This ongoing PhD research project explores changes in mobility and lithic production from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic in the coastal landscape of Istria and Dalmatia in the Eastern Adriatic and seeks to provide a greater understanding of Holocene dispersal/expansion in the East and Central Mediterranean region. I believe that differences in the raw material acquisition and tool systems of Mesolithic hunter-gatherer groups, initial lowdensity Early Neolithic agricultural pioneers and later, mid to high density Early Neolithic farming communities provide a useful approach to answering questions concerning variations in landscape use and knowledge.

The purpose of the fieldwork was to analyse lithic collections fundamental to the project and to gather information on lithic raw material sources in the region. Flint and chert suitable for knapping do not occur evenly in Istria and along the Dalmatian coast. These resources have never been systematically mapped and neither have they been discussed in detail in relation to worked lithics found on prehistoric sites.

During three months in the spring of 2004, a number of Mesolithic and Neolithic collections were examined in museums in Istria, Zagreb and on the Dalmatian coast, interrupted by short reconnaissance visits to sites and lithic outcrops. It was often a challenge to sort out where collections were stored. Many sites were excavated more than a generation ago and a good number of boxes with finds have now gone missing into dusty storerooms or into the homes of the archaeologists who excavated them. Sometimes the finds from a single locality were scattered between different museums and institutions.

Modern lithic resource use near Radovin-Zviraca: grave cover decorated with seashells, pebbles and Palaeolithic flakes.

The majority of the lithic assemblages had not previously been analysed and published, partly because the archaeological potential of lithic analysis has not yet been fully recognized in Croatia and due to the fact that only a few archaeologists there specialise in the study of stone tools. The project aims to make clearer the value of this aspect of Croatian archaeological heritage.

In Zadar, I was discouraged by the locals from surveying on my own for lithic sources in the countryside. There are still many fields and tracks which have not been cleared of landmines from the last war when Serbian irregulars and JNA (Yugoslav People’s Army) forces reached the hills immediately outside Zadar. Being constrained in my reconnaissance visits, I was happy when staff from the museum drove me to Radovin-Zviraca, a prominent tectonic ridge in the northern part of Ravni Kotari, which is covered by clayish red earth and cut by striking erosion gullies.

In a couple of hours, we had collected a nice assemblage of cores, flakes and a few bladelets, presumably of Middle and Upper Palaeolithic date. The area was potentially an important raw material source in the past as numerous small pebbles of a good chipping quality are easily accessible. A curious display of modern lithic resource use was observed in a nearby graveyard. On one grave, the cemented lid was extensively decorated with seashells, multicoloured pebbles and – probably unwittingly to the artist – several worked Palaeolithic flakes.

Diagnostic Early Neolithic pottery with impressed decoration.

When Mr. Mendusic from Sibenik Museum offered to show me Skarin Samograd, I gladly seized the opportunity. This is a Neolithic cave-site a little way inland from Sibenik near the rural village of Skar. Although never properly analysed, the excavation in the mid-1950s yielded a large archaeological assemblage. The entrance to the cave is hidden behind lush vegetation in the mysterious treeshrouded bottom of a sinkhole. The large, dark cave is home to some 1600 bats and the damp air inside reeks of ammonia from their guano. As we had not brought flashlights, we had to be careful in the semidark not to fall into the deep excavation trenches. At some distance from the cave, we found the large spoil heap from the initial excavation from which it was still possible to sample pieces of ceramics. Sieving was an uncommon practice during excavations at the time but even today some excavations are carried out with shovels and trowels alone. On the way back to Sibenik, we stopped at Danilo, the type-site of the Dalmatian Middle Neolithic. I later had the opportunity to examine part of the Danilo assemblage in Split Museum and it is a pronounced blade-based industry mainly in the form of sickle elements and high-quality retouched blades. Several blades exceed 20 cm in length.

My work in Croatia concluded by taking part in a one-week exploratory excavation in the Vela Spilja cave on Losinj Island in the Kvarner Gulf, directed by Dr. P. Miracle, Cambridge University. The cave appears to hold “transitional” deposits of the Mesolithic-Neolithic period and contains diagnostic Early Neolithic Impresso pottery and non-local highquality flint blades.

I am indebted to the Croatian colleagues who helped me during my fieldwork. Special thanks go to Darko Komso, Natalija Klari, Marko Mendusic, Damir Kliskic and Staso Forenbaher. A John & Bryony Coles Bursary from the Prehistoric Society, to which I would like to extend my sincere appreciation, supported the fieldwork.

