Neolithic enclosures

This article presents the current state of research on the Early Neolithic settlement enclosures in the Eastern Balkans (ca. 6200/6000-5500 cal. BC), with a focus set on the ditch-digging practices. A large database was accumulated in the last decade during surface surveys, large-scale excavations, and geomagnetic prospection, demonstrating conclusively that ditch enclosures were indeed a tradition rather than an exception. In the Eastern Balkans, enclosures consist mostly of single or multiple ditches and rarely a combination of ditch and wooden, emplectum, or a stone wall. Moreover, some sites existed long enough that the development of the settlement pattern demanded also changes in the enclosures' layout and/or design. Most of the settlements were enclosed as early as their initial stages. However, no enclosure features have been identified at the earliest Neolithic sites in the area even though this might reflect biased research strategies.

I recently had the opportunity to review Alex Gibson’s thought provoking volume, 'Enclosing the Neolithic: Recent studies in Britain and Europe'. That review, to which the reader is directed for further commentary, identified as a weakness the uneven spread of regional case studies, and in particular the omission of studies from the West Country, Wales and North West England, which are so important in understanding the Irish Sea Zone. The aim of this paper is to address this with regard to the material from the North West of England, and in particular Cumbria. This paper is therefore meant to be read in conjunction with Gibson’s edited volume.

This paper presents a general overview of the current state of the art of archaeological research at the Valencina de la Concepción Copper Age site. The main aim is to put the contributions presented in this volume within a general perspective, with special reference to ongoing debates and promising avenues of research. First, a review is made of the research history of this site, assessing the general conditions of the currently available empirical evidence. Second, a series of topics are discussed, including the spatial organisation of the settlement, its chronology, subsistence economy, metallurgy, exchange and social complexity.

Gathering Time presents the results of a major dating programme that re-writes the early Neolithic of Britain by more accurately dating enclosures, a phenomenon that first appeared in the early Neolithic: places of construction, labour, assembly, ritual and deposition. The project has combined hundreds of new radiocarbon dates with hundreds of existing dates, using a Bayesian statistical framework. Such formal chronological modelling is essential if significantly more precise and robust date estimates are to be achieved than those currently available from informal inspection of calibrated radiocarbon dates. The resulting dating project included over 35 enclosures - the largest study so far attempted in a Bayesian framework. This chapter establishes a new chronology for causewayed and related enclosures in south west Britain.

New insights into Diemarden: Geomagnetic prospection in a linear pottery settlement. – A section of the large LBK settlement east of Diemarden (Göttingen District) was investigated by geomagnetic prospection. Within the relatively small area investigated (2 hectares) ground plans of at least 16 houses and an earthwork were revealed with exceptional accuracy. The grey scale image ranks among the most significant magnetograms of early Neolithic settlements in Central Europe.

Key words: Neolithic/Copper Age enclosures, Hilltop sites, Natural shrines, Beaker cosmology


In this paper I am going to discuss the phenomenon of Neolithic enclosures as symbols of shared identity and their replacement by natural shrines and perhaps by new ideology and cult. The tradition of collective values gradually faded from the mid Fifth Millennium BC However, this dramatic change started at the beginning of the Third Millennium BC. The changes that I am going to discuss in this paper were not induced by any change in subsistence strategy or climatic influences. The Third Millennium changes comprise the development of social relations and transition of cosmology amongst the European Copper Age farming communities. What kind of changes were they? Mainly it was a sudden discontinuity in the long tradition of the construction of ditched and hill top enclosures that dominated the Neolithic Period in central Europe. This phenomenon has its pedigree in the early Neolithic round ditched shrines,so called roundels. Such monuments are traditionally interpreted as features of mainly sacral meaning (Podborský 2001 etc) but some other social functions are also being considered (Květina et al 2009).

It is possible that the changes that occurred during the third millennium BC in the society and cosmology of Copper Age farmers in Central Europe might have been a reflection of a much more general collapse of traditional Neolithic values that brought with it the new quality of Bronze Age society. The Copper Age innovations resulted in the deeper individualisation of some social principles and contributed towards greater social differentiation in the Early Bronze Age. Abandonment of the megalithic idea of collective
burials and continuity in the use of funerary monuments together with a decline in ditched enclosures and the use of hilltop locations are not only evidence of changing social relations but also of far reaching changes in the cosmology of our ancestors. We can observe a reorientation from the Neolithic tradition of agricultural cults and a decline in the communal monuments (roundels, causewayed enclosures, hilltop enclosures) that were used to demonstrate and reinforce the collective identity and spiritual activities. The new cult was perhaps derived from the tradition of solar worship. Within the individualized funerary practices people emphasized their communication with the ancestors and the presentation of social status as well as the confirmation of social hierarchy and the reinforcement of a genealogical system of hereditary wealth of both individuals and families. It is also possible that the new Beaker ideology was rapidly spreading over Western and Central Europe to help enforce the new order of social relations. We can clearly see how some very distant regions of Europe with a variety of cultural traditions partook of this shared cultural uniformity, symbols, rituals and perhaps religion. In many other aspects, such as the tradition of the Central European Eneolithic-Bronze Age pottery complex (Neustupný 2008, 22) or the more intensive arable systém of agriculture (Neustupný 2008, 18) we can, however, see a distinctive continuity throughout the whole Copper Age. The collapse of traditional values in the third millennium BC might be seen mainly in relation to changes in social structure, the rise of a new ideology and the transformation of cosmology. During the final stages of the Copper Age the foundations were laid for the forthcoming systém of a greater stratified Bronze Age society and its new cosmological archetypes.

