Pottery began to appear at the start of the British Neolithic period, along with other changes in lifestyle. These changes included a switch to settled agriculture, as opposed to hunting and gathering.
Pottery began to appear at the start of the British Neolithic period, along with other changes in lifestyle. These changes included a switch to settled agriculture, as opposed to hunting and gathering.
The earliest pots in Britain appear in the south-east, shortly before 4000 BC. [1] The earliest style of pottery is known as Carinated Bowl; these pots usually have distinct carinations (sharply turned shoulders) and burnished finishes. [2] Carinated Bowls (CB) are not decorated, except for a few instances of grooves created by fingertips dragged down or along the bowl surface while the clay was still wet. Lugs (protrusions from the side, presumably used as handles) are only known from one example. Prehistoric potters generally incorporated other materials such as shell or lithic (stone) fragments into their clay, to assist with releasing the water of plasticity and reduce cracking during firing, and to help stabilize the fabric of the pot. Carinated Bowls have small lithic inclusions and walls often as thin as 4–10 mm, so they would have required a great deal of skill to produce. [3] [4] Radiocarbon dating has established that the “package” of Neolithic material culture that is associated with CB spread very quickly in Britain, and it is likely that this is associated with the migration into Britain of groups of farmers from the continent, though the details are still debated. [5]
Regional variations begin to appear in about 3800. [6] The earliest variation is Plain Bowl, with a wider range of basic forms than Carinated Bowl, including high shoulders, S-shaped rims, developed rims, some closed forms, and coarser fabrics than the thin-walled CB. [7] [8] Plain Bowl, like CB, is widely distributed across the British Isles. [7] Hembury Ware is a specific type of Plain Bowl found across the south-west, which uses a gabbroic clay that has been traced to the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall. [9]
Plain Bowls were followed by Decorated Bowls, by about 3700 BC. By the middle of the millennium, Carinated Bowls ceased to be made; Plain Bowls and Decorated Bowls lasted until about 3300 BC. [10]
These three styles were originally collectively known as Grimston-Lyles Hill ware, though this is no longer a universally used term. [11] [10] [note 1]
Hembury ware starts to appear around 3750 BC in the southwest. [12] These pots were made from materials found at gabbroic outcrops in Cornwall, and were traded as far east as Dorset and Wiltshire. The bowls are rounded, and the sides may be rounded or carinated, with or without lugs (external protrusions that may have been handles). [13] Trumpet lugs, with ends that look like the bell of a trumpet, occur only on Hembury ware and imitative forms. [13] [14]
By 3300 BC, Cardium pottery, also known as Impressed ware, began to appear. These bowls had decorations made by pressing various items into the clay before firing: reeds, sticks, bones and twisted cords were used, for example. The term Peterborough ware originally defined a sequence of styles of Impressed Ware, from Ebbsfleet ware, which was thought to be the earliest, through Mortlake ware to Fengate ware, the latest. Since the late 1990s evidence has accumulated that this sequence is not as clear-cut as was once thought. [15]
The Bell Beaker culture, also known as the Bell Beaker complex or Bell Beaker phenomenon, is an archaeological culture named after the inverted-bell beaker drinking vessel used at the very beginning of the European Bronze Age, arising from around 2800 BC. Bell Beaker culture lasted in Britain from c. 2450 BC, with the appearance of single burial graves, until as late as 1800 BC, but in continental Europe only until 2300 BC, when it was succeeded by the Unetice culture. The culture was widely dispersed throughout Western Europe, being present in many regions of Iberia and stretching eastward to the Danubian plains, and northward to the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, and was also present in the islands of Sardinia and Sicily and some coastal areas in north-western Africa. The Bell Beaker phenomenon shows substantial regional variation, and a study from 2018 found that it was associated with genetically diverse populations.
The West Kennet Long Barrow, also known as South Long Barrow, is a chambered long barrow near the village of Avebury in the south-western English county of Wiltshire. Probably constructed in the thirty-seventh century BC, during Britain's Early Neolithic period, today it survives in a partially reconstructed state.
A causewayed enclosure is a type of large prehistoric earthwork common to the early Neolithic in Europe. It is an enclosure marked out by ditches and banks, with a number of causeways crossing the ditches. More than 100 examples are recorded in France and 70 in Southern England and Wales, while further sites are known in Scandinavia, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Ireland and Slovakia.
Grooved ware is the name given to a pottery style of the British Neolithic. Its manufacturers are sometimes known as the Grooved ware people. Unlike the later Beaker ware, Grooved culture was not an import from the continent but seems to have developed in Orkney, early in the 3rd millennium BC, and was soon adopted in Britain and Ireland.
Hembury is a Neolithic causewayed enclosure and Iron Age hillfort near Honiton in Devon. Its history stretches from the late fifth and early fourth millennia BC to the Roman invasion. The fort is situated on a south facing promontory at the end of a 240m high ridge in the Blackdown Hills. It lies to the north of and overlooking the River Otter valley and this location was probably chosen to give good views of the surrounding countryside as well as for defensive reasons. The Devon Archaeological Society bought the hillfort in 2022.
Combe Hill is a causewayed enclosure, near Eastbourne in East Sussex, on the northern edge of the South Downs. It consists of an inner circuit of ditches and banks, incomplete where it meets a steep slope on its north side, and the remains of an outer circuit. Causewayed enclosures were built in England from shortly before 3700 BC until at least 3500 BC; they are characterized by the full or partial enclosure of an area with ditches that are interrupted by gaps, or causeways. Their purpose is not known; they may have been settlements, meeting places, or ritual sites. The historian Hadrian Allcroft included the site in his 1908 book Earthwork of England, and in 1930 E. Cecil Curwen listed it as a possible Neolithic site in a paper which attempted to provide the first list of all the causewayed enclosures in England.
