New Light on the Neolithic of Northern England

These papers highlight recent archaeological work in Northern England, in the commercial, academic and community archaeology sectors, which have fundamentally changed our perspective on the Neolithic of the area. Much of this was new work (and much is still not published) has been overlooked in the national discourse. The papers cover a wide geographical area, from Lancashire north into the Scottish Lowlands, recognising the irrelevance of the England/Scotland Border. They also take abroad chronological sweep, from the Mesolithic/Neolithic transition to the introduction of Beakers into the area. The key themes are: the nature of transition; the need for a much-improved chronological framework; regional variation linked to landscape character; links within northern England and with distant places; the implications of new dating for our understanding ‘the axe trade; the changing nature of settlement and agriculture; the character early Neolithic enclosures; the need to integrate rock art into wider discourse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Release date: Jan 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781789252675

Book preview

Introducing New Light on the Neolithic of Northern England

Gill Hey and Paul Frodsham

Northern England barely features in accounts of the Neolithic of the British Isles or, if it does, it is as the source of stone or flint that people used and deposited in other parts of the country; its inhabitants are seldom actors in the grand narrative. A variety of factors might explain this omission: with the exception of the Yorkshire Wolds, there is, perhaps, less of a legacy of intensive antiquarian and earlier 20th-century activity, and the more rugged terrain and its relative inaccessibility may have deterred research effort; the scarcity of university archaeology departments throughout much of the area hasn’t helped. Additionally, the region has certainly seen less development than many other parts of England, and thus the opportunity for serendipitous discovery has been more limited. As a result, the prevailing view is that ‘the North’ was a cultural backwater, following in the wake of major developments elsewhere. The dragon lurking over northern England and Wales in Alasdair Whittle, Frances Healy and Alex Bayliss’ depiction of the start of Neolithic activity in their Gathering Time volume (2011, fig. 14.177), may have been placed in jest – because of the absence of dated events– but it does illustrate a perception of the area that has had some currency. The papers in this volume challenge these assumptions.

Preconceptions about the nature of the Neolithic in the North have hampered research, and have tended to lead to sites and discoveries being viewed through the prism of southern archaeology and not on their own terms, a point noted by a number of the authors in this volume (e.g. Oswald and Edmonds in Chapter 4 and Sharpe in Chapter 5). This has not only had an unfortunate impact on research within the region, but has meant that British archaeology generally has not benefitted from the insights provided by the northern English evidence: the wealth of environmental data, the comparatively good preservation of upstanding remains of earth and stone, including rock art, the diversity of stone material types, the sources of which can be readily identified, and the understanding that can be gained from traditional farming practices.

Earlier conferences and volumes have attempted to remedy misconceptions about the Neolithic of northern England, including the Regional Research Frameworks for both North East and North West England (see also Harding et al. 1996). However, the most recent publication dedicated to the Neolithic of this region was Neolithic Studies in No-Man’s Land, a special edition of the journal Northern Archaeology, published 25 years ago (Frodsham 1996). The title derived from Graeme Barker’s 1981 volume on prehistoric communities, and his comment that: ‘The prehistoric archaeology of Britain has invariably been divided into two major regions, southern and northern, but there has tended to be a rather uncomfortable No Man’s Land between the two, north of the Trent and south of the Scottish Border’ (Barker 1981, 1); this perception has lingered.

The impetus behind the Royal Archaeological Institute conference on ‘The Neolithic of Northern England’, held at Tullie House Museum, Carlisle, in October 2016, and organised by one of the editors in association with the Prehistoric Society and the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, was the increase in work and research in the region that was not getting the recognition that it deserved. Indeed, new work as well as new research on sites which had seen previous investigation, was demonstrating that the results from northern England could make a vital contribution to understanding Neolithic society, from the origins of farming communities to the arrival of new materials at the dawn of the Bronze Age. These results derived from developer-funded excavations, academic research and community projects. The conference was a great success, and there was a groundswell of opinion that it should be published. The opportunity has been taken to add contributions that were omitted from the conference proceedings, because of lack of time, unavailability of speakers or the ignorance of the organiser.

