f timber
uprights set in the Aubrey Holes (Cleal, Walker and Montague 1995: 64).
Artefactual associations included clusters of flint knapping debris, chalk
balls, and deliberately placed cattle skulls on the ditch bottom, which
may have been curated for a considerable while before deposition. Shortly
after these acts of deposition, the ditch began to be deliberately backfilled,
not as a single event but in a series of small-scale episodes.
The later part of the Neolithic saw the development of a new complex of
ceremonial monuments in the Stonehenge area. Stonehege itself was transformed
and reconfigured on a number of occasions. A complex series of timber
structures was constructed in the middle of the enclosure, and a great
number of cremated human bodies were buried in the ditch, bank, and the
Aubrey Holes, from which the timbers had now been removed. Finally, the
bluestones were set up in the Q and R holes, and by around 2500 BC the
sarsen circle and probably the sarsen trilithons had been constructed
(Cleal, Walker and Montague 1995: 206-7). In the surrounding landscape,
the two cursus monuments were deliberately destroyed, and a massive linear
palisade was constructed north of Stonehenge, blocking off the view toward
Robin Hood's Ball.
Later, the henge monuments of Coneybury, Durrington Walls
and Woodhenge were constructed: earthen ceremonial enclosures which contained
settings of timber uprights. Although Stonehenge is often classified with
these monuments, it was clearly used in an entirely different way. Stonehenge
has produced rather little material culture of later Neolithic date, in
contrast with the massive quantities of pottery and animal bones which
seem to document events of conspicuous consumption at Durrington Walls
(Wainwright and Longworth 1971).
By the later Neolithic, scatters of flint which may document
occupation patterns were a little denser in the Stonehenge region, and
there are indications that those concentrations to the west of the monument
contain a greater 'industrial' element (Richards 1990: 24). East of Stonehenge
Bottom, on the King Barrow Ridge and around Durrington Walls, numerous
pits containing later Neolithic pottery and other artefacts have been
recorded, and these may include formal deposits of symbolic importance.
Early Bronze Age
There is clearly some overlap between formally 'Neolithic' and 'Early
Bronze Age' assemblages in the Stonehenge area. Later Neolithic Grooved
Ware was still seemingly in use at some sites when burials with Beaker
pottery were being deposited, and the sparse material assemblage which
is associated with the early sarsen settings at Stonehenge is of Beaker
affinity. This implies a continuing pattern of spatial variability within
the region, with different artefacts being used in different practices
at different sites. In the period after 2500 BC, single grave burials
began to be deposited in round barrows which started to form a number
of clusters or cemteries, some of them aligned upon earlier monuments.
Over time, locations around the edges of the visual envelope of Stonehenge
itself came to be favoured (Woodward and Woodward 1996: 287), and there
is a suggestion that the land immediately surrounding the monument was
deliberately avoided (Parker Pearson and Ramilisonina 1998). Many of these
round barrow graves had very rich material associations, and they include
many of the Wessex series graves, as defined by Piggott (1938).
Middle and Late Bronze Age
The eclipse of the monumental landscapes of the Neolithic took the form
of a reorganisation of land into 'Celtic' field systems, settlement enclosures
and boundary earthworks. A number of these have been identified in the
western part of the Stonehenge area, surrounding the western end of the
Great Cursus, around Winterbourne Stoke Crossroads, and on Rox Hill (Richards
1990: 277). These are associated with Deverel-Rimbury and later ceramics,
and there are indications of small round barrows which form the funerary
element of this reconstructed landscape.
Although artefactual evidence of the occupation of th