Systematic Irregularity; hidden in plain sight

When you start an excavation, or make an original observation, it may become your responsibility to give things a name, which is not as easy as it might seem. 

I inherited an archaeological site named Orsett “Cock”, the Cock in Question was the local pub, a perfectly reasonable and appropriate idea for archaeology in 1976, when google was just a spelling mistake.

It was working on the Orsett enclosure report, as I preferred to call it now, that I had to start naming parts of theoretical model structures, although I also floated an idea that I decided to call Systematic Irregularity.[1]

While it is my understanding that this idea exists in other forms, as an archaeologist doing detailed work on built environments, I had perceived that engineered structures were never square or rectangular, an observation that applied to both to foundations of small buildings and to layout of large ditched enclosures.

The original plans of six Little Woodbury 4 post structures [2]

2016 - Review of the Year

One of basic principles that always governed my professional practice in commercial world was “Always do what you say you are going to do”, if everyone sticks to this, then even quite complex projects can come together successfully.   Since the year started with a bold statement of intent concerning building a model of a CAD Class Ei building, some form of progress report is probably due.   However, what happens, or is reported on this blog, is a separate issue to what is going on in terms of research; you can do it or write about it; it is not that there is nothing to report, but that things are changing; you can spend weeks illustrating and writing a post about a particular problem, only to find that you have solved it. 

There are other things going on; I am virtually busy working on a range of other case studies, methodology, and projects with other people; there is even the real world, which exacts its a terrible crushing toll on a daily basis.  

Understanding the Neolithic Longhouse

Archaeology is recorded in diagrams

All pictures of a Neolithic Longhouse are imaginary; generally, all that remains are the archaeological plans of their foundations, however, it is possible to produce a theoretical model of the form of engineering that fits the nature of this data.

Prior to the advent of digital recording systems large amounts of information were routinely recorded by visual representation in the form of hand drawn plans and sections.  Structural archaeology takes these diagrams and extends them into a ‘theoretical’ three dimensional space; in some respects these models are as accurate as the original plan.

Theoretical structural archaeology is theoretical because it based on measurements and ideas that can be expressed as diagrams and models which are the best fit for an imperfect data set.  This fit tends to improve with further study and this article represents an updating of my previous articles.

26. Impossible Drains

All journeys start somewhere, even those in the mind, and the mental expedition exploring the uncharted depths of my ignorance that became Theoretical Structural Archaeology started at a site called Orsett ‘Cock’, to the north of the Thames in Essex.

The Orsett ‘Cock’ enclosure, Essex, during the 1976 excavation,
showing the position of buildings S1 and S9, discussed below.

The Orsett ‘Cock’ enclosure had, appropriately for an archaeological site, taken its name from a local hostelry, the ‘Cock’ Inn. The complete liability this would become in a Google search could not have been foreseen when the site was excavated in 1976 (hereafter to be known as the Orsett Enclosure, so as not to attract unwarranted attention). After a brief interim report,[1] the site vanished into the great black hole of unpublished sites known as ‘The Backlog’.

25. A world of Invisible Walls

How to account for things that are invisible is always tricky, as priests would no doubt testify, and in some respects archaeologists have a comparable problem to religions, in that what we are asking you to comprehend and visualise happened a long time ago. However, archaeologists, unlike priests, are happy to admit (if pushed) that what we are asking you believe is an educated guess, even if, as often the case, we have a story and we’re sticking to it with almost religious zeal.

For British prehistory the problem is that some significant pieces of the visual jigsaw have been destroyed forever, and they have become ‘archaeologically invisible’. I can tell what the woods and the trees looked like -- I have photos that must be fairly close – but the evidence for the human part, particularly the built environment where human life is played out, is somewhat sketchy.

23.Uncovered; Prehistoric Building Regulations

I want to show you something quite remarkable about prehistoric buildings that nobody ever noticed before, so you are going to be the first to know.

The previous article, which I’m sure you’ve read, looked at the roof geometry of circular buildings, and using simple theoretical models, demonstrated that large 16-17m roundhouses are probably at the technical limits of the design. We shall extend our simple model to include a theoretical longhouse, and compare the two forms to try and understand what advantages this challenging form of roof construction offers, with interesting results.

22. Iron Age Graphs; an important discovery

To be a theoretical structural archaeologist, you are going to have to understand (or at least believe in) Pythagoras, the sine rule, and pi; but there is no need to panic -- I think they still teach this to children, so it might be useful to have one to hand.


Digging holes for a living is an ideal place to hide from maths, not to mention reading and writing, but, unfortunately, Iron Age roundhouses only really make sense if you understand their geometry. Maths is important to help us model the nearly 2-dimensional evidence of prehistoric postholes, and encourages us to think 3-dimensionally about structures.

21. Thrust, trusses, and not going down the aisle

Much of our experience of height and depth, the z axis of the space we inhabit, comes from the built environment, which has long since outstripped things like trees as tall objects in our lives. By contrast, in prehistoric Britain, when buildings were made of wood, it was difficult to create structures taller than the trees they were made of, and builders got on with the practical problem of creating width. This is one of the perennial problems of architecture, and an important thread in the narrative of the built environment. In this article we shall look at how builders solved the technical problems inherent in wide timber buildings, considering medieval buildings at the end of this process, and how this can be related to the archaeology of Neolithic buildings at the beginning.

20. Everything you ever wanted to know about postholes – but were afraid to ask

I was once asked by the head of an archaeological department,“What is the difference between a stake hole and a posthole?” If you don’t know, may I suggest you read my previous article first; this article is for advanced students who have grasped the basic idea: Postholes held posts that supported a vertical load.

Had the head of an archaeology department told me he had never excavated a posthole, I would not have been the least surprised. Many academics may have little contact with real soil, and may not even get muddy at work. Apparently it's not part of their job description. So they may never have enjoyed lying on the ground with their arm lost down a deep and narrow posthole, excavating mostly by feel, and struggling to get the loose soil out from the bottom of the hole (an old fashioned ladle is ideal), which may account for the lack of scholarship on the subject.

19. The proper study of mankind is postholes

With all due apologies to Alexander Pope [1], and John Collis [2], postholes are quite important, but it is what they represent, the prehistoric built environment, that gives them their significance to archaeology.

An excavated posthole

The central importance of the built environment to archaeology, to its original inhabitants, and to builders was explored in a series of earlier articles, as was the basic problem of archaeological sites with lots of postholes that, once any roundhouses have been extracted, remain uninterpreted.