Putting Things in Place: A Material Culture Approach to the Study of Early Neolithic Houses in Britain and Ireland.

从中石器时代到新石器时代的过渡通常被理解为一个直接的进步，在此期间，移动的狩猎采集生活方式被以农业为基础的经济的永久定居点所取代。这幅新石器时代的社会图景受到来自中欧和东南欧的考古证据的显著影响，在那里，这一时期永久居住的家庭似乎已经确立（例如Hodder 1990）。考虑到驯化和向久坐过渡等过程，房屋在该地区的新石器时代叙事中表现得很强也就不足为奇了。与此同时，来自不列颠群岛的证据的特征似乎并不总是坚持这种简化的，通常被接受的新石器时代观点。虽然有证据表明这一时期存在房屋，但与欧洲其他地区相比，数据似乎相当稀少。这使得不列颠群岛的新石器时代特别有趣。虽然木材、石块和巨石遗迹与欧洲大陆一样广泛分布，但房屋的证据，以及由此延伸的定居特征，似乎在北海以西和英吉利海峡以北是非常独特的。在英国和爱尔兰，最早的可与房屋等同的新石器时代建筑是木结构。这些建筑代表了不列颠群岛新石器时代建筑的第一个例子，先于纪念性项目的发展，如堤道围栏，长手推车和通道坟墓（布拉德利，2007：42）。然而，它们的建造和使用似乎

The transition from the Mesolithic to Neolithic period is often understood as a direct progress during which a mobile hunter-gatherer lifestyle was simply replaced by permanent settlements with an agricultural based economy. This picture of Neolithic society has been significantly influenced by the archaeological evidence coming from central and SE Europe, where the presence of permanently occupied households dated to this period appears to be well established (e.g. Hodder 1990). Considering the processes such as domestication and transition to sedentarism, it is not surprising that houses appear to figure strongly in the Neolithic narratives of the region. In the meantime, the character of evidence from the British Isles does not always seem to adhere to this simplified, often routinely accepted view of the Neolithic. Although there is evidence for the presence of houses in this period, when compared with other parts of Europe, the data appears to be rather scanty. This makes the Neolithic of the British Isles particularly interesting. While the timber, earthwork and megalithic monuments are as widely distributed as on the continent, the evidence for houses, and by extension, the character of settlement appear to be quite unique when moving west of the North Sea and north of the English Channel.In Britain and Ireland, the earliest Neolithic constructions which can be equated with houses are the timber structures. These buildings represent the first examples of the Neolithic architecture in the British Isles, preceding the development of monumental projects such as causewayed enclosures, long barrows and passage graves (Bradley, 2007: 42). However, their construction and use appear to