Inventing the Neolithic? Putting evidence-based interpretation back into the study of faunal remains from causewayed enclosures

Abstract

The paper argues that our current understanding of the animal bones from causewayed enclosure sites in Britain is flawed. During the 1980–90s, a number of key interpretations, still frequently espoused, were based more upon anecdote and theory-driven assertion than on empirical evidence. An example is that evidence of bone processing (butchery and bone fracture) does not feature heavily in the faunal record from causewayed enclosures. Using data from the sites of Etton and Staines, this view must now be questioned. Both butchery and peri-mortem bone fracture are present in these assemblages in substantial quantities. These sites are compared with Ludwinowo 7, a Linearbandkeramik settlement site in Poland and there are considerable similarities between the three different sites. This suggests possibility that the broader economic utility of animal bone assemblages at causewayed enclosures has been underestimated, having been, up to now, regarded as ‘not indicative of domestic settlement’.

Keywords:

• Neolithic
• causewayed enclosures
• LBK
• Linearbandkeramik
• faunal remains
• bones
• fracture
• butchery

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Francis Pryor for both his blessing to revisit the Etton material and the enthusiasm with which he has responded to the resulting research. Thanks are also owed to Richard Sabin at the Natural History Museum for his help in accessing and processing the material from both Staines and Etton. Our gratitude goes to Arkadiusz Marciniak for providing access to the Ludwinowo 7 material. We thank two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments.

Additional information

Funding

We thank Richard Evershed and the rest of the NEOMILK team and are grateful to the ERC for funding that project (NEOMILK ERC324202).

Notes on contributors

Pip C. R. Parmenter

Pip Parmenter worked in professional archaeology for a number of years after finishing her archaeology degree. She later gained a scholarship to return to Exeter to undertake a PhD on applying new methods to the analysis of the faunal remains from Etton and Staines causewayed enclosures. She is currently working as a freelance zooarchaeologist and report writer.

Emily V. Johnson

Emily Johnson is currently reading for her PhD at Exeter. Her current research forms part of an exciting international project on the milking revolution in Neolithic temperate Europe (5500–4900BC), funded by the European Research Council. Her work is focussing on the relationship between bone fat exploitation and milking at key sites from the LBK culture.

Alan K. Outram

Alan Outram is Head of Archaeology at the University of Exeter and editor-in chief of journal Science and Technology of Archaeological Research (STAR). He is a zooarchaeologist who has recently been researching horse domestication and early pastoral societies in prehistoric Europe and Central Asia. He is also known for developing methods for the study of bone fracture and fragmentation.