Prehistoric Ditched Enclosures

Presentation given at the conference "Megaliths, Societies, Landscapes. Early Monumentality and Social Differentiation in Neolithic Europe" 16th - 20th June in Kiel.

Abstract:
For years it was believed that little happened during prehistoric times in the centre of the Iberian Peninsula. The different peoples of the end of the Neolithic and the Chalcolithic were said to be living nearly exclusively at the Iberian coasts and only poor temporal settlements of small size should exist on the Spanish Mesetas. Like in other parts of Europe, development and progress were believed to derive from the “blessed” lands of the Eastern Mediterranean and therefore the coastland of the peninsula was influenced and developed faster but the hinterland was supposed to remain on the same low level of economy, social differentiations etc. until the Iron Age. Since research in the centre intensified by the end of the 1980s, this view on Spanish prehistory is changing eventually.
A subproject of the Collaborative Research Centre 1070 Resource Cultures of the University of Tübingen is currently investigating in different areas of the Iberian Peninsula. In close collaboration with the University of Alcalá de Henares and the help of the DAI Madrid the project is also focussing on the southern Meseta with emphasis on the surroundings of the dolmen of Azután. Intensive archaeological surveys in spring and geomagnetic surveys in autumn of the year 2014, that focussed on findings and features from the end of the 4th and the whole 3rd millennium BC, already give insight in the impressive late Neolithic and Chalcolithic structures that bit by bit bring back to life the contemporaneous environment and landscape of this important megalithic monument.
With today’s possibilities of different survey methods, interpretation of aerial and satellite images and the close collaboration with archaeobiology as well as pedology the aim will be a reconstruction of the environment and the integration of this area within the communication network of the 3rd millennium BC.

The investigation of the peninsular Recent Prehistory ditched enclosures has been revealing the importance that funerary practices and the manipulation of human remains have assumed in these contexts. Among a significant diversity of situations, architectures and material assemblages are deposition practices of articulated or disarticulated human remains inside ditches. Documenting fragmentation (of bodies) and different forms of deposition of human remains, this evidence allows the exploration of the heuristic potential of the theories that propose the intentionality present in these practices, in a context of greater ontological fluidity and
permeability.
This work will address and describe the currently available anthropological and contextual data regarding human remains found in ditches in the Perdigões archaeological complex, dated from the late Middle Neolithic, Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic. A contextualization within the wider Iberian reality will also be attempted, seeking to discuss the interpretative possibilities that rise in face of the occurrence of human remains in ditch fillings, framed within a more comprehensive context of intentional practices of fragmentation and structured depositions occurring on the site.

One of the most recent structures identified so far in the ditched enclosure of Perdigões will be presented, allowing one to discuss intentionality, functionality and chaining issues. This context, dating from the last quarter of the 3rd millennium BC, known as Cairn 1, due to its similarity to Chalcolithic and Bronze Age structures, contains a series of pits, of which is noteworthy pit 79. In its interior three moments of faunal remains, deposition were identified. These remains, whose characteristics seem to point to the tangible result of commensality practices, allow one to ponder the chaining and intentionality behind this deposition, questioning if it can reflect an act of eviction without any symbolic value, or a formalised deposition with its own value. Alongside, the agglomeration and closure of these realities by the stone cairn suggest the existence of a script of practices, mostly of intangible value and meaning.

