In many regions in north-west Europe, the Middle Bronze Age is seen as the first period in which a 'humanlyordered' agrarian landscape took shape that has resonance with rural landscapes of historical periods. But what did this 'ordering' actually involve? Basing ourselves on a survey of the rich evidence from the Netherlandsincluding the evidence on everyday settlement sites as well as the use of the non-everyday 'ritual' zones in the land -we argue that from c. 1500 cal BC onwards the landscape was organised and structured by specific, ideological concepts of regularity and categorisation that are distinct from those of the preceding Neolithic and Earlier Bronze Age. We will show that elaborate three-aisled farmhouses of very regular layout emerged here around c. 1500 cal BC and argue that this profound architectural change cannot simply be explained by assuming agricultural intensification combined with indoor stalling of cattle, as conventional theories would have it. Also, we will argue that the way in which the settled land was used from this period onwards was also different than before. Neolithic and Early Bronze Age settlements, far from being 'ephemeral', seem to have been organised along different lines than those of the Middle Bronze Age-B (MBA-B: 1500-1050 cal BC). The same holds true for the way in which barrows structured the land. Although they were significant elements in the organisation of the landscape from the Late Neolithic onwards and do hardly change in outer form, we will show that MBA barrows played a different role in the structuring of landscape, adhering to long-term categorisation and zoning therein. A similar attitude can also be discerned in patterns of object deposition in 'natural' places. Practices of selective deposition existed long before the MBA-B but, because of different subsistence bases of the pre-MBA-B communities, their interpretations of unaltered 'natural' places will have differed significantly. The presence of multiple deposition zones in the MBA-B also must have relied on a unprecedented way of persistent categorisation of the 'natural' environment. Finally, the evidence from 'domestic, funerary and ritual' sites is recombined in order to typify what the Dutch Middle Bronze Age landscape was about.
A fireplace represents one of the most fundamental and time-transgressive gathering points for humans. However, when situated in pits that are organized in lines running sometimes hundreds of metres, fire pits represent a significant challenge in terms of interpretation, and may evidence a particular perception of space. This paper argues that in a Bronze Age context, pits associated with fire remains marked out directionality and axiality in the landscape as part of ceremonial events of a temporary nature. Adopting a landscape approach and going beyond regional and chronological borders, the authors argue that in northwestern Europe such events took place in relation to unbounded barrow landscapes in open spaces and could often be linked to the orchestration of funerary events. In some regions, the depositional activities evident in relation to these aligned pits have added significance. Furthermore, the authors argue that the aligning of fire pits is incompatible with divided or parcelled landscapes, thus challenging interpretations of pitted lines as territorial and field boundaries.
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