The article presents an Early Neolithic site from southernmost Norway called Hamremoen. Here, the Museum of Cultural History excavated the remains of an enclosure in 2010–2011. This is part of Norway has little solid evidence of agrarian activity from the Early Neolithic. Instead it looks like the forager way of life was sustained. The  appearance of an enclosure in such a context is important for our understanding of the whole process of Neolithization or the cultural transformation that took part in Northern Europe at the beginning of the Neolithic. A short phase of occupation took place in the beginning of the fourth millennia and four succeeding use phases have been identified. The pottery at the site shows influence from several regions of the Early Neolithic TRB culture. The pottery style is however locally developed. The ceramics and the enclosure reveal crucial aspects of the acculturation process. Their presence can be explained as the arrival of new people with new ideas and customs in southern Norway at the beginning
of the Neolithic. Although their presence did not alter the fundamental structures of subsistence in the area, new ideas and new technologies were nevertheless introduced, demonstrating alterations in cosmology or worldview. The new worldview demonstrates a wider horizon, the importance of far-reaching social networks and new ideas about representation and time. Such changes could have been more
intrinsic for the process of Neolithization than new subsistence strategies, not just in southern Norway, but also in northern Europe at large.

Since 1975 the site of "Las Pozas" has named the Copper Age in Spanish Northern Plateau. In the last decade several causewayed enclosures dated to this period have been discovered. This new situation has led us to revise the foundational site using remote sensing techniques. The infrared images have allowed us to distinguish two overlapping enclosures at "Las Pozas": a north one with three interrupted ditches and a southern group composed of two circles. This paper describes the characteristics of both enclosures using as well the information provided by 1979 and 1987 excavations. We believe this discovery certifies that causewayed enclosures were a common feature in the Douro Valley during the Copper Age.

VAQUER J., GANDELIN M., HÉROUIN S., LABADIE D. - 2008 -  La sépulture 1 de Villeneuve-Tolosane, Fouille L. Méroc, Révision d’une ancienne découverte. In Vaquer, J. et al (dir.). Défunts néolithiques en Toulousain. Toulouse  éditions des Archives d’Écologie Préhistoriques, 2008. P. 45-71

Zusammenfassung Ziel des Beitrages ist es, den aktuellen Forschungsstand zu den neolithischen Befestigungsanlagen in Schlesien darzustellen. In den letzten Jahren hat die Zahl der neu entdeckten Fund­ stellen deutlich zugenommen. Ermöglicht wurde dies durch den Einsatz geophysikalischer Untersuchungsmethoden und durch die Auswertung von Luftbildern. Die meisten dieser Fundstellen in Schlesien stehen mit Kulturen in Verbindung, die auf die Linienbandkeramikkultur folgen: der Stichband­ keramikkultur sowie der Lengyel­ und Polgar­Kulturgruppe, inklusive der Jordanów Kultur. Deutliche Unterschiede gibt es hinsichtlich der Größe und Form der Fundstellen: Es treten hölzerne Palisaden, Kreisgrabenanlagen – sog. Rondelle – und durch Gräben eingefasste Siedlungen auf. Diese Heteroge­ nität legt nahe, dass die Anlagen verschiedene soziale, rituelle und wirtschaftliche Funktionen erfüllt haben, wenn sie im übergreifenden Kontext der Veränderung in jener Zeit und in Bezug auf zeitgleiche Siedlungssysteme betrachtet werden. In Dzielnica, Woj. Opole, ermöglichten geomagnetische Prospektionen in Kombination mit geochemischen Analysen des Phosphatgehaltes der Erde eine Bestimmung und Beschreibung der funktionalen Wandelbarkeit des Raumes innerhalb der neolithischen Befestigungsanlage.
Summary The aim of the paper is to present the current state of research on Neolithic enclosures in Silesia. Over recent years there has been a significant growth in the number of newly discovered sites. This was possible thanks to geophysical research and aerial photography interpretation. Most of those sites are con­ nected with the Post­Linear Pottery Culture societies who lived in Silesia: the Stroke­ Ornamented Pottery Culture and the Lengyel­ Polgar complex (including the Jordanów Culture). There are clear differences in size and form of these sites (wooden palisades, circular enclosures – so­called rondels, and settlements surrounded by ditches). These differences con sidered in the broader context of changes taking place at this time and in the relation to the contemporary settlement system indicate that these sites had played various social, ritual and economic functions. Geophysical prospection, with use of the magnetometer, combined with geochemical analy­ sis of phosphate content in soil enabled the characterisation and identification of functional variability of space of the Neo lithic enclosure at Dzielnica, Woj. Opole.

