Causewayed enclosures
- Created by: Canar
- Created on: 09-02-16 14:45
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- Causewayed enclosures
- Windmill hill culture-S and SE Britain.
- 80+ sites across S Britain
- Hambledon Hill
- Evidence of ritual pits within enclosure containing exotic and imported items
- Stone axes from Cornwall, Jadeite axes from Brittany. Trade.
- Setting of posts found
- Rectangular hut?
- Suggestions of them being excarnation sites.
- Possible 150 bodies within area
- May have had several purposes.
- Open cemetery at centre but settlement and fields on southern arm and defensive.
- Arrow head in spine of man with child underneath.
- Open cemetery at centre but settlement and fields on southern arm and defensive.
- 48,000 man hours estimated.
- Two actual causewayed enclosures.
- Two long barrows in association
- 2850BC
- Largest with diameter of 365m
- Single grape pip leaf fragment found
- Evidence of trade?
- Vine cultivation
- Evidence of trade?
- Ditches contained significant amounts of pottery and red deer antler picks
- In one of the ditches human skulls had been placed at the very bottom.
- Ancestral offering?
- In one of the ditches human skulls had been placed at the very bottom.
- Analysis of animal bones indicate they were eaten in late summer and early autumn-hence seasonal usage idea.
- Evidence of ritual pits within enclosure containing exotic and imported items
- Likely uses
- Defensive camps
- unlikely as have gaps, low banks, bad situations etc. Also unlikely needed by mobile population.
- Camps
- Periodic spots of use. Ceremonial practices at certain times of the year.
- Meeting places-trade, marriages etc.
- Memory of previous life of migrants from Linearbandkeramic.
- Defleshing areas
- Ceremonial sites.
- Liminal sites-bid farewell to the dead. somewhere between life and death.
- Different material in different parts-causewayed enclosures divided up. Hambledon hill.
- Lots of animal bones in ditches, particulalry from cattle.
- Kraals?
- feasting?
- Whole animals in some cases-not just discarded-ritualistic burial
- Defensive camps
- Normally located on hills or somewhere with good field of view.
- Other examples
- Maiden castle and Knap hill
- Interrupted ditches
- Done over long time?
- Other examples
- Windmill hill culture-S and SE Britain.
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