As with many such enterprises, it has taken much longer to reach the printer than was intended, but much of the content will still be new to most readers, and all of it remains relevant. The area covered is wide and there has been no attempt to impose rigid boundaries, whether spatial or chronological, as this would have been detrimental to an understanding of the context and landscape within which the Neolithic inhabitants lived. Most contributors focus on Cumbria or Northumberland; Neolithic County Durham is conspicuous by its absence and, for whatever reasons, remains something of an unknown quantity. The upper reaches of the Yorkshire Dales (Yvonne Luke in Chapter 10), and the North Pennines (Al Oswald and Mark Edmonds in Chapter 4, and Stewart Ainsworth et al. in Chapter 14), for example, are areas that have witnessed limited research before. A few contributors focus on areas a little to the south (e.g. Helen Evans et al. in Chapter 8) or north (Alison Sheridan in Chapter 11 and Julian Thomas in Chapter 12); those from the north serve to remind us of the irrelevance of the Anglo-Scottish border to Neolithic studies (Frodsham 2000; Crellin et al. 2016), even though its presence has led to different research priorities and approaches to cultural heritage. Similarly, no attempt has been made to impose uniformity of views; there are diverse opinions herein. Only time and future research can test their validity.

The volume begins with the keynote address delivered at the conference by Richard Bradley and Aaron Watson (Chapter 1), not because it deals with the earliest evidence in the book, but because it set the tone for the event and introduced many of the key themes that emerged over the weekend. This is also the case for the papers that form this volume:

•it re-evaluates previous results in the light of new evidence, in this case radiocarbon results providing evidence of earlier axe production than previously thought, with implications for discoveries of Langdale axes elsewhere;

•it tackles sites high up on the Langdale Fells in a rugged and remote location, an archetypal inaccessible place, yet one that was known and frequented in the Neolithic; it discusses extensive movement and exchange of material at an early date, including across the Pennines;

•it deals with the enduring significance of place, considering the relationship between the early axe extraction sites on Pike o’ Stickle and the extraordinary decorated boulders surviving at Copt Howe on the valley floor, including a solstitial event which dramatically links the two;

•and it provides evidence for the wider connections that the rock art suggests, along the western seaboard and across the Irish Sea.

Langdale tuff was found to have been used by the Mesolithic communities described by Fraser Brown in his account of the recent excavations at Stainton West, on the north bank of the River Eden just north of Carlisle (Chapter 2). This site exemplifies the value of the good preservation that exists in many locations in the North. The lithic assemblage of around 300,000 flints was sealed beneath the flood silts of the River Eden, and the careful analysis of its distribution provides insights into the detail of Mesolithic social life. The extent of exchange networks and/or the distance of movement before the Neolithic was remarkable, as evidenced by material brought to the site not only from the Lake District and the Cumbrian Coast, but from across the Pennines, the Scottish uplands and the Isle of Arran. The well-preserved organic evidence provides an understanding of landscape change over the Mesolithic/ Neolithic transition and the ways in which people interacted with their physical environment, including woodworking and woodland management. It demonstrates cereal cultivation in the vicinity from c. 3800 cal BC, and evidence of cattle farming. And, of course, the environmental data were ideal for good scientific dates. The late Mesolithic seasonal settlement seems to have held special significance for the Neolithic inhabitants, who made votive deposits along the watery margins of the river and around a wooden structure.

The nature of the Mesolithic/Neolithic transition is a theme that permeates a number of contributions to this volume and, as with discussions nationally, there is no consensus. As seen through the prism of excavations at the single site at Stainton West, there seems to have been considerable continuity in the lifeways of late Mesolithic and early Neolithic inhabitants (though Brown is careful not to suggest these people were related groups). Alison Sheridan disagrees (Chapter 11), and from the standpoint of her expertise in the material culture of these periods, and from north of ‘the border’, questions both the similarity of the artefactual evidence and the social and economic structures of these groups. She cites the new evidence for a marked change in the genetic signature of early Neolithic people, with apparently little input from local hunter-gatherers, and she also draws attention to the likely source of Carinated Bowl pottery from the area of north-eastern France, across the North Sea, and into the North West either from Scotland or over the Pennines. Clive Waddington (Chapter 6) points to the increasing numbers of comparatively early dates for Neolithic things in the North East, as do Helen Evans, Antony Dickson and Denise Druce for the North West (Chapter 8). In both regions, the importance of understanding changing landscape features and environments over the period of transition is stressed, as is the significance of coastal regions in this respect. Evans et al. highlight the episodes of increased rainfall during the last quarter of the 5th millennium cal BC that may have caused large-scale flooding and tipped the ecological balance, and Waddington emphasises the prolonged period of relatively dry climatic conditions that began c. 4100 cal BC and continued beyond 3800 cal BC. He also points out that islands may have survived in the North Sea into the late Mesolithic, and emphasises the importance of understanding sea level change in this context.

