EARLY NEOLITHIC ENCLOSURES IN WALES: A REVIEW OF THE EVIDENCE IN LIGHT OF RECENT DISCOVERIES AT CAERAU, CARDIFF

2017 ◽  
Vol 97 ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Davis ◽  
Niall Sharples ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Core Region ◽  
British Isles ◽  
Early Neolithic ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Southern England ◽  
Limited Success ◽  
European Neolithic

Causewayed enclosures have recently been at the forefront of debate within British and European Neolithic studies. In the British Isles as a whole, the vast majority of these monuments are located in southern England, but a few sites are now beginning to be discovered beyond this core region. The search in Wales had seen limited success, but in the 1990s a number of cropmark discoveries suggested the presence of such enclosures west of the River Severn. Nonetheless, until now only two enclosures have been confirmed as Neolithic in Wales – Banc Du (in Pembrokeshire) and Womaston (in Powys) – although neither produced more than a handful of sherds of pottery, flint or other material culture. Recent work by the authors at the Iron Age hillfort of Caerau, Cardiff, have confirmed the presence of another, large, Early Neolithic causewayed enclosure in the country. Excavations of the enclosure ditches have produced a substantial assemblage of bowl pottery, comparable with better-known enclosures in England, as well as ten radiocarbon dates. This paper provides a complete review of the evidence for Neolithic enclosures in Wales, and discusses the chronology and context of the enclosures based on the new radiocarbon dates and material assemblages recovered from Caerau.

‘Drinking the Feast’: Alcohol and the Legitimation of Power in Celtic Europe

1999 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bettina Arnold
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Considerable Change ◽  
Alcoholic Beverages ◽  
British Isles ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
Metal Ceramic ◽  
The Impact

Drinking and feasting were an integral part of life in Iron Age Europe and the British Isles. The distribution of food and especially drink in prescribed fashion played a key role in establishing and maintaining social relationships. Alcoholic beverages were important consumable status items in prehistoric Europe, serving as a social lubricant as well as a social barrier. The metal, ceramic and wooden vessels required for the preparation, distribution and consumption of these beverages were a vehicle for inter- and intragroup competition, and underwent considerable change, both symbolic and material, through time. This article will attempt a cognitive analysis of the material culture of Iron Age drinking and feasting by integrating archaeological and documentary evidence. The impact of contact with the Mediterranean world, gender configurations, and the ideology of power and patronage will be discussed in relation to changing material culture assemblages.

scholarly journals Dates, Diet, and Dismemberment: Evidence from the Coldrum Megalithic Monument, Kent

2013 ◽  
Vol 79 ◽  
pp. 61-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Wysocki ◽  
Seren Griffiths ◽  
Robert Hedges ◽  
Alex Bayliss ◽  
Tom Higham ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Stable Isotope ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Statistical Modelling ◽  
Regional Studies ◽  
Early Neolithic ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Burial Practices ◽  
Fish Resources ◽  
Slot Structure ◽  
Stable Isotope Data

We present radiocarbon dates, stable isotope data, and osteological analysis of the remains of a minimum of 17 individuals deposited in the western part of the burial chamber at Coldrum, Kent. This is one of the Medway group of megalithic monuments – sites with shared architectural motifs and no very close parallels elsewhere in Britain – whose location has been seen as important in terms of the origins of Neolithic material culture and practices in Britain. The osteological analysis identified the largest assemblage of cut-marked human bone yet reported from a British early Neolithic chambered tomb; these modifications were probably undertaken as part of burial practices. The stable isotope dataset shows very enrichedδ15N values, the causes of which are not entirely clear, but could include consumption of freshwater fish resources. Bayesian statistical modelling of the radiocarbon dates demonstrates that Coldrum is an early example of a British Neolithic burial monument, though the tomb was perhaps not part of the earliest Neolithic evidence in the Greater Thames Estuary. The site was probably initiated after the first appearance of other early Neolithic regional phenomena including an inhumation burial, early Neolithic pottery and a characteristic early Neolithic post-and-slot structure, and perhaps of Neolithic flint extraction in the Sussex mines. Coldrum is the only site in the Medway monument group to have samples which have been radiocarbon dated, and is important both for regional studies of the early Neolithic and wider narratives of the processes, timing, and tempo of Neolithisation across Britain

The Times of Their Lives: from Chronological Precision to Kinds of History and Change

2007 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alasdair Whittle ◽  
Alex Bayliss
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Early Neolithic ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Southern England ◽  
Northwest Europe ◽  
Special Supplement ◽  
The Times ◽  
First Time

In preparing for the publication of the seven papers in the special supplement of Cambridge Archaeological Journal, we were concerned to find an outlet that could find a worldwide audience, as we believe that these papers have more than regional or period significance. That is a big claim. The case studies presented in the supplement are all of early Neolithic long barrows and long cairns of the fourth millennium cal. bc in southern England. Why should a study of the dating of constructions that held the remains of selected human dead, from a particular region of northwest Europe, at a particular point in the regional Neolithic sequence, have any wider importance? We offer two reasons. First, we are applying, perhaps for the first time to a group of monuments rather than to individual sites, a method for the interpretation of radiocarbon dates which enables much more precise estimates of chronology. Secondly, from this promise of far more robust and precise dating come many implications for the kinds of agents that we may wish to people our pasts, for the kinds of lives they lived, and for the histories that we can try to write about them. These are two developments, we suggest, which any archaeology needs to embrace.

