1st September 2011, 09:10 AM
I'm not sure that I've seen one that is convincingly defensive. The problem is that causeways: if you're going to build a defensive enclosure, why make it so difficult to defend by keeping the causeways? Many of the excavated ones seem to have been recut, with the causeways preserved and maintained. That said, these things are a part of a continuum of related sites.
Plus, the new Bayesian statisitical analysis of these monuments indicates a spread across the UK & Ireland within a couple of hundred years, and then the monuments were used for c.150 years. That short lived use might suggest more ritual than functional: if they were defensive they might always be useful. I haven't read the new book yet, I've just read the article on it in British Archaeology.
Whittle, Alasdair , Healy, Francis & Bayliss, Alex (2011) Gathering time : dating the early Neolithic enclosures of southern Britain and Ireland. Oxford; Oxbow books.
Plus, the new Bayesian statisitical analysis of these monuments indicates a spread across the UK & Ireland within a couple of hundred years, and then the monuments were used for c.150 years. That short lived use might suggest more ritual than functional: if they were defensive they might always be useful. I haven't read the new book yet, I've just read the article on it in British Archaeology.
Whittle, Alasdair , Healy, Francis & Bayliss, Alex (2011) Gathering time : dating the early Neolithic enclosures of southern Britain and Ireland. Oxford; Oxbow books.