Seren Griffiths’ paper (Chapter 3) deals with the crucial issue of chronology and the many new radiocarbon dates that have become available in recent years, including from Stainton West and from Langdale; northern England is not the radiocarbon desert it used to be. She specifically addresses the impact of Bayesian modelling of radiocarbon dates on our understanding of the onset of the Neolithic and demonstrates that there is a chronological overlap between the latest Mesolithic communities and early Neolithic groups in Yorkshire at least. She stresses the potential of accurate dating programmes to inform not simply issues of sequence but also, in a profound way, the basic structures of our Neolithic narratives. Have we allowed the way we describe and write about the past to constrain the way we conceptualise it, and has this influenced how we construct our models?

Al Oswald and Mark Edmonds (Chapter 4) also pick up on our obsession with a ‘Neolithic package’ – whether looking for consistency, or for regional diversity; this is preventing us from being open-minded about the evidence before us. The apparent absence of ‘classic’ causewayed enclosures in the North has been a source of puzzlement for several decades – does the absence of such enclosures imply a radically different way of life ‘up North’? But Al and Mark discuss several plausible (and several unlikely) candidates, and point out that the great variety of such enclosures in southern England should make us wary of placing too much emphasis on evidence from individual examples. Unfortunately, most potential enclosures have never seen excavation, a situation that needs to be remedied. If these enclosures prove to be of similar date to those in southern and western England, they would be broadly contemporary with the ditched cursus monuments excavated by Julian Thomas in south-west Scotland, and later than the post-defined linear monuments he and his team revealed (Chapter 12). There have been no discoveries of such monuments in England at such an early date, and their proximity to northern England makes this difference all the more intriguing.

Causewayed enclosures highlight the enduring importance of gathering together for human groups, and their locations also show the extent to which these people followed watercourses as they navigated through the landscape; many are routes used by Mesolithic communities. The benefits to be gained by environmental evidence for understanding patterns of movement and clearance, as well as an appreciation of traditional herding practices in the uplands of northern England are obviously great.

While potential Neolithic enclosures remain (as yet) rare throughout the region, the same cannot be said about rock art, as demonstrated by Kate Sharpe’s contribution (Chapter 5). She points to the vastly increased number of known sites in recent years (partly as a result of volunteer endeavour), and the emerging picture is increasingly complex, with rock art deployed more widely and in a greater variety of contexts than previously appreciated. Rock art in the North East has been known about and studied for some time, but the relatively recent recognition of several sites in Cumbria is an important development – as Bradley and Watson demonstrate. There are clearly regional variations in the phenomenon throughout northern England, and its chronology remains hopelessly undefined. As an iconic aspect of the region’s prehistory it demands further study, not in isolation but in a way that integrates with our general models of the Neolithic.

Clive Waddington’s contribution to our understanding of Neolithic Northumberland over recent years has been immense. His work in the vicinity of Milfield, much of it advance of gravel extraction, is particularly important. This has included the discovery and excavation of a number of Neolithic settlement sites (including some unusual structures that to date have no parallels outside the North East), enabling radiocarbon dating and the construction of welldated ceramic sequences covering the entire Neolithic, from Carinated Bowl to Beaker. He has been able to develop speculative models integrating settlement, environment, agriculture, ceremonial and burial monuments and rock art. His paper (Chapter 6) provides something of an overview of this work (mostly already published elsewhere), and presents some previously unpublished dates.

Stephen Sherlock (Chapter 7) presents an interim account of the extraordinary and well-preserved early Neolithic structure being excavated at Street House in north-east Yorkshire, through his own endeavours, with the support of Durham University and many local enthusiasts. A number of significant Neolithic and early Bronze Age sites cluster within the local area, including the Street House long cairn and ‘wossit’, excavated in the 1980s by Blaise Vyner, but the structure found in 2018 is believed to be a house. It has returned radiocarbon dates in the early 4th millennium cal BC, pottery in the Carinated Bowl tradition, a flint assemblage with late Mesolithic/early Neolithic characteristics and grains of emmer wheat and hazelnut shells. Comparable sites doubtless await discovery in what is currently a great Neolithic settlement void between here and north Northumberland.

