Antiquity 43

Enough 14C dates (twenty-four from nine sites, all corrected for best half-life) are now available to suggest a provisional sequence for Scottish regional population groups from 700 BC to about AD 500. On this basis, the Abernethy Culture, represented by timberlaced forts like Finavon and thick gritty pottery, jet rings and armlets, dates from at least 7th cent BC. Covesea and Hallstatt finds in E Scotland suggest a N German stimulus for this culture, which became homogeneous and widespread, changing little apart from the introduction of iron in a late phase. Palisaded settlement sites in the Tyne/Forth province -the Hownam Culture - yield few artefacts, but their 14C dates start in 7th cent BC. For the Atlantic Cultures, 14C dates from Vaul (Tiree) of 6th-5th cents BC support apparent connections with French Urnfield pottery. Later on there are links with English pottery and bronzes of Iron A and B. Although the Atlantic pottery styles diversified, they remained interconnected by their association with brochs. Some 14C dates are also available for Norse and medieval material.

Did animal and plant husbandry have a Near Eastern source, and were they relatively sudden introductions which caused early man to change from a nomadic to a settled existence? Closer investigation of the concepts and evidence shows that symbiotic relationships between man/animals/plants may have existed far earlier, and in far more widespread areas, than previously supposed. The changes in animal and plant stock usually attributed to "domestication" could have come about in several other ways. The supposed "wild" proto/types of animals and cereals which survive today in the Near East and Asia might be feral domesticates; and there is much evidence for the initial domestication of dog, cattle and pig, perhaps also sheep and goat, elsewhere than in the Near East. Wheat and barley provide the best evidence for Near Eastern origins, but Anatolia and E Europe may also have supported early man/plant associations. The Near East was probably less an innovating centre for domestication than a fruitful contact zone between sub-tropical, temperate and colder climates which had long supported appropriately different forms of symbiotic relationship (see also 69/441).

Extensive excavations outside the Silchester Gate revealed a large La Tène III cemetery, Roman and Saxon burials and EIA and RB settlement traces. The main discovery was of 463 La Tène III burials, all but eighteen were cremations usually in urns. Over 700 pots and 220 brooches were recovered. Several rectangular ditches enclosed plots containing satellite burials around a richer central grave. This cemetery was in use from c 15 BC to the Conquest; some pottery preceding it represents the earliest material so far found at Verulamium. The Roman settlement was occupied from Flavian or earlier times to mid-2nd cent, presumably when the town wall was built. A few Roman inhumations and cremations were found. A Saxon cemetery contained thirty-two rather poorly furnished graves, of too late a date to provide a link with the end of the Roman town. Wheeler's ditch still remains obscure in purpose. Coin histograms of five Verulamium sites are compared, and an outline scheme is presented for subdividing RB coinage into archaeologically and numismatically significant periods.

Early Neolithic material occurs in quantity below the inner rampart; thermoluminescence dating of pottery suggests a date for this settlement, which may have been embanked, of 3300 + 800 BC. The earliest Iron Age defence, Rampart A (dated to Hengistbury A phase) was of clay and small stones in a timber frame implying massive effort and deforestation. Over its collapsed remains was built Rampart B, of stone and timber in a modified Preist construction. Ramparts C and D are badly collapsed. Rampart E, the post-Roman defence, was very crudely built in timber and stone. At the SW entrance the Aethelredan gate was excavated; remnants of the arch responds and pivot stone showed how completely the burh defences had been slighted. A crude rebuilding had followed some time afterwards. Inside the hillfort, two Iron Age round houses, and a rectangular timber ?shrine surrounded by burials of animal skulls, were excavated, as were traces of a Roman military building and part of a post-Roman structure.

Undoubtedly most Neolithic pottery was made and used locally, but for Hembury "f" wares the examination of thin sections indicates only one possible source, the gabbro outcrops of the Lizard Head in Cornwall. This rock weathers to a clay which thin sections show to be mineralogically identical with the pottery. The Hembury "f" wares, together with similar pottery recognised long ago at Maiden Castle, Windmill Hill and Robin Hood's Ball, were previously thought to originate near Dartmoor, but the S Cornish source now indicated involves distribution over nearly 200 miles. The pottery is restricted typologically to the fine, thin-walled, usually burnished wares, in two main forms - simple open bowls (often with trumpet lugs) and carinated bowls. These look like specialist products in any case, especially when compared with, for example, the crude local copies of trumpet lugs. The distribution is similar to that of the early Cornish axes and presumably used the same routes. The date of this pottery could be as early as 3300-3000 BC.