A zooarchaeological re-examination of occupational fluidity between fourth millennium BC domestic and ritual sites in Yorkshire

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This proposal seeks to challenge long established concepts of Neolithic 'dwelling' as distinct to and separate from ritual monument sites during the fourth millennium BC in Yorkshire by leading with material culture assemblages rather than architectural forms. Building on a growing body of research considering ritual (Richards and Thomas 1984, Thomas 1999) and 'everyday' depositional practices (McFadyen 2007, Harris 2009, Garrow 2012), it is proposed a comparative re-examination of the site archives will allow for more refined narratives for how people lived at traditionally assigned domestic (during the fourth millennium BC in Yorkshire this includes earlier Neolithic houses and pit sites) and ritual (in the form of long and round barrows) sites, and on how it was through those practices that these sites emerged. Key to this scrutiny are the faunal assemblages from all site types. In line with the recent call for a reappