a first ‘wessex 1’ date from wessex . needham et al 2010

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A first Wessex 1 date from WessexStuart Needham1, Mike Parker Pearson2, Alan Tyler3, Mike Richards4

& Mandy Jay4

The furnished barrow burials of Wessexrepresent a maturation of the Beaker riteduring the Early Bronze Age in Britain. Manyof these burials were unearthed centuries ago,when archaeology was at its most eager andinsouciant, but happily for us there wereoften a few careful recorders on hand. Thanksto their records, the modern scientists engaged

in the Beaker People Project can still follow thetrail back to a museum specimen and obtainhigh precision dates as in the case of theWessex 1 grave from West Overton in Wessexreported here.

Keywords: Britain, Brittany, Wessex, Overton Down, Bronze Age, Beaker, radiocarbon dating

The Wessex Culture

A radiocarbon date has been obtained for the first time for a grave belonging to theWessex 1 grave series and coming from Wessex itself, courtesy of the Beaker People Project(hereafter, BPP). The Wessex Culture (more latterly, Wessex grave series) was first definedby Stuart Piggott in a seminal publication (Piggott 1938). It served to recognise that funeraryaccompaniments of the mature Early Bronze Age in central southern Britain (the Wessexregion) included a new range of specialist equipment involving varied, often exotic, materials

such as amber, jet, faience, gold, tin and new levels of craftsmanship. The Wessex seriesfeatured both ornament-dominant graves, presumed to be those of females (most wererecovered by antiquarian excavations) and dagger-graves, presumed to be those of males,as well as less easily categorised graves. Piggott was able to show that the emergence of the

1 Langton Fold, North Lane, South Harting, West Sussex, GU31 5NW, UK2 Department of Archaeology, University of Sheffield, Northgate House, West Street, Sheffield, S1 4ET, UK3 22 Albert Road North, Malvern, Worcestershire, WR14 2TP, UK4 Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany; Department

of Archaeology, Durham University, South Road, Durham, DH1 3LE, UK

Received: 8 February 2010; Accepted: 24 February 2010; Revised: 3 March 2010

ANTIQUITY84 (2010): 363373 http://antiquity.ac.uk/ant/84/ant840363.htm

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A first Wessex 1 date from Wessex

Wessex Culture was linked to the appearance of similar rich graves in certain other parts ofEurope, notably Armorica (ancient Brittany) and Central Europe, and that the phenomenonin general related to the emergence of elites capitalising on inter-regional trade in metalsand exotics. He also ventured that the Wessex graves represented an elite that had imposeditself from Armorica, where very similar styles of dagger have been found, but the notion

of wholesale introduction has found less favour in more recent decades (e.g. Needham2000).

When Piggott was writing, the chronology of the Early Bronze Age in Britain and Europewas condensed and still wholly dependent on a chain of regional interconnections to thehistorically-dated cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean. It was only some while after theadvent of radiocarbon dating that it became clear that the links used for cross-dating weresometimes spurious and that the beginnings of the Early Bronze Age in Europe reached backcenturies earlier than Piggott could then have envisaged. Even so, today many importantseries of graves are still relatively poorly dated. Sometimes, as in Armorica, this is because of

the decay of critical skeletal materials in adverse environments, and sometimes this is becausediagnostic burials were mainly found by early barrow diggers who did not retain the skeletalremains, or who saw little purpose in recording them well. Fortunately, however, occasionalpioneering excavators, such as Thomas Bateman, John Thurnam and John Mortimer inBritain, kept and labelled at least the skulls. Their respective collections, well curated forover a century, now offer a rich harvest of information with the development of more refinedradiocarbon dating and a range of other new analytical techniques, not relevant to this paperbut central to the BPP (see papers in Larsson & Parker Pearson 2007: esp. Chapters 8-10;

Jayet al. in press).

Radiocarbon programmes

Over the course of the later twentieth century radiocarbon dates have accumulated in anad hoc fashion from new excavations of burial sites and have proved to be of varied qualityand sometimes disputable relevance. Some are individually good results, nevertheless, andhave helped in the building of an outline chronology (Table 1), but few have had anydirect bearing on the chronology of the Wessex Culture which therefore continues to relyon typological comparisons and association patterns. Opinion has been divided on boththe longevity of the Wessex grave series and the extent to which the distinction between

Wessex 1 and Wessex 2 first suggested by Arthur ApSimon (1954) was truly a matterof chronological sequence. The first date dealt with below is salient here. Similarly, therehas been uncertainty over whether there was significant temporal overlap between the earlystages of Wessex and the burials of the climax Beaker phase (Period 2 in Table 1) some of

which are early bronze dagger burials lacking a Beaker. The second date published belowbears on this issue.