This paper presents the preliminary results for six archaeological sites, of the several excavated by ERA Arqueologia, S.A., in the context of the impact assessment project of water supplying network of Alqueva dam promoted by EDIA. S.A.. Empirical data is considered to be quite revolutionary to regional Recent Prehistory, namely concerning sites with negative structures (pits, hypogeum and ditched enclosures). A set of problems that can be addressed through those archaeological contexts is discussed, namely regarding the Archaeology of Death, the temporality of certain
sites and its meaning, and the debate on the interpretation of this kind of negative structures (such as ditched enclosures and “fields of pits”).

The Earthworks at Altheim: Built by Many for Many. – In 2012, fieldwork recommenced at the Altheim earthwork, discovered more than a century ago. The investigation in its immediate environs revealed a second ditched enclosure from the Altheim period, south-east of the previously known structure. The two enclosures are spatially related to one another. The first radiocarbon datings, carried out on samples of domestic animal bone, allow both enclosures to be dated to the 37th–36th centuries BC and suggest a temporal sequence of the ditches from inner to external ones. Certain earlier observations, namely the high proportion of arrowheads among the flaked stone tools and the very low proportion of bones from wild animals, were confirmed by the new excavation. The southwest-northeast orientation of the structures’ long axes permits an archaeoastronomical interpretation: knowledge obtained from the observation of natural phenomena was transferred to architecture. The new investigation sheds further doubt on the interpretation of the enclosures as fortifications. Also, it was found that several decimeters of soil have been eroded during the last hundred years in the area of the north earthwork; the very substance of both monuments is acutely threatened.

VAQUER J., GANDELIN M., MARLIÈRE P., TEXIER M. - 2008 - Les sépultures de Villeneuve-Tolosane et Cugnaux: apports à la connaissance des pratiques funéraires du Chasséen garonnais. In Vaquer, J. et al (dir.). Défunts néolithiques en Toulousain. Toulouse : éditions des Archives d’Écologie Préhistoriques, 2008. P. 155-178.

Neolithic ditched enclosures appear to be widely distributed across Central and Western Europe, and from the Mediterranean area to Scandinavia. They have been known in areas of Europe for a long time, but particularly in the last 25 years studies on British, French, Central European, and Scandinavian ditched enclosures have flourished. In line with this, a number of international meetings occurred in the last three decades. In southern Iberia, by contrast, ditched enclosures only began to be known in the 1970s, and even then methodological deficiencies and lack of funding hampered their characterisation. As a consequence of this, Iberian Neolithic and Copper Age ditched enclosures were largely unknown outside Portugal and Spain. They were not represented in any of the international meetings above, nor included in any of the syntheses made about the topic. Not only that, for decades, Spanish and Portuguese archaeologists were not aware of the potential analogies themselves, and the research that was being carried out elsewhere in Europe had almost no influence on the way ditched enclosures were surveyed, excavated, and interpreted in the peninsula. The main objective of this article is to advance the recognition of the southern Iberian evidence by other European researchers and the integration of the Iberian conversation into the general discussion. The focus will be on how these sites have been studied by several generations of Iberian archaeologists, in an attempt to explain why it has taken Portuguese and Spanish archaeologists so long to realise that Iberian enclosures should not be understood in isolation.

In the last decades, the discourse on the subject of Prehistoric ditched enclosures from the Iberian SW underwent various changes, ranging from its theoretical interpretation – residential spaces vs. temporary ceremonial spaces – to its terminology – settlement (povoado) vs. enclosure; indeed, both aspects are intrinsically related.
As far as Portugal is concerned, and though it may be argued that those changes resulted from the identification of new data in the archaeological record, that process never took place. What really happened was a huge increase in the number of identified sites, which was not duly followed by the publication of the corresponding monographs.
The scarce number of works focusing on the comprehensive analysis of the empirical data gathered at those locations has been showing that sites delimitated by ditches are residential and permanent settlements (e.g. Ponte da Azambuja 2), and that the only element that tells them apart from the so-called povoados is their architecture (namely the presence of delimitating ditches).
This paper aims at reflecting on the interpretive model that regards these sites as exclusively ceremonial places. The proposed reflection is based on a critical review of the specialized bibliography and on the available empirical data. Several issues are approached, including i) architecture, ii) material culture and iii) the subsistence strategies identified at the referred sites, in order to assess whether the presence of a ditch is enough reason to change the interpretation of such settlements as residential sites.

