Beyond the Core: Reflections on Regionality in Prehistory

This volume explores the idea of regionally-based archaeologies across the British Isles which are not necessarily defined by modern political boundaries or through comparisons with regions such as Wessex and Orkney. In the past these intensively studied areas have often been assumed to represent the 'typical' - other areas with apparently different narratives have generally been labelled 'peripheral' and their diversity and distinctiveness overlooked. Assumptions about these core-based models have been challenged, especially by archaeologists in Ireland and Scotland and to some extent Wales. In England, despite more than two decades of intensive developer-funded archaeological investigation, new regional narratives are only just beginning to emerge. The 12 contributions to the collection - based on a session at the Exeter TAG conference in 2006 - identify distinctive elements of the prehistoric archaeology of a number of discrete areas across the British Isles, from Cornwall to Scotland and south-east England to Ireland. Some also consider how archaeologically coherent regions might be defined and the associated methodological problems in approaching such definitions. Others examine the ways in which 'universal' artefact forms and monument types have been interpreted in different areas, and how different patterns of contact, with the Continent or other regions, may have affected the construction of identities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Release date: Apr 30, 2011
• ISBN: 9781842175880

Book preview

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Regionality in prehistory: some thoughts from the periphery

Andy M Jones

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Introduction

This book arose from a session at the Theoretical Archaeological Group conference, which was held in December 2006 at the University of Exeter. The idea had developed as a result of discussions with colleagues from both the academic and contractual sphere, who have been undertaking archaeological work in various parts of Britain, and especially those in the south-west peninsula, who felt that the archaeological narratives of their regions were being subsumed by the evidence from a relatively small geographical area, which has dominated the study of prehistory since the latter part of the eighteenth century, namely the chalkland uplands of Wessex.

This situation undoubtedly occurred because ‘Wessex’ contains a range of iconic monuments such as Stonehenge and Avebury, and its soils permit levels of preservation, which many other areas do not. Furthermore, geography has played its part, as the region’s easily accessible location within central southern England, in easy reach of several museum and university departments, has meant that it was much better studied through the nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries than any other region in Britain at the time when the idea of prehistory was being formulated. Antiquarians such as Colt Hoare (1821), and Thurnam (1869; 1891) set about excavating and, most importantly, widely publishing the results of their labours to wider audiences; these readers were more easily able to view the Wessex sites, than those on the Yorkshire Wolds, the Highlands of Scotland or the moors of the south-west peninsula.

Subsequently, throughout the twentieth century archaeologists have spent much of their time finding links between identifiable strands of evidence, such as commonly found ceramic forms or widely occurring monument types to create larger synthetic narratives. Again there has been an understandable tendency to work from the familiar, so it is little surprise that the most influential synthetic model in the first half of the twentieth century was Stuart Piggott’s 1938 paper on the Wessex Bronze Age, which firmly established the idea of a ‘Wessex culture’. Although few people today would follow this model in its entirety, the fact remains that it is the only region in England which has been the focus for frequent updated syntheses (for example, Stone 1963; Grinsell 1957; 1958; Piggott 1971; McOmish et al 2002; Lawson 2007). Similarly, despite the more recent move towards the identification and interpretation of the particular practices of prehistoric communities, all too many studies are still devoted to what are perceived to be the well understood ‘core areas’. In fact, even many of the ‘regionally’ based studies which have appeared in recent years are actually devoted to areas within ‘Wessex’ (for example, Brück 1999; Peters 2000 and Watson 2001). This imbalance is even greater when one considers the ever increasing collection of books and papers on Wessex sites such as Stonehenge and Avebury (for example, Pollard and Reynolds 2002; Cleal et al 1994; Darvill 2006) far outweighs that of any other area of Britain. This is despite the fact that most recent archaeological fieldwork has occurred away from the iconic chalkland monuments. Indeed, even books which are not wholly focused on prehistoric Wessex often use Stonehenge in the title (Burgess 1980 Gibson 1998; Gibson and Sheridan 2004; Larsson and Parker Pearson 2007).

