A Meeting in the Forest: Hunters and Farmers at the Coneybury ‘Anomaly’, Wiltshire

Abstract

The Coneybury ‘Anomaly’ is an Early Neolithic pit located just south-east of Stonehenge, Wiltshire. Excavations recovered a faunal assemblage unique in its composition, consisting of both wild and domestic species, as well as large quantities of ceramics and stone tools, including a substantial proportion of blades/bladelets. We present a suite of new isotope analyses of the faunal material, together with ancient DNA sex determination, and reconsider the published faunal data to ask: What took place at Coneybury, and who was involved? We argue on the basis of multiple lines of evidence that Coneybury represents the material remains of a gathering organised by a regional community, with participants coming from different areas. One group of attendees provided deer instead of, or in addition to, cattle. We conclude that the most likely scenario is that this group comprised local hunter-gatherers who survived alongside local farmers.

Feasting and Mobility in Iron Age Ireland: Multi-isotope analysis reveals the vast catchment of Navan Fort, Ulster

“…Identifying areas of origin with confidence remains beyond the scope of current data in most instances. Sulphur isotope analysis is becoming ever more useful in faunal provenancing when used in multi-isotope studies 14,30–32 , but detailed mapping is required for potential to be fulfilled and the interpretation of these data should be refined in the future. It is clear that the 35 animals were raised in wide-ranging locations across Ireland.…”

The original Stonehenge? A dismantled stone circle in the Preseli Hills of west Wales

“…Stonehenge's first stage may also have served to unite the people of southern Britain. Bluestones were brought to the land of sarsen stones and installed at a sacred axis mundi (world axis or world centre), where the sky and the earth were envisioned in cosmic harmony, and where people of different cultural and regional origins might gather for collective monument-building and feasting (Gron et al 2018;Parker Pearson et al 2020: 469-73).…”

Middle Neolithic pits and a burial at West Amesbury, Wiltshire

“…As such, the location of winter pasture would be of paramount importance to them, whether they were nomadic or locally transhumant pastoralist. The pollen and macrofossil evidence from the Stonehenge landscape in the Middle Neolithic is limited, but interpolating from the Early and Late Neolithic evidence suggests that the Middle Neolithic landscape was a complex mosaic of fairly open woodland and increasingly widespread open grassland on the Plain, more open grassland on the slopes of the downs, and alder-hazel carr woodland in the base of the Avon valley (French et al 2013;Hazell and Allen 2013, 21-23;Gron et al 2018;Roberts et al 2018).…”

“…This part of Salisbury Plain was already a monumentalised landscape at the time of the Middle Neolithic activity at West Amesbury. The earliest dated Neolithic activity in the area (Figure 13) is the Coneybury, 'Anomaly', 400 m to the south-west, which dates to the thirty-eighth century cal BC and has recently been interpreted in terms of a formal gathering site (Richards 1990;Barclay 2014;Gron et al 2018). Undated monuments in the vicinity include a long barrow 400 m to the north-east, which is presumably Early Neolithic in date, and a square enclosure a similar distance to the north-west, which might be a Neolithic mortuary enclosure (Valdez-Tullett and Roberts 2017).…”