SPATIAL ARCHAEOLOGY AND NEOLITHIC HOUSES

 

SPATIAL ARCHAEOLOGY AND NEOLITHIC HOUSES 

Durrington Walls, House 1, 2006. The pale cleared floor is the central area of the house, with the hearth. The beds and 'dresser' are around the edges.
 

I have always been somewhat critical of Mike Parker-Pearson's use of Ethnographic Analogy to suggest parallels between British Neolithic monuments and Madagascan beliefs regarding the use of stone for ancestors and wood for the living. He used the analogy to suggest that the area around Stonehenge was a 'Land of the Ancestors' within the wider 'Land of the Living'. The problem was never that I thought it was unlikely or a terrible hypothesis; it was simply the guidelines that allow us to evaluate analogies showed that this one was very weak indeed. There was a vast separation in both distance and time, as well as a completely different cultural background, all of which meant that there was nothing to suggest a link in beliefs beyond use of  stone or timber in large scale building projects. Despite that, I think he came fairly close to the truth, but by luck and chance rather than good deduction. It does seem both cultures shared a belief in ancestral spirits (inferred from the archaeology in the Neolithic) and an agricultural economy, but beyond that there is little common ground or history between the two groups.

 

So here I am about to indulge in some very similar long distance analogy; but, accepting the rules of analogy and the inherent weakness of this one, I will not assert that this is any more than a possible interpretation of the evidence.

 

 

 Skara Brae House 1: The stone lined rectangles to either side are the beds, the clear area in the centre the hearth. (Stock Photo).

 

I have just been watching  Julian Richards' "Stonehenge Access All Areas' episode 10, in which he talks to Mike Parker-Pearson about the excavations at nearby Durrington Walls. Richards asks about the comparison between the houses at Durrington and the ones at Skara Brae in Orkney.  MPP replies  by saying that they are so similar that when they overlaid the plans of House 1 at both sites they were almost identical in both size and layout. Now I should mention that this is of course a pretty strong piece of Ethnographic Analogy: both sites are from the same time period (Late Neolithic) and both share clear cultural affinities (corded ware pottery, henges and stone circles) and histories (earlier communal burial mounds) and the distance between them is only around 600 miles - as opposed to the 5000 or so miles between Stonehenge and Madagascar. 

 

Both house types share the same layout - a central hearth, a set of shelves or similar furniture opposite the doorway, and sleeping areas to the sides of the hearth. The latter are also similarly differentiated: to the right is a large bed, presumably for adults, whilst opposite is a smaller space more suited to children. The repetition of this model across several houses at both sites (and its parallel in the tomb of Maes Howe on Orkney) all suggest a layer of symbolic meaning being portrayed in this organisation of space. Its exact meaning, beyond pure functionality, is harder to demonstrate. Which is where my own dodgy analogy comes into play.

 

Many decades ago, I studied archaeology in southern Africa and went on to work in the Spatial Archaeology Research Unit at the University of Cape Town. We worked on landscape distributions of both Stone Age rock art sites and Iron Age (farming) settlements, as well as the use of space within settlements and dwellings. We were introduced to the views of David Lewis-Williams and the oppositional symbolism of shamanistic religions through his parallel work on rock art in the Drakensberg Mountains (see my post 'A Look at Neolithic Beliefs'). 

 

We were also aware of the shamanistic nature of African beliefs and the modern-day symbolism which could confidently be traced back into the Iron Age and used to interpret archaeological arrangements of structures and areas within houses. And the patterns were consistent and readable across a wide variety of southern African tribal groups and regions. Time and time again, settlements were laid out to similar symbolically significant patterns, and within them households created their own microcosm of the same pattern.

 

The classic settlement in this model was a circular kraal of houses with the stock enclosures and a meeting area in the centre (although there was a wide variation in this pattern), with the entrance downslope and the headman or chief's compound at the top, with the households between roughly in order of rising status as you went up the slope. Curiously, MPP reckons that the settlement at Durrington Walls was arranged as a ring of dwellings around a central 'empty space' reserved for ritual structures. This is probably coincidental, as the format is fairly logical and there is no evidence of further similarities. Still, it would be interesting to excavate at the top of the enclosure and see if there are any high status houses up there, wouldn't it?

 

Within individual homesteads, there is further symbolic organisation of space. In essence, front is public and profane, back is private and sacred. So in front of each main house is a small clearing for public gatherings, with lesser huts for the wives and older children, boys on one side and girls on the other, near the bottom of the compound.  Behind the headman's hut is a fenced off private yard where there are shrines to the family ancestors (a sacred space) against the back wall of the hut. Inside each main hut the space is likewise arranged around the central hearth so that the family head sits opposite the door and nearest to the shrines behind the wall, in the place of honour. His wives sit either side of him, with children and other family members arranged around the fire, ending with guests nearest the door. Normally men sit on one side and women on the other. Sleeping arrangements are similarly regimented, although normally the head slept with his chosen wife in her hut which she shared with her young ones.

