Teachers’ Notes for the Whitehawk Camp Digital Game

A. The Mesolithic – 10,000 BC to 4,000 BC

The last glacial cold period ended around twelve thousand years ago and

since then we have experienced a period of relatively warm global tempera-

tures. The name given to this period is the Holocene. It probably doesn’t rep-

resent the end of climactic fluctuations within the existing Ice Age, but is more

likely to be one of the regular warm periods (Interglacials) within the Pleis-

tocene.

After the end of this last cold period (the end of the Palaeolithic or ‘Old Stone

Age’ and beginning of the Mesolithic or ‘Middle Stone Age’), the climate in

Britain warmed very quickly and what was previously open steppe inhabited

by large herbivores (reindeer, mammoth) became heavily forested temperate

woodland with smaller, faster game (red deer, wild boar and wild ox). As sea

levels continue to rise, the old hunting grounds that connected Britain to north-

ern Europe (Doggerland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland) get covered

by the North Sea and about 8000 years ago the remaining land bridge with

the Continent disappears and Britain finally becomes an island.

Although Britain continued to be populated by small bands of hunter-gatherers

similar to those that hunted mammoth in the Palaeolithic, their movement was

now restricted by water and by thick woodland. New weapons (bow and arrow

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_archery) were adopted to help hunting

animals through forest and undergrowth, more use was made of fish and

shellfish (due to the increase in open water) and new trees and shrubs pro-

vided an increase in variety of fruit and nuts in what was a comparatively

healthy diet.

The need for small arrow and spearheads, and for sickles and knives to har-

vest wild seeds and fruits, lead to the Mesolithic peoples developing ‘Mi-

crolith’ technologies. These were finely-made, tiny flint flakes or blades proba-

bly mounted on wood to create tools such as knives, saws and sickles.

(http://www.stoneagetools.co.uk/microliths.htm ).

The Mesolithic hunters lived in small temporary structures, moving around to

make best use of the resources available during the different seasons. As

time progressed, it is likely that these hunter-gatherers moved less and

started to control the landscape around them (eg ‘slash and burn’ - cutting

and burning trees and plants to create open spaces). The transition to the Ne-

olithic, when people start to live a more settled farming lifestyle, is probably a

fairly steady one but early examples of more settled Mesolithic communities in

Britain have been found. Star Carr in Yorkshire is a very good example of this

(http://www.starcarr.com).

B. The Neolithic – 4,000 BC to 2,500 BC

BackgroundThe Neolithic (New Stone Age) in Britain starts with a steady change in life-

style influenced by ideas coming from the East via the Continent. These in-

volved growing crops, keeping domestic animals, the construction and use of

large monuments, occasional formal burials, pottery and stone tool-making

and the development of long-distance trade networks. Towards the end of the

Neolithic Age copper and bronze came into use, settlements and fields be-

came increasingly larger and more complex, and society became more struc-

tured and hierarchical.

a. Neolithic Monument BuildersAntler picks and shovels made from oxen shoulder blades were the basic

tools used to help create the large monuments for which Neolithic peoples

were known.

- Large Causewayed Enclosures were created with circular ditches and

banks which seem to be used as centres for feasting and sometimes burial

(https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/publications/iha-causewayed-enclo-

sures/causewayedenclosures.pdf ;

- Long Barrows (burial chambers) were built to house the bones of the dead

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_barrow );

- Cursus monuments - long ‘avenues’ lined by a bank and an outer ditch -

(https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/publications/iha-prehistoric-avenues-

alignments/prehistoricavenuesalignments.pdf ) and

- Henges - as time proceeded, progressively larger circular monuments

(henges) with ditches and banks were constructed within the British Isles,

often incorporating stone or timber circles (https://www.english-her-

itage.org.uk/publications/iha-prehistoric-henges-circles/prehistorichenge-

sandcircles.pdf )

Whitehawk Camp: The construction of the Whitehawk Causewayed Enclo-

sure (Whitehawk Camp) was started early in the Neolithic, around 5,600 years

ago (1,000 years before the erection of the major stone circles at Stone-

henge) and appears to have been completed within one or two generations.

It consists of a series of at least four concentric rings of ditches and banks

which cover a total area of around 6 hectares. It must have been a major focal

point in the landscape with the white chalk banks clearly visibly from afar.