Niels H. Andreasen
Department of Archaeology,
Cambridge University

nha22@cam.ac.uk

 

If I had to sum up my own personal feeling about this tour to Northern Ireland in just one word, then that word would be privileged. As a mature undergraduate student of archaeology, and as a new member of the Prehistoric Society, I felt privileged to have been selected for the student placement on the study tour. I feel privileged to have spent an enjoyable week in the company of such friendly members of the Prehistoric Society and the organisers of this tour, and privileged to have experienced Northern Ireland at its best.

The tour began with a series of talks on the prehistory of Ireland, with Barrie Hartwell welcoming the members to Northern Ireland and introducing Peter Woodman who talked on the Mesolithic, Rick Schulting on the Neolithic, and Richard Warner on the Bronze and Iron Ages.

The itinerary for the tour was organised by Sinéad McCartan, from the Department of Archaeology and Ethnography at the Ulster Museum, and Barrie Hartwell, from the School of Archaeology and Palaeoecology at Queen’s University Belfast. Although these two individuals have been thanked collectively by John Cruse, on behalf of the Society, and personally, by individual members, another thank you in print with an appreciation of the hard work that must have gone into the planning and organisation of this tour would not go amiss. Special thanks also go to Vincent McAllister who not only drove our luggage and packed lunches around the six counties of Northern Ireland, but who bravely, and very efficiently, delivered a talk at the very important Mount Sandel Mesolithic site in County Antrim whilst constantly looking over his shoulder for signs of Peter Woodman arriving.

From the very beginning of the tour – a visit to the dual court tomb at Audleystown in County Down – the sites that we visited got better and better. In all, we visited some 40 sites, which included court tombs, portal tombs, passage tombs, wedge tombs, various cairns, stone circles, henge and timber enclosures, a prehistoric artificial ritual pond, earthworks, museums, and spectacular views of prehistoric landscapes. Some members also took the opportunity to visit the Giant’s Causeway and look at the stunning scenery of the Antrim coastline. The tour also took in some historic sites, such as St Patrick’s Cathedral and the public library in Armagh, the early Christian stone figures at White Island on Lower Lough Erne in County Fermanagh, and the ogham stone at Aghascrebagh in County Tyrone. A tour to any part of Ireland would not be complete without visiting one of its more enigmatic sites, and certainly the Linford earthworks are enigmatic – are they Neolithic, Bronze Age, multiperiod or could they be Roman watch towers?

Receptions were held at the Ulster Museum and the Fermanagh County Museum, and refreshments were also provided at the Armagh County Museum. Many land owners had graciously given their consent for the Society to access their land to visit various sites, and many other people gave their time freely to meet the tour members at different locations and talk about them. Overall, the trip was extremely well organised, friendly and fascinating, and that is why I feel privileged to have been on this tour.

David Greenwood,
University of Bradford

 

Hambledon Hill, in Dorset, persists in prehistorians’ consciousness because of roles which were flagged up in the 1970s and 1980s, when it emerged as a site where human corpses underwent excarnation and as the scene of Neolithic warfare and defensive architecture on a scale previously unthought of in Britain. A programme of post-excavation analysis funded by English Heritage in the 1990s has expanded understanding of these functions, and has redefined numerous other aspects of the site’s use.

An overall plan of Hambledon Hill.

The hill itself stands on the boundary of the Wessex Chalk and the very different landscape — both topographically and culturally — of the south-west. It is an island cut off from the mass of the Chalk by rivers and is a striking landform, with spurs radiating from a central dome. The whole hill (approximately 1.5 km long) was used and modified in the fourth millennium BC, although the Iron Age hillfort subsequently built on the northern spur obscures the Neolithic earthworks there. The demonstrably fourth millennium earthworks comprise two long barrows, two causewayed enclosures and at least nine outworks and cross-dykes.

Its role as an excarnation site has come more sharply into focus from Jacqueline McKinley’s analysis of the human remains. Some have been gnawed, occasionally when still articulated, by dogs or rodents, and there is a scarcity of the smaller and more readily degraded elements, such as the bones of the hand and foot and the articular ends of long bones. These features had already been noted. What is new is that some human remains, again including articulated ones, carry fine cut-marks, made with flint tools during the deliberate removal of flesh from the bones by the living. This was carried out in a quite different way from the butchery practiced on the animal bone. Excarnation could be an active process as well as a passive one. Many of the completely disarticulated human bones could, of course, have been brought to the hill from elsewhere. This is particularly likely of crania, which tend to be more weathered than other parts of the anatomy.