2011 wurden die Geländeuntersuchungen zur Michelsberger Kultur im Rahmen des am Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseum und an der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz angesiedelten Forschungsprojektes über die Dynamik neolithischer Gesellschaften fortgesetzt. Die Arbeiten, darunter die Grabung 2010 auf dem Glauberg bei Glauburg-Glauberg (Wetteraukreis), sind außerdem Teil des von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft und der französischen Agence National de Recherche finanzierten Kooperationsprojektes „Die Anfänge sozialer Komplexität: Erdwerke, Rohstoffnutzung und Territorialität im Neolithikum. Deutsch-französische Forschungen zur Michelsberger Kultur“. (...)

This article presents the current state of research on the Early Neolithic settlement enclosures in the Eastern Balkans (ca. 6200/6000–5500 cal. BC), with a focus set on the ditch-digging practices. A large database was accumulated in the last decade during surface surveys, large-scale excavations, and geomagnetic prospection, demonstrating conclusively that ditch enclosures were indeed a tradition rather than an exception. In the Eastern Balkans, enclosures consist mostly of single or multiple ditches and rarely a combination of ditch and wooden, emplectum, or a stone wall. Moreover, some sites existed long enough that the development of the settlement pattern demanded also changes in the enclosures’ layout and/or design. Most of the settlements were enclosed as early as their initial stages. However, no enclosure features have been identified at the earliest Neolithic sites in the area even though this might reflect biased research strategies.

Investigations at Carn Galva and Bosporthennis Quoit, Zennor, were undertaken by Cornwall Archaeological Society over a two-week period in 2009. Field survey after a fire in the 1980s had revealed walling around  the southern tor on Carn Galva and it was believed that the site would prove to be an Early Neolithic tor enclosure. The small megalithic monument at Bosporthennis was first recorded in the nineteenth century;  however, its date and form were uncertain.
Two trenches were opened within the enclosure at Carn Galva and two adjacent to Bosporthennis Quoit.
The trenching at Carn Galva confirmed the presence of a substantial enclosure wall. Although the enclosure  could not be dated, it seems probable that it is of prehistoric origin and comparison with excavated tor  enclosures suggests a Neolithic date. The excavations at Bosporthennis Quoit confirmed that it is likely to  have been oval in plan and revealed a possible entrance into the chamber on its northern side. Radiocarbon  dating suggests that the opening was blocked in the early medieval period. It is possible that the monument  was a large cist or a small entrance grave, comparable with those at Bosiliack and Brane.

La prospection magnétique donne pour la première fois un aperçu extensif des structures d’habitat rubanées en Basse-Saxe. La représentation suffisamment détaillée des emplacements des trous de poteau, les relations entre les habitats et les fossés ainsi que la similitude entre fossés du Néolithique ancien de Basse-Saxe et de Rhénanie sont particulièrement surprenantes.

A complex enclosure identified by aerial photography at Dunragit Galloway, was demonstrated by excavation to have been of Late Neolithic date, and comprised three concentric timber ramped post-rings, 120–300 m in diameter. The two outer post-rings each comprised large uprights interspersed with smaller members, probably forming a continuous palisade. Each was a single-phase structure and the posts had rotted out. The inner ring had largely been made up of large, free-standing posts, most of which had rotted away, but some of which had been deliberately removed, the post-holes being considerably larger than those of the two outer rings. Where posts had been pulled out, a number of elaborate deposits had been placed in the crater left by the post-removal. The entrances to the post-rings are not aligned and the preferred interpretation is that the monument as a whole had two phases of construction, in each of which a timber circle was surrounded by a palisade, and in which the middle post-ring succeeded the outer, or vice-versa.

The enclosure had been preceded by a post-defined cursus monument in which all the post had been burned in situ and numerous other post-holes were located on the same axis as the cursus, extending beyond the monument itself.

The most elaborate entrance, connected with the middle post-ring, is composed of two parallel lines of features, presumably post-holes, opening toward the south, and aligned on a large earthen mound at Droughduil, 400 m away. Droughduil Mote, though recorded as a medieval motte, recalls the association of various very large mounds with with henges or palisaded enclosures, as at Silbury Hill, Wiltshire. Excavation demonstrated that it had been constructed with stepped sides, and that a stone cairn had been constructed on its summit. A series of optically stimulated luminescence dates on the accumulated sand over the surface of the mound demonstrated that it was certainly not medieval, and was probably Neolithic in date.