Gaps in the banks and ditches would have allowed ceremonial access of the

local Neolithic communities to the inner circle.

Causewayed Enclosures became very popular in Southern England about

5,700 years ago and many were constructed rapidly at around the same time

but may have only remained in use for only a few decades. However White-

hawk Camp could have been in use for up to 250 years. These monuments

appear to have acted as large arenas where communities gathered, cele-

brated and possibly worshipped and the large amounts of animal bone and

broken pottery that have been excavated from the ditches testify to the regular

feasting that must have taken place there.

Whitehawk Camp was also chosen as the final resting place for some of these

Neolithic peoples. The remains of four complete burials have been found

within the enclosure, along with bits of bone from up to another 15 individuals,

often deposited at the bottom of the ditches along with animal bone, broken

pottery and flint tools. Of the complete burials, one was of an eight-year-old

child placed at the bottom of a pit (a similar pit burial of a complete roe deer

was also found nearby) and another was of a young woman carefully buried

with the remains of her new-born child, surrounded by chalk blocks and with

two fossil sea urchins known as shepherds’ crowns, two chalk ‘pendants’ and

a joint of meat placed in her grave.

It would seem that Causewayed Enclosures were created when societies

were becoming more settled and the huge amount of labour and resources in-

volved in their construction may indicate that they were visible symbols of lo-

cal communities with their own leaders and their own identities. The fact these

enclosures went out of use so quickly must show how fast society was chang-

ing at this time.

Game: the intention of the Entrance/Exit game is to introduce pupils to the

scale of the site and to the idea that although there might have been breaks

(causeways) between ditches, these often weren’t mirrored in the banks and

palisades behind them. This would have meant that access was restricted to a

few, possibly 3, specific ‘special’ places. It’s also worth noting that with

ditches around 4-5 feet deep, banks of the same height and probably a large

palisade or fence on top, the structure would have been pretty impressive as

you approached. The design would also have prevented people from seeing

into the middle which would have added to the mystique.

b. Whitehawk - Ritual Centre ? (the Shaman)The building of Whitehawk Camp must have been a huge investment of time

and effort for what were probably smallish local farming communities. We will

never know the true meaning of Whitehawk but there is no evidence (so far)

that people lived within it. Built in the saddle of Whitehawk Hill, it’s not really

ideally suitable as a fort and the 3 possible entrances that have been located

don’t point to it being a fortified structure.

However, the amount of animal bone, pottery and stone tools found in the

ditches (based upon excavation of no more than 10% of the site) seems to

point to people gathering there, socialising and feasting and constructing the

monument bit-by-bit over a period of time. Whitehawk would have been the

perfect centre for communities to meet, settle disputes, find partners, swap

animals for breeding etc. The Camp would also have been clearly visible from

some distance away and it doesn’t seem too unreasonable to suggest that

these local Neolithic people were making a statement about their ‘ownership’ of the land. Given that during the Neolithic, land is slowly being cleared of

trees and scrub to create space for planting crops and grazing animals, it

seems to be the first time that man is really beginning to control the environ-

ment rather than living within it.

The four burials located so far and the deposited bones of up to 15 other indi-

viduals in various of the ditches might also point to Whitehawk being an im-

portant Neolithic spiritual space. Formal articulated burials are less common

in the Neolithic. It has been assumed that in a lot of cases, bodies were left

exposed to be de-fleshed and, once this process was complete, individual

bones were placed in ditches or pits (or in chambers in early long barrows) as

part of some sort of ritual. Skeleton II at Whitehawk – a young woman who

may have died in childbirth, buried with a neo-natal child, was certainly placed

within a grave (surrounded by chalk blocks) and covered over. A number of

grave goods appear to have been buried with her: an ox bone, two fossil sea

urchins called shepherds’ crowns and two chalk ‘pendants’ with holes drilled

in them. What is interesting is that even today Sussex folklore associates

shepherds’ crowns and pierced stone with good fortune, so perhaps these of-

ferings were designed to bring the deceased luck in some sort of Neolithic af-

terworld.