The base of the inner Stepleton outwork ditch, at a point where it was cut through Clay-with-Flints, showing burnt clay and wood from the collapsed rampart.

The defensive architecture of the hill, and the conflict which it anticipated, have acquired time-depth, thanks to a programme of radiocarbon dating undertaken by Alex Bayliss of English Heritage. In the 1980s a colleague viewing the mass of Neolithic earthworks on Hambledon for the first time exclaimed ‘This would be Early State the other side of the Atlantic!’, on the grounds that only a political unit of that scale could provide the organisational, human, and material resources to build a complex of this size. It has now become clear that the complex grew progressively and that construction, together with the recutting and remodelling of existing earthworks, was piecemeal, spread between 3680 and 3320 cal BC. At any one time, the complex would have consisted of weathered earthworks, some of them recut or refurbished, and newly-built ones. The course of this process reflects changing preoccupations: once the main enclosure on the central dome of the hill was built, other elements were added to the east side of the hill, facing towards Cranborne Chase and the Wessex Chalk. The final, and largest, episode of construction, however, resulted in the erection of a timber-laced chalk and earth wall along the west side of the central dome and the north spur, presenting a monumental barrier to the lower-lying lands of the Vale of Blackmoor to the west.

Within that span of three to four centuries, even the largest constructional undertakings could have been accomplished by a workforce of about 100 in about six months. The superficially vast collection of artefacts and food remains can, if inflated to allow for unexcavated areas and then spread across the lifespan of the complex, be reduced to the equivalent of a couple or three well-stuffed pits a year. Yet, Tony Legge has shown that the butchered remains of more than one cow were sometimes deposited in a single episode of ditch-filling — and just one cow would have provided some 300 kg of meat, offal and fat. Consumption on this scale implies, like the estimated size of the labour force which built each part of the complex, that large numbers of people came to the site occasionally. This accords with the predominantly wooded conditions evidenced by the snail shells from the Neolithic pits and ditches — circumstances which would scarcely have obtained if people and their animals had been on the hill habitually. Short stays are also suggested by a preponderance of small pots, suitable for eating and drinking, rather than large ones suitable for storage.

An aerial view of the central dome of Hambledon Hill from the east, looking across the Neolithic of the east cross-dykes and main enclosure towards the better-preserved earthworks of the Iron Age hillfort.

Some of the earthworks were defensive, but episodes of conflict were, like construction, spread over time. Before the middle of the fourth millennium BC, a timber-laced outwork on the Shroton spur of the hill was burnt down along at least 140 m of its length. This was followed by the firing of the more massive inner Stepleton outwork to the south, which was burnt down along a length of 160 m. It was a while after this that two young men, both killed by arrowshot, possibly at the same time, were buried in separate ditches on the Stepleton spur. Conflict, in other words, seems to have been as episodic as the construction and use of the site. The periodic gathering of otherwise scattered populations could provide opportunities for hostilities on a scale otherwise impossible, and could prompt the construction of defences. The scale of the Hambledon complex and, by implication, its importance and the numbers of people which it could accommodate, could have made its users particularly conspicuous and vulnerable. The ecotonal — even frontier — location of the site may have made it more of a theatre for conflict than many other enclosures. These were, however, brief interludes in its long life.

When the complex went out of use, however, it was not the result of any catastrophe, but of changing beliefs and practices. At about the same time as the last Neolithic earthworks were being built on the hill, the Dorset cursus was under construction in Cranborne Chase to the east, at a date estimated as 3360–3030 cal BC (Barclay and Bayliss 1999, 22–23). The cursus is, like Hambledon, the largest known monument of its kind in Britain, but it expressed a completely different approach to ceremony and gathering, just as its location firmly in the chalkland of Cranborne Chase reflected a new local focus, away from the ‘frontier’ location of Hambledon.

Roger Mercer and Frances Healy

References
Barclay, A. & Bayliss, A. 1999. Cursus monuments and the radiocarbon problem. In A. Barclay & J. Harding (eds) Pathways and Ceremonies. The Cursus Monuments of Britain and Ireland, 11–29. Oxford and Oakville: Oxbow Books (Neolithic Studies Group Seminar Papers 4).
Mercer, R. & Healy, F. Forthcoming. Hambledon Hill, Dorset, England. Excavation and Survey of a Neolithic Monument Complex and its Surrounding Landscape. London: English Heritage Archaeological Report.