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Causewayed enclosures are a type of large prehistoric earthworks common to the early Neolithic Europe. More than 100 examples are recorded in France, 70 in England and further sites are known in Scandinavia, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Northern Ireland and Slovakia.
Causewayed enclosure is preferred to the older term causewayed camp as it has been demonstrated that the sites did not necessarily serve as occupation sites.
Construction
Causewayed enclosures are often located on hilltop sites, encircled by one to four segmented concentric ditches, with an internal bank that is also segmented. In general, enclosures located in lowland areas are larger than hilltop ones. Crossing the ditches at intervals are causeways which give the monuments their names. It appears that the ditches were excavated in sections, leaving the wide causeways intact in between. They should not be confused with segmented, or causewayed ring ditches, which are smaller and relate only to funerary activity or with hillforts which are later and had a definite defensive function. (With regard to defensive functionality, however, evidence of timber palisades has been found at some sites such as Hambledon Hill.)
Function
Archaeological evidence implies that the enclosures were visited occasionally by Neolithic groups rather than being permanently occupied. It is possible that they represent a transitional period in the Neolithic before hunter-gatherer societies finally became fully settled. The presence of human remains in the banks and ditches of the enclosures has been seen as an attempt by the builders to connect their ancestors with the land and thus begin to anchor themselves to specific areas. Longitudinal sections excavated along the ditches by archaeologists suggest that they were repeatedly dug and redug by the builders who during each event would deliberately deposit pottery and human and animal bones in a what is considered to have been a regular ritual. Environmental archaeology suggests that the European landscape was in general heavily forested when the enclosures were built and that they were rare clearings in the woodland that were exploited for numerous social and economic activities.
In the 1970s the archaeologist Peter Drewett suggested seven possible functions for the sites:
- Settlement
- Defence
- Cattle compounds or kraals
- Trade centres
- Communal meeting places for feasting and other social activities
- Cult/ritual centres
- Burial sites
Other interpretations have seen the causeways as symbolic of multi-directional access to the site by scattered communities, the enclosures as funerary centres for excarnation or the construction of the site being a communal act of creation by a fragmented society. Some enclosures are better situated for one activity than another and it is unlikely that they served any one purpose.
Animal remains (especially cattle bone), domestic waste and pottery have been found at the sites. There has been only limited evidence, however, of any structures. In some locations—Windmill Hill, for example—evidence of human occupation predates the creation of the enclosure. Generally, it appears that the ditches were permitted to silt up, even while the camps were in use, and then re-excavated episodically and it is unlikely that they had a strong defensive purpose. It may be that the earthworks were designed to keep out wild animals rather than people. The sequential addition of second, third and fourth circuits of banks and ditches may have come about through growing populations adding to the significance of their peoples' monument over time. In some cases, they appear to have evolved into more permanent settlements.
Most causewayed enclosures have been ploughed away in the intervening millennia and are recognised through aerial archaeology. The first were constructed in the fifth millennium BCE and by the early third millennium BCE notable regional variations occur in their construction. French examples begin to demonstrate elaborate horn-shaped entrances which are interpreted by their excavators as being designed to impress from afar rather than serve any practical purpose.
Aubrey Burl considers that causewayed enclosure building decayed by 3000 BC with examples of more localised types of earthenwork monuments replacing them. Examples of such replacements in Britain include Stonehenge I, Flagstones, Duggleby Howe and Ring of Bookan, monuments which seem to have been predecessors of the later henge monuments.
Examples
Examples of causewayed enclosures include:
England
- Hambledon Hill
- Windmill Hill
- Hembury
- Coombe Hill.
- Rams Hill (on the Berkshire Downs)
- Some tor enclosures such as that at Carn Brea are believed to have served a similar purpose in south western Britain.
France
Northern Ireland
"Causewayed enclosure"