Gathering Itineraries: Reconstructing Depositional Practices at an Early Neolithic Causewayed Enclosure in Eastern Britain

Abstract

Discussions of depositional practices have been widely researched and discussed in archaeological discourse (Richards and Thomas 1984; Thomas 1999, 2012; Whittle et al. 1999; Chapman 2000a; Pollard 2002; Pearce 2008; Hatzaki 2009; Beadsmoore et al. 2010; Garrow 2012; Hughes 2014; Hofmann 2020). In this thesis I will contribute to these global discussions by detailing the deposition of the pottery assemblage from the Freston causewayed enclosure (Suffolk, UK), an Early Neolithic (EN) monument dating to the 4th millennium cal. BC. Following contemporary studies of fragmented assemblages (Joyce 2015) I use the term ‘itineraries’ in an attempt to show how pot sherds can carry a multiplicity of meanings associated with various contexts, despite often being understudied due to their lack of diagnostic qualities or wholeness and seen as less useful for studies (Arnoldussen and de Vries 2019; Gaydarska 2023: 115). I first detail the pottery by employing a multi-attribute analysis to characterize the assemblage and categorize pots into distinct ware groups in order to identify particular itineraries. Further, I discuss how the ditches of a causewayed enclosure, and the enclosure itself followed diverse histories as the groups of people who built and used these spaces throughout c. 500 years of Freston’s use. To do this I examine in detail the stratigraphic sequences (i.e., phases) of the ditches. I show that depositional practices were consistent through time, and initiated by the cleaning and maintenance of these features, which were then followed by depositing both whole and fragmented objects. I propose that these depositional events mark durable memories of the lineages responsible for the digging and maintenance of ditches, and the repeated patterns of deposition representing various object itineraries of ritually-significant objects.