However, it would be entirely unfair to lay the blame for any disparities in the study of British prehistory solely at the door of archaeologists who work in southern England, as it could also be argued that until comparatively recently, relatively few archaeologists across the British regions have taken very much interest in constructing their own distinctive local narratives or with challenging the dominance of the established Wessex sequence. Indeed, regardless of local differences in the archaeological record, much effort has in the past been given by archaeologists working in the regions into fitting their findings into the ‘bigger picture’. Burials and monuments and material culture recovered from archaeological sites around the country were frequently described in terms of ‘Wessex’ artefact typologies, monument forms and burial rites. In fact, given the dependency on relative dating, and the small-scale nature of most pre-war excavations, this was probably the only way for the discipline to develop the models needed to explain British prehistory to a wider audience in a comprehensible way.

As a result of more than 100 years of archaeological study, and almost two centuries after Colt Hoare, the chalk-lands of central southern England have become conceived of as a normative ‘core area’ and its archaeological record has been used to produce the synthetic narratives of the Neolithic, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age that are held to be typical of the rest of Britain, and this is especially true for the English regions (for example, Barclay 2000; 2001), which have not had the political impetus of nationalist ideologies to generate an interest in exploring the potential, alternative, regionally distinctive narratives. As a result areas such as the north of England (see for example, Harding and Johnston 2000) have been lacking good syntheses.

This situation is detrimental to the wider understanding of British prehistory because a handful of visually iconic, durable stone monuments, situated in a fairly restricted area of southern England, will not necessarily elucidate the prehistory of Britain beyond their immediate hinterlands. In fact the attempt by some archaeologists to extrapolate evidence from one region to another has led to rather circular and often sterile arguments, as, for example, the question of whether the Early Neolithic was associated with houses (Garrow 2008). Indeed, as David Field points out in this volume, had the field archaeology of Britain had its origins and development in another region, the grand narratives of British prehistory might have been different. In fact, both his and Andrew Martin’s papers argue that even within the Wessex chalkland the established sequence is more complex and less problematic than is sometimes presented. Field argues that the coastal zone may have been more important throughout the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. By contrast, Martin points to differences between communities which are evident in the Early Bronze Age funerary record, which he suggests were the result of the maintenance of distinct intra-regional identities. The necessity for good localised sequences is therefore as important for the archaeology of central southern England as it is for the rest of Britain.

In actual fact, the development of more subtle narratives which reflect regional diversity is becoming increasingly possible for a number of reasons. Undoubtedly one of the major enabling factors is the unprecedented rise in developer-funded projects, which has created a greater expansion and randomization in the areas where fieldwork has taken place. In the last 20 years under explored regions such as the Midlands, the South West, East Anglia, Wales and northern Britain have been the subject of large-scale excavation projects (Bradley 2007, preface; Barber et al 2006; Thomas 2008). The results of this have been far reaching in terms of the rapid expansion of knowledge it has brought about and as Richard Bradley recently commented (2006), ‘It is apparent that – many of the established type sites that featured prominently in text books written only twenty years ago now seem to be exceptional, commonplace or even irrelevant’. The challenge now is ensuring that the vast mount of data that is being collected is also being disseminated adequately.

Furthermore, high-quality data is also being collected from recent carefully targeted research projects, in areas which had not previously been the subject of modern excavation. Several of these projects have produced unexpected results which have altered long-held assumptions about regional sequences (Bradley 2000; Cummings and Fowler 2007) and have highlighted contacts between areas and their fluctuations across time and space. In the south-west peninsula, for example, it appears that at certain points in time during the Early Bronze Age and the Iron Age sea-borne contacts between communities along the Atlantic facade are likely to have been as important as those with communities to the east including Wessex (Henderson 2007, Jones and Thomas forthcoming; Mattingly et al forthcoming; Jones 2010).

