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A chambered cairn is a burial monument, usually constructed during the Neolithic, consisting of a sizeable chamber around and over which a cairn of stones was constructed. Some chambered cairns are also passage-graves. They are found throughout Britain and Ireland, with the largest number in Scotland.
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.
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.
Peterborough ware is a decorated pottery style of the early to middle Neolithic. Named after the region of Middlesex and East Anglia, England where the style was first discovered, it is known for the impressed pits made by bone or wood implements in its sides. Whipped cord was also used to make circular 'maggot' patterns. Ebbsfleeet ware, Fengate ware and Mortlake ware have been identified as subdivisions of Peterborough ware.
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.
Unstan ware is the name used by archaeologists for a type of finely made and decorated Neolithic pottery from the 4th and 3rd millennia BC. Typical are elegant and distinctive shallow bowls with a band of grooved patterning below the rim, a type of decoration which was created using a technique known as "stab-and-drag". A second version consists of undecorated, round-bottomed bowls. Some of the bowls had bits of volcanic rock included in the clay to make them stronger. Bone tools were used to burnish the surfaces to make them shiny and impermeable.
Figsbury Ring is an 11.2 hectare biological Site of Special Scientific Interest in Wiltshire, England, notified in 1975. It is owned and managed by the National Trust.
The prehistory of Ireland has been pieced together from archaeological evidence, which has grown at an increasing rate over the last decades. It begins with the first evidence of permanent human residence in Ireland around 10,500 BC and finishes with the start of the historical record around 400 AD. Both the beginning and end dates of the period are later than for much of Europe and all of the Near East. The prehistoric period covers the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age societies of Ireland. For much of Europe, the historical record begins when the Romans invaded; as Ireland was not invaded by the Romans its historical record starts later, with the coming of Christianity.
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 Karanovo culture is a Neolithic culture named after the Bulgarian village of Karanovo. The culture, which is part of the Danube civilization, is considered the largest and most important of the Azmak River Valley agrarian settlements.
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.
Grapčeva cave is a Neolithic and Bronze Age archaeological site. Three distinct prehistorical cultures were discovered here: Nakovan, Cetina and Hvar culture.
Beacharra ware, also known as Ballyalton bowls, is a style of Middle Neolithic pottery, defined by Thomas Hastie Bryce (1862–1946), which is only found in the western parts of Scotland, including Kintyre). The comparable pottery style in Ireland is known as Western Neolithic ware. British archaeologist, Stuart Piggott divided Beacharra ware into 3 groups:
Western Neolithic ware, also known as Western style Neolithic pottery or New Stone Age pottery in the Western style, is a type of pottery of the Early and Middle New Stone Age, which is found in the western parts of the British Isles and especially in Ireland. It was defined in 1961 by Humphrey Case (1918–2009). He described the pottery as usually round-bottomed bowls, which were normally smooth, thin-walled and hard, usually dark brown and sometimes with a profile at the shoulder or area of the mouth.
Abingdon ware is a Middle Neolithic, decorated, round-bottomed pottery found in an ancient causewayed enclosure at Abingdon-on-Thames, whence the name, about 15 kilometres south of Oxford, as well as in the upper Thames valley and central England.
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.
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.
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.