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The Alluvial Geoarchaeology of the Upper River Kennet in the Avebury Landscape: a Monumental Transformation of a Stable Landscape

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

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Authors

CAREY, CHRIS 
ALLEN, MICHAEL J 
TOMS, PHILIP 
WOOD, JAMIE 

Abstract

jats:pGeoarchaeological research as part of the AHRC funded Living with Monuments (LwM) project investigated the upper Kennet river system across the Avebury World Heritage landscape. The results demonstrate that in the early–mid-Holocene (jats:italicc.</jats:italic> 9500–1000 jats:scbc</jats:sc>) there was very low erosion of disturbed soils into the floodplain, with floodplain deposits confined to a naturally forming bedload fluvial deposit aggrading in a shallow channel of inter-linked deeper pools. At the time of the Neolithic monument building in the 4th–early 3rd millennium jats:scbc</jats:sc>, the river was wide and shallow with areas of presumed braid plain. Between jats:italicc.</jats:italic> 4000 and 1000 jats:scbc</jats:sc>, a human induced signature of soil erosion became a minor component of fluvial sedimentation in the Kennet palaeo-channel but it was small scale and localised. This strongly suggests that there is little evidence of widespread woodland removal associated with Neolithic farming and monument building, despite the evidently large timber requirements for Neolithic sites like the West Kennet palisade enclosures. Consequently, there was relatively light human disturbance of the hinterland and valley slopes over the jats:italiclongue durée</jats:italic> until the later Bronze Age/Early Iron Age, with a predominance of pasture over arable land. Rather than large Neolithic monument complexes being constructed within woodland clearings, representing ancestral and sacred spaces, the substantially much more open landscape provided a suitable landscape with areas of sarsen spreads potentially easily visible. During the period jats:italicc.</jats:italic> 3000–1000 jats:scbc</jats:sc>, the sediment load within the channel slowly increased with alluvial deposition of increasingly humic silty clays across the valley floor. However, this only represents small-scale landscape disturbance. It is from the Late Bronze Age–Early Iron Age when the anthropogenic signal of human driven alluviation becomes dominant and overtakes the bedload fluvial signal across the floodplain, with localised colluvial deposits on the floodplain margins. Subsequently, the alluvial archive describes more extensive human impact across this landscape, including the disturbance of loessic-rich soils in the catchment. The deposition of floodplain wide alluvium continues throughout the Roman, medieval, and post-medieval periods, correlating with the development of a low-flow, single channel, with alluvial sediments describing a decreasing energy in the depositional environment.</jats:p>

Description

Keywords

4301 Archaeology, 43 History, Heritage and Archaeology

Journal Title

Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0079-497X
2050-2729

Volume Title

Publisher

Cambridge University Press (CUP)