Pits and Post-holes in the British Early Iron Age: some alternative explanations

Abstract

From ethnography and social anthropology ‘the prehistorian learns how particular peoples adapt themselves to their environments, and shape their resources to the ways of life demanded by their own cultures: he thus gains a knowledge of alternate methods of solving problems and often of alternative ways of explaining artefacts resembling those he recovers in antiquity. Study of ethnography will not as a rule … give him straight answers to his queries. What it will do is to provide him with hypotheses in the light of which he can resume his attack on the raw materials of his study’ (Clark, 1957, 172). Such a controlled use of ethnographic parallels has recently been applied successfully in the spheres of art and burial practices (e.g. Ucko, 1969, 262 and references there cited) but not as yet to the study of prehistoric settlement patterns or economy. In this paper it is hoped to show how the consideration of ethnographic parallels can help us to reach some possible alternative interpretations of two classes of excavated evidence: the pits and the two-, four-, five- and six-post-hole structures found mainly on Lowland Zone Iron Age settlements in Britain. These, usually interpreted in the literature as storage pits, ‘drying-racks’ and ‘granaries’ have been taken to be characteristic features of the ‘Woodbury Type’ economy of the earlier pre-Roman Iron Age in the Lowland Zone (Piggott, 1958, 3–4 and Bowen, 1969, 13–5), bearing in mind that ‘the type site must be clearly distinguished from the economy, and the economy itself seems to have been as variable as possible within the rather narrow Iron Age technical limits, (Bowen, 1969, 13).

A Late Bronze Age Landscape at South Hornchurch, Essex

“…Most of the other buildings in Area 41 were accompanied by four-or six-post structures, which are usually interpreted as raised granaries (eg, PittRivers 1888, 55;Stead 1968), although the association of a placed pottery deposit and a token cremation with two of these structures (5050 and 2482) suggests that they may have had a special function (cf, Ellison & Drewett 1971). Small rectilinear structures associated with placed pottery deposits and unurned cremation deposits, which were interpreted as possible shrines, have been found at Broads Green near Chelmsford (Brown 1988a) and Newman's End near Harlow (Guttmann forthcoming).…”

Centralized Storage in Later Prehistoric Britain

“…Despite their importance, however, ten years have passed since the last extended discussion of these structures (Stanford 1970;, and since then the number of separate buildings has been increased ten times and the number of sites on which they occur has been multiplied by five (Gent 1980). Other suggestions are that four-posters were shrines (Piggot 1968, 61), watch-towers, fighting-stages, or exposure-platforms (Ellison and Drewett 1971), but these explanations can account for only a small proportion of the buildings now known in such profusion at settlements. Instead of a sequence of discrete invasions, each represented by specific rectangular or square buildings, there is a gradual rise and fall in the number of structures through time ( fig.…”

“…To some extent this suggestion can be tested, and it does account for much of the available evidence. (See, for example: Batchelor 1892, 59-60; Bersu 1940;Ellison and Drewett 1971;Swanton 1946, 378-81;Forde 1934, 248; and, in particular, reviews of world-wide evidence in Gast and Sigaut 1981. Certainly there is evidence that the storage of crops in raised timber structures could have been feasible, as such structures were used alongside ground-level dwellings in historic times in Europe and other parts of the world.…”

“…If bulk crop products were entering a 'public economy', this development may have been one of the more important changes to be seen in the earlier first millennium BC. The interpretation of four-posters remains much more controversial (Pitt-Rivers 1888, 57;Bersu 1940;Stead 1968;Stanford 1970;Ellison and Drewett 1971;Bradley 1978, 43 and 121;Cunliffe 1978a, 180-81, 271;Guilbert 1981, 108-10). The main evidence for storage at the early hillforts consists of'four-post structures', and depends on the interpretation of these structures as storehouses (Cunliffe 1978a, 271 and 331).…”

Carbonised Plant Remains from Two Iron Age Sites in Central Hampshire

“…The ancient Egyptians used pits for storing food products including grain, and grain storage in pits is still particularly common in a number of places on the African continent (Reynolds 1974;White 1970, 197;Robinson 1963). Ellison and Drewett (1971) argued that closer parallels to the Iron Age pits were those used by the Maori to store sweet potato and water. Ellison and Drewett (1971) argued that closer parallels to the Iron Age pits were those used by the Maori to store sweet potato and water.…”