The limitations of ad hoc dating are now beginning to be turned around with muchmore targeted dating programmes, such as that by Anna Brindley and Jan Lanting on EarlyBronze Age burial deposits (both inhumations and cremations) from Ireland (Brindley2007) and that by Alison Sheridan focusing on, inter alia, graves containing faience beads

(Sheridan & Shortland 2004). These targeted campaigns, made possible in large measure

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Stuart Needham et al.

Table 1. Summary chronology for the southern British Chalcolithic, Early Bronze Age and MiddleBronze Age.

Date range Predominant Main distinctive Simple MetalworkPeriodisation (cal BC) burial rite burial traditions description traditions

Period 1(Chalcol-ithic)

2450-2200/2150 Inhumation Beaker (pioneering phase fission horizon) Early Beaker Copper: MoelArthur

Period 2(EarlyBronzeAge)

2200/2150-1950

Inhumation Beaker/Food Vessels/flatbronze daggers(Butterwick-Mastertonseries)

Climax Beaker Earliest bronze:BrithdirMile Cross


1950-1750/1700

Cremation Food Vessels/Urns/Wessex1 (Bush Barrow series)

Early Urn Willerby


1750/1700-1550/1500

Cremation Urns/ Wessex 2(Camerton-Snowshillseries)

Middle Urn Arreton

Period 5(MiddleBronzeAge)

1550/1500-1150/1100

Cremation Deverel-Rimbury andrelated Urns

Late Urn ActonTauntonPenard

Dating is based on calibrated radiocarbon determinations. The less precise limits given allow for poor stretches of the

calibration curve. There is some simplification for example, Urns (in-urned cremation burials) may start towards the end

of Period 2 and there was a late facies of Beaker burial into Period 3.

by the development of the reliable dating of burnt bone (Lanting et al. 2001), are alreadybeginning to provide a much better temporal structure for the enormous and varied burialrecord of this period in Britain and Ireland. Such a targeted campaign had been attemptedearlier by Ian Kinnes and colleagues (Kinnes et al. 1991) for burials of Beaker tradition, butunfortunately this came before more recent improvements in radiocarbon dating techniques.For this reason, it was considered essential when setting up the BPP to budget for the high-precision dating of a good proportion (c. 40 per cent) of the skeletal remains selected forother isotopic analyses aimed at yielding information on diet, nutrition and mobility. The

tiny size of bone samples now required has helped allay curatorial concerns about irreparabledamage to valuable and sensitive human remains. The BPP, although focused primarily onBeaker type burials, has also taken in examples of earlier, later and temporally overlappingnon-Beaker burials. These provide a broader backdrop against which to assess the Beaker-specific results, and, within this remit, opportunities have been seized to sample burials

worth dating in their own right.

A pivotal grave

The Wessex 1 grave in question is the presumed primary burial in West Overton

barrow G1 (project reference SK 291), which lies close to The Sanctuary timber/stone

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Figure 1. Map of Overton Hill showing barrow West Overton G1 in relation to The Sanctuary, the barrow cemetery andother near-contemporary monuments. Avebury lies 2.5km to the north-west. Barrows are labelled with the parish-basednumbers (Grinsell 1957: nos. 1-8, West Overton parish; nos. 23-30, Avebury parish).

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circle to the south-east of Avebury in north Wiltshire (Figure 1; see Cleal 2005 fora recent review of the barrow concentration in the Avebury district). It was excavatedby Sir Richard Colt Hoares team on 2 August 1814 but, despite good publicationfor the time (Hoare 1819: 90), the identity of the associated objects had becomeuncertain before the material reached Devizes Museum in 1878. Two decades earlier,

Thurnam had randomly picked three objects known to be from quite separate sites andillustrated them as if they constituted the West Overton G1 group (Thurnam 1860:329; Davis & Thurnam 1865: section XXIII, figure on p. 7; Annable & Simpson1964: 52).