At the same time detailed studies of site chronologies and artefactual assemblages mean that we are beginning to have a finer-grained understanding of the past which was not possible even a decade or so ago. Dating programmes (for example, Benson and Whittle 2006; Whittle et al 2007) are beginning to refine prehistoric chronologies to the point where local monument sequences are understood at a generational level. This greater precision makes it easier to begin to situate human actions in time and space, and this will enable independent localised chronologies to be developed, which are not reliant upon using dating from more distant places. Likewise, detailed studies considering the contrasting way that artefacts were produced, circulated and deposited in prehistory (Needham et al 2006; Jones 2007, 122–140) have revealed significant differences between regions. This latter theme is illustrated by Neil Carlin’s paper in this volume, which discusses the contexts in which Beakers appear in Ireland and how these differ from the established picture of the ‘Beaker package’.

Nonetheless, the study of regionalised sequences is not without potential pitfalls. In particular the problems of associating material culture recovered from archaeological contexts with specific prehistoric groups or ethnicity are well documented as they have in the past been used to further extreme political agendas (for example, Jones 1997, 2), and even today the past can be used support modern identities (for example, Brown 1994). However, there are other problems, too, with the establishment of regional sequences. Strat Haliday, in this volume, raises the thorny problem of the biases in artefact or monument-based distribution maps which could undermine interpretation of the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods in Scotland, which are often too heavily dependent on the information from collection of archaeological data-sets. On a different tack, Dave Mullin’s paper explores the difficulties which are raised in trying to understand where the borders of regions lay in prehistory and how they can be identified or related to people’s shifting sense of identity. This latter paper highlights the problem of how to identify the extent of a discrete region in the past and asks at what level it should be studied. Following Cyril Fox (1936), the traditional way of discussing regions has often been to demarcate the country into simple topographical zones such as ‘upland’ and ‘lowland’ (for example, Johnson 1981; Pryor 1984). The problem of this approach is that it implies that static, timeless boundaries existed between groups and ignores the dynamic interactions and inter-dependencies which must have existed between communities who inhabited different topographical niches.

The study and identification of regional diversity in prehistory therefore has to be much more nuanced than just mapping differences in the distributions of material culture and expecting these to equate with the identities of past communities. Did communities who built widespread types of monument, or used commonly-found artefact forms such as Beakers, engage with them in the same way as their neighbours? Is a Bronze Age round barrow with a central burial on the Wessex chalk really the equivalent of an apparently similar monument in another region covering only a token burial or indeed multiple burials? How did monuments and artefacts reflect local practices and traditions? Did diversity in material culture – different forms of chambered tomb, roundhouse architecture, or distinct regional ceramic styles, for example, the Bronze Age Trevisker Ware pottery, which is found in south west England, equate with distinct culturally-defined groups, or are there other ways of interpreting the variety in archaeological record? How do we explain the diversity that existed between communities without falling into the trap of cultural determinism?

Lastly, and equally, importantly given the fascination with monumentality which is shared by many archaeologists, why did some communities decide to construct small ‘monuments’ or not to build monuments at all? What does this tell us about the construction of identity in those areas, and the relationships that these communities had with the wider world?

The papers in this volume discuss these questions and explore issues relating to regional sequences and social identity from a variety of stand-points and include a diverse range of geographic areas, which range from Scotland to the Welsh Borders, to west Cornwall and Ireland, and indeed Wessex itself. However, although there is no single overriding theoretical perspective which has guided the production of this volume and the scales of study, which range from the cemetery to landscapes and in the case of Neil Carlin’s paper a countrywide examination, the papers within it have attempted to discuss the question of regionality from a more contextually situated perspective, which has generally taken a ‘bottom up’ approach, which interprets the evidence on the ground in the light of what is known about the bigger picture. For example, Vicky Cummings paper advocates the use of varying scales of analysis to see how broader trends are played out at a local level and this approach is also adopted in Jones’s study of a cemetery which considers how widely found monuments were used in a specific place.

