Excavations on the south-eastern slopes of King Barrow Ridge, 1.5 km east of Stonehenge, revealed five pits, a grave and other features of Middle Neolithic date. Analysis of the pit assemblages and the partial inhumation interred in the grave has provided insights into lifeways in this landscape in the late fourth millennium cal BC. Evidence suggests that the area was visited by a pastoralist, mobile community on a semi-regular basis for a significant period, in late autumn or winter. Selected remnants of craft-working and consumption were deposited in pits, before deliberate infilling. These depositions repeatedly memorialised activity on the hillside at a time of contemporary activity elsewhere on King Barrow Ridge and at the future site of Stonehenge. Middle Neolithic pits are present in significant numbers across King Barrow Ridge, and alongside pits in the Durrington area, form one of the densest concentrations of such activity in the region. Long distance mobility is suggested by the possible Irish origins of the inhumation, the first Middle Neolithic individual excavated in the environs of Stonehenge. Whilst of significance for understanding the Middle Neolithic in the WHS and the region, this research also hints at the roots of Late Neolithic monumentalisation of this landscape.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00665983.2020.1758495

Middle Neolithic pits and a burial at West Amesbury, Wiltshire

This paper describes the discovery of a massive, fan-shaped flint core from West Kennett Farm, near Avebury in Wiltshire, a site that is noted for two Late Neolithic palisaded enclosures. The discovery of the core has renewed focus on three similar artefacts from East Anglia, the importance of which has been overlooked. These cores arguably constitute some of the largest individual pieces of systematically worked flint from Britain. The paper considers the implications of the discovery at West Kennett Farm, where nodules of this size are absent, with the movement of flint across Britain, and concludes by discussing the role of these ‘mega-cores’ with current thinking on the function of stone in Neolithic Britain.

Thoughts on massive flint cores from wiltshire and east anglia, the movement of flint and its role in late neolithic britain

The A r c h a e o l i t h i c encompasses the period of the oldest recognizable manmade tools before the appearance of the true handaxes. As far as the typification of the tools is possible, they are part ly pebble tools. The division of pebble tools into choppers and chopping tools is not very satisfactory; one should rather speak of unifacially and bifacially worked pebble tools. In those areas where pebbles were not avai lable , tools of different types were made from slab-like or irregularly shaped stone material. One could include all the tools of this early phase under the heading "Coarse Tools" , or even better, "Elementary Tools" . Geologically, the Archaeolithic period occupies a long and not yet sufficiently defined period between the end Tertiary and the Mindel Glaciation.

/pdf/the-palaeolithic-and-mesolithic-periods-3j3rwfkw0h.pdf

The Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Periods

The Avebury henge is one of the famous megalithic monuments of the European Neolithic, yet much remains unknown about the detail and chronology of its construction. Here, the results of a new geophysical survey and re-examination of earlier excavation records illuminate the earliest beginnings of the monument. The authors suggest that Avebury's Southern Inner Circle was constructed to memorialise and monumentalise the site of a much earlier ‘foundational’ house. The significance here resides in the way that traces of habitation may take on special social and historical value, leading to their marking and commemoration through major acts of monument building.

/pdf/the-origins-of-avebury-1vpf3nro83.pdf

The origins of Avebury

Geoarchaeological research as part of the AHRC funded Living with Monuments (LwM) project investigated the upper Kennet river system across the Avebury World Heritage landscape. The results demonstrate that in the early–mid-Holocene (c. 9500–1000 bc) there was very low erosion of disturbed soils into the floodplain, with floodplain deposits confined to a naturally forming bedload fluvial deposit aggrading in a shallow channel of inter-linked deeper pools. At the time of the Neolithic monument building in the 4th–early 3rd millennium bc, the river was wide and shallow with areas of presumed braid plain. Between c. 4000 and 1000 bc, a human induced signature of soil erosion became a minor component of fluvial sedimentation in the Kennet palaeo-channel but it was small scale and localised. This strongly suggests that there is little evidence of widespread woodland removal associated with Neolithic farming and monument building, despite the evidently large timber requirements for Neolithic sites like the West Kennet palisade enclosures. Consequently, there was relatively light human disturbance of the hinterland and valley slopes over the longue durée until the later Bronze Age/Early Iron Age, with a predominance of pasture over arable land. Rather than large Neolithic monument complexes being constructed within woodland clearings, representing ancestral and sacred spaces, the substantially much more open landscape provided a suitable landscape with areas of sarsen spreads potentially easily visible. During the period c. 3000–1000 bc, the sediment load within the channel slowly increased with alluvial deposition of increasingly humic silty clays across the valley floor. However, this only represents small-scale landscape disturbance. It is from the Late Bronze Age–Early Iron Age when the anthropogenic signal of human driven alluviation becomes dominant and overtakes the bedload fluvial signal across the floodplain, with localised colluvial deposits on the floodplain margins. Subsequently, the alluvial archive describes more extensive human impact across this landscape, including the disturbance of loessic-rich soils in the catchment. The deposition of floodplain wide alluvium continues throughout the Roman, medieval, and post-medieval periods, correlating with the development of a low-flow, single channel, with alluvial sediments describing a decreasing energy in the depositional environment.

pdf/the-alluvial-geoarchaeology-of-the-upper-river-kennet-in-the-5a8wumh0qz.pdf

The Alluvial Geoarchaeology of the Upper River Kennet in the Avebury Landscape: a Monumental Transformation of a Stable Landscape

Living on the avenue: investigating settlement histories and other events at West Kennet, near Avebury

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Living on the avenue: investigating settlement histories and other events at West Kennet, near Avebury