Hoare (1819: 90) described the associated artefacts as . . . a small lance, a long pin witha handle and a little celt all of brass, but there was no accompanying illustration, nor doesone survive amongst the unpublished Philip Crocker drawings in the Wiltshire HeritageMuseum, Devizes. Fortunately a friend of Hoare and fellow antiquarian, the Reverend

John Skinner, participated in the excavation and made detailed notes on the burial rite and

grave goods, including sketches; these survive in the British Library (Additional Manuscript33648: esp. folios 2, 57 & 59). Skinners records leave no doubt that two of the three objectsmentioned by Hoare may be identified in the Stourhead collection at Devizes (Figures 2 &3). Most diagnostic chronologically is a small bronze flat axehead of Willerby type (Annable& Simpson 1964: cat. no. 299), found widely across Britain in hoards and as single finds,but only rarely placed in graves, most famously at Bush Barrow (Wilsford G5, Wiltshire;Needham 1988).

The second extant object is a crutch-headed bronze pin (Annable & Simpson 1964: cat.no. 360; Rohl & Needham 1998: 125, fig. 26, no. 56), an infrequent type characteristic ofthe mature Early Bronze Age, but found in graves of both Wessex 1 and 2 series. Skinners

sketch of the third and still missing bronze object shows it to be a tanged knife with aleaf-shaped blade and apparently a single off-set rivet through its broad tang. This appearsto belong to a broad-tanged subset of a series of small tanged blades of the Early Bronze

Age which are variously termed knives or razors. Skinner in fact adds a fourth object notmentioned by Hoare: a portion of deers horn, measuring a foot (British Library AdditionalManuscript 33648, folio 2); this object also appears with the other three in a plan of thegrave group (Figure 4).

The burial was in a large oblong grave cut into the chalk beneath the large mound andwas evidently enclosed in a tree-trunk coffin (Hoare 1819: 90). The body, identified as that

of an elderly male of tall stature, was lying on its left side with flexed legs and head to theeast facing south (Figure 4). Skinner shows the four objects in a diamond formation a foot(300mm) in front of the face; the right hand was between the group and the individualsface.

Hoare and his team re-buried the skeletal material unearthed in the many barrows theyopened, but John Thurnams interests in the craniology of the ancient British led him to re-excavate some of the Cunnington/Hoare barrows to retrieve the skulls and West OvertonG1 was among them (excavation 1854; Thurnam 1860: 329; Davis & Thurnam 1865:section XXIII, pl. 11). Thurnams collection passed ultimately to the Duckworth collection,Cambridge University, thus allowing thorough re-evaluation and sampling in the context

of the BPP.

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Figure 2. Revd John Skinners watercolour sketches of the three bronze objects from West Overton G1. c The British LibraryBoard, Add. 33648, f.59. Scale 100%.

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Result and assessment

The radiocarbon measurement obtained from bone collagen is 2020-1770 cal BC(95% probability) or 1950-1780 cal BC (68%) (3550+35 BP; SUERC-26203 (GU-19959)). While this can be claimed to be the first direct date from Wessex

Figure 3. The West Overton G1 objects extant in WiltshireHeritage Museum, Devizes. Drawings Stuart Needham.Scale 50%.

for a grave with a diagnostic Wessex 1artefact the axehead a few other findshave already begun to chart the absolutedating of this grave series and, moregenerally, of Period 3 to which they areassigned. In particular, the cremation burialat Breach Farm, Llanbleddian, Glamorgan,

which contained inter alia a very similarsmall axehead, has been dated recently onthe cremated bone to 2020-1690 cal BC(95%), 1920-1755 cal BC (68%) (3520+60 BP; GrA-19964; Brindley 2007: 367;Needham & Woodward 2008: 51). Twoburials from Ireland with daggers of

Armorico-British type or inspiration, fromTopped Mountain, Co. Fermanagh andGrange, Co. Roscommon, have yieldedcomparable dates (Brindley 2007: 85, 125;Needham & Woodward 2008: 50).

Back in central Wessex, a grave from Norton Bavant Borrow Pit, Wiltshire, includes adagger combining features of this style with others from the Camerton-Snowshill type foundin Wessex 2 graves which are believed to belong to Period 4. This potentially transitionalgrave has been dated on the unburnt human bone to 1870-1620 cal BC (95%), 1750-1645 cal BC (68%) (3410+35 BP; BM-2909; Needham 1996: 132). These and otherless directly relevant radiocarbon dates give a good confirmation that graves of the Wessex1 series, allied graves and metalwork of the Willerby tradition all key constituents indefining Period 3 date within the first quarter of the second millennium cal BC. Thevery few radiocarbon-dated graves diagnostic of Wessex 2 (Camerton-Snowshill series) doindeed indicate a later era (Burleigh et al. 1976), but as early-run determinations, sometimeson material of uncertain origin, they are of limited value in relation to the more precisechronologies that are now emerging.

