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

• 102 • Timothy Champion
Little is yet known about the
sites of this period in the
Midlands, Wales and the northwest
of England. There are a few
burials with regional variants of
Deverel-Rimbury pottery, but
little evidence for settlement sites.
By the end of the Bronze Age,
hill-top sites were being occupied
and defended in the northern
Welsh Marches. Sites at Dinorben,
Moel-y-Gaer and the Breiddin
(Musson 1991) were all occupied
by the end of the Bronze Age, but
the construction of defences and
their development as hillforts may
not have occurred until the
beginning of the Iron Age.
Settlement evidence is a little
better known in the north of
England. In north-east Yorkshire,
an extensive system of linear
earthworks probably dating from
around 1000 BC divided the area
below the moors into a series of
territories or estates with equal
access to natural resources (Spratt
1989). A cave at Heathery Burn,
Figure 6.7 Simplified plan of Bronze Age land divisions on Dartmoor. Land Co. Durham, contained a series of
above 500m shaded.
ritual deposits of metalwork,
Source: Fleming 1988, Fig. 30
including parts of wheeled
vehicles (Britton 1971). Sites in
the Anglo-Scottish borders, comprising platforms terraced into the hill slope for round houses,
belong to the early first millennium BC and earlier; these sites extend well into southern Scotland,
where in particular north of the Forth-Clyde isthmus, there are also many hut circles, penannular
dry-stone footings for houses, with associated clearances and field walls, some of which certainly
belong to this period. At Jarlshof, Shetland, a small, but more nucleated settlement with stone
houses has also produced important evidence of metalworking. In parts of Scotland, small kerb
cairns covering cremations occur.
One type of site found in many parts of Britain is burnt stone mounds (Buckley 1990). Though
best documented in northern and western Scotland and the Isle of Man, they are being found in
increasing numbers as far south as the New Forest, and radiocarbon dates place them mainly in
the second and early first millennia BC. They comprise mounds or spreads of stone that has been
heated; many of them are near a water supply, and in some excavated examples there are water
troughs associated with them. Liddle, on South Ronaldsay, Orkney, is a well-excavated example.
It is assumed that the stone was heated in a fire and placed in the water to boil it, and several
functions have been suggested, such as cooking places or sweat lodges (an analogy with
ethnographically recorded practices in North America), though some have a possible link with