The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

• 90 • Mike Parker Pearson
are often in rocky and impressive locations that were evidentially special places. It seems fairly
clear that the deposits were votive offerings, occasionally broken and, for certain unknown reasons,
inappropriate accompaniments to buried individuals (Needham 1988). Insights into gender and
age distinctions can also be gained from the relationship between primary and secondary burials:
where adult males are buried first, the later ones may be other adults and children, yet where
adult females are buried first, they are rarely followed by adult males (Mizoguchi 1992). The
pattern closely matches ethnographic observations of societies with patrilineal systems of descent.
The placing of the dead within the landscape was a complex matter, relating to and even
reusing earlier monuments and establishing large areas of sacred space. The large barrow cemeteries
in south Dorset, Cranborne Chase, and the Stonehenge area, either side of the River Avon, are
far larger than most groups. The western Avon group is built within an area of Neolithic
monuments, and most mounds are placed on the edge of an ‘envelope of visibility’ around
Stonehenge. The same referencing of earlier monuments can be found at Avebury (Wiltshire),
Irthlingborough and Rudston (Yorkshire). In Ireland, similarly, Earlier Bronze Age barrow
cemeteries are placed around the edges of the Neolithic monument complex at the Bend in the
Boyne. On the chalklands of Wessex, the predominant locations chosen are downlands often at
a distance from the valley-based settlement areas, suggesting that the dead were buried within
areas of pasture. Conversely, in the East Midlands, the lighter soils of the river valleys were the
principal locations for barrow groups, with each group spaced approximately 10 km along each
major river valley. At Irthlingborough, the most intensively investigated of these complexes, the
habitation areas (as indicated by flint-knapping debris) were located on the valley sides a short
distance away. The carbonized remains of plants from one of these excavated barrows derive
from grasses that thrive only when grazing is absent, indicating that animals were kept away from
this area.
With the advent of the Middle Bronze Age, cremation was universal and grave goods were
largely limited to a single Deverel-Rimbury pot to contain the ashes. The cremated remains were
buried in small cemeteries, either of small mounds, or within and around an earlier mound or in
unmarked graves, that were located close to settlements. From enclosed settlements like South
Lodge and Down Farm on Cranborne Chase (Dorset), it is apparent that the dead were placed in
the direction away from the entrances, thereby maintaining a symbolic distinction between the
realms of the living and those of the dead (Barrett et al. 1991). Their unremarkable remains thus
marked the land and fields in which the homestead was situated, rooting people in their land and
emphasizing identities at the household level rather than the wider kin groups.
ENVIRONMENT AND LANDUSE
The landscape of the Early Bronze Age was one that was being continuously reworked and
remade. It consisted not only of the forests, wastes, pastures and fields of human occupation but
also of the places, monuments and spaces of ancestors and spirits. Neolithic monuments were
modified and transformed. For example, in the Western Isles and northern Scotland many Neolithic
chambered tombs seem to have been turned into closed monuments by individual Beaker burials
(Armit 1996, 94–95). The entrance to the West Kennet chambered tomb in Wiltshire was blocked
with huge stones and its chambers filled with chalk rubble and Peterborough and Beaker sherds.
Other ancient places were appropriated. In Eastern Scotland, Beaker-accompanied burials were
often inserted into, or placed close to, earlier henge monuments, as at Broomend of Crichie,
Aberdeenshire. Within the Mount Pleasant henge, a palisaded enclosure of enormous dimensions
(800 m long) was constructed, with large tree trunks forming an impenetrable barrier. Another
such enclosure was erected with reference to an earlier Late Neolithic monument at Avebury,