Preservation and the pit problem:

Loveday, Roy

doi:10.2307/j.ctvh1dkr0.13

Cited by 1 publication

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“…The pits themselves contained the by now familiar suite of Early Neolithic material: variable (but sometimes substantial) quantities of flint and pottery together with more limited evidence of crop cultivation/processing (cereal grains and a rubber stone) and animal husbandry, as well as the exploitation of wild resources (represented largely by charred hazelnut shells). No attempt is made to discuss the potential function/role of pits – ideological or practical – given that there is little within the evidence to further a debate which is widely discussed elsewhere (see Garrow 2006; Loveday 2012; Darvill 2012, for examples of the many and varied hypotheses regarding Neolithic pits generally). However, it is clear that material assemblages within the pits were almost certainly derived from surface deposits/‘middens’ with no evidence of structured or selective deposition (cf.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early Neolithic Pits and Artefact Scatters at North Fen, Sutton Gault, Cambridgeshire

Tabor

Billington

Healy

et al. 2016

Proc. Prehist. Soc.

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This paper presents the results of an excavation at North Fen, Sutton Gault, Cambridgeshire, which revealed evidence of Early Neolithic occupation comprising some 48 pits together with twoin situartefact scatters preserved within buried soil horizons. Largely as a result of the spatial separation between scatters and pit sites/clusters, it has been possible to identify a series of ‘sites’, which appear to represent temporally discrete episodes of activity ranging from task-specific ‘visits’ to relatively long-lived occupation. Through analysis of pottery and flint assemblages an attempt is made to characterise each individual site in terms of the types of activities undertaken there and to consider their scale and duration. Set within a landscape that has seen extensive archaeological investigation over the past 30 years the excavation also provides an excellent opportunity to explore how these sites relate to activity in the wider locale and to what extent it is possible to characterise Early Neolithic occupation at a landscape scale.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%