However, although all of the papers within this volume address issues concerning the identification of regionality, it should be stressed that none of the contributors to this book suggest that we should lose sight of relationships between regions in favour of localized myopic visions of prehistory which stand in isolation from one another. Both Joanna Wright and Helen Evans, for example, both consider the archaeological record within their respective study areas but emphasize the need to recognize both differences and similarities between communities, and Graeme Kirkham’s paper on the prehistory of west Cornwall specifically draws on the bricolage effect created by interaction with other areas.

Finally, we would argue, that rather than continuing to develop a single narrative, the time is ripe for the further exploration of new ideas about how the construction of identity in prehistory was produced and can be better understood from the regional diversity which can be seen in the archaeological record today.

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Borders and belonging: exploring the Neolithic of the Anglo-Welsh borderland

David Mullin

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People become aware of their culture when they stand at its boundaries

A P Cohen (1982a)

Landscape and archaeology in the Anglo-Welsh borderland

The Anglo-Welsh border is a modern political construct and, as such, it seemingly has no relevance to a study of the prehistoric period. The counties which touch both sides of the border: Cheshire, Shropshire, Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, Flintshire, Wrexham, Powys and Monmouthshire (Figure 2.1) are likewise modern constructs, their boundaries having been altered significantly over the last 50 years. The border region, however, maintains a certain unity forming a natural topographical transition zone, dividing the lowlands to the east from the highlands to the west. The present national border largely respects boundaries between upland and lowland, the English side being largely the valleys of the Dee, Severn, Wye and Teme, the Welsh side comprising the Cambrian uplands, Black Mountains and Clwydian Hills. The Malvern Hills (Figure 2.2) perhaps best typify this transitional landscape and form an impressive steep-sided ridge when viewed from the Severn Vale, running north-south with few natural passes or east/west routes across. The hills form the modern boundary between Herefordshire and Worcestershire, their southern edge extending slightly into Gloucestershire. The hills have formed a borderland, in one sense or another, probably since at least the Later Bronze Age (Bowden 2005, 52).

Although the Malvern ridge is narrow, it forms a major landscape division between the wide vale of the River Severn to the east and the undulating Herefordshire plain, Marcle Ridge and Woolhope Dome to the west. Views are extensive from the Malverns and extend to Shropshire, Birmingham, the Cotswolds, the Forest of Dean and the Black Mountains. The visual distinction is striking between the low-lying Midland Plain to the east and the rolling upland to the west. The hills themselves are varied both geologically and geomorphologically but are characterised by a long, whaleback ridge of predominantly Pre-Cambrian rock with numerous springs issuing from the lower slopes. In common with the Shropshire Hills and the Clwydians, the Malverns form a major barrier to east-west travel across the landscape and Rowan Whimster (1989) has noted that this contrast between upland and lowland in the area has consistently influenced the pattern of human settlement in the region and encouraged generations of historians and archaeologists to recognise the Marches as a natural borderland.

Contrasts with other regions are visible in the archaeological signature of the Neolithic in the area. It lies outside the distribution of classic causewayed enclosures (Oswald et al 2001; Figure 2.3) and there are few long barrows or chambered tombs, which tend to be distributed further south, west and north (Darvill 2004; see Figure 2.4). Although there is an extensively discussed group of Neolithic burial monuments in the Black Mountains (Powell 1969; Olding 2000), mortuary monuments are rare elsewhere on the border, with a single example of a chambered tomb at the Bridestones, Cheshire (Dunlop 1938), and another at Arthur’s Stone, Herefordshire (Hemp 1935). Early ceremonial and religious monuments are not absent: there appears to have been a major Late Neolithic/ Early Bronze Age monument complex in the Walton Basin in Powys, for example, but such aggregations of monuments are far from common and appear to have taken special