PIT‐DIGGING, OCCUPATION AND STRUCTURED DEPOSITION ON RUDSTON WOLD, EASTERN YORKSHIRE

Abstract

Summary. Excavated Neolithic pit clusters, like those found on Rudston Wold in eastern Yorkshire, have often been seen as the remains of occupation sites. The features are interpreted as possessing practical roles, including their use for storing grain, and the incorporated material culture regarded as casually discarded waste. More recent interpretations, however, have emphasized these features’ functional unsuitability, rather seeing pit‐digging, and the deposition of ideologically‐charged objects, as a deliberate attempt to inscribe meaning across a landscape. These two different approaches are considered by a detailed examination of the Peterborough Ware and Grooved Ware associated pits, dug‐out swallow‐holes and hollows of Rudston Wold. It is argued that their lithic assemblage demonstrates a conventionality best understood as representing occupation at and around the features, themselves once part of small‐scale dwellings, but that this material nonetheless resulted from deliberate and purposeful acts which changed during the later Neolithic.

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