Is There a British Chalcolithic?

People, Place and Polity in the later Third Millennium

Michael J. Allen, Julie Gardiner, Alison Sheridan, Julie Gardiner, Alison Sheridan

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781842178973
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Archäologie

The Chalcolithic, the phase in prehistory when the important technical development of adding tin to copper to produce bronze had not yet taken place, is not a term generally used by British prehistorians and whether there is even a definable phase is debated. Is There a British Chalcolithic? brings together many leading authorities in 20 papers that address this question. Papers are grouped under several headings. 'Definitions, Issues, and Debate' considers whether appropriate criteria apply that define a distinctive period (c. 2450 - 2150 cal BC) in cultural, social, and temporal terms with particular emphasis on the role and status of metal artifacts and Beaker pottery. 'Continental Perspectives' addresses various aspects of comparative regions of Europe where a Chalcolithic has been defined. 'Around Britain and Ireland' presents a series of large-scale regional case studies where authors argue for and against the adoption of the term. The final section, 'Economy, Landscapes, and Monuments', looks at aspects of economy, land-use and burial tradition and provides a detailed consideration of the Stonehenge and Avebury landscapes during the period in question. The volume contains much detailed information on sites and artifacts, and comprehensive radiocarbon datasets that will be invaluable to scholars and students studying this enigmatic but pivotal episode of British Prehistory. Additional information originally found on included CD ROM can be downloaded here: https://books.casematepublishers.com/Is_There_a_British_Chalcolithic.pdf

1

Case and Place for the British Chalcolithic

Stuart Needham

A part of the late 3rd millennium BC, two to three centuries in duration (c. 2450/2400–2200/2150 BC), can be defined as the Chalcolithic, or Copper Age, terms that have historically been eschewed in British prehistory. However, the definition and labelling of this period are arguably essential if we are to lay terminological confusion to rest, and the growth of a reliable radiocarbon dataset eases the task of chronological definition. This contribution sets out to characterise the British Chalcolithic by focusing on key aspects of the two cultural complexes that were involved – the insular Late Neolithic Grooved Ware culture and the continentally derived Beaker culture, the latter initially brought by incomers and progressively adopted by indigenes. Early Beaker grave assemblages with distinctive goods are separated into three Association Groups, largely of temporal significance. The broad trajectory of insular ceremonial monument construction throughout the 3rd millennium BC is set out and the span of the Chalcolithic located within it. It is argued that, despite their radically different outlook on the world, these coexistent cultures interrelated with one another from the outset and thereby set in train a highly dynamic situation as disparate interests were melded into common goals. It is this dynamism as much as any other feature which characterises the British Chalcolithic.

Do we need a Chalcolithic? Why insert a period of relatively short duration into the broader trajectory of prehistory when we have managed without it for so long? One answer lies in terminologies and the way in which they affect mutual comprehension. It is no exaggeration to say that the later 3rd millennium has been dogged by terminological confusion more than any other period in British prehistory. Most prehistorians think in terms of the Late Neolithic extending down towards the end of the 3rd millennium, based on the continuation of certain ‘type fossils’ such as henges or Grooved Ware. Yet a new age of metal, Beakers and single graves was ushered in soon after the middle of that millennium and long unbroken sequences in these major cultural attributes often made it convenient to embrace their whole span as ‘Early Bronze Age’ (eg, Case 1966, 168ff). This problem was sometimes tackled head on, for example, Colin Burgess’ nuanced definition of where the Late Neolithic gave way to the Early Bronze Age (Burgess 1979). Substituting another oft-used label, the ‘Beaker period’, presents its own problems because it overlaps both the latest Neolithic and the material and sites that are accepted as classic Early Bronze Age. It is no wonder that it is difficult for anyone – whether specialist, generalist, or lay-person – to make sense of this crucial period of change with such divergent terminologies for what is the same bracket of time. It is a recipe for confusion at every deeper level of analysis and interpretation.

It is vital to emphasise at the outset, however, that if we dispense with these discordances in period name it does not exclude genuine overlap between quite different cultural manifestations. Period structures are of value precisely because they provide common templates against which the examination of cultural inter-relationships can take place. They facilitate rather than obstruct the inter-comparison of different specialist views on those relationships. And changes in prevailing interpretations of critical relationships may themselves act to modify the period framework. In this way it becomes evident that a defined period is itself always a part of the interpretative edifice; there is nothing inherent or immutable in any period definition.

The period that concerns us here is undeniably one of certain critical overlaps and thus unusual tempo-cultural complexity. It features certain cultural manifestations rooted in the previous era alongside others that are novel and yet others that anticipate important later developments. Indeed, it is this very overlap which has always excited considerable interest in the later 3rd millennium and might be more of a defining feature than any single material or behavioural attribute. Elsewhere, I likened the Chalcolithic to the European Renaissance, when sweeping change came in the arts, science, and technology, and in social, economic, and political institutions (Needham 2008). These two periods cannot be closely analogous for the obvious reason of their markedly different social contexts, but my point is that the Chalcolithic is likewise a period which saw radical change in many, perhaps most, aspects of culture. Moreover, it was dynamic and thus characterised as much by its rate of internal development as its conformity to a period ethos. This aspect of marked change might encourage some to view it as a relatively drawn out ‘transition’, but it seems to the writer that this would be a travesty for it would undervalue the dynamic qualities of certain cultural situations relative to other, more static ones.

