, you often get a nice sample of what would have been lying about on the ground-surface at the time but has since been lost elsewhere due to weathering/ploughing etc.

You're not one of those people who actually believe the structured deposit b***ocks in relation to ring-gully terminals are you? - whereas a more rational explanation is that that's the handiest place to dump the trash when its p***ing with rain and it's your turn to take it out and you've made the mistake of living in a house with no windows (best circumstantial evidence for roundhouses being windowless by the way). If they were making some sort of gift to the gods one would think they could come up with something better than a few bits of smashed crockery and dog-chewed bones, and distinguish the 'structured deposit' from the rest of the floor.... Same applies to ditch terminals - a dump of stuff in the end is a good indicator that the ditch had a fairly substantial above-ground barrier on one side which they had to go past before they could get shot of that unwanted fridge/Iron Age equivalent - notice how modern fly-tipping usually happens just inside fields, not halfway along the hedge....whatever the palaeoanthropologists or whatever say, I'm pretty certain basic human nature hasn't changed all that much over the millenia, people have always in general been pretty lazy unless there's someone with a pointy stick or a taxman to encourage them to be otherwise....:face-stir:

P Prentice Wrote:....................

causewayed enclosures are - simply enclosures with causeways. they could have had different meanings to even the adjacent communities to those that used them

P Prentice Wrote:any argument, even using the minutia of excavated evidence, concerning the function of any of these features must also adress the fact that our proccupations were not necessarily the same as thos in the past - ie finding cereal grains, pottery, food bones and even quern stones in a rectangular structure does not make it a house in any sense that we have today.

P Prentice Wrote:banana gullies are widely published and are easily recognised as bona fide features often containing the same kind of material culture as one often finds in the terminal ends of penannular gullies - quite different to the crescent shaped features left by trees - although the jury is still out as to their actual use and meaning

P Prentice Wrote:nah - i'm talking about parallel sided curving gullies with easily recognisable edges and bases - they are as easy to recognise as the penannular variety.
and yep i do believe in structured deposits, particularly in the terminal ends of a wide range of features. i have personally dug over 30 1st millennium BC roundhouses and getting on for 20 enclosures on at least 10 sites - and i mean open area excavations not keyholes - and i have found everything from complete querns to cremated animals, i have also worked on a massive midden site - seeing is believing

Dinosaur Wrote:...and when did middens become relevent to this discussion?