A Research Framework for the Archaeology of Wales

Southeast Wales – Early Prehistoric

22/12/2003

Background and purpose

• Known resource as represented in SMR quantified in GGAT Resource Audit
• Mixture of 'key sites' with good data (mainly excavations) and more basic identifications
• Aims to reveal strengths weakness and biases in current knowledge
• Try to identify key issues for future work

NEOLITHIC

Strengths

Settlement

Excavated enclosures at Coed-y-Cymdda and Beech Court Farm, Ewenny

Excavated upland site at Cefn Glas

Occupation site at Ogmore-By-Sea
Sant-y-Nyll structure below cairn

Trostrey hearth, finds

Funerary and ritual

Well-established distribution of chambered tombs

Excavated evidence from many chambered tombs

Dietary/skeletal work Goldcliff, Parc le Breos

Also cave burials

Artefacts

Some provenance data from implement petrology group work

Large number of single axe finds

Smaller number of established flint scatters

Limited precision for many reported finds

Weaknesses

Settlement

Lack of data about subsistence/transhumance

Other settlement evidence found beneath later cairns: more than chance?

Funerary and ritual sites

Possible henge and causewayed enclosure only known from APs

Artefacts

Little material with firm contexts/sites

Low resolution of provenance data

Biases

Settlement

Nature of settlement: permanent? Mobile/shifting?

Low visibility

Limited economic/dietary evidence

Little wetland evidence from Levels

Funerary and ritual sites

Chambered tombs highly visible and characteristics: other types misdated?

Possibly further examples to be identified in uplands

Artefacts

Emphasis on polished stone axes as readily identifiable

Detailed understanding restricted to few sites

Key issues

Nature of Neolithic settlement/land use

Relationship between chambered tombs and other sites

Skeletal and dietary evidence

Upland/lowland differences (if any); use of marine resources and wetlands

Sourcing and use of flint and other stone

EARLY BRONZE AGE

Strengths

Settlement

Peterstone palaeochannel post structure

Funerary and ritual

Very numerous cairns/ barrows ring cairns, currently being revisited

Numerous cairn excavations producing human bone, pottery and metalwork

Fewer stone circles, standing stones

Burials and other activity in caves

Artefacts

Some EBA hoards

Some flints from Levels

Weaknesses

Settlement

No evidence apart from structures below cairn at Colts Hill

Midden sites poorly dated and understood

Funerary and ritual

Equivocal evidence for date and function of cairnfields

Lack of dating evidence for cairns: EBA date is assumed

Few modern studies of skeletal material

Artefacts

Low precision of flint data

Biases

Settlement

Is it recognisable?

Funerary and ritual

'Classic' cairns excavated

Few studies of cairns as groups

Artefacts

Metalwork over-represented due to metal detecting

Undateable flint assemblages may be EBA

Key issues

Domestic sites: what? where?

Single cairns/multiple/cairnfields: relationship and function

Lack of chronology

Link between landuse and environmental change in uplands

Limited wetland evidence: animal hoof prints, charcoal within peat

Outcomes

Review of site types: what is 'settlement'? What is a causewayed enclosure?

SMR and other databases: nature of recording (period and site type)

SMR needs to reflect recent work to act as research tool (integration at data collection stage?)

Palaeoenvironmental analysis (site and general)

Review of archive material held in museums: potential for scientific analysis

Approach to landscape: field walking, remote sensing etc. rather than single-site excavation

Coordination of research activities

Paper prepared by Martin Locock (GGAT)

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