 

Evidently in the British Neolithic cases, some of the family slept in the main houses (not in outlying wives' huts) but curiously if the children's bed is noticeably smaller, it rather suggests that, as in Africa, older children slept elsewhere. 

 

 There are clearly a number of differences between the pattern described here and that observed in the British houses, and it would be foolish to take the parallel further than to say that the use of space in the Neolithic cultures shows signs of have been organised on traditional or symbolic lines. But given the similarities in the belief systems, it is very tempting to suggest that, like the African example, the Durrington and Orkney traditions may have been based upon similar sets of symbols, with the level of privacy, status and sacredness increasing from the door to the rear of the house. It has been suggested that the furniture against the back walls may be some form of shrine rather than simply storage space; this would certainly align with the interpretation suggested here. But at the risk of diminishing my case, it is possible that the archaeologists suggesting the shrine idea had in mind similar patterns known from Africa, and were simply making the same parallel that I am.

 

It seems unlikely that in the near future we will have detailed enough samples to test these ideas with any degree of certainty, so, for the present at least, as I have said before, you pays your money and you takes your choice. One day, hopefully, it will all become clear.

 

 

 

WAS STONEHENGE A BURIAL MOUND?

 

A Critical Look at "Stonehenge: new  interpretation of the 

architectural remains" by Didier Laroche

 

The 'new interpretation' outlined in this paper proposes that the main 'Sarsen' phase of  Stonehenge was essentially a huge round barrow, only with the centre missing and no central burial. The theory suffers from several shortcomings, with, not the least being that there are no burials at all associated with the hypothesised mound phase nor any viable explanation of how the central stone monument was relevant in this role. The whole hypothesis hinges on  the way the stones were shaped and finished and a perceived anomaly in dating the sequence of construction. In neither instance are alternative explanations considered, and the local regional developments that might explain these anomalies are ignored in favour of suggested links to Mediterranean Bronze Age civilisations.

 

This paper recently appeared on my Academia feed and, intrigued, I downloaded it. The paper is undated, but has references up to 2008, so is presumably more recent than that. It is essentially a new take on an old theory that involved building a temporary chalk mound to place the stones in position.

 Fig 1: Laroche's impression of the mound around Stonehenge. (from Laroche, n.d.)

In this version of the theory, however, the mound remains as part of the finished monument rather than just a building technique to be removed once the structure was complete. Laroche suggests that the main circle of  Sarsen¹ stones (see, with the gaps filled with dry stone walling (as in the earlier chambered tombs of Britain and Europe), was used to hold back an outer mound or cairn extending out to the line of the Aubrey Holes². The monument, he maintains, was always a burial place, and the mound was simply a later phase of the cemetery. He dismisses the absence of burials from this phase by suggesting that since the burials were all within the mound, they all disappeared when the mound was demolished. He says nothing of the  abundant evidence for a long tradition of oval and later circular enclosures (without mounds) which could be seen to culminate in the complex engineering feat that is Stonehenge Phase II.

The identification by Laroche of Stonehenge II as a burial mound, along with the additional working of the stones and the structural complexity, is taken as evidence of Mediterranean influence, if not actual participation. Comparison is invited to Aegean and Egyptian tombs, although he stops short of stating that the builders were actually from the eastern Mediterranean.

 

 Fig 2: The dry stone infill - with a suitably Mediterranean-looking figure for scale. (from Laroche, n.d.)

He begins by saying that the inner faces of the stones in the Sarsen circle are much more carefully dressed and finished than the outer faces, which tend to be varied and irregular. This was because, Laroche maintains, only the inner face was intended to be seen - because the outer face was covered by the mound. The difference he notes between the inner and outer faces is valid in part, although it ignores the difference in quality of stone and overall dressing between the back (southern) and the front (Avenue side) of the monument. In fact, many of the stones are quite well finished on both sides (eg. stones 1, 4, 5, 7), which rather counters the argument for a mound to hide them.

