Living with Monuments: life and cultural landscape between the 4th and 2nd millennia BC in the Avebury region, Wiltshire

新石器时代和早期青铜器时代（EBA）的伟大仪式和葬礼纪念碑吸引了相当多的学术界和公众的关注，但更广泛的社会世界的日常生活，生存和定居，他们创造仍然知之甚少，往往难以捉摸。参观巨石阵和埃夫伯里等遗址的游客经常会问，建造和使用这些纪念碑的人是如何生活的，住在哪里。这些问题都不容易回答。埃夫伯里巨石阵、巨石阵和锡尔伯里山等建筑的规模和持久性与新石器时代和EBA时期（公元前3800-1500年）日常活动的短暂性形成鲜明对比，因此，这些时期社会生活的考古叙述通常围绕着“正在进行”的高度可见的纪念碑进行。“与纪念碑一起生活”项目旨在通过研究以其史前仪式纪念碑而闻名的景观中的定居记录和相关活动来纠正这种平衡：威尔特郡的上肯尼特山谷，位于巨石阵和埃夫伯里世界遗产（WHS）的埃夫伯里组成部分。该项目旨在确定新石器时代和EBA时期该地区核心地区人类住区的范围、规模、密度、特征和速度；人们在景观中的生活与其逐渐纪念性之间的关系，就纪念性建筑如何组织聚落（例如吸引人们进入该地区）而言，以及聚落如何将历史传授给可能导致其随后转变为纪念性空间的地方；并更好地定义这些活动发生的环境。另一个次要的问题是了解这些景观中的生命是如何与某些自然特征联系起来的，我们知道这些自然特征受到了特别的关注，比如独特的砂岩分布。为了探讨这些问题，将在一系列地形地带的一系列地点进行一项有针对性的实地考察方案。有些是新石器时代定居的已知地点；其他被怀疑在冲积山和洪水沉积物下有良好沉降和环境证据的地点；还有那些看起来是从定居点发展而来的古迹。这项工作将涉及各种各样的人工制品的网格表面收集，以绘制活动痕迹，地球物理调查，沉积物取心，测试点蚀和全面挖掘。处理这个日期的日常活动留下的短暂痕迹将需要新的方法来调查、理论化和解释证据；这个项目试图迎接一个挑战，以开发可以应用于其他地方的方法。在与Alexander Keiller博物馆的合作下，该项目将整合、分析并首次全面出版该地区燧石散落地点的早期现场工作。这将包括撰写霍尔盖特和托马斯在20世纪80年代初开展的工作计划，在20世纪90年代和21世纪初由国民信托基金和英国遗产在耕地恢复之前进行的工作计划，以及20世纪初业余考古学家的收藏计划。与国民信托的合作和专门的外展方案将确保将这项工作的结果传达给当地和国际利益相关者社区。这项工作还将为未来易碎的定居点痕迹的管理提供信息。该项目将由南安普顿大学和莱斯特大学的研究人员指导，并由国民信托基金会、根特大学和艾伦环境考古学院的同事提供支持。它将建立在埃文斯和惠特尔之前对该地区后冰川环境历史和新石器时代考古的工作基础上，以及长石项目（1999-2003年）和更广泛的WHS范围内的巨石阵河畔项目（2004-2009年）。

The great ceremonial and funerary monuments of the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (EBA) have attracted considerable academic and public attention, but the wider social worlds of routine, subsistence and settlement within which they were created remain poorly understood and often elusive. Visitors to sites such as Stonehenge and Avebury often ask how and where the people who constructed and used these monuments lived. These have not been easy questions to answer. The scale and permanence of constructions like the Avebury henge, Stonehenge and Silbury Hill contrast markedly with the ephemeral character of everyday activity during the Neolithic and EBA (c.3800-1500BC), and for this reason archaeological narratives of social life during these periods have often been crafted around 'goings on' at highly visible monuments.The Living with Monuments Project seeks to redress the balance by examining the record of settlement and related activities within a landscape that is famed for its prehistoric ceremonial monuments: the Upper Kennet Valley, Wiltshire, in the Avebury component of the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site (WHS). The project aims to identify the extent, scale, density, character and tempo of human settlement in the core of the region during the Neolithic and EBA; the relationship between people's living within the landscape and its progressive monumentalisation, in terms of how monument building may have structured settlement (e.g. drawing people into the region), and the way that settlement imparted a history to places that could lead to their subsequent conversion into monumental spaces; and to better define the environment within which such activity took place. A subsidiary concern is to understand how life within this landscape was lived in relation to certain natural features which we know received especial attention, such as the distinctive spreads of sarsen stone.In order to explore these issues, a programme of targeted fieldwork will be undertaken on a series of sites in a range of topographic zones. Some are known locations of Neolithic settlement; others locations where good settlement and environmental evidence is suspected to be preserved under hillwash and flood sediments; and at the sites of monuments that look to have developed out of settlement locations. This work will variously involve gridded surface collection of artefacts to map traces of activity, geophysical survey, coring of deposits, test pitting and full excavation. Dealing with the ephemeral traces that routine activity of this date leaves will require new ways of investigating, theorising and interpreting the evidence; a challenge this project seeks to embrace, with the view of developing approaches which can then be applied elsewhere.In collaboration with the Alexander Keiller Museum, the project will integrate, analyse and bring to full publication for the first time earlier episodes of fieldwork on flint scatter sites in the area. This will include writing up programmes of work undertaken by Holgate and Thomas in the early 1980s, by the National Trust and English Heritage in advance of arable reversion in the 1990s and 2000s, and by early 20th-century collections by amateur archaeologists. Collaboration with the National Trust and a dedicated outreach programme will ensure the results of this work are communicated to stakeholder communities local to international. The work will also inform future management of fragile settlement traces.The project will be directed by researchers from the Universities of Southampton and Leicester, supported by colleagues from the National Trust, Ghent University and Allen Environmental Archaeology. It will build upon the work undertaken previously by Evans and Whittle on the region's post-glacial environmental history and Neolithic archaeology, and that of the Longstones Project (1999-2003) and, within the wider WHS, the Stonehenge Riverside Project (2004-2009).