In the archaeology of Southwest Asia, the Late Neolithic, also known as the Ceramic Neolithic or Pottery Neolithic, is the final part of the Neolithic period, following on from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic and preceding the Chalcolithic. It is sometimes further divided into Pottery Neolithic A (PNA) and Pottery Neolithic B (PNB) phases.
Pottery and ceramics have been produced in the Levant since prehistoric times.
The Trundle is an Iron Age hillfort on St Roche's Hill about 4 miles (6 km) north of Chichester, West Sussex, England, built on the site of a causewayed enclosure, a form of early Neolithic earthwork found in northwestern Europe. Causewayed enclosures were built in England from shortly before 3700 BC until at least 3500 BC; they are characterized by the full or partial enclosure of an area with ditches that are interrupted by gaps, or causeways. Their purpose is not known; they may have been settlements, meeting places, or ritual sites. Hillforts were built as early as 1000 BC, in the Late Bronze Age, and continued to be built through the Iron Age until shortly before the Roman occupation.
Whitehawk Camp is the remains of a causewayed enclosure on Whitehawk Hill near Brighton, East Sussex, England. Causewayed enclosures are a form of early Neolithic earthwork that were built in England from shortly before 3700 BC until at least 3500 BC, characterized by the full or partial enclosure of an area with ditches that are interrupted by gaps, or causeways. Their purpose is not known; they may have been settlements, or meeting places, or ritual sites. The Whitehawk site consists of four roughly concentric circular ditches, with banks of earth along the interior of the ditches evident in some places. There may have been a timber palisade on top of the banks. Outside the outermost circuit there are at least two more ditches, one of which is thought from radiocarbon evidence to date to the Bronze Age, about two thousand years after the earliest dated activity at the site.
Dark faced burnished ware or DFBW is the second oldest form of pottery developed in the western world, the oldest being Dotted wavy line pottery from Africa.
Knap Hill lies on the northern rim of the Vale of Pewsey, in northern Wiltshire, England, about a mile north of the village of Alton Priors. At the top of the hill is a causewayed enclosure, a form of Neolithic earthwork that was constructed in England from about 3700 BC onwards, characterized by the full or partial enclosure of an area with ditches that are interrupted by gaps, or causeways. Their purpose is not known: they may have been settlements, or meeting places, or ritual sites of some kind. The site has been scheduled as an ancient monument.
Grimston-Lyles Hill ware or Grimston ware is an Early and Middle Neolithic pottery originally named after the site where it was found in the north east of England, "Hanging Grimston", a long barrow in the former East Riding area of Yorkshire.
Alexandra Bayliss is a British archaeologist and academic. She is Head of Scientific Dating at Historic England, and a part-time Professor of Archaeological Science at the University of Stirling in Scotland. Her research focuses on the construction of exact chronologies of European Neolithic archaeological sites, through the application of Bayesian statistical modelling of radiocarbon dates.
Cord-marked pottery or Cordmarked pottery is an early form of a simple earthenware pottery. It allowed food to be stored and cooked over fire. Cord-marked pottery varied slightly around the world, depending upon the clay and raw materials that were available. It generally coincided with cultures moving to an agrarian and more settled lifestyle, like that of the Woodland period, as compared to a strictly hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
Barkhale Camp is a Neolithic causewayed enclosure, an archaeological site on Bignor Hill, on the South Downs in West Sussex, England. Causewayed enclosures were built in England from shortly before 3700 BC until at least 3500 BC; they are characterized by the full or partial enclosure of an area with ditches that are interrupted by gaps, or causeways. Their purpose is not known; they may have been settlements, meeting places, or ritual sites. The Barkhale Camp enclosure was first identified in 1929, by John Ryle, and was surveyed the following year by E. Cecil Curwen, who listed it as a possible Neolithic site in a 1930 paper which was the first attempt to list all the causewayed enclosures in England.
A causewayed enclosure was found at Abingdon in Oxfordshire in 1926. Causewayed enclosures are a form of early Neolithic earthwork found in northwestern Europe; they were built in England from shortly before 3700 BC until about 3300 BC and are characterized by the full or partial enclosure of an area with ditches that are interrupted by gaps, or causeways. Their purpose is not known; they may have been settlements, or meeting places, or ritual sites.
Offham Hill is a causewayed enclosure near Lewes, East Sussex, England. Causewayed enclosures were built in England from shortly before 3700 BC until about 3300 BC; they are characterized by the full or partial enclosure of an area with ditches that are interrupted by gaps, or causeways. Their purpose is not known; they may have been settlements, meeting places, or ritual sites. The site was identified as a possible causewayed enclosure in 1964 by a member of the Sussex Archaeological Society. The Ordnance Survey inspected the site in 1972 and recommended an excavation, which was carried out in 1976 by Peter Drewett.
Court Hill is a causewayed enclosure in West Sussex. Causewayed enclosures were built in England from shortly before 3700 BC until about 3300 BC; they are characterized by the full or partial enclosure of an area with ditches that are interrupted by gaps, or causeways. Their purpose is not known; they may have been settlements, meeting places, or ritual sites.
The prehistory of Cornwall spans an extensive timeframe from the earliest evidence of archaic human presence in Cornwall, perhaps c. 225,000 years ago, to the Roman conquest of Britain c. 43 CE, encompassing the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age, and Iron Age periods. Throughout this era Cornwall underwent significant cultural and environmental changes, evolving from a sparsely-populated hunter-gatherer society reliant on rudimentary stone tools to an agricultural society characterized by developed metallurgical practices, expansive trade networks, and emerging social complexity.