stonehenge - English Heritage

047-120 section 2.qxd 6/21/05 4:18 PM Page 60
Illustration 38
Late Neolithic house
revealed below Durrington
68. [After Pollard 1995b,
figure 2.]
(Gibson and Kinnes 1997). Within the Stonehenge
Landscape no Peterborough Ware has been recovered from
pits, only occurring as surface finds, in buried soils (see
below), or within amorphous subsoil hollows. Surface
scatters have been recorded on King Barrow Ridge, Wilsford
Down, Fargo Wood/Packway, and Stonehenge Down
(Richards 1990, 267). Similar scatters with Grooved Ware
are far less common, and almost exclusively in the eastern
part of the Stonehenge Landscape. The only exceptions are
around Stonehenge and on Wilsford Down (Richards 1990,
270). Beaker pottery was found thinly scattered throughout
the surface collections with a slight concentration on
Wilsford Down (Richards 1990, 271; Cleal et al. 1995, figures
78 and 225). What these scatters represent is not known,
and they may in some cases simply be background noise
representing the extensive off-site dimensions of activity
that is otherwise locally intensive. Some of the scatters
coincide, for example around Wilsford Down, and this has
led them to be interpreted as significant places of some
kind repeatedly visited over a long period of time (Cleal et
al. 1995, 488).
Collections of worked flint from field survey are less
diagnostic than pottery, but again provide evidence for the
differential concentration of activity across the landscape.
Two late Neolithic flint scatters were investigated during the
Stonehenge Environs Survey. One, at King Barrow Ridge,
revealed pits and stakeholes in four of the twelve 5m by 5m
excavated trenches. Pottery and worked flint were mainly of
Peterborough and Grooved Ware affinity. Interpretation is
difficult, but is seen in terms of occupation and domestic
activity (Richards 1990, 109–23). The second area was on
Wilsford Down. Here only one feature was recognized in the
sixteen 5m by 5m trenches excavated. Activity here was
mainly seen in terms of flintworking with minimal domestic
occupation (Richards 1990, 158–71). Together, these two
investigations illustrate the diversity of activity represented
by surface scatters and at the same time illustrate the
potential for further investigation and the systematic
characterization or ‘fingerprinting’ of assemblages collected
from the ploughzone.
Perhaps the most important collections are those
preserved beneath the earthworks and mounds of later
monuments, especially round barrows. These illustrate
great potential for future work, although locating suitable
places to target investigation is always going to be difficult.
Woodhenge Circle 2 (Durrington 68: Illustration 38)
preserved a setting of postholes that has been
reconstructed as the remains of a late Neolithic structure,
possibly a house (Cunnington 1929, 45 and plate 39; Pollard
1995b), fairly typical of others around the country (Darvill
1996, 107 and figure 6.8).
Amesbury G39 and other barrows on King Barrow Ridge
incorporated much Peterborough Ware, Grooved Ware, and
Beaker pottery in the matrix of the mound (Cleal and Allen
1994, 62–5 and 70); Amesbury 133 (a twin bell barrow)
sealed a large hollow containing Peterborough pottery and
the remains of an antler, and Grooved Ware was recovered
from the buried soil (RCHM 1979, 4); excavations in the Lake
Wood Group revealed Peterborough Ware and Beaker
pottery within and under the mounds G36f , G37, G38, and
G39 (Grimes 1964); Amesbury G133 yielded a small but
diverse assemblage of pre-barrow ceramics including
Grooved Ware and Beaker pottery (Gingell 1988, 39); Beaker
pottery was found at Winterbourne Stoke G39 and G47
(Gingell 1988, 54); but the largest group is from G51–54
excavated by Greenfield in 1958 where 144 sherds of
Peterborough Ware, 49 sherds of Grooved Ware, and 5
sherds of Beaker pottery were found in pre-barrow contexts
(Smith 1991, 34–8); Amesbury G61 also yielded a range of
Beaker pottery (Ashbee 1984a, 76–9).
The potential for finding late Neolithic activity on the
lower ground in the main river valleys is hard to assess
because opportunites for looking have been few. Mention
may, however, be made of the assemblage of late Neolithic
flintwork recovered during watching briefs on pipeline
developments near Netheravon on the Avon Valley
(McKinley 1999, 30), and the extensive evidence for late
Neolithic occupation, including a possible house structure,
at Downton just outside the Stonehenge Landscape south
of Salisbury (Rahtz and ApSimon 1962).
Overall, evidence of sectoring within the landscape can
be glimpsed even if it is not fully understood (Richards
1984, 181; 1990, 270). Thorpe and Richards note the almost
mutually exclusive distribution of associations between
Beaker pottery and Peterborough Ware as against Beaker
pottery and Grooved Ware (Thorpe and Richards 1984,
figure 6.3). This they attribute to the way that the users of
Beaker pottery consciously sought to acknowledge and
reuse earlier centres of power in the landscape. As a result
of the Stonehenge Environs Survey it is possible to add
further detail. The Durrington Zone along the east side of
the Avon is perhaps to be associated with residential and
domestic areas, Wilsford Down and the northeastern part of
Durrington Down may be flintworking areas, while the
central sector focused on Stonehenge and the Cursus may
be considered sacred or ceremonial. Darvill (1997a, 182–9)
has suggested that such divisions may be fitted with a
quartering of the landscape based on a simple cosmological
scheme grounded in a fourfold subdivision of space
structured around the movements of the sun (and cf. Pollard
and Ruggles 2001 for a similar pattern within Stonehenge
itself). Parker Pearson and Ramilisonina (1998) prefer a
slightly different scheme in which the space is structured
and conceived in terms of a domain of the ancestors centred
on Stonehenge and a domain of the living centred on
Durrington Walls. During the later third millennium BC the
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