Early Bronze Age Burial, Territory, and Population in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, and the Great Ouse Valley

Green, H. Stephen

doi:10.1080/00665983.1974.11077521

Cited by 25 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Fleming 1971, 159-60). The linear placement of barrows at cemeteries such as Net Down, Wiltshire, can be interpreted as a material mapping-out of genealogical relationships over several generations (Garwood 1991;Green 1974;Mizoguchi 1992). We can perhaps envisage dispersed communities gathering in substantial numbers at the clan or lineage burial place to take part in the mortuary rites of a deceased relative.…”

Section: Middle Bronze Age Burial Practicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Settlement, Landscape and Social Identity: The Early‐Middle Bronze Age Transition in Wessex, Sussex and the Thames Valley

Brück

2000

Oxford J Archaeology

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In southern England, the end of the Early Bronze Age is marked by the appearance of archaeologically visible farmsteads and field systems. This paper explores and critiques the widespread idea that these changes are the direct result of a need to intensify agricultural production. Such discussions have implicitly drawn on evolutionist images of economic maximization and environmental exploitation that do not sit easily with our knowledge of other aspects of Bronze Age society. In this paper, I shall consider economic change as a consequence rather than the cause of wider changes to the social fabric at this time. A review of the Early and Middle Bronze Age settlement evidence provides insights into how society became transformed over the period and begins to hint at some of the reasons why subsistence practices changed so visibly. BACKGROUND At the end of the Early Bronze Age, a transformation took place in the nature of society across much of southern England. In the archaeological record, this is documented by a cessation in the building and use of monuments such as henges, stone circles and elaborate round barrows, and by the emergence, c.1500 BC, of new types of site, notably substantial, enclosed settlements and field systems. Archaeologists have often implicitly interpreted these changes as the replacement of a landscape structured around ritual activities with one dominated by everyday, economic concerns. Although this way of conceptualizing the Early-Middle Bronze Age transition has been challenged, it continues to have a major impact on ways in which this period of social change is explained. This paper aims to explore and critique our current understanding of the Early-Middle Bronze Age transition and to build on recent discussions by suggesting new ways of thinking about social change during this period. DESCRIBING THE EARLY-MIDDLE BRONZE AGE TRANSITIONArchaeological knowledge of Early Bronze Age society derives largely from the ritual monuments that dominate the archaeological record of this period. Evidence for settlement and data on the economy are sparse. In contrast, there is something deceptively familiar about the settlements and field systems of the Middle Bronze Age (Fig. 1).

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Section: Middle Bronze Age Burial Practicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Settlement, Landscape and Social Identity: The Early‐Middle Bronze Age Transition in Wessex, Sussex and the Thames Valley

Brück

2000

Oxford J Archaeology

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“…Towards the source of the Avon in the Vale of Pewsey there are clusters of ring ditches around Charlton, as well as a whole series of cemeteries alongside its course through Salisbury Plain, while along the River Till valley there are extant examples at Rollestone and Winterbourne Stoke. This riverine distribution is reflected elsewhere in the country, for example along the Little Ouse, in Northamptonshire (Field 1974;Green 1974;Woodward 1978, 33-4), and in the Upper Severn drainage (Whimster 1989, 59). Grinsell too recognised that barrows were sometimes grouped along water-courses and cited examples near the Thames, the Kennett between Avebury and Marlborough, the Stour and Frome in Dorset and the Bourne and Candover valleys in Hampshire (Grinsell 1941, 75), but this has been overshadowed by the pre-occupation with intervisibility and 'fancy' barrow types.…”

Section: David Fieldmentioning

confidence: 94%

Round barrows and the harmonious landscape: placing Early Bronze Age burial monuments in south‐east England

Field

1998

Oxford J Archaeology

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The distribution and siting of barrows within the landscape of south‐east England is considered, and it is observed that clustering occurs on certain geological units and in specific topographical positions. A socio‐economic explanation for the distribution of those in Sussex is possible, and the concentrations can even be considered in terms of territorial units. However, distribution across the south‐east is nodal, and the clusters present on the South Downs are not matched on the North Downs, and it is necessary to consider other explanations. A cosmological approach provides a fresh insight into the siting of barrows and helps explain siting within cemeteries as well as within the wider landscape.

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“…The number of individuals thought necessary to construct a barrow (it often being argued that they could only have been assembled seasonally), and the low average number of interments from the investigations of non-mounded sites, has promoted models of elite/chieftain burial in which only a very minor portion of the populace ever received barrow interment (e.g. Atkinson 1972;Green 1974). The Low Grounds results would challenge this.…”

Section: The Low Grounds Barrow Cemetery-dead Countmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making time work: sampling floodplain artefact frequencies and populations

Evans¹,

Tabor²,

Linden

2014

Antiquity

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Over London 0 k m 400 N The expansion of large-scale excavation in Britain and parts of Continental Europe, funded by major development projects, has generated extensive new datasets. But what might we be losing when surfaces are routinely stripped by machines? Investigation by hand of ploughsoils and buried soils in the Fenlands of eastern England reveals high densities of artefacts and features that would often be destroyed or overlooked. These investigations throw new light on the concept of site sequences where features cut into underlying ground maygive only a limited and misleading indication of the pattern and timing of prehistoric occupation. The consequential loss of data has a particular impact on estimates of settlement density and population numbers, which may have been much higher than many current estimates envisage.

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Early Bronze Age Burial, Territory, and Population in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, and the Great Ouse Valley

Cited by 25 publications

References 10 publications

Settlement, Landscape and Social Identity: The Early‐Middle Bronze Age Transition in Wessex, Sussex and the Thames Valley

Settlement, Landscape and Social Identity: The Early‐Middle Bronze Age Transition in Wessex, Sussex and the Thames Valley

Round barrows and the harmonious landscape: placing Early Bronze Age burial monuments in south‐east England

Making time work: sampling floodplain artefact frequencies and populations

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