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Earlier Neolithic Enclosures in North-West Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2014

Alasdair Whittle
Alasdair Whittle
Affiliation:
Institute of Archaeology, Beaumont Street, Oxford
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Extract

Enclosures with ditches and banks were a feature of Neolithic cultures in western Europe from the end of the Linear Pottery culture onwards, and seem to have served a wide variety of purposes within the settlement patterns and economic strategies based on mixed farming such as prevailed in the fourth and third millennia be (on the uncorrected radiocarbon chronology, used throughout). The aim of this paper is twofold: first, to draw attention to the earliest known examples in western Europe, belonging to the late Linear Pottery culture and to its immediate successors in what may be called the Linear Pottery culture tradition, to outline the variety of possible functions which these may have had, and to suggest that they are ancestral to subsequent enclosures in other parts of western Europe and particularly in southern England; second, to show that the enclosures of the earlier Neolithic of southern England may also, like their continental predecessors, have had varied roles, such that the hypothesis of ritual function is inadequate and even the label ‘causewayed camp’, like ‘henge’ or ‘hillfort’, cannot denote more than common constructional techniques.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society , Volume 43 , December 1977 , pp. 329 - 348
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1977

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