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

The Neolithic period
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newly sedentary lifestyle based on agriculture, could best define the changes apparent in the
Neolithic. This view has been increasingly challenged for some 15 years. Undoubtedly, there were
new resources in play, including domesticated cattle, pigs and sheep/goats (the latter not
indigenous), and cultivated cereals, principally wheats and barleys (also not indigenous); but their
relative importance and impact remain to be established, and substantial rescue and research
projects have consistently failed to turn up definitive evidence for permanent or large-scale
settlements. The essence of the Neolithic seems to lie elsewhere, in a changing world view involving
new notions of time, descent, origins, ancestry, relations with nature, community and shared
values and ideals: in changing conceptions of people’s place in the scheme of things (Barrett
1994; Bradley 1993; Hodder 1990; Thomas 1991; Tilley 1994; Whittle 1996). These are bound up
in part with domestication, but that should not lead us to equate the Neolithic uniquely with
mixed farming, nor necessarily with sedentary existence.
The Neolithic period offers both continuities and contrasts with what came before and after
it. Mobility and dispersal, a broad-spectrum resource base, and perhaps social ideals such as
sharing, can be linked to the Mesolithic lifestyle, while domestication of plants and animals, more
frequent woodland clearance, novel artefacts, treatment of the dead and the building of a great
variety of monuments, serve to distinguish the Neolithic from the preceding period. The contrasts
with what follows, from the Beaker horizon on, may appear superficially extensive: increasing
emphasis on individuals in mortuary rites; a greater range of artefacts, some of metal; the demise
of major monument building; and a trend in many areas to less wooded landscapes. There are
also many continuities, however, and the greatest shift may be sought between the world of the
Neolithic and Earlier Bronze Age (considered in Chapter 5) and that of the Later Bronze Age,
when the processes of settling down and social differentiation took firmer hold.
In this perspective, traditional terminologies look increasingly unhelpful, but they have their
value as labels, and are sanctioned by long use. The simplest division is between an Earlier Neolithic
and a Later Neolithic, separated at c.3000 BC. This accords quite well with major patterns in the
development of pottery styles, flint projectile points, and much of the repertoire of southern
British monument types. To the Earlier Neolithic belong round-based pot styles, some decorated;
chipped and polished stone and flint axes; leaf-shaped flint arrowheads; and long barrows, various
series of chambered tombs, causewayed enclosures, and cursus monuments. To the Later Neolithic
belong more profusely decorated round-based pots in the Peterborough tradition and flat-based
Grooved Ware pots; waisted, partially polished and other variant stone axes; asymmetrical and
transverse flint arrowheads; other portable artefacts including stone and antler maceheads, bone
pins, and stone balls; and henges, stone and timber circles, timber palisaded enclosures, early
round barrows and ring-ditches, and late cursus monuments.
A next-best approximation is to distinguish Early Neolithic, Middle Neolithic, and Late Neolithic.
The Early Neolithic (c.4000–34/3300 BC) displays strong continuity with the Mesolithic in terms
of residential mobility and broad-spectrum subsistence, but now involving animal herding and
some cereal cultivation with accompanying limited clearance of woodland, broad regional styles
of round-based pottery, and axe production but limited circulation (perhaps through gift exchange).
The first tombs and shrines, in a variety of regional types of barrow and cairn, with internal
structures of wood and stone, were erected; and towards the end of this phase the first causewayed
enclosures were built.
The Middle Neolithic (perhaps 3400/3300–3000/2900 BC) is marked by both continuing
development of these features and the beginnings of replacement and further change. Many of
the southern causewayed enclosures (and also modified enclosures as at Flagstones, Dorchester,
Dorset, or the first phase of Stonehenge) and most of the largest and most complex chambered
tombs, for example of Maes Howe type on the Orkney Islands, were in use, as the largest passage