Marking Place: New Perspectives on Early Neolithic Enclosures

Much archaeological work is concerned with identifying gaps in our knowledge and developing strategies for addressing them; we perhaps spend less time thinking about how research should proceed when we already know, relatively speaking, quite a lot. ­The programme of dating causewayed enclosures in southern Britain that was published in 2011 as Gathering Time (Oxbow Books) gave us a new, more precise chronology for many individual sites as well as for enclosures as a whole, and as a consequence a far better sense of their significance and place in the story of the British Early Neolithic. Arguably, causewayed enclosures are now the best understood type of Neolithic monument. Yet work continues, and in the last few years new discoveries have been made, older excavations published and further work undertaken on well-known sites. Viewing this research within the new framework for these monuments allows us to assess where our understanding of enclosures has got to and where the focus of future research should lie.

This volume originates from a Neolithic Studies Group meeting held in November 2019, which aimed firstly to showcase and explore the wide range of current work on causewayed enclosures and related sites, and secondly to assess what we still want to know about these sites in light of the monumental achievement of Gathering Time. ­The papers collected here comprise reports on recent development-led fieldwork, academic research and community projects, and the volume concludes with a reflection by the authors of Gathering Time.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: marking place
Jonathan Last

2. Interrogating the Third Dimension: enclosures and surface artefact distributions
Joshua Pollard

3. Early Neolithic Tor Enclosures of South-Western England
Simon R. Davies

4. Structural and Sequential Complexity in Causewayed Enclosures: implications from Dorstone Hill, Herefordshire
Nick Overton, Keith Ray and Julian Thomas

5. A Demographic Perspective on Burial Practices at Early Neolithic Enclosures in South-East England
Dawn Cansfield

6. The Freston Causewayed Enclosure, Suffolk: initial insight and hypothetical history
Tristan Carter, Nathaniel Jackson, Rose Moir, Peter Allen, Helene Burningham, Daniel Contreras, Tim Schofield and Richard Tipping

7. Expanding the Neolithic of Hembury, East Devon
F.M. Griffith and E.M. Wilkes

8. Come, Friendly Bones, Flint And Pots… Datchet’s Fit for the Neolithic Now: recent work at Riding Court Farm, Datchet
John Powell

9. Gathering Time for Harlow
Robin Webb

10. Butts Brow: Coombe Hill’s Counterpart? Initial excavations at an early Neolithic enclosure monument in Eastbourne
Stephen Patton

11. Gathering Space
Dave Durkin

12. Made In Hembury: an experimental reconstruction of the Hembury bowl
Angie Wickenden

13. A Decade On: revised timings for causewayed enclosures in southern Britain
Alasdair Whittle, Alex Bayliss and Frances Healy