Don Benson & Alasdair Whittle (ed). Building Memories: the Neolithic Cotswold Long Barrow at Aseott-Under-Wychwood, Oxfordshire.

Darvill, Timothy

DON BENSON & ALASDAIR WHITTLE (ed.) Building Memories: The Neolithic Cotswold Long Barrow at Aseott-Under- Wychwood, Oxfordshire. xxxvi+380 pages, 269 illustrations, 24 colour plates. 57 tables. 2007. Oxford: Oxbow; 978-1-84217-236-0 hardback 55 [pounds sterling].

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Long barrows are amongst the oldest and most widespread prehistoric monuments in the British Isles, yet despite knowing of more than a thousand examples only a handful have been fully investigated. This volume reports the total excavation of the Ascott-under-Wychwood barrow 20km northeast of Oxford between 1965 and 1969 under the direction of Don Benson. The report is substantial, detailed, and very well-produced, with contributions from numerous specialists. The layout follows the tried and tested approach to excavation reports that most archaeologists will navigate easily: introduction; phase-by-phase account of what was discovered; specialist studies; and a synthesis covering the implications of what was found. It stands up well against reports of much more recent excavations, and it is a great credit to the skill of Don Benson and his team that the excavation and recording systems developed for the dissection of such a complicated structure have allowed a high level of post-excavation analysis. Indeed, it might be said that the archives and finds have matured through keeping as techniques such as palaeopathology, AMS dating, organic residue analysis, and isotope studies were simply not available when the site was dug. And in coordinating the post-excavation programme Masdair Whittle has not hesitated to call on the latest scientific approaches, with fascinating results.

Ascott as a physical space has always been part of the Cotswold landscape, but as a humanly-constructed place has been given meanings and purpose on many occasions. Short-lived visits in the eight and fifth millennia BC are recognised, but things really kicked-off in the early fourth millennium BC. Occupation is represented by an artefact-rich midden and postholes, a pattern present below other long barrows in the Cotswolds and beyond, which raises interesting questions about whether these barrows were built over spots imbued with significance, or whether the barrow-builders simply used existing open ground out of expediency. Taphonomy plays a role here as the barrows protect areas of early landscape that have long-since vanished around about, thus making it difficult to contextualise the recorded remains in space. For Ascott, Whittle and colleagues favour a thread of continuity linking the occupation with the subsequent construction of the barrow; one of the 'constructed memories' implied in the report's title. They acknowledge, however, that a buried soil and turfline sealed the midden before the barrow was built, and that the two events were separated in time. Perhaps the midden should be seen as a typical settlement of the early Neolithic in the area, and, for this reviewer at least, the pair of structures with a hearth in-between as described in the report (p. 27-32 and Figure 2.4) makes more sense as a single timber-framed house with a central hearth, a view that finds some support in the many helpful plots showing the distribution of finds below the barrow.

The long barrow itself was built in two main stages, resulting in a typical trapezoidal structure c. 46m long and c. 15m wide at its maximum, edged with high-quality dry-stone walling. At the east end a shallow forecourt lay between a pair of projecting horns. Transversely across the centre of the mound were two opposed pairs of cists, each with a short passage from the adjacent long sides of the mound. The cists and passages contained the remains of 21 people representing all ages and both sexes, deposited in a variety of circumstances from flesh-covered corpses to incomplete body-parts and cremations.

Two analyses make this report stand out. First is the detailed study of the human remains and the patterns of deposition supported by numerous coloured plans identifying the bones from specific individuals through the various deposits. Second is the dating programme that allows a level of analysis not previously possible for these sites. In consequence, the settlement is dated to the late 40th or early 39th century BC, the gap between the abandonment of the midden and the construction of the barrow is reckoned to be about 50 years, and the construction of the barrow was in the 38th century BC. Use of the site extended for between three and five generations with burial ending in the 37th century BC. This level of detail excites a new and welcome kind of prehistory in which people and events can at last be brought into sharp focus. Given similar results at other sites (Bayliss & Whittle 2007), long barrows must now be seen as a relatively short-lived phenomenon within the early fourth millennium BC; a distinct type of monument that renders obsolete the traditional terminological pot-pourri of earthen long barrows, chambered cairns, gallery graves, megalithic long mounds and so on (cf. Darvill 2004: 39-40). Clearly, long barrows represent specific responses to the circumstances of time and place in which Britain's early farming communities found themselves.

For all its joys, there are a few gaps in the Ascott report that might have been addressed: labour requirements, sources of materials used, stonework sequences, and the relationships between timber and stone, to name a few. But these could no doubt be filled through further work with the archive and the excellent range of plans and illustrations in the report. Discussion in the report focuses on place and time, building and remembrance, drawing heavily on agency theory and the idea of temporality. It is a way of thinking quite alien to those excavating the site back in the late 1960s when even the New Archaeology was still new, but it works well and delivers new insights relevant to contemporary agendas. Most importantly, it shows how good quality fieldwork can recurrently fuel the needs of changing theoretical perspectives; it is a report whose content will no doubt be used time and again by future generations of scholars working in paradigms not yet defined.

References

BAYLISS, A. & A. WHITTLE (ed.). 2007. Histories of the dead: building chronologies for five southern British long barrows. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 17.1 (Supplement): 1-147.

DARVILL, T. 2004. Long barrows of the Cotswolds and surrounding areas. Stroud: Tempus.

TIMOTHY DARVILL

School of Conservation Sciences, Bournemouth

University, Dorset, UK (Email:

tdarvill@bournemouth.ac.uk)