The contribution by Helen Evans, Antony Dickson and Denise Druce (Chapter 8) complements that of Waddington. It highlights recent work in north-west England, including results of palaeoenvironmental research, fieldwalking, landscape survey and excavation, that demonstrates the wide geographic spread of habitat mosaics used in both the Mesolithic and Neolithic. This includes evidence of probably deliberate woodland clearance, or at least maintenance of clearings, by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, and fully-fledged mixed farming economies in the early Neolithic. North Lancashire still remains a poor relation in the study of the archaeology of northern England, but the Mesolithic scatters on the Caton terraces of the River Lune, and work on the M6 to Heysham Link Road farther down river, hint at the potential of this landscape. Work very recently underway by OA North on a road scheme around Windy Harbour near the Wyre Estuary may redress this imbalance to some extent and show that current distribution maps illustrate absence of evidence rather than evidence of absence.

Evans, Dickson and Druce also describe how lithics in particular reveal patterns of movement of Neolithic groups, mainly along river valleys and at the heads of those valleys, and in estuaries along the coast, often following routes first used by hunter-gatherers. The assemblages demonstrate the exploitation of local resources, such as chert and beachflint, while also containing ‘exotic’ material from distant locations, such as Yorkshire flint and Arran pitchstone; those which comprise these mixed groups are often associated with monuments. The paper stresses the need to consider the wider context of monuments, many of which appear intimately linked to landscape features and also, in some cases, other monuments.

Evans et al.’s challenge is met admirably by two papers that also demonstrate cross-Pennine movement and the importance of gathering and ceremony, but at very different scales. One presents investigations on a well-known site (Long Meg), and the other deals with an area that has previously seen little investigation.

Yvonne Luke’s study of long cairns and barrows in the Yorkshire Dales (Chapter 9) serves to demonstrate that significant discoveries can still be made in areas not renowned for their Neolithic heritage. The study area, wedged between Cumbria to the west and Yorkshire to the east, seems to have been influenced by both, while developing a character all of its own. This is an area which people evidently passed through, but where previously there had been little evidence that they stopped. Recent work in local caves shows that people were buried in these locations in the Neolithic, but Yvonne Luke shows that, not only did people move through this landscape, they built monuments here, continuing a theme of the use of limestone and river terraces as choice locations for monument construction. The monuments, some of which have been recognised only recently, seem to have been sited with reference to landscape features, and in some cases to incorporate solar alignments relating to the solstices, as seen at Copt Howe (Bradley and Watson, Chapter 1) and Long Meg (Frodsham, Chapter 10). Some of these alignments relate to midsummer, others to midwinter, suggesting the possibility of year-round activity in these upland areas. Further work to demonstrate the date of these monuments and establish their local context, as well as their relationship with landscapes to the west and the east, is much needed.

The stone circle of Long Meg and Her Daughters has been the subject of interest and wide-ranging discussion for many centuries. It is one of Britain’s great Neolithic monument complexes, and demands a more prominent place on the national stage. Paul Frodsham (Chapter 10) shows how a careful investigation of earlier commentaries can throw light on the interpretation of monuments, much enhanced by detailed observation of the site in relation to its topography. The discovery of a dome of quartz, 0.2 m wide, on a now prostrate stone of the circle, demonstrates that there is always something new to learn, even at sites that have seen much previous investigation. A key result of recent smallscale excavation (by the Altogether Archaeology project in partnership with Durham University) is that, by the early Neolithic, Long Meg was integrated into wider networks, as demonstrated by finds of Langdale tuff, Arran pitchstone and Yorkshire flint. The site clearly occupies a key nodal point in the landscape of northern England, linking the navigable Eden with overland routes to and from northeast England and Yorkshire. Another remarkable result of the excavations is that the very large ditched enclosure adjacent to and conjoining the stone circle predates it by several centuries, seemingly being early Neolithic in date (3950–3790 cal BC). Material from the socket of one of the stones in the circle yielded a date towards the end of the 4th millennium. This work clearly demonstrates the potential of small-scale, carefully crafted fieldwork projects to address key issues throughout Neolithic northern England. ‘Irish’ rock art is found on Long Meg, and, like sites discussed by other contributors, the relationship of Long Meg with her daughters clearly evidences a link with the movements of the sun, in this case the setting sun at midwinter. The importance of the winter solstice provides an important link with the Thornborough henges on the other side of Pennines, and the sites discussed by Yvonne Luke in Chapter 9, as well as several other sites around the Irish Sea and beyond.