Laroche's next assertion is that the only recognised entrance to the stone circle, on the solstice alignment between stones 30 &1, is no wider than many of the other gaps between the stones. It is therefore not grand enough for a Neolithic "monumental entrance" and probably wasn't one at all³. This claim ignores completely all the other aligned elements that point to this as the entrance to the circle: the Avenue, the entrance through the ditch, the Heel Stone and Slaughter Stone (along with several missing marker stones), and the Altar Stone and Solstice Trilithon on the other side. It also leaves out  the wider gaps beside stones 11 and 22, two very 'thin' uprights, that may have been entrances, but in any case marked the points one and two thirds of the way around the circumference — with the point of origin being the gap between stones 30 & 1.

So why is there no increase in scale or grandeur to mark the entrance? There could be many reasons, but significantly there is no tradition in Neolithic Britain for such accentuated gateways — at best a few circles have slightly larger stones flanking the entrance, which is usually slightly wider than other gaps between stones or posts. It may be, for the sake of argument, that the actual entrance was considered to be the gap in the ditch — and that was marked by several large entrance stones, by gaps in both bank and ditch, and by the Heel Stone at the end of the Avenue.One must also consider the view from this point across the monument to the tallest trilithon; it is probable that the main occasion on which a ceremonial entrance might be made would quite probably be at sunset on the winter solstice,  and with the whole structure backlit by the low sun, an extra large entranceway might actually diminish the awesome effect of the moment. Needless to say, this visual effect would disappear completely if there was a 4m high mound in the way.

Which brings me to the crucial criticism of this and all other 'mound' theories. The size of the proposed mound is substantial: more than 40 m in radius and 4.2m high in the middle. Even with a hollow centre a mound like this would require a huge volume of chalk to be taken from a large (probably shallow) quarry, most likely very near the monument⁴. There is no sign within the nearby landscape of any quarrying on this scale. There were not even any remnants of ramps, let alone an entire mound, in any of the excavations at Stonehenge. The same may be said, incidentally, of the dry stone walling supposed to have been used between the stones: no remnants or loose blocks have been found in excavations covering well over a third of the monument. It is really very unlikely that the  long ramp idea commonly used for building  in the Near East was used in the construction of Stonehenge, and even less likely that there was ever a sizeable mound anywhere inside the ditch.

There is one final point I would like to examine. Laroche suggests that the dating of the Trilithons suggests that they were raised after the erection of the outer ring of Sarsens, and that Parker Pearson and others have discounted this as impractical.  Laroche's theory of a hollow-centred mound does, he claims, overcomes the problem with this anomaly as the trilithons  could be dragged into place over the top of the outer circle, thereby putting the dates for the circle and trilithons in 'correct' order.

  

 Fig 3: Additional  ramps required for erection of the trilithons (from Laroche, n.d.)

First, on his own admission, this would require temporary earthworks in the hollow centre to support the trilithon stones to their positions (see fig 3). He does not mention the considerable difficulty of moving this earth out again (without an entrance) when the erection was complete. Significantly, though, this reasoning fails because it is an unnecessary complication. The idea that the dates are out of sequence is largely the result of a misunderstanding by Laroche of the nature of radiocarbon dates and the limits of precision inherent in the technique. If the matter of statistical deviation from the central point of each date is taken into account, the single date obtained for the trilithons is well within the acceptable variation for the several dates for the outer structure, suggesting that they are all essentially indistinguishable in radiocarbon terms and part of the same construction phase, in no particular order.

So, the article gives no real evidence for foreign influence; none for contemporary burials, ramps, or a mound; and no consideration of alternative reasons — such as symbolism or that perhaps the smoothed surfaces internally might have, say, desirable acoustic properties. All these, seen in conjunction with a poor understanding of the dating and archaeology of the site, make this whole hypothesis, or indeed any part of  it, unlikely to be worthy of serious consideration as an explanation for the main phase of the Stonehenge monument.

NOTES

Most of the terms used here are well known or explained in the root post on this blog " Stonehenge: an introduction".

1  Sarsen is a hard sandstone rock found in places on the top of the Wiltshire chalks and was the stone used to build Stonehenge Phase II (=Atkinson's Phase III).

2 The Aubrey Holes are a circle of 56 pits dug just inside the bank and ditch, first discovered by John Aubrey and now known to be perhaps the oldest part in the Stonehenge monument.

3 The concept of a monumental entrance to a tomb appears to be drawn from his comparison with Aegean and Egyptian tombs.

4  To judge from other sites (such as Silbury Hill) where mounds and banks are sourced usually from adjacent ditches and scrapes.

ON ICE SHEETS AND ALTAR STONES

 

ON ICE SHEETS AND ALTAR STONES

 

The Altar Stone, half hidden beneath the massive stones of the collapsed trilithon.