Game: the Shaman (Priest) is a bit of a leap of imagination but studies of

other cultures often recognise the existence of tribal/cultural shamans who

have spiritual powers and who practice medicine and perform ritual on behalf

of the community. This Burial Items game is designed to inform pupils about

the Skeleton II burial and the goods buried with her. It can also encourage a

discussion about the wider use of Whitehawk in the Neolithic as possibly

some sort of ritual centre.

c. Pottery (the Potter) and Cooking (the Cook)

The Neolithic heralds the arrival of pottery in Britain. Hand-made round bot-

tomed undecorated pots (which sit safely in a fire and have lugs for easy re-

moval) slowly in time become more profusely decorated leading to Impressed

Wares (pottery decorated with fingertip, twisted chord and bird bone) and, in

the later Neolithic, flat bottomed, more angular Grooved Wares.

The technology would have been very simple. Clay sourced locally would

have been mixed with a ‘temper’ (ie burnt crushed flint, crushed shell,

crushed pottery (‘grog’) or sand) to help the release of gas and water during

firing which would lessen the chance of the pots breaking. A simple pinch, coil

or slab method would have been used to form the pots and, as the Neolithic

progressed, different forms of decoration applied when the pots had dried a

little. The firing would have taken place in a form of bonfire – the dried pots

placed on a platform of wood on a fire, and then covered in wood and earth

leaving the fire to burn out. This method doesn’t always produce the highest

firing temperatures, which is why prehistoric pot often appears brittle, but they

are normally sufficient to convert the clay into useable pots.

The ability to make pottery would have made a massive change in the way

that Neolithic people lived. As pottery is easily breakable, it suits a more

sedentary lifestyle, but it also offers many advantages. You can use it for stor-

age of food (grain) and liquids. You can cook certain foods in a different way

and for longer periods, allowing you access to different types of food ie the

tougher cuts of meat or to certain grains and roots that may need longer cook-

ing in liquids before they become edible. In addition, with the new availability

of dairy produce, pots could be used to process milk into cheese and butter

and were useful to render fat down into oil for lighting and even as the basis

for lotions and early soaps

Games: the Pot Making and Stew Ingredients games involving the Potter and

the Cook introduce pupils to the technology of early pottery making and to get

them to think about the ways that this new technology would have been used

and would have changed people’s way of life.

d. Farming (the Herdsman and the Farmer)

The main driver for the new pastoral/farming way of life in the Neolithic is the

arrival of domesticated farm animals and cereal crops from the East. It is not

generally thought that Britain was flooded by new incoming peoples, but the

few that did arrive in Britain (having crossed the channel in some sort of boat)

brought with them a new culture and new strains of animals and grains. These

new arrivals must have encouraged the local ‘Mesolithic’ populations to

slowly relinquish their old hunter-gatherer lifestyle and adopt a totally new cul-

ture and way of life.

Oxen, goat and sheep appear in Britain, along with pigs, which may have

cross-bred with local wild boar. The oxen seem to be quite a small variety,

very different to the huge wild aurochs that hunter-gatherers would have

hunted. The sheep and goats would not have been a long haired woolly vari-

ety (there’s no sign of cloth production in early Neolithic Britain) but the do-

mesticated animals as a whole would have supplied a ready source of meat,

cheese, butter and animal fat and, of course, the skins would provide the raw

material for clothing. Analysis of food residues in pottery and of Neolithic hu-

man bones and teeth seem to point to a heavy reliance on meat and dairy

produce in the Neolithic diet with very little use of fish, which is a big change

from the previous Mesolithic lifestyle and unusual in the case of Whitehawk

given its proximity to the sea.

Cereal crops in particular provide a good source of carbohydrate to supple-

ment the Neolithic diet. Broken grain rubbing stones or ‘quern’ stones at

Whitehawk evidence the processing of grain to make bread. An imprint of a

barley grain on one of the broken pot sherds shows the availability of barley

for making stews and possibly even brewing beer. The quantity of broken pot-

tery cups found at Whitehawk also may point to there being ceremonial drink-

ing at the site.

Game: the idea of the Domestic Animals and Bread Making games is to in-

form pupils about these new food sources arriving in Britain at the beginning

of the Neolithic and to get them to think about how they affected lifestyle and

diet.

e. Stone Tools (the Flint Knapper).