Alison Sheridan’s contribution (Chapter 11) has been discussed above in relation to the Mesolithic/Neolithic transition. Her paper reinforces the need to look farther north when seeking to comprehend aspects of the northern English Neolithic, and she stresses the close connections with south-west Scotland throughout; we still study these regions separately. The important influences of Scotland and Ireland in the later Neolithic can be seen particularly with the presence of passage tomb art at sites like Copt Howe and Long Meg, but also the shared material culture and traditions of monument construction. The Irish Sea and the western seaboard were important routes of communication. However, there are differences between south-west Scotland and England.

Dumfries and Galloway is easily reached from Cumbria, either overland or across the Solway. Julian Thomas (in Chapter 12) reviews his excavations of several ceremonial monuments (published in detail elsewhere) dating from the early Neolithic onwards, which would have been visually spectacular. Some were deliberately destroyed by fire then rebuilt, sometimes on more than one occasion; they were the foci for dramatic performances and ceremonies. He points out that cursus monuments were already established in this area by the time that causewayed enclosures began to be constructed in Britain, indicating a rival set of practices or modes of organisation in the early to mid-Neolithic. Postdefined linear monuments date to the 38th century BC, only a little later than, or contemporary with, the large curvilinear earthwork enclosure at Long Meg. As Thomas says, there is a ‘Distinct flavour to the architecture of the region’.

The monuments Thomas describes left little surface trace other than cropmarks, and many further features of interest only came to light through excavation; to try and interpret such sites in any detail on the basis of surface evidence alone can be dangerous. In adjacent Cumbria, where attention is understandably focused on its many splendid stone circles and other upstanding remains, we shouldn’t forget that comparable timber monuments may also survive beneath the ground, perhaps at as yet unrecognised sites or as early phases of stone monuments, as may be represented by an early Neolithic posthole at Long Meg.

At one of these splendid stone circles, Castlerigg, Al Oswald and Constance Durgeat provide another example of how looking afresh at antiquarian sources and careful survey, can shed new light on a monument previously thought to be ‘familiar’ (Chapter 13). They reassess the original form of the monument and the impact of later activity, including monument ‘improvement’ in the past.

Stewart Ainsworth, David McOmish, Al Oswald and Andrew Payne present a discussion of two ‘henges’ in the North Pennines, well outside the previously known distribution of such monuments (Chapter 14). One of these, at Allendale, was discovered by a volunteer during a ‘Lidar Landscapes’ survey of the Allen Valleys as part of the Altogether Archaeology project. Its position in the landscape would have been relevant to people passing through the North Pennines, between Tynedale and the Eden valley or Teesdale. Dryburn, near Alston, also sits on a key route through the uplands. It has been known about locally for many years, but was first surveyed as part of Historic England’s recent Miner-Farmer project and subsequently dated to the last quarter of the 3rd millennium cal BC by a small-scale Altogether Archaeology excavation. Other potential henges, again discovered by volunteers using LiDAR, have been noted elsewhere in the North Pennines. These monuments are all very different in character, and the value of lumping them all together as ‘henges’ must be questioned.

Andrew Fitzpatrick considers whether the arrival of Beakers and ‘Beaker culture’ represents the ‘end’ of the Neolithic in northern England (Chapter 15). The number of settlements and burials is small and widely distributed, suggesting short-lived occupation by small groups of people, but this is typical of the evidence from across Britain. The material culture suggests dates quite early in the period, and there are apparent differences between eastern England and the North West, where links across the Irish Sea may have remained strong. He also discusses the implications of recent aDNA studies which suggest that the British Neolithic genetic signature was completely displaced by that of people moving from the east from around 2450 BC, and how this tallies with the apparent small scale of Beaker settlement. Social identities and beliefs are not the same as genetic identity, however. The evidence of Beaker settlement in northern England is one part of the jigsaw that will help us unravel this conundrum, as is the evidence for the indigenous Neolithic groups amongst whom the ‘Beaker people’ lived.