In addition to the issue of Wessex grave chronology, the West Overton date broaches asimilar problem relating to Early Bronze Age axeheads. Despite being the most abundantmetalwork type of the period, sequencing axeheads has depended on typology in conjunction

with critical associations particularly in hoards. However, their absolute chronology hasremained insecure because of their virtual exclusion from graves and other contexts viablefor dating. As it happens, it was possible to select another rare axe-containing grave as partof the BPP (project reference SK 213), the axehead this time being of the Aylesford type

(class 4B in Needham et al. 1985) a southern British type belonging to the preceding

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Figure 4. Revd John Skinners watercolour sketch of the disposition of the body and the grave goods in West Overton G1; inaddition to the three bronzes, the portion of deers horn is shown. c The British Library Board, Add. 33648, f.57).

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Figure 5. Grave group from Shuttlestone Plantation, Parwich, Derbyshire. Weston Park Museum, Sheffield. Drawings:Stuart Needham. Scale 50%.

typological stage of late Period 2. A deep grave under a barrow at Shuttlestone Plantation,Parwich, Derbyshire, contained a presumably crouched inhumation of a man in the primeof life and of fine proportions laid on his left side (Bateman 1861: 34); he was accompanied

by remains of skin clothing or a shroud, ferns, a bronze dagger, a jet bead and a circular flint(lost) in addition to the axehead (Figure 5; Bateman 1861: 34-5; Smith 1957: GB.19; Vine1982: 221). Metalwork of the Mile Cross tradition, which includes Aylesford axeheads, hasbeen placed close to the turn of the third/second millennia BC (Needham & Woodward2008: 7, fig. 3). The radiocarbon date is in reasonable accord: 2150-1960 cal BC (94%),2140-2020 cal BC (68%) (3680+30 BP (SUERC-26172 (GU-19924)).

Conclusion

The new radiocarbon results presented here, two of many more generated by the BPP,illustrate how the project is poised to clarify further the chronological structure of theChalcolithic and Early Bronze Age in Britain. In the BPP and other recent programmes,the matter of obtaining high-quality radiocarbon dates in some quantity is seen as essentialunderpinning. This is not just for the sake of getting chronologies as accurate and detailed aspossible; more refined chronologies should serve to specify much better the interrelationshipsbetween given ritual practices and will thus directly affect interpretation of the social realitiesof the period. The BPP results themselves will inevitably be loaded towards the early partof the total burial sequence and there remains a pressing need for more concerted datingcampaigns on Wessex and indeed other graves, such as those accompanied by Food Vessels.

Wessex should not be considered paramount, but it is essential that we can place it reliably

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in order to refine our understanding of the British sequence and implied social changes and,moreover, to clarify the much vaunted continental connections.

Technical Note on radiocarbon methodology

The dates were obtained on bone collagen extracted at the Max Planck Institute forEvolutionary Anthropology laboratories in Leipzig, using standard procedures whichincluded the use of ultrafiltration (Brown et al. 1988). The pre-treated collagen extracts

were then dated at the SUERC AMS facility. The 13C values for SK 291 and SK 213, asobtained from the Leipzig facility, were -20.9%o for both samples indicating that there wasno marine resource consumption by these individuals. The calibrations given are based onOxCal v. 3.10 and IntCal04 (Bronk Ramsey 2001; 2005; Reimer et al. 2004).

Acknowledgements

The Beaker People Project is funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council and led by one of theauthors (MPP). We are grateful to the British Library for permission to publish Figures 2 and 4 and for helpin accessing Skinners manuscripts. The late Ken Annable facilitated study of the objects in Devizes Museum,and Pauline Beswick, those in Sheffield Museum. The sampling of skeletal material from West Overton G1and Shuttlestone Plantation were facilitated respectively by Mercedes Okumura, Leverhulme Centre for HumanEvolutionary Studies, Cambridge University (Duckworth Collection) and Gill Woolrich, Weston Park Museum,Sheffield (Bateman Collection). Andrew Chamberlain gave vital reassurance that the skeletal remains sampledcorresponded with those described in the original accounts.

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