Houses, Lifecycles and Deposition on Middle Bronze Age Settlements in Southern England

Abstract

This paper explores how the lifecycles of Middle Bronze Age settlements were intimately related at both a practical and metaphorical level to the lifecycles of their inhabitants. Many settlements of this date appear to have been single-generational sites. Building sequences and other changes in the use of settlement space can be understood within a framework that explores how the demographic, social, and economic circumstances of a site's occupants changed over time. However, the lifecycle of the settlement was not only related to that of its occupants in practical terms; each was also a symbolic representation of the other. For example, such acts as the deposition of whole quernstones or animal burials in pits and ditches may have been carried out at critical points in the lifecycle of a settlement, its structures, and its inhabitants. The notion that settlements had lifecycles introduces the possibility of anthropomorphic symbolism in house architecture, a suggestion that may help to explain the presence of a standardised house form during the Middle Bronze Age. Yet, despite the formality of the architecture, there was considerable diversity in how space was actually used within the round-house. Likewise, variability in other aspects of these settlement sites suggests that, although cultural ideals may have existed, in practice the developmental cycle of each household group depended on a particular set of social and material circumstances as well as on household members' commitment to communal tradition.