Developer-funded archaeology on the Isle of Sheppey resulted in the
discovery of not one but two Neolithic causewayed enclosures on the same
hilltop in very close (c. 300 m) proximity. In the later Bronze Age
enclosures and cremation cemeteries were constructed immediately to the
east, followed by Iron Age enclosures and, ultimately, field systems dating
to the later Iron Age onwards.
A radiocarbon programme enabled the chronological sequence and hiatus
between all of these events to be discerned, but the majority of this paper
explores the physical, chronological, and social relationship between the
two Neolithic causewayed enclosures. These were of different forms and,
although on the same hilltop, they each seem to have had distinctly
different viewsheds over the Thames and the Swale respectively. There are
subtle, but potentially significant, differences in the material culture and
deposition which allow exploration of the possible functions and role(s) of
the two largely contemporaneous sites. Questions may be addressed such as
whether they performed the same functions for two communities or had
separate and distinct roles for a single community. Beyond the Neolithic,
the paper also explores the nature of the later use of the hilltop. The
Bronze Age enclosures, though agricultural in function, clearly seem to
respect their Neolithic predecessors invoking a remembrance of space, which
is lost by the Iron Age. The shift away from the special function of this
landscape in the Neolithic to a subsequent agricultural use is explored, as
is the hiatus in use and subsequent re-use of the area.
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