(Both Photographs on this post courtesy of 'The Stones of Stonehenge' website & Simon Banton)

There have been numerous articles in the media recently about the Altar Stone, and how it might have been brought south by glacial action during the last ice age. For each and every one of these, there is a single answer. Not true! To be fair, part of the blame must lie with the writers of the original paper in the Journal of Quaternary Science (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jqs.70080  Clarke et al 2026) who left the door open to supposition with somewhat ambiguous wording. But we should, as they say, begin at the beginning.

 Location of the Altar Stone at the heart of the stone structure (source unknown)

In 2024, Clarke and others put out  a paper in Nature (Vol 632:570-575) that analysed the Zircon and trace element signature of the Altar Stone and showed that it was not from Wales, or as suggested by preliminary results, from Orkney,  but from Old Red Sandstone outcrops in NE Scotland, probably in the area around Caithness. At that time, the consensus seemed to be that any movement of stones (erratics) by the ice sheets and glaciers during the Pleistocene would have taken them northwards or eastwards, and definitely nowhere nearer to Stonehenge, over 700km to the south.

By 2026, Clarke and his fellows had become a little less precise. They said in the Quaternary Studies paper: "However, its source location within this large basin remains unresolved and its mode of transport uncertain."

In the end, they accepted the Caithness area as the closest match, with two nearby outcrops as possibilities. These were around Inverness on the Great Glen, and a small outlier to the east at New Aberdour. They then used computer modelling to look at how any erratics from these outcrops could have been moved by glaciation. They found that in certain circumstances, especially with displacement in several stages of glacial advance and retreat, some of these stones could have been moved east and then south into the far side of the area known as Doggerland, somewhere off the coast of what is today southern Denmark — this is from the least likely of the three models, New Aberdour. From Caithness, the most likely, ice  might have transported an erratic to the sea 150km further north, where the distance to Stonehenge was almost as much as the direct route from the outcrop. And note, this would still have been around 6000 years before the construction of Stonehenge. Clarke's paper states that the New Aberdour option would have brought the erratics  c470km south, implying the distance to Stonehenge would be halved; in fact, the direction is south-east, and the reduction in distance is minimal, and a considerable land journey dragging the stone would have been needed to get it to a place safe from (as yet unforeseen) submergence.

Because, as sea levels rose during the Mesolithic, Doggerland was fairly rapidly submerged beneath what is now the North Sea and anything carried there by ice would have been many fathoms beneath the sea. So before that happened — still around 3000 years before Stonehenge — Mesolithic hunters would have had to have considered this rock so important that they moved it across the landscape to a position where, presumably by chance, it would be safe from inundation.  And that would leave it either on the northern English coast or more likely on the coast of the European mainland. From there it would still have been necessary to haul or float it  all the way to Stonehenge. Clarke et al had to admit: "The need to invoke such a long, multi-stage chain of events challenges the plausibility of Dogger Bank as an intermediate source." Yet in their conclusions, they allow that this option is "plausible" after all. This was the loophole the media needed to make headlines about glacial transport to Stonehenge.

So that soon we had articles all over the papers and online media saying things varying between the strong possibility that the stones could have been transported much closer to Stonehenge and the absolute certainty that this was how it happened. None of them relayed the evident unlikeliness of this happening (partly because Clarke's paper failed to make it at all clear in the conclusions) or the huge gaps in time between the various stages of the transport. And the impression given in the paper that the ice transport to Dogger might have shortened the journey considerably — it doesn't actually say that, but the wording does allow you to think it if you don't look too closely — does encourage such flights of fancy.

 

The reality is that any such ice transportation was very unlikely to begin with, and would not have brought an erratic closer to Stonehenge. Add to that the human action in the Mesolithic that would have been necessary to get it somewhere it could be found later and taken to Stonehenge ...

I mean, it's possible (just), but no-one could seriously call it "plausible".  Not when long journeys with large megaliths were quite evidently within the means and experience of Late Neolithic people in the British Isles. Not when there is already strong evidence that people drove livestock to Stonehenge from the north of Britain (let's not insist on Orkney, that's also far from proven) around 2500BC. We don't know whether they used sea-going boats to move the stones but that information will come eventually, as long as we are looking for the right evidence and not some proof of what is surely no more than a fantasy.

PUBLISHED: THE HEART OF THE WORLD

PUBLISHED: THE HEART OF THE WORLD

 

Stonehenge at the dawn of the Bronze Age.

Son of the greatest shaman of the age, Ulrac has a momentous legacy to uphold. But with his family falling apart as rivals threaten his leadership, he still has a lot to learn. The seer will need all his supernatural strength to battle wild beasts, warriors, plots and plagues if he is to save his family and his people from disaster — but are the spirits really with him this time?

 

Available through:  https://mybook.to/hotw