The Beaker grave at Kirkhaugh was exceptional, in both the quantity and richness of the objects within it. Its re-excavation by Altogether Archaeology volunteers in 2015 became, for a few hours, the most read news story on the BBC website when a group of local schoolboys found the ‘other’ gold tress ring to match the one found by Herbert Marion in the 1930s; a story made all the more remarkable by the fact that two of the boys were the great-grandsons of Maryon’s assistant on site! As well as being of great archaeological importance, this project demonstrates the value of involving local communities in archaeological fieldwork. Presumably the ‘Kirkhaugh craftsman’ was in search of copper or gold reserves, but unfortunately his skeleton failed to survive the millennia because of the acidic soil in which he was buried, so it is not possible to compare him in any detail with his more famous near-contemporary, the Amesbury Archer (Fitzpatrick 2011). However, the similarities between the grave goods at Kirkhaugh and Amesbury are striking.

Throughout the Neolithic, there appears to have been much variation between different parts of the region, giving rise to what might be considered to be number of local ‘Neolithics’, each with its own characteristics and chronology, but people were evidently participating in similar social and ceremonial practices to communities throughout Britain. They were inter-connected. The following papers demonstrate that far from being a ‘No-Man’s Land’, the north of England is both a land of plenty and a land of huge opportunity, both in its own right and as the geographical centre of Neolithic Britain. There is huge potential for exciting new discoveries through a combination of developer-funded fieldwork, academic research and public archaeology initiatives.

Acknowledgements

The editors are extremely grateful to the generosity of the Royal Archaeological Institute for funding the conference, and also supporting editorial work and the costs of publishing the colour figures in this volume. Pete Wilson has been very supportive, and many thanks are also due to Rachel Swallow who provided a great deal of assistance with editing the volume.

The staff at Oxbow Books, and particularly Julie Gardiner, have been extremely patient and helpful. Thank you. Finally, we would like to thank the contributors who have produced such excellent papers for this publication, and everyone who attended the conference and contributed to the lively debates.

Bibliography

Barker, G. (1981) Approaches to prehistoric man in northern England. In G. Barker (ed.), Prehistoric Communities in Northern England: Essays in Economic and Social Reconstruction, 1–10. Sheffield, University of Sheffield.

Crellin, R., Fowler, C. and Tipping, R. (eds) (2016) Prehistory Without Borders. The Prehistoric Archaeology of the Tyne Forth Region. Oxford, Oxbow Books.

Fitzpatrick, A.P. (2011) The Amesbury Archer and the Boscombe Bowmen: Bell Beaker Burials on Boscombe Down, Amesbury, Wiltshire. Aberystwyth, Wessex Archaeology Report 27.

Frodsham, P. (ed.) (1996) Neolithic Studies in No-Man’s Land: Papers on the Neolithic of Northern England from the Trent to the Tweed. Northern Archaeology special edition 13/14. Newcastle, Northumberland Archaeological Group.

Frodsham, P. (2000) Worlds without ends: towards a new prehistory for Central Britain. In J. Harding and R. Johnston (eds), Northern Pasts. Interpretations of the Later Prehistory of Northern England and Southern Scotland. British Archaeological Report (British Series) 2302, 15–31. Oxford, Archaeopress.

Harding, J., Frodsham, P. and Durden, T. (1996) Towards an agenda for the Neolithic of northern England. In P. Frodsham (ed.), Neolithic Studies in No-Man’s Land: Papers on the Neolithic of Northern England from the Trent to the Tweed. Northern Archaeology special edition 13/14, 189–201. Newcastle, Northumberland Archaeological Group.

Whittle, A., Healy, F. and Bayliss, A. (2011) Gathering Time. Dating the Early Neolithic Enclosures of Southern Britain and Ireland. Oxford, Oxbow Books.

1

Langdale and the northern Neolithic

Richard Bradley and Aaron Watson

Summary

In the 1980s and 1990s, stone axes made in the Cumbrian mountains provided some of the best evidence for the extent of long distance contacts in the northern Neolithic, but now these artefacts must be viewed in a different light. New radiocarbon dates from the Langdale fells show that most of them were made between about 3800 and 3330 cal BC, and a review of the contexts in which the finished products are found suggests that they were losing their significance by the late Neolithic period. If so, their connection with stone circles or henge monuments was not as close as was once believed. More of them are likely to be contemporary with earlier structures: long barrows, round barrows, causewayed enclosures and cursuses.

New work has been carried out at Copt Howe, a rock art site in the valley below the Langdale Pikes. Two decorated boulders were associated with a glacial mound, and a new study of the pecked motifs shows that they are very similar to designs found in Irish passage tombs around 3000 BC. Thus they could postdate the main period of production of stone axes. Instead, they were associated with a new social network illustrated by the use of Grooved Ware.

