Prehistoric social networks in north-eastern England and south-eastern Scotland: Day Conference

Date:Saturday 19th November 2011
Location: Great North Museum, Newcastle

This was out biggest meeting yet with 92 people in attendance and some 45 members of the public joining us for the day. We hope many of them will become members and come to future events.

Archaeologists are increasingly interested in the nature and scale of social networks. Were there small, widely-dispersed kin-based societies connected by infrequent interactions and/or centralised communities exerting influence at regional scales? Social networks in the present clearly consist of human beings – but also of things, places, plants, and animals. We might argue that a past community not only had human members, but that buildings, places, objects and animals also belonged to such a community. While the living human members of society die, some material things endure and eventually become archaeological remains. What can we learn from these remains, these ‘surviving members’ of past communities, in Northeast England and Southeast Scotland?

Abstracts

Inter-communal contact, landscape and long term change

Roger Mercer and Richard Tipping, Stirling University

This paper will consider the changing direction and dynamic of inter-communal contact across and around the Cheviots from the early Neolithic through to the Iron Age. The earliest penetration of the area sees avoidance of overland communication, an avoidance that continued until c. 2000 cal BC. Thenceforward a more aggressive trend is established that sees regular and controlled movement over the Cheviot massif by the earlier 1st millennium cal BC and the creation of a 'Cheviot community'.

Querns in Northumberland

Dave Heslop, Newcastle County Archaeologist

Querns are the only common artefacts that have the potential to integrate the realms of subsistence economy and social relations. They are durable, easily recognised and relative abundant, and hold-out the possibility that their place of origin (geological source) can be identified and differentiated from their place of use/deposition.

The quern assemblages of northern England are being studied with a view to looking at the issues of manufacture, procurement, use and deposition, with data currently being collected for Northumberland. Recent work in Yorkshire has shown that querns were subject to votive deposition, and that pattern can be seen to extend into Northumberland and southern Scotland.

Although a statement of work in progress, the paper will define the resource and suggest ways the material can provide information on the social relations of the later prehistoric and Roman communities of the region.

The Needles Eye Enclosure, Berwick-upon-Tweed: Evidence for salt manufacture in the Late Iron Age

Jennifer Proctor, Pre-Construct Archaeology

Archaeological investigations were undertaken by Pre-Construct Archaeology in 2005 at the Needles Eye enclosure, a large oval enclosure identified as a cropmark on aerial photographs, which sits on the cliff tops to the north of Berwick-upon-Tweed. The work took place ahead of the construction of an industrial estate and excavation was restricted to the western extremity of the enclosure. The boundary ditches defining this side of the enclosure had been subject to many periods of re-cutting and redefinition and two entrances located along this side had been modified several times. Only a small portion of the internal area of the enclosure was situated within the limits of excavation, the remainder lying beyond the site boundaries to the east of the mainline railway, so many questions concerning the nature of occupation at the Needles Eye Enclosure remain unanswered. However, the analysis and interpretation of the artefactual assemblages, which is still on-going ahead of the publication of the site, has revealed some significant findings to date.

A programme of radiocarbon dating along with artefactual evidence has demonstrated that occupation of the excavated area spanned the Late Iron Age and into the early Roman period. A large assemblage of briquetage was recovered from the site, by far the largest yet found in the region, and the quantity and composition of this material demonstrates that salt was manufactured at the site. Iron Age tradition pottery was also recovered, this a sizeable assemblage in comparison to the quantity found on many other Late Iron Age sites in the region. Thin section analysis of the pottery has revealed an extraordinary range of fabrics with likely sources identified in the Cheviot Hills as well as more local sources.

It is proposed that there may not have been permanent habitation at the enclosure, but instead it may have been occupied intermittently, perhaps seasonally, and was the focus for communal gatherings. Salt, which must have been manufactured by people with specialist knowledge, may have been traded here for agricultural products and manufactured goods such as pottery. This theory fits well with the growing evidence that is emerging from recent large-scale excavations, such as Pegswood Moor in the south Northumberland Coastal Plain, that Late Iron Age communities in these lowland areas did not live in isolated enclosed settlements but were part of a complex organized social landscape. These settlements evidently exploited a wide hinterland and interacted with other communities in the vicinity. The distribution of artefactual material such as briquetage, quernstones and glass bangles across the region indicates the presence of well-established trade networks.

Pits, Pots and Deposits - Social Trajectories in Northumberland and the Borders

Ben Edwards Liverpool University

This paper examines the role of depositional practices in the creation of architecturally defined spaces in the Earlier and Later Neolithic of Northumberland and the Borders. Persistent practices relating to the fragmentation, curation and deposition of pottery in a variety of contexts are identified across the whole of the period, and are linked to contemporary changes in architectural tradition. The role of depositional practices as a form of 'ritual' action, which was used in the long-term transmission of cultural knowledge, is raised as a possible explanation for the patterns observed.

What can the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age mortuary evidence from Northeast England and Southeast Scotland tell us about social networks across and beyond this area?

Chris Fowler,Newcastle University and Neil Wilkin .University of Birmingham,

Burials comprise the largest set of evidence for understanding social networks during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age (c. 2450-1500 BC) in Northeast England (here defined as County Durham, Tyne and Wear and Northumberland) and Southeast Scotland (here defined as Roxburghshire, Berwickshire, Selkirkshire, Peeblesshire, West Lothian, Midlothian, and East Lothian). In this paper we will explore what patterns in funerary practices and the styles of artefacts deposited with the dead (such as Beaker and Food Vessel pottery) indicate about social networks within this area and beyond. How did these social networks change as funeral rituals were transformed during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age?

 

Social networks in Tyne-Forth and beyond: some examples from the Bronze Age metalwork in the Great North Museum.

Brendan O’Connor

Certain objects on display the Museum, such as the Kirkhaugh gold basket ornament and the Ewart Park swords, will be used to reflect social networks in the Bronze Age.