scholarly journals Stepping Stones to the Neolithic? Radiocarbon Dating the Early Neolithic on Islands Within the ‘Western Seaways’ of Britain

2017 ◽  
Vol 83 ◽  
pp. 97-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Garrow ◽  
Seren Griffiths ◽  
Hugo Anderson-Whymark ◽  
Fraser Sturt
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Neolithic ◽  
Large Area ◽  
Stepping Stones ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Literal Sense ◽  
The North ◽  
Outer Hebrides ◽  
Absolute Dating ◽  
Radiocarbon Chronology

The western seaways – an arc of sea stretching from the Channel Islands in the south, up through the Isles of Scilly, the Isle of Man, and the Outer Hebrides to Orkney in the north – have long been seen as crucial to our understanding of the processes which led to the arrival of the Neolithic in Britain and Ireland in the centuries around 4000 cal bc. The western seaways have not, however, been considered in detail within any of the recent studies addressing the radiocarbon chronology of the earliest Neolithic in that wider region. This paper presents a synthesis of all existing 5th and 4th millennia cal bc radiocarbon dates from islands within the western seaways, including 50 new results obtained specifically for this study. While the focus here is insular in a literal sense, the project’s results have far reaching implications for our understanding of the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in Britain and Ireland and beyond. The findings broadly fit well with the Gathering Time model of Whittle et al., suggesting that the earliest dated Neolithic in this zone falls into the c. 3900–3700 cal bc bracket. However, it is also noted that our current chronological understanding is based on comparatively few dates spread across a large area. Consequently, it is suggested that both further targeted work and an approach that incorporates an element of typo-chronology (as well as absolute dating) is necessary if we are to move forward our understanding of the processes associated with the appearance of the first Neolithic material culture and practices in this key region.

Hembury (Devon): Roman troops in a hillfort

Antiquity ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 58 (224) ◽  
pp. 171-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm Todd
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Early Neolithic ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
South West ◽  
Western Side ◽  
Clear Weather

Hembury is chiefly noted as the site of a neolithic settlement and one of the finest hillforts of the Iron Age in the South-West (PL. XXIV & FIG. I ) . These prehistoric works lie at the southern tip of a long, narrow promontory extending southwards from the Greensand mass of the Blackdown Hills and overlooking the broad valleys of the Otter and the Culm. Beyond these to the west lies the Exe valley and further west still (and visible in clear weather) the Haldon ridge and the eastern tors of Dartmoor. Excavations by Miss D. M. Liddell (Liddell, 1930; 1931; 1932; 1935) between 1930 and 1935 revealed the significance of Hembury for the south-western Neolithic in particular, the material culture of the early neolithic settlement being plainly related to that of Windmill Hill. Miss Liddell's examination of the iron age fort was centred upon the two fine gates, on the western side and at the north-west angle. Little work was devoted to the interior except to trace the ditch of the neolithic causewayed enclosure and to explore the extreme southern tip of the promontory.

scholarly journals Dun an Ruigh Ruaidh, Loch Broom, Ross & Cromarty Excavations in 1968 and 1978

1980 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Euan W MacKie
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Early Date ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates

Summary The site is an Iron Age stone fortlet, of the semibroch type and probably a prototype broch; it is only the second of its class to be excavated. Radiocarbon dates show that it was built in the 3rd or 2nd centuries b.c. and this early date is supported also by the artefacts. The mainly aceramic material culture shows strong links with S Scotland but the fort itself is Hebridean, as are the three early potsherds found. The wall has an upper and lower intra-mural gallery and seems originally to have contained a roofed round-house with an oval of wooden posts and a central hearth. Later the wall was partly demolished and the Iron Age occupation continued for a while. After a period of abandonment there was some Medieval use of the wall gallery and sheep dippers worked in the ruined fort in recent times.

scholarly journals Radiocarbon Dating of the Crannogs of Loch Tay, Perthshire (Scotland)

Radiocarbon ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 673-684 ◽  
Author(s):  
T N Dixon ◽  
G T Cook ◽  
B Andrian ◽  
L S Garety ◽  
N Russell ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Radiocarbon Dating ◽  
Open Water ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Neolithic Period ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Timber Piles ◽  
Hunting And Fishing