Introduction

This is not the first study to investigate the Neolithic period through the production and distribution of Cumbrian axes. It was one of the aims of fieldwork undertaken at Great Langdale between 1985 and 1987, and when the results of the project were published as Interpreting the Axe Trade (Bradley and Edmonds 1993) the book attempted to interpret them in a regional framework (Fig. 1.1).

In one sense little happened over the quarter century that followed. Other axe quarries were investigated, notably Graig Lwyd and Mynydd Rhiw in north-west Wales, Creag Na Caillich, Perth and Kinross, North Roe, Shetland, Rathlin Island, Northern Ireland and Lambay Island, County Dublin. Irish axeheads were characterised in particular detail, but work in north-west England has been on a less ambitious scale. More stone sources have been located (not all of them of Group VI tuff); additional flaking floors were recorded when they were exposed by footpath erosion, and Mark Edmonds has conducted a detailed study of the technology and morphology of roughouts distributed across the Langdale Pikes (Edmonds 2004; Davis and Edmonds 2011, 172–6). The conclusions of the original project have not been questioned until now. The one unexpected development was the identification of rock art at Copt Howe in the valley below the stone source (Beckensall 2002; Edmonds 2004, 92; Sharpe and Watson 2010).

The Langdale complex in 1993

The conclusions of the original fieldwork are easily summarised (Bradley and Edmonds 1993, chapters 7–9). The Cumbrian Mountains (the Langdale Pikes, Scafell Pike and Glaramara) provided a major source of raw material throughout the Neolithic period, but axes were made in two different ways. In one case, the stone was extracted at the quarries, roughly shaped at the site and then removed to more sheltered locations for further treatment. At that stage, the artefacts were ready for grinding and polishing in the lowlands. This work was undertaken with limited success, and many tools were abandoned partly made. Alternatively, tuff was quarried with the aid of fire-setting, all stages of production were undertaken at the stone source, and carefully selected hammerstones were introduced to help with the work, which was undertaken with considerable skill. In one case, artefacts may have been made in the course of transhumance during the summer months; in the other, expeditions were undertaken with the specific aim of working the rock. It seems to have been important to use stone found in remote and dangerous locations (Bradley and Watson 2019). People knew how to reach them, and these places were unlikely to be discovered by strangers. Stratigraphic evidence from the opencast quarry at the head of Dungeon Ghyll suggested that the two ways of making axes were used in succession, and that the major quarries might have been employed at a later stage than more informal extraction sites, but no dating evidence was found in the excavation of this particular feature.

Figure 1.1 Places mentioned in the text.

After the axes had been ground and polished at settlements in less mountainous areas, the finished objects were widely distributed, with a particular concentration along the North Sea coast. Others were taken across the Solway Firth or travelled along and across the Irish Sea. The 1993 study followed Isobel Smith’s hypothesis that at first axes circulated over a limited area (Smith 1979). The few dates obtained from the Langdale Pikes raised the possibility that their distribution expanded during the earlier 4th millennium BC when axes from north-west England were deposited at causewayed enclosures in the south. A similar pattern extended into the earlier 3rd millennium BC, when these artefacts were associated with late Neolithic pottery, especially on the Yorkshire Wolds (Manby 1979). Following Aubrey Burl’s suggestion (2000, 114–17), it seemed likely that axes had changed hands in the course of meetings at henges and other monuments. These structures cluster on either side of the Pennines, with one group close to Penrith and another across the high ground in the Vale of Mowbray. Despite the fieldwork carried out since 1993, this interpretation has remained unchallenged. That is a little surprising as the age of henges and stone circles has been reconsidered, and so has the chronology of other monuments. Yet more importantly, the dating of Neolithic pottery has been revised during recent years.

The Langdale complex in 2017

Over two decades later, there were reasons for doubting this outline. An increasing number of radiocarbon dates had been obtained from quarries and mines where Neolithic axes were made in Britain. The great majority fell within the first half of the 4th millennium BC (Kerig et al. 2015, fig. 3); the one major exception, at Grimes Graves, was a source of arrowheads and knives as well as axes. It seemed that different locations were favoured for making late Neolithic artefacts. They extended from Beachy Head to Flamborough Head, and probably further to the north (Durden 1995; Gardiner 2008).

