Project overview
The Living with Monuments Project is directed by Joshua Pollard (University of Southampton) and Mark Gillings (University of Leicester), in collaboration with Rosamund Cleal and Nick Snashall (National Trust), Mike Allen (Allen Environmental Archaeology) and Charly French (University of Cambridge). It is funded by an award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
The aim of the project is to redress a critical imbalance in our knowledge of life and cultural landscapes during a key period of British prehistory - the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (Neo-EBA; c.4,000-1500 BC). Accounts of the Neo-EBA are dominated by an interpretive framework devised to explain the creation of ceremonial and funerary monuments, which form the most visible and tangible part of its archaeological record. By contrast, knowledge of the character of contemporary settlement and other non-monument focussed activity lags behind.
This project will redress this imbalance through a coherent and innovative programme of targeted fieldwork and reassessment of existing data within one landscape that is famed for its monumental architecture: that of the Avebury region in Wiltshire.
The great ceremonial and funerary monuments of the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (EBA) have attracted considerable academic and public attention, but the wider social worlds of routine, subsistence and settlement within which they were created remain poorly understood and often elusive. Visitors to sites such as Stonehenge and Avebury often ask how and where the people who constructed and used these monuments lived. These have not been easy questions to answer. The scale and permanence of constructions like the Avebury henge, Stonehenge and Silbury Hill contrast markedly with the ephemeral character of everyday activity during the Neolithic and EBA (c.3800-1500BC), and for this reason archaeological narratives of social life during these periods have often been crafted around 'goings on' at highly visible monuments.
Fieldwork to Date
In 2017 the project excavated an extensive lithic scatter on the Foot of Avebury Down originally indentifed in the 1920s by H.G.O. Kendall and W.E.V. Young. The fieldwork represented the first systematic investigation of the dense scatter of worked flint that occupies a key location overlooking Avebury to the west. The scatter was investigated through the excavation of nine trenches, comprising at total area of 421m2. The excavation retrieved a large assemblage of later prehistoric worked flint, alongside smaller assemblages of prehistoric ground stone, pottery and animal bone. The worked flint and pottery is dated to the Neolithic and Bronze Age with a small amount of probably late Mesolithic flintwork also being identified. Beneath the ploughsoil a series of pits, tree throws, stake-holes and post-holes were identified. At least one of the pits dates to the middle Neolithic, whilst a substantial post-hole, likely part of a larger structure, is of Late Neolithic date.
The density and scale of the Foot of Avebury Down scatter is striking. This was a locale that witnessed repeated visitation over at least two millennia. Some of the activity was related to the working of flint nodules, which here outcrop from the chalk slightly upslope from the investigated area. Settlement also occurred, as witnessed by the finds of animal bone, pottery and ephemeral structural traces. Geophysical survey hints at the presence of numerous other pits in addition to those revealed through the excavation. Together, the evidence points to this being a major Neolithic and early Bronze Age site occupying a commanding location in the Avebury landscape.
The aim of the project is to redress a critical imbalance in our knowledge of life and cultural landscapes during a key period of British prehistory - the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (Neo-EBA; c.4,000-1500 BC). Accounts of the Neo-EBA are dominated by an interpretive framework devised to explain the creation of ceremonial and funerary monuments, which form the most visible and tangible part of its archaeological record. By contrast, knowledge of the character of contemporary settlement and other non-monument focussed activity lags behind.
This project will redress this imbalance through a coherent and innovative programme of targeted fieldwork and reassessment of existing data within one landscape that is famed for its monumental architecture: that of the Avebury region in Wiltshire.
The great ceremonial and funerary monuments of the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (EBA) have attracted considerable academic and public attention, but the wider social worlds of routine, subsistence and settlement within which they were created remain poorly understood and often elusive. Visitors to sites such as Stonehenge and Avebury often ask how and where the people who constructed and used these monuments lived. These have not been easy questions to answer. The scale and permanence of constructions like the Avebury henge, Stonehenge and Silbury Hill contrast markedly with the ephemeral character of everyday activity during the Neolithic and EBA (c.3800-1500BC), and for this reason archaeological narratives of social life during these periods have often been crafted around 'goings on' at highly visible monuments.
Fieldwork to Date
In 2017 the project excavated an extensive lithic scatter on the Foot of Avebury Down originally indentifed in the 1920s by H.G.O. Kendall and W.E.V. Young. The fieldwork represented the first systematic investigation of the dense scatter of worked flint that occupies a key location overlooking Avebury to the west. The scatter was investigated through the excavation of nine trenches, comprising at total area of 421m2. The excavation retrieved a large assemblage of later prehistoric worked flint, alongside smaller assemblages of prehistoric ground stone, pottery and animal bone. The worked flint and pottery is dated to the Neolithic and Bronze Age with a small amount of probably late Mesolithic flintwork also being identified. Beneath the ploughsoil a series of pits, tree throws, stake-holes and post-holes were identified. At least one of the pits dates to the middle Neolithic, whilst a substantial post-hole, likely part of a larger structure, is of Late Neolithic date.
The density and scale of the Foot of Avebury Down scatter is striking. This was a locale that witnessed repeated visitation over at least two millennia. Some of the activity was related to the working of flint nodules, which here outcrop from the chalk slightly upslope from the investigated area. Settlement also occurred, as witnessed by the finds of animal bone, pottery and ephemeral structural traces. Geophysical survey hints at the presence of numerous other pits in addition to those revealed through the excavation. Together, the evidence points to this being a major Neolithic and early Bronze Age site occupying a commanding location in the Avebury landscape.
Staff
Lead researchers
Research outputs
2020, PLoS ONE
Type: article
Mark Gillings, Joshua Pollard & Kristian Strutt,
2019, Antiquity, 93(368), 359-377
DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2019.37
Type: article