Location | Near Amesbury, Wiltshire, England |
---|---|
Coordinates | 51°10′25″N1°48′33″W / 51.1735°N 1.8093°W |
OS grid reference | SU13424160 |
Type | Pit |
History | |
Periods | Mesolithic / Neolithic |
Designated | 1986 [1] |
Reference no. | 373 |
The Coneybury Anomaly is a pit with animal and other refuse, interpreted as the remains of a cross-cultural feast, within the Stonehenge Landscape in Wiltshire, England. It was not apparent on the ground and was discovered in the 20th century by geophysical survey. Excavation has produced a large amount of early Neolithic pottery together with a large quantity of animal bone, and flint tools of both Mesolithic and Neolithic types. [2]
The Coneybury Anomaly is around 1.4 kilometres east-by-southeast of the Stonehenge monument, which can be seen from the site. [3] There are extensive views south-east across the Avon valley, and west towards Normanton Down. [3] The pit is not obvious on the ground and was discovered as a geophysical anomaly (hence the name) as part of the excavations of the Coneybury Henge, which is some 12 metres south-west of the Anomaly. [4]
The Anomaly is a pit containing a large amount of early Neolithic pottery together with a large quantity of animal bone, and flint tools of both Mesolithic and Neolithic types. [2] The bones included at least ten cattle, plus several roe deer, two red deer and a pig. [2] The material was radiocarbon dated to 3980–3708 BCE, before the henge was constructed and within three centuries of the introduction of Neolithic technology to Britain. [2]
The ceramic assemblage included bowls and cups, all of rather similar manufacture. Many of the fragments were large, indicating that they had not been trampled after they were discarded, and thus that a single, relatively short event led to the Anomaly. [5]
The cattle were not butchered in the same way as the roe deer; most limbs of the cattle are absent – possibly redistributed among participants – while the deer bones remained in the pit. Isotope ratios in the bones indicated that all the animals came from within 20 km of Coneybury. They included at least three groups of cattle, each from a different place and comprising individuals of several ages, while the deer all came from the immediate surroundings. [4] The cattle were all female and had grazed on open ground; they had not eaten straw from manured cereal plots. [4]
The primary pit fill includes both Neolithic and Mesolithic tool types. There is no obvious source from which residual Mesolithic material could be derived, and no evidence of differential weathering. The blades/blade-lets must therefore be part of the event that caused the Anomaly. This intimate mixture of Neolithic and Mesolithic tools is unique, and seems to indicate a single event attended by two different cultural groups. [4]
The excavators suggest that the Coneybury Anomaly represents the material remains of a single gathering organized by a regional community, with participants from several areas. One group of attendees provided deer instead of, or in addition to, cattle. This group may have been hunter-gatherers who lived alongside farmers, engaging with them in a solidarity feast which required equivalent contributions from participants and promoted community cohesion. If this is correct, the regional feasts that have been suggested for the later causewayed enclosures were already taking place in the earliest Neolithic phase, albeit on a smaller geographical scale. [4]
Stonehenge is a prehistoric megalithic structure on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, two miles (3 km) west of Amesbury. It consists of an outer ring of vertical sarsen standing stones, each around 13 feet (4.0 m) high, seven feet (2.1 m) wide, and weighing around 25 tons, topped by connecting horizontal lintel stones, held in place with mortise and tenon joints, a feature unique among contemporary monuments. Inside is a ring of smaller bluestones. Inside these are free-standing trilithons, two bulkier vertical sarsens joined by one lintel. The whole monument, now ruinous, is aligned towards the sunrise on the summer solstice and sunset on the winter solstice. The stones are set within earthworks in the middle of the densest complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England, including several hundred tumuli.
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Avebury is a Neolithic henge monument containing three stone circles, around the village of Avebury in Wiltshire, in south-west England. One of the best-known prehistoric sites in Britain, it contains the largest megalithic stone circle in the world. It is both a tourist attraction and a place of religious importance to contemporary pagans.
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Robin Hood’s Ball is a Neolithic causewayed enclosure on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, approximately 5 miles (8 km) northwest of the town of Amesbury, and 2+1⁄2 miles (4.0 km) northwest of Stonehenge. The site was designated as a scheduled monument in 1965.
Maud Edith Cunnington was a Welsh archaeologist, best known for her pioneering work on some of the most important prehistoric sites of Salisbury Plain.
Waulud's Bank is a possible Neolithic henge in Leagrave, Luton, England dating from 3,000BC.
The prehistory of the County of Norfolk, England is broken into specific time periods, these being Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic.
The Stonehenge Riverside Project was a major Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded archaeological research study of the development of the Stonehenge landscape in Neolithic and Bronze Age Britain. In particular, the project examined the relationship between the stones and surrounding monuments and features, including the River Avon, Durrington Walls, the Cursus, the Avenue, Woodhenge, burial mounds, and nearby standing stones. The project involved a substantial amount of fieldwork and ran from 2003 to 2009. It found that Stonehenge was built 500 years earlier than previously thought. The monument is believed to have been built to unify the peoples of Britain. It also found a previously unknown stone circle, Bluestonehenge.
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Parc Cwm long cairn, also known as Parc le Breos burial chamber, is a partly restored Neolithic chambered tomb, identified in 1937 as a Severn-Cotswold type of chambered long barrow. The cromlech, a megalithic burial chamber, was built around 5,850 years before present (BP), during the early Neolithic. It is about seven 1⁄2 miles (12 km) west south–west of Swansea, Wales, in what is now known as Coed y Parc Cwm at Parc le Breos, on the Gower Peninsula.
Marden Henge is the largest Neolithic henge enclosure discovered to date in the United Kingdom. The monument is north-east of the village of Marden, Wiltshire, within the Vale of Pewsey and between the World Heritage Sites of Avebury and Stonehenge.
Bury Camp is the site of an Iron Age multivallate hillfort in north-west Wiltshire, England. It occupies a triangular promontory of Colerne Down, in the north of Colerne parish, at the southern edge of the Cotswold Hills between two spurs of a river valley. The enclosed area of approximately 9.2ha is surrounded by a ditch 4m wide and up to 1m deep, and an outer rampart up to 1.5m high on the east and northwestern sides and up to 2m high on the southwestern side, across the neck of the promontory.
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.
Blick Mead is a chalkland spring in Wiltshire, England, separated by the River Avon from the northwest edge of the town of Amesbury. It is close to an Iron Age hillfort known as Vespasian's Camp and about a mile east of the Stonehenge ancient monument. Evidence from archaeology excavation at the site since 2005 indicates that there was continuous human habitation from 10,000 BP to 6,000 BP.
Coneybury Henge is a henge which is part of the Stonehenge Landscape in Wiltshire, England. The henge, which has been almost completely flattened, was only discovered in the 20th century. Geophysical surveys and excavation have uncovered many of its features, which include a northeast entrance, an internal circle of postholes, and fragments of bone and pottery.
Falkner's Circle was a stone circle near the village of Avebury in the south-western English county of Wiltshire. Built from twelve sarsen megaliths, it measured about 37 metres (121 ft) in diameter, although only one of these stones remains standing.
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