At the same time, the dating of Cumbrian axes had to be reconsidered. When the large collections from northeast England were first studied by Terry Manby (1979), it seemed as if they occurred in both early and late Neolithic contexts, the most recent of which were characterised by Peterborough Ware; only a few examples were found with sherds of Grooved Ware. At one time, it was thought that these ceramic assemblages were used in parallel and in different contexts, but subsequent work has shown that they date from separate phases: Peterborough Ware (now referred to as Impressed Ware) was made by the mid-4th millennium and Grooved Ware by 3000 BC (Ard and Darvill 2015; MacSween 2016). The results of the new work have serious implications for the chronology of Cumbrian axes. Most of the associations fall within the early and middle Neolithic periods between about 4000 and 3000 BC, and those artefacts that were found as reused fragments may have been of some antiquity when they were deposited. Perhaps the latest secure dating evidence is provided by the distinctive Seamer/Duggleby types which were made from Group VI tuff (Manby 1979, 69). New dates from Duggleby Howe suggest that they can be assigned to the period between about 3300 and 3000 BC (Gibson and Bayliss 2009, 68).

There is new information from the Langdale complex itself. It comes from two separate sources. The first is the discovery of an important series of pecked motifs at Copt Howe, a cluster of massive boulders that command a direct view of the stone source on Harrison Stickle (Sharpe and Watson 2010). These images had not been recognised in the 1980s. Had they been known then, they would probably have been assigned to the Bronze Age. More recent work suggests that most prehistoric rock art dates from the late Neolithic period (Bradley 1997). When these images were first identified it was tempting to relate Copt Howe to the later use of the Langdale quarries, for this might have been the time when henges and stone circles were built. Similar designs had been recognised around Penrith where there was a concentration of these monuments (Beckensall 2002). The designs resembled those in distant parts of Ireland and Britain. Perhaps they could be explained by Isobel Smith’s idea that Group VI axes were distributed over an increasing area during the late Neolithic phase (Smith 1979).

There matters stood until Stephen Shennan embarked on an investigation of stone axe production in Neolithic Europe. By good fortune, charcoal samples were still available from the 1985–87 excavations at Langdale and it was possible to date those from reliable contexts. Technical developments in radiocarbon dating since the 1993 publication meant that smaller samples could be processed than before and that it was no longer necessary to employ a mixture of charcoal taken from short-lived species to provide enough material for analysis. Even so, the results of the new dating programme are consistent with those from the original fieldwork. In keeping with practice at the time, few dates were obtained during the original project. Now there are sufficient to identify some striking patterns (although it would still be desirable to extend this work to the smaller workshops on Scafell Pike and Glaramara).

The dates associated with axe production at Langdale have been analysed by Seren Griffiths, whose detailed study of early Neolithic chronology in northern England appears in another chapter in this collection (cf. Edinborough et al. 2020). Her analysis was limited to the period up to 3250 cal BC and did not take account of later material. Nevertheless none of the dates from Great Langdale provide any evidence for axe-making during the late Neolithic period. Of course, the sample is limited to the sites investigated in 1985–87 (Bradley and Edmonds 1993) as well as earlier work at Thunacar Knott (Clough 1973), but this result is consistent with the re-dating of the pottery associated with Cumbrian axes in north-east England. Far from showing that many of these artefacts were circulating during the late Neolithic period, new studies of the Peterborough/Impressed Ware tradition argue that it emerged about 3600 BC and was the dominant ceramic style by 3400 BC. In the North, it was replaced by Grooved Ware early in the 3rd millennium (Ard and Darvill 2015; MacSween 2016).

Nor is there any clear evidence of a sequence in which informal production methods were replaced by more efficient ways of working the stone. This is not to question the stratigraphy observed at Dungeon Ghyll (where there were no earlier prehistoric samples to date), but it does suggest that both approaches to obtaining and using the raw material were employed concurrently during the Neolithic period. Different kinds of expedition were organised to obtain axe blades and reflected the needs of particular communities (Edmonds 2004, 145–50). The only exception concerns the highest of the well-preserved quarries on the south face of Pike o’ Stickle (Site 95). This was one of the most remote and dangerous of the stone sources, and here a sequence of radiocarbon dates shows that activity extended until the second half of the 4th millennium: 3450–3190 cal BC (91.7% probability).

This broad outline