Posthole Archaeology; Function, Form and Fighting

In the previous post I posed the question what buildings does a moderately complex hierarchical agricultural society require, looking at aspects of agricultural buildings; this time I am looking at moderately complex hierarchical society, or at least that end of hierarchy that tends to represented in archaeology.
It is fashionable, and perhaps progressive, to talk of higher status individuals or elites, to avoid cultural bias inherent such terms as aristocracy.   However, I use the term in its original cultural context precisely to reference that bias, or understanding, and also is to imply a degree of continuity between Prehistory and History.
I am going to look particularly at the Late Iron Age fort at Orsett, Essex, [1] now lost to the latest incarnation of the junction it guarded 2000 years ago. [below].  It typifies all the problems of interpretation associated with archaeology that has been ploughed. It was clearly a fortification at some stage, and only the aristocracy, have the resources, interest and right to build such things. Systematic and sustained fighting, takes considerable resources, training and expensive kit. It was after all, what maintained them at the top of the divinely sanctioned heap, and some might argue it was their raison d’etre.

38. Bronze Age Architecture: Woodhenge

In recent articles we have looked at the typical architecture of the Early Neolithic in Northern Europe. This was clearly domestic and agricultural in nature. However, by the Early Bronze Age in Southern Britain, we see the development of much larger and more elaborate buildings. These structures are marked by concentric rings of posts and have been referred to as type Ei buildings.[1] Woodhenge, overlooking the River Avon, two km from Stonehenge, is one of the best fully excavated examples.

I chose Woodhenge because it goes straight to the heart of the matter: We have a complete plan, so there will be no ambiguity.

29. Bloody Scotland

History is just archaeology by other means, but writing things down, instead of committing them to memory, did not herald a whole new pattern of existence, it’s clearly bad news if you are a druid or a bard, but if you plough the fields and scatter - it is of passing interest, and if you own the lands being ploughed, its time to sack the bard and hire a scribe.

The stories we learnt at school about kings, queens, bishops, and knights are surprisingly relevant to the archaeology of the built environment, because great chunks of it were built at their behest; they were at the focal point of the history of medieval Scotland, which as we saw in the last article, was an economic and ecological disaster zone, subject to systemic violence between Highlands and Lowlands.

For several millennium agriculture had supported an elite, an aristocracy, who for most of our history owned the land, an ownership that extended a varying degree to the people who lived on and worked their land. While prehistory gives us a canvass onto which we can project a world where this might not be so, as soon as myth, then history, emerges, it’s men with swords that are calling the shots. Swords are not entirely symbolic in this context, they appear in the Bronze Age, [left [1]],and unlike arrows or spears, they are unambiguously weapons, and raised the technological bar for warfare; interpersonal violence was becoming the preserve of specialists.