Anybody home? Avebury archaeologists hope to discover a Neolithic house

A group of archaeologists have begun to dig at a site in Wiltshire in hopes of finding out more about the creators of the Avebury circle of great standing stones and its neighbouring Stonehenge.

“Avebury’s prehistoric monuments are justly world famous but one of the questions I’m most often asked is where the people who built and used them  lived,” says Dr Nick Snashall, spokesman and National Trust archaeologist for Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site.

The site was first found by Alexander Keiller 80 years ago and a team of National Trust, Allen Environmental Archaeology, and Southampton and Leicester University Archaeologists have spent three years researching his journals and drawings, and using geophysical survey techniques to locate the exact spot that he found.

What they discovered when they began their three-week dig did not disappoint. Arrowheads, clusters of scrapers for hide and plant materials, flint swords and pottery were all found when the turf was stripped back. Dr Snashall stated that so far the finds have been unearthed in clusters of three or four at a time, all appearing to be perfectly preserved.

“It’s as if the people were sitting here working away making arrowheads, scraping hides and carrying out their daily tasks and then they just got up and walked away.”

Along with these tools and artefacts, the excavation team believe they have uncovered the remains of an ancient house. This would be a very important find for the team as very few of these houses have been uncovered.

Dr Snashall stated that “this site dates from a time when people are just starting to build the earliest parts of Avebury’s earthworks so we could be looking at the house and workplace of the people who saw that happening.” 

Read more about Neolithic houses in this free article from Journal of Field Archaeology:

A Neolithic Household at Piana di Curinga, Italy

12 days of Archaeology! A Christmas Sing Song

We are feeling very Christmassy at CUDI, so what better way to spread festive cheer than to have a little festive sing along, so all together now…

On the first day of Christmas CUDI gave to me,
Fortune's portrait collection of Chinese trees

On the second day of Christmas CUDI gave to me,
Two neolithic ditch enclosures in Bohemia

On the third day of Christmas CUDI gave to me,
Three ancient Jewish reliefs

On the fourth day of Christmas CUDI gave to me,
Four middle Holocene pillar sites in West Turkana, Kenya

On the fifth day of Christmas CUDI gave to me,
Five notes on Jerusalem in the first and second Temple Periods

On the sixth day of Christmas CUDI gave to me,
Six apostle spoons from Finland

On the seventh day of Christmas CUDI gave to me,
Seven years of preserving damaged stone 

On the eighth day of Christmas CUDI gave to me,
Eight seventeenth-century decorative paintings

On the ninth day of Christmas CUDI gave to me,
Nine engraved sites in the Hong Kong

On the tenth day of Christmas CUDI gave to me,
Ten Commandments for effective anthropological exhibits

On the eleventh day of Christmas CUDI gave to me,
Eleven post-medieval corpses

On the twelfth day of Christmas CUDI gave to me,
Twelve dirt-walled structures in Mesa Verde National Park

Palaeolithic Pests and Neolithic Nightmares: Were Prehistoric Children Really as Bad as You Think?

When you picture a prehistoric child, what do you see?

Popular culture and biological evidence have influenced our belief that children in prehistory were unruly, temperamental and ultimately extremely violent. There have been two interesting articles published this month that aim to shed light on prehistoric childhood.

A research team from PALAEO (Centre forHuman Palaeoecology and Evolutionary Origins) and the Department of Archaeology at York recently offered a new and distinctive perspective which suggests that Neanderthal children experienced strong emotional attachments with their immediate social group. This research results from an investigation into Neanderthal burial sites which suggests that children’s graves were generally more elaborate graves than those of older individuals.

“The traditional view sees Neanderthal childhood as unusually harsh, difficult and dangerous. This accords with preconceptions about Neanderthal inferiority and an inability to protect children epitomising Neanderthal decline. Our research found that a close attachment and particular attention to children is a more plausible interpretation of the archaeological evidence, explaining an unusual focus on infants and children in burial, and setting Neanderthal symbolism within a context which is likely to have included children.” Said Dr Spikins from the research team involved in the project.

A second paper, published as an advance article in  European Journal of Archaeology and titled Ageing, Childhood and Social Identity in the Early Neolithic of Central Europe, also challenges the traditional preconception of prehistoric children. In this case focusing on the children of the Neolithic Linearbandkeramik culture, the article argues that Neolithic children could have played an active role in their communities from a young age and visits the discovery of handmade tools, particularly smaller versions of axes or ‘grave goods’ that could be found in the child graves. These tools suggest that not only did children play an active role in their communities from a young age but also suggest an acknowledged engagement with the process of growing and learning into adulthood.

Read Ageing, Childhood and Social Identity in the Early Neolithic of Central Europe here >