Historical perspectives

There has never been any generally accepted Copper Age or Chalcolithic for Britain despite widespread recognition of the utility of such a stage elsewhere in Europe (Gibson 1988; but see appendix I in Burgess 1992). There was even a long period of debate on whether there was a copper-using stage preceding that of bronze in Britain and Ireland. Space only permits the briefest of reviews of the relevant literature. As long ago as the mid-19th century Daniel Wilson believed there was a ‘transitional age of copper’ (Wilson 1851, 319–20; O’Connor 2008, 119), yet later, John Evans in his seminal work was doubtful of a discrete ‘Copper Age’ in Britain or even Europe (Evans 1881, 2, 455ff).

After the turn of the 20th century Oscar Montelius was convinced that Britain and Ireland, like much of continental Europe, had a ‘Copper Age that … could also be considered as the last part of the Stone Age’ (Montelius 1909, 99). George Coffey, writing more specifically about the Irish evidence, accepted this position, although he questioned Montelius’ absolute dating (1913, 3–4). He states explicitly that ‘In Ireland the first metal used was copper’ (ibid., 6). Early metal analyses and a few key hoards were mustered to show that halberds were among the early types, alongside early styles of axe, knife and awl. A ‘Copper period’ was broadly accepted thereafter for Ireland (eg, Ó Ríordáin 1937, 305).

Meanwhile the lack of analyses for early British metalwork left Abercromby uncertain as to which objects were copper and which bronze (1912, 54) and in the following decades works by leading scholars continued to plunge straight into a full-blown bronze economy introduced from outside, even when aware that some early objects were of unalloyed copper (eg, Kendrick & Hawkes 1932, 99; Childe 1940, 112). This difference of perception between the two islands was only finally eroded by the first significant programme of metal analysis conducted under the auspices of the Ancient Mining and Metallurgy Committee of the Royal Anthropological Institute during the 1950s. Nearly 100 objects of early type, from Britain as well as Ireland, were analysed and the majority proved to be of copper without tin. This culminated in explicit discussion of the ‘metallurgy of copper’ and recognition that this was established before the subsequent introduction of bronze alloying, the latter still within the currency of Beakers (Coghlan & Case 1957, 100).

From this platform, a copper-using stage became accepted at the beginning of the ‘Bronze Age’, even though there was often uncertainty over the degree of overlap with subsequently introduced bronze metallurgy (eg, Britton 1963; Piggott 1963; Case 1966; as well as Hawkes’ unpublished but widely circulated Scheme for the British Bronze Age of 1960). For Dennis Britton, broad-butted axes and tanged flat daggers were the prime types of copper object belonging to a copper-using phase within a ‘Late Neolithic’ milieu, a cultural ascription for the earliest metalwork most often followed. Despite broad acceptance, there were still reservations about the strictness of the copper/bronze succession and a tendency for the time-span to remain compressed (Piggott 1963; Case 1966; Harbison 1969). Chronological compression arose partly from the view that the introduction of metals to Britain and Ireland could not have preceded the beginning of Reinecke’s stage A in central European chronology, a view now overturned, but even more extreme effects arose from spurious cross-correlations between early metalwork and material in Wessex culture graves. Harbison, for example, considered that even the earliest Irish metal axe type (Lough Ravel) probably overlapped with early Wessex and he could not conceive of insular metallurgical origins before c. 1750 BC (1969, 72, 82).

Although cultural context had not gone ignored, up until this point the Chalcolithic question hung entirely on the metallurgical switch from copper to bronze. Colin Burgess changed all this in the 1970s. Not only did he de-couple the more tenuous comparisons made in previous research, but he also began by subdividing copper metalwork into two stages (Burgess 1974, fig. 26, 191–2). More fundamental in conceptual terms, however, was his developed thesis which broke away from the assumption that metallurgical change was necessarily more important than other cultural change. By the end of the decade he had defined an early metal-using period – the Mount Pleasant period – to comprise not only three stages of copper use but also the succeeding first phase of bronze working (Burgess 1979; 1980). The early beginnings then envisaged for the Mount Pleasant period (cited at the time as c. 4100 BP, main intercept at around 2650 cal BC), were inspired by a few early and imprecise radiocarbon associations, and have since been tempered by much better dating evidence. But the principle Burgess set in defining periods on the basis of holistic cultural evidence is pivotal. Writing in the mid-1990s the present writer likewise put the earliest bronze metalwork in the Metal-Using Neolithic along with preceding copper metallurgy (Periods 1 & 2; Needham 1996, 123). However, the much augmented dating evidence now available has improved our understandings of alignments between different cultural manifestations and led to a modified configuration in this paper. Paradoxically, the phase of copper metallurgy can now be argued to coincide with other crucial cultural switches and Chalcolithic comes into its own as a fitting term.

Defining the Chalcolithic

The beginning of the Chalcolithic might be defined in one of two ways: either, the first appearance of the complete novelties – Beaker material culture including metalwork and Beaker ritual practices, especially burial; or alternatively, a point in time at which these became ‘significant’ (Gibson 1988, 193). Deciding between such options can be difficult. In pragmatic terms, the excellent archaeological visibility and distinctiveness of Beaker burials, Beaker material culture and the metalwork makes it easy to opt for ‘first appearance’ as the defining moment. This may actually make best sense also in historical terms. Evidence increasingly points to the first Beaker arrivals having been effectively simultaneous (in terms of archaeological chronologies) across large areas of Britain and Ireland and, given marked differences in virtually all aspects of culture (below...