Watch
Description
Ever since antiquarians first began to record their observations about long barrows, it has been almost universally agreed that these monuments were deliberately sited both to be seen from afar and to command distant views over the landscape. When archaeologists eventually recognised causewayed enclosures as being early Neolithic, they mapped similar expectations onto them and treated visual orientation as an indicator of territorial hegemony.
Equally, it has long been recognised that most of southern England was heavily wooded throughout the Neolithic, punctuated by small patches of cleared ground. Our understanding of the extent and composition of early Neolithic woodland has advanced considerably since the 19th century, yet we still glibly assert that monuments and territories were intervisible. This long-standing habit has been further cemented in recent years by the ease with which viewsheds can be produced in GIS.
This talk will argue that it is time to treat Neolithic woodland not as a passive, unchanging backdrop to the construction of monuments, but as a crucially important component of people’s experience of encountering monuments. Like the landscape’s topography, the character and extent of woodland varied across southern England, and came with its own dynamics. The processes that produced clearings were also varied and differed dramatically in duration: clear-felling with stone axes – the traditional job of every self-respecting Neolithic farmer - was conceivably a very rare event. Seeing monuments from afar was not a given, nor was the act of seeing a simple, unchanging reminder of ancestral power over an expanse of land. There is much more to say.