Paper short abstract:

In recent decades, extensive multi-period sites uncovered by developer-led archaeology in Britain have provided enormous potential for addressing questions of long-term landscape inhabitation. However, the ability to identify connections and continuity between different elements of these landscapes has been hampered by the way in which analysis is often conducted – through breaking up sites into neat but fragmented period-specific blocks. This paper wishes to reconnect severed links and offer a more coherent but perhaps ‘messy’ approach to our understanding of past landscapes in south-east England spanning Neolithic to Roman periods.

Paper long abstract:

Over the last 20 years, many large and complex multi-period sites have been uncovered through developer-funded archaeological work in Britain. While this has provided a valuable resource for investigating long-term landscape inhabitation, the potential of these excavations has sometimes been under-played. Archaeological analysis is not always well-designed to explore the multiplicity of associations that may have been present amongst various landscape elements of different periods. While archaeologists are often more comfortable dividing landscapes up and creating single-phase site plans, this adds the danger of unwittingly severing the nuanced connections that once existed between various features and landscape elements of different periods.

This paper will highlight such links identified in recently excavated, extensive multi-period landscapes at Boscombe Down in Wiltshire and Springhead in Kent spanning the Neolithic to Roman periods, and will investigate the various ways in which long-term landscape memories were maintained, recreated or manipulated. This included the creation of new relationships with existing monuments in addition to continuities and changes in attitudes to these places through re-use, elaboration, and even deliberate avoidance over surprisingly long periods of time. Sites should therefore not be viewed as static entities, and our rather clinical classification removes the opportunity to pursue how prehistoric landscapes were knitted together over extensive time-frames. By embracing the 'messiness' and multi-scalar nature of archaeological sites it is possible to identify the networks of past connections and provide cogent and more rounded biographies of prehistoric inhabitation.