Causewayed enclosures

[Marcus Brody]

My gran had a bagatelle board when I was wee. Absolutely fantastic

:face-topic:

[Jack]

there are some buildings - but are they houses?

Hmmm......Some are definitely, some maybe, some unknown.

where are the settlements and fields?

C?ide fields, County Mayo, Ireland.
Also field systems on Shetland (although some/all of these may be Bronze Age

Settlements at Skara Brae etc. Also I'd call the collection of Neo buildings at Balderbride (excuse my bad spelling?) a settlement
Also not sure about what I've read about Durrington walls settlement. A 'ritual settlement', really!? But not been able to find much on that yet.
Also see the West Heslerton stuff of destruction of early remains and their lovely Beaker period house!
Further afield there are lots of neolithic settlements in the Balkans etc. (and some 'mesolithic' settlements in Denmark).

No reason why same can't be the case in this country..............I'd argue that in the main reasons why there seems to be a lack of Neolithic settlement recorded in this country are:

1) Destruction - large swathes of the country has suffered severe truncation through ploughing (from the neolithic onwards) so older remains will be more heavily truncated hence you loose all shallow postholes etc. leaving only the deeper pits
2) Lack of recognition/dating - pits not containing pottery on most jobs are often assumed to be the same date as nearby features containing pottery (especially on linear/infrastructure excavations)
3) A real drive from academia for the period to be dominated by ritual remains and a mobile populace despite the evidence!
4) Many earlier archaeological remains lying hidden amongst loosely interpreted cropmarks - see Balderbride

[P Prentice]

i will accept Skara Brae of course and to there being settlements on the continent but for the rest - there is no concensus but i would concur with mr T. the new stuff from Durrington walls isnt available in detail but i expect it to be a tempory, seasonal camp for festival goers.

your arguments for reasons of absence have been practised for generations and during concerted campaigns to find the evidence. i am mystified why they resonate with some of you still - must be like a religeon. i also think it a mistake to even think in terms of ritual and domestic when the two are not distinct - maybe durrington will help here

[Dirty Dave Lincoln]

Some could be Bronze Age Follies?

[Steven]

i will accept Skara Brae of course and to there being settlements on the continent but for the rest - there is no concensus but i would concur with mr T. the new stuff from Durrington walls isnt available in detail but i expect it to be a tempory, seasonal camp for festival goers.

your arguments for reasons of absence have been practised for generations and during concerted campaigns to find the evidence. i am mystified why they resonate with some of you still - must be like a religeon. i also think it a mistake to even think in terms of ritual and domestic when the two are not distinct - maybe durrington will help here

HI
P a friendly piece of advice....."no-one likes a smart ass, especially one who adopts a smug attitude whilst missunderstanding basic soil descriptions"

[Jack]

your arguments for reasons of absence have been practised for generations and during concerted campaigns to find the evidence. i am mystified why they resonate with some of you still - must be like a religeon. i also think it a mistake to even think in terms of ritual and domestic when the two are not distinct - maybe durrington will help here

Because my arguments are backed up with evidence! Some unpublished as yet (doing the post-ex). But Domnic Powlesland stuff at West Hesslerton is amazing for explaining the apparent lack of Neolithic, Beaker Bronze Age (etc.) settlement evidence elsewhere.....as in we are missing it!

Also from my recent research into excavations in West and South Yorkshire its clear to me that previous excavations have missed all the Bronze Age settlement evidence due to a lack of dating and assuming roundhouses are Iron Age. A recent excavation at South Elmsall by WYAS has a brilliant Bronze Age settlement.

Harking back a few years, archaeologists were convinced that there was no Orkney Mesolithic.........until some radiocarbon dates proved the contrary. I truly believe much of what seems to be missing is hiding in undated remains and artificial distinctions created by typological dating and divisions cause by the three age system (e.g. mesolithic and neolithic).

Yes you are right about a probable indistinct ritual/domestic division (but the same goes for now) but this is irrelevant to whether a people lived in a structure.

As to Mr T's 'interpretation' of obvious settlement sites like Balderbride or Lismore Fields as being special 'ritual' buildings for storage of surplus of grain for ritual destruction like the potlach ceremony .............He is an idiot!

Also look up the Whitehorse stone (or was it Bluebell hill?) settlement in Kent...as far as I remember there is an early neo longhouse, later neo roundhouse, bronze age settlement and metal working all in one bit....

And yes hopefully durrington walls will throw up some insight...........I know people will be arguing over the interpretations for years!

......................but i expect it to be a tempory, seasonal camp for festival goers.

Why..........have you, like all those 'social archaeologists' decided what the site is before seeing the evidence? :face-stir:

[Dirty Dave Lincoln]

Well said Jack, i've noticed over the years digging on the eastern fens there seems to be a lack of meso or neo, this is often done because the features are not blatantly obvious!! as they are often heavily truncated, and finds are recorded as residual and the features-natural! whether this happens because of time-constraints or lack of ability in recognising older occupation, who knows!!

[Jack]

I find its often little more than conforming to the accepted without interrogating the data.

Have you read....Pits, Settlement and Deposition during the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age in East Anglia by Duncan Garrow?

I'm most of the way through. Its a fascinating scientific study into depositional processes and problems with interpreting neo pits. It fascinates me as it has very similar conclusions to Jess Tippers The Grubenhaus in Anglo-Saxon England.

Even though the two studies are of very different periods there is a lot of similar data and similar depositional processes going on.

Same pattern in different periods?........!.........function winning over post-processual thought? Surely not:face-stir:

[Dirty Dave Lincoln]

Interpretation can only be debated upon if such sites are recognised and recorded at the excavational stage!!

[P Prentice]

Have you read....Pits, Settlement and Deposition during the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age in East Anglia by Duncan Garrow?

yep - but i will wait til you get to the end

dont know about the west heslerton stuff so cant comment

your research invloves bronze age stuff without dating evidence?

obvious settlement sites like lismore and balbridie - obvious how?

and the last bit i said about durrington was a slightly corrupted quote from the excavation team - presumably based on the evidence

are you confusing locals of temporary habitation with actual farmsteads?