Crannogs are ancient artificial islands found in Scotland and Ireland, which typically had some sort of dwelling place constructed on them that served variously as farmers' homesteads, status symbols, refuges in times of trouble, hunting and fishing stations, etc. Substantial research has been carried out for similar sites in mainland Europe, which has demonstrated that they were lakeside settlements, mostly dating to the Neolithic period and not built over open water. In contrast, the Scottish and Irish sites were built in open water, clearly separate from the shore. In Perthshire, some prehistoric crannogs were originally timber-built roundhouses supported on piles or stilts driven into the loch bed. Today, these crannogs appear as tree-covered islands or remain hidden as submerged stony mounds. Until recently, there were few radiocarbon dates for these structures and so the sites appeared as a homogeneous group. Not only did this make it impossible to examine them in sub-groupings but it also inhibited research, as they did not fit into known periods or architecturally distinct sub-groups, except that they were surrounded by water. Recent work in Loch Tay has resulted in 14C dating of the timber piles from 13 of the 18 crannogs in the loch, allowing them to be fitted into different classes. A major group was constructed in the Early Iron Age around 400–800 BC, with smaller groups constructed around 200–300 BC and 0 BC/AD. There is also evidence of repair/reoccupation of some of these crannogs in the 6th–9th centuries AD. A number of the sites were also known to be inhabited into the recent past, with one, Priory Island, occupied until the 17th century. The dates of construction also raise important issues relating to the loch-level changes that have taken place. The 14C results will be discussed in relation to the periods of origin and habitation of the crannogs.

THE LATER PREHISTORY OF THE SHAHRIZOR PLAIN, KURDISTAN REGION OF IRAQ: FURTHER INVESTIGATIONS AT GURGA CHIYA AND TEPE MARANI

Iraq ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 82 ◽  
pp. 41-71
Author(s):  
Robert Carter ◽  
David Wengrow ◽  
Saber Ahmed Saber ◽  
Sami Jamil Hamarashi ◽  
Mary Shepperson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Environmental Data ◽  
Kurdistan Region ◽  
Ceramic Assemblage ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Northern Iraq ◽  
Halaf Period ◽  
Adjacent Site ◽  
Related Series ◽  
Southern Iraq

The Shahrizor Prehistory Project has targeted prehistoric levels of the Late Ubaid and Late Chalcolithic 4 (LC4; Late Middle Uruk) periods at Gurga Chiya (Shahrizor, Kurdistan region of northern Iraq), along with the Halaf period at the adjacent site of Tepe Marani. Excavations at the latter have produced new dietary and environmental data for the sixth millennium B.C. in the region, while at Gurga Chiya part of a burned Late Ubaid tripartite house was excavated. This has yielded a promising archaeobotanical assemblage and established a benchmark ceramic assemblage for the Shahrizor Plain, which is closely comparable to material known from Tell Madhhur in the Hamrin valley. The related series of radiocarbon dates gives significant new insights into the divergent timing of the Late Ubaid and early LC in northern and southern Mesopotamia. In the following occupation horizon, a ceramic assemblage closely aligned to the southern Middle Uruk indicates convergence of material culture with central and southern Iraq as early as the LC4 period. Combined with data for the appearance of Early Uruk elements at sites in the adjacent Qara Dagh region, this hints at long-term co-development of material culture during the fourth millennium B.C. in southeastern Iraqi Kurdistan and central and southern Iraq, potentially questioning the model of expansion or colonialism from the south.

The Carnyx in Iron Age Europe

2001 ◽  
Vol 81 ◽  
pp. 77-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fraser Hunter
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
North East ◽  
Starting Point

This paper reviews the evidence for the carnyx, the Iron Age animal-headed horn, in its European setting. The starting point is the head from Deskford, north-east Scotland: the results of recent work are described and a revised dating proposed. Excavations at the findspot strongly indicate it was a votive deposit. The nature of the wider European evidence and its biases are reviewed, to provide a firmer basis for commenting on the date and distribution of the instrument. Finally, attempts to reconstruct the carnyx are described.

From Texts and Iconography to Use-Wear Analysis of Ceramic Vessels

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-210
Author(s):  
Bartłomiej Lis ◽  
Trevor Van Damme
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Wear Analysis ◽  
Use Wear ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Ceramic Vessels ◽  
Repeated Use ◽  
Funerary Rites

While handwashing is attested in the Bronze Age cultures of the eastern Mediterranean and appears in both Linear B records and Homeric epics, the custom has not been discussed with regard to the material culture of Mycenaean Greece. On analogy with Egyptian handwashing equipment, we explore the possibility that a conical bowl made of bronze and copied in clay was introduced in Greece early in the Late Bronze Age for this specific use. We integrate epigraphic, iconographic and formal analyses to support this claim, but in order to interrogate the quotidian function of ceramic lekanes, we present the results of use-wear analysis performed on 130 examples. As use-wear develops from repeated use over a long time, it is a good indicator of normative behaviour, particularly when large datasets are amassed and contrasted with other shapes. While not conclusive, our results allow us to rule out a function as tableware for food consumption, and in combination with all other analyses support the interpretation of lekanes as handwashing basins. We then trace the development of this custom from its initial adoption by elite groups to its spread among new social classes and venues after the collapse of the palace system: at home, as part of communal feasting and sacrifice or as an element of funerary rites. The widespread distribution of handwashing equipment after 1200 bc closely mirrors the situation in our earliest surviving Greek Iron Age texts and joins a growing body of evidence pointing to strong continuity in social practices between the Postpalatial period and the early Iron Age in Greece.

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