Long Houses, Long Mounds and Neolithic Enclosures

Abstract

This paper discusses the relationship between Neolithic long houses, the burial mounds that adopt a similar ground-plan and the first earthwork en closures in Europe. It considers recent discussions of these monuments by Hodder and Sherratt and proposes a new interpretation of the relationship between these different features. It suggests that the long houses of the Linear Pottery Culture were often abandoned whilst they were structurally sound and that they were then left to decay. This may have happened when one of the occupants died. The distintegration of such houses might have provided the frame of reference for the eventual development of long mounds. On some sites ditched enclosures may have marked the positions of abandoned houses or even those of whole settlements. Like the burial mounds, such earthworks were still being built long after their prototypes had gone out of use.