The Neolithic ‘tool-kit’ becomes progressively more varied to cover the range

of work undertaken by settled farmers. Various specialist tools were made

from flint (eg scrapers, awls, fabricators), quern stones and grain rubbers

made out of sandstone (for processing wheat) and a smaller, thinner hafted

axe becomes a symbol of land clearance. These axes were often ground

smooth and polished and Neolithic peoples travelled long distances (http://

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langdale_axe_industry) and dig deep mines (http://

www.sussexarch.org.uk/saaf/harrowhill.html#arch2) to find the best quality

stone. The resulting axes were then traded widely over the length and

breadth of the British Isles.

Stone tools in various degrees of sophistication have been found as far back

as 3.4 million years ago and they were still being made well into the Bronze

Age, even though the technology to make metal tools and weapons had ar-

rived. The knapping technology used in the Neolithic is almost certainly no dif-

ferent to that used during the earlier Mesolithic and/or Upper Palaeolithic peri-

ods, the only great difference is that the variety of tools has increased. Ne-

olithic people are beginning to make more structures out of wood and need to

develop tools for new activities such as harvesting and ploughing. The new

habit of polishing axe heads not only helps prevent the axe from chipping dur-

ing use but also, depending on the stone used, produces a really beautiful fin-

ish showing the grain of the stone in its full glory. The existence of quantities

of broken polished axe heads in the archaeological redcord shows that they

were being used for practical tasks but the fact that some polished axe heads

are being traded over long distances is a more revolutionary discovery. Ne-

olithic groups are communicating over long distances but they have also dis-

covered trade !

Game: the Flint Knapper game (with video) is designed to introduce pupils to

the flint-knapping process - a skill practised throughout the Stone Age.

f. Clothing (the Leather Worker)

There is no evidence of weaving at the beginning of the Neolithic and it ap-

pears that the types of goat and sheep raised at the time are not species that

have thick coats suitable for making wool.

Modern humans and their ancestors have probably been wearing furs for over

a million years and during the Upper Palaeolithic we find evidence of bone

needles and awls which shows that modern humans are tailoring clothes for

both comfort and warmth.

Neolithic clothes would have been well-made and close-fitting and made

mostly from skins of their domesticated farm animals. There may even have

been an element of adornment and fashion involved. As a pretty good indica-

tion of what these clothes were like, see what Otzi was wearing over 5,000

years ago: http://www.iceman.it/en/clothing-equipment

Game: the Neolithic Clothing game highlights the fact that Neolithic people

(and Mesolithic and Palaeolithic before them) weren’t necessarily rough cave

people draped in skins. They wore carefully tailored clothes that were comfort-

able and functional.

g. Lifestyle (Neolithic -v- Mesolithic)

Although it was probably harder, the mobile lifestyle of the Mesolithic hunter-

gatherer was most likely healthier and had much less impact on the environ-

ment than that of the Neolithic. Their diet would have included a good mixture

of wild foods and fruits and also a good portion of fish and seafood.

Neolithic peoples start relying much more on meat, dairy products and starch

for their diet. They are in control of their own food production, so life is proba-

bly a little easier, and they are less susceptible to natural disaster and food

shortages (because they can store food). The fact that the diet is less healthy

and that Neolithic communities start living in settlements in closer contact with

each other and their animals (aiding the spread of disease) means that the life

expectancy seems to drop slightly after this lifestyle starts to take precedence.

But perhaps this is an acceptable price to pay for less hardship.

The start of larger scale land clearance in the Neolithic begins to change the

environment completely as man asserts dominance over nature. We are only

really now beginning to focus on the effect that our actions can have on cli-

mate change and the fact that we are fast using up our natural resources.

This is a sharp contrast to the harmonious lifestyle that the hunter-gatherer

would have lived.

Game: the Neolithic –v- Mesolithic game can get pupils thinking about differ-

ent lifestyles and what affect they might have on health and environment.

h. The Magic Stone

Whitehawk Camp so far hasn’t really produced much evidence of Neolithic

art. However, what has been discovered are rather enigmatic chalk blocks

and tablets deliberately scored with lines, sometimes in regular geometric pat-

terns.

These often appear to have been carefully placed in ditches, one of them

above the pit burial of the young child. They appear to be too deliberate in de-

sign just to be random scratches but we may never really know what they

mean.

Game: This magic stone is the prize for completing the Whitehawk game.

The pupils are asked to give their opinions about the purpose of these stones

and they will be shown what other players have suggested. The important

thing to remember is that no answer is wrong .