Neolithic Pilgrimage? Rivers, mobility and monumentality in the land between Avebury and Stonehenge: The Vale of Pewsey project

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The Late Neolithic period represents a key stage in our human history sitting as it does on the threshold between the Stone Age and Bronze Age. At this time a suite of cultural and ideological changes swept through Britain, including the introduction of the first metalwork. These cultural developments also involved the rapid construction of enormous ceremonial monuments, indicating a period of intense religiosity. Nowhere in the British Isles is this more evident today than within the Wessex landscape, with the construction of the major monuments at Avebury, Stonehenge and Silbury Hill.This project will take a new perspective on understanding the prehistoric landscape of the Wessex region, pioneering a holistic approach that uses connectivity and mobility as central themes, challenging archaeology's traditional focus upon place (Leary 2014; Kador & Leary in prep). The project will consider Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age monuments as nodes in a ceremonial and pilgrimage nexus. It will focus on the sacred importance of water and the use of rivers as route-ways linking ritual and ceremonial architecture. It appraises these monuments as interrelated through their connections to the river, representing a linked chain of cult centres that people journeyed to, and therefore takes the river valley and associated monuments as a single entity for study. This contrasts with the dominant views of the area that focus on just Stonehenge (for example Darvill and Wainwright 2009) or the interaction and duality between Stonehenge and Durrington Walls (such as Parker Pearson and Ramilisonina 1998 or Parker Pearson 2012), and moves interpretation on from discussions of centralised social polities and fixed notions of power.The project, led by the University of Reading in collaboration with the Wiltshire Museum and English Heritage, will examine the internationally important prehistoric landscape between Avebury and Stonehenge, linking for the first time the spatially separate components of the same World Heritage Site. The work will focus on the upper reaches of the River Avon in the Vale of Pewsey where recent aerial photographic work has mapped a plethora of prehistoric monuments and ceremonial sites. These include Marden henge - a large Neolithic complex with extraordinary internal features, including a now demolished huge mound, an internal henge, and a unique recently discovered Neolithic ritual building with associated evidence of feasting.The project will take place over three fieldwork seasons (2015 to 2017), followed by a full programme of analysis, archiving and publication (2018 to 2019). It will comprise investigations on various nested scales. These will include detailed, targeted, open area excavations aimed at understanding activities undertaken within and between the monuments, and a programme of test pitting to discern linkages between them and the River Avon. A programme of coring, test pitting and fieldwalking along the river and in the wider landscape will investigate the environmental history of the Vale, testing hypotheses of natural and human environmental disturbance in areas where monument complexes developed.The project will form part of the University of Reading's field school, a credit-bearing undergraduate module; the running and infrastructure for which will be funded separately by the University. Summary assessment reports will be produced at the end of each season and the Integrated Archaeological Database will be made available via the project website. The major academic output for the project will be a substantial monograph. A synthesis of the work will be published in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society. Other outputs will include regular updates on the project website, including fieldwork summaries, blogs, site diaries, and finds reports. There will also be an annual exhibition in the Wiltshire Museum, and a public symposium on the archaeology of the Vale of Pewsey.