Evidence for long-distance contacts at the Neolithic settlement of Kolín-Šťáralka
The archaeological excavation of an area in Kolín-Šťáralka was conducted within a large-scale excavation
project caused by the construction of a bypass road in Kolín. In 2008 and 2009, six Neolithic settlement areas
with three roundels and one settlement surrounded by a ditch were discovered during its course. The site of
our interest yielded 579 predominantly prehistoric features in an area of 5.6 ha. At least 86 of them contained
Stroked Pottery culture material. Several isolated finds belonged to the Linear Pottery culture, Protolengyel
culture, and in one case, perhaps also to the Grossgartach or Oberlauterbach culture. Several settlement features
dated from the Aeneolithic. Other features dated from the Late and Final Bronze Age, Hallstatt period, early La
Tène period and Roman period.
The ditch enclosure consisted of an interrupted V-profiled ditch. It had a roughly square shape with
rounded corners, the size of approximately 245/250 × 230/240 m and an area of c. 5 ha. In all three unearthed
segments of the ditch, it is possible to notice evidence for hastened completion of the excavation work which
means that the ditch enclosure probably never fulfilled its intended purpose. On the basis of field observation,
archaeological finds and radiocarbon dates obtained from a skull of an ox found in the lower part of the ditch
(c. 4950–4800 cal BC), it is possible to date this feature to phase III of the Stroked Pottery culture. There were detected
six features inside this enclosed area which contained a unique assemblage of fine red and in two cases,
also red and yellow painted Protolengyel pottery.
There were recorded 253 pieces of chipped stone industry in 36 features dating from the Neolithic to the
Roman period (Fig. 15, Chart 1). Out of this number, 181 objects from 12 features were securely dated to the
period of the Stroked Pottery culture. Erratic flints were represented by 107 pieces, Krumlov Forest-type cherts
by 22 pcs, Kraków-Częstochowa Jurassic silicites by 11 pcs, radiolarites by 10 pcs, Bavarian tabular cherts by 8
pcs, jaspers by 5 pcs, and northern Bohemian quartzites by 3 pcs. Quartz, porcellanite or limnosilicite and
Ożarów-type silicite were only represented by one specimen each. Layered chert of unknown origin and an unspecified
type of flint were represented by two pieces. The raw material used for the manufacture of eight tools
could not be determined, usually due to the burn out.
It can be generally said that, despite the dominant proportion of erratic flint, practically all important raw
materials used for the manufacture of chipped stone industry during the early and middle phase of the Stroked
Pottery culture in Central Europe are represented in the remaining less than half of the assemblage to a lesser
or greater extent. Such raw material variability, so far unseen in Bohemia, points to a great importance of the
settlement of Kolín-Šťáralka and the Elbe waterway in the distribution process of lithic raw materials and other
goods at the time of the Stroked Pottery culture. An important finding is the unexpected discovery of a chipped
stone industry assemblage made of Krumlov Forest-type chert and radiolarite (altogether 17.5%) which, together
with Protolengyel culture pottery proves a difficult-to-notice link between the inhabitants of this settlement
and the regions of South Moravia and the central Danube region.

Neolithic settlements (6th/5th millennium BC) encircled by moats were widespread throughout Europe, including eastern Croatia, on which there is an extensive bibliography. Excavations conducted over the last several years have confirmed the existence of thus far unrecorded methods for the formation and organization of such settlements in eastern Croatia – twin settlements. This new type of settlement was ascertained by means of remote sensing from aircraft and by means of drones, in combination with a series of satellite and aerial vertical photographs,
while the results of field surveys of the sites so discovered have confirmed that they were generally multi-layered, long-term and attributed to the Sopot culture, so that they may be generally dated to the 5th millennium BC.

If there is a feature of the Central European Neolithic period that deserves increased attention of researchers and all those with interest in prehistory, it is circular architecture of the dimensions of many tens of metres, from which only negative imprints of the ditches and imprints of posts in the form of postholes or narrow trenches are preserved to this day. The reason is that it offers quite a different insight into the skills and interpersonal relationships of ancient societies that lived in Europe in the first half of the fifth millennium BC.
The authors of the book ask whether these structures, most often termed rondels, can be regarded as “architecture of power” – the first clear evidence of thought-out power strategies of some individuals or their groups. Using anthropological terms – were they skilful and exceptional entrepreneurs with an ad hoc status (such as Big Men) living in egalitarian/segmented communities, or rather powerful Chiefs living in rank and hereditary based societies/chiefdoms?
In the introduction, the book points out the difficulties that necessarily arise when cultural (social) anthropology and archaeology join forces in an attempt to generalise information about kinship and socio-political relationships, in an effort to project them into the world of archaic societies that are only known from material culture in the archaeological record. After summing up various hypotheses, the authors use selected sites, results and often only recently processed terrain research projects to summarise more information about the settlements and burials in order to present the important period in which an attempt at accumulation of power took place, perhaps not the first but definitely not the last in European prehistory.
Besides other methods used in archaeology to evaluate the archaeological record, the book devotes an important chapter to the radiocarbon dating method, which may – with a critical assessment of the outcomes of dating of carefully selected samples – bring fundamental information not only about dating itself but also about the limits of archaeological sources.