by Chris Fowler
This control continued within buildings. Upon entry to Orcadian houses, movement to the right was encouraged by flagstones and paving (Richards 1990, 116–117), and paving acted in a similar way at Lough Gur house A (Cooney 1999, 59). In timber buildings, a range of internal partitions further controlled movement—acting as ‘barriers’, as Topping (1996) put it—as well as defining spaces for different activities. Screens (perhaps movable) divided many Irish and English rectangular houses into two or more ‘rooms’, often with one considerably larger than the other(s) (Darvill 1996; Grogan 2002). The larger space, and single room buildings, could be interpreted as main residential spaces (Grogan 2002) often with a hearth. Smaller ‘annexes’ may have been storage spaces, working areas, cooking areas, or small animal byres (Cooney 1999; Grogan 2002). In some cases, internal timbers may have been arranged for pragmatic reasons such as supporting the roof, and in turn may have facilitated storage space or even an ‘upper floor’ in larger buildings (Barclay et al. 2002). It seems likely that access to certain internal spaces was controlled, whilst certain acts would only have been appropriate in some rooms.
Central to many of these spaces was the hearth. Ubiquitous throughout domestic sites in Britain and Ireland, hearths and fire-pits have been regarded as indicative of domestic activity (Smyth 2006, 241). Some may have been ‘covered ovens’ or cooking pits (Darvill 1996, 89–90). Where found, hearths tend to have been centrally located in buildings or the main ‘room’ (although some external hearths have been recognized). Hearths brought people together; heel or buttock marks around hearths in the Durrington Walls houses indicated people squatting around the fire (Julian Thomas, pers. comm.). Richards (1990) has described the hearth as the axis mundi, providing light and warmth for the inhabitants of the Orkney houses. When one house replaced another, the original hearth was often retained. Movement within the house would have centred on the fireplace (Cooney 1999, 61) and this would have created spaces associated with light and shadow. The fire offered a means to cook (although such processes may have more commonly occurred outside in large communal hearths, such as at Barnhouse) but may also have meant the houses were smoky places. Central fire-pits may also have been a focus for deposition and transformative processes, such as the pit lined with burnt broken pot at Claish timber hall (Barclay et al. 2002). Hearths also found their counterparts at some monuments—stone settings within the Stones of Stenness henge and Maeshowe passage grave mimic the substantial stone-lined hearths in Orcadian houses and ‘village’ yards (Richards 1990). Fragments of burnt human bone were found in such a hearth at the Raigmore late Neolithic timber building, Highland (Simpson 1996).
Arranged around the hearth were other fittings and fixtures, although again we have little evidence for this outwith Orkney other than scattered pits and stake-holes. The stone buildings in Orkney offer the most compelling evidence for ‘furniture’, including possible box beds, storage spaces, and so-called ‘dressers’ (Clarke and Sharples 1985; Richards 2005). Slots for wooden equivalents of these were also identified at Durrington Walls (Parker Pearson et al. 2006). A convincing argument can be made for the Orkney and Durrington Walls houses that they shared ‘both ontological and metaphorical knowledge of the world’ (Richards 1990, 113). For instance, the cruciform layout of Orkney buildings with central hearth and beds to left and right recurred repeatedly, and one can imagine screens, partitions, and posts performing a similar role in timber buildings (Brophy 2007). The reading and experience of buildings, then, may have embodied many characteristics we more usually apply to ritual, and burial, monuments.
LIFE AND DEATH
A connection between houses and tombs has been recognized across much of Europe, where longhouses had a similar appearance and symbolism to longbarrows (Midgley 1985; Hodder 1994; Bradley 2005). There are also many examples of houses under burial monuments (Hodder 1994, 77ff) and in some cases abandoned houses may have been the inspiration for burial monuments (Bradley 1996).
In Britain and Ireland a range of occupation sites were built on, or replaced by, megalithic and earthen burial monuments. For instance, a posthole-defined structure with a hearth, interpreted as an early Neolithic house, was found beneath Hazelton North longbarrow, Gloucestershire (Saville 1990, 14–21). Scatters of features, but with no obvious structure, were found beneath Camster Long chambered tomb, Highland (Masters 1997). Examples are more commonly found in Ireland (Cross 2003, 200; Grogan 1996, 57). The remains of two rectangular timber buildings at Ballyglass, Co. Mayo, were discovered beneath a court-tomb; at least one of these may have been destroyed in advance of tomb construction (Ó Nualláin 1972). In the late Neolithic, at Knowth, Co. Meath, a large passage tomb (Eogan and Roche 1998) covered nine circular stake buildings. The location of occupation traces beneath burial monuments, in the form of pits, hearths, plough-marks, or houses suggests an enduring significance of certain locations, and some may have been more easily remembered through being marked by a mound or megalith (Hodder 1994).
Further connections between burial monuments and houses are apparent in Orkney. Houses share a cruciform layout with Maeshowe-type passage graves, and Maeshowe itself was probably constructed on the location of a house-like structure (Richards 2005). The use of large stones and orthostats to define space are common characteristics of tombs and houses in Orkney and Shetland, whilst the typical house structures in Shetland are heel-shaped in plan, as are most of the local chambered tombs (Whittle et al. 1986, 134; Barclay 1996, 63). Shared architectural traits may also characterize timber buildings. Split half tree trunks are commonly found beneath barrows, and such timbers were used in the construction of Warren Field timber hall (Noble 2006a; Murray et al. 2009). More generally, large timber buildings have been associated with other Neolithic monuments from cursuses to timber circles (Barclay et al. 2002, 122; Brophy 2007; Thomas 2006; 2010).
Houses offered connections between life and death as well as the domestic and ceremonial. They may also have embodied ancestral connotations, of early farmers, pioneers (Murray et al. 2009), and the wild wood (Noble 2006b). It may even be that houses were associated with specific individuals and groups, an embodiment of social memory and personal biography. We have little sense of the lifespan of most houses, although many were not built to last substantial periods of time. Even if places endured, buildings did not. In all likelihood, the timber halls stood for no more than 50 years (Marshall 2009), and even the stone houses of Orkney and Shetland were frequently replaced or rebuilt. We have limited evidence for repairs and maintenance at some buildings, and this may be indicative of people returning to a location after an absence and carrying out restorative work (Pollard 1999). Within oval stake-house groups, huts were simply abandoned and new ones built in more or less the same place, probably for the same reason. Bradley (1996, 248) has suggested that the length of time a house stood for was determined by the ‘social life-span of the household’. So when a householder died, perhaps the house was abandoned as well. Houses themselves became memorialized through being dismantled and destroyed.
The death of individuals was met with a range of strategies, and in the early Neolithic timber buildings were mostly burnt (or perhaps cremated), often charring posts even beneath ground level. Experimental work suggests this would have been a substantial task (e.g. Bankoff and Winter 1979). To burn down any reasonably sized timber-framed building would have taken much planning and pyre material, and several days of hard work. Such spectacular drawn-out events would have seared themselves into the communal biography through the creation of ‘flashbulb memories’ (Noble 2006a). Such an act of ‘purification’ was perhaps necessary (Smyth 2006) because of the death of an individual. The death of houses and houses for the dead seem to have been closely connected motifs throughout the Neolithic.
CONCLUSION
The evidence for Neolithic houses in Britain and Ireland is now compelling: there is no doubt that people were living and sleeping in some of the structures discussed in this chapter, although wheth
er all year round remains to be seen. Smyth (2006) noted that evidence for cooking food, tool manufacture, cereals, and cereal processing, as well as the presence of hearths and in some cases ovens, suggest ‘domestic’ activity at the Irish sites at least. The size of most of these small buildings suggests most could have accommodated a ‘family size’ group of perhaps 5–12 people (Grogan 2002, 520). Larger clusters of buildings from Durrington Walls to Orkney suggest groups of families living together, apparently sharing communal yards, hearths, and ancillary buildings by the late Neolithic. Some settlements may have been permanent, but there seems also to have been a network of overnight, specialized, and seasonal camps scattered across the landscape. Exceptionally large buildings such as the timber halls may have served some form of domestic role, and offered fixed points for a large group of people. In other words, Neolithic settlement evidence suggests a nested scale of temporalities, with clear regional variations. Importantly, such sites offer a window into the rites and social organization of Neolithic people across Britain and Ireland. Neolithic settlements, then, were places of ritual and routine, played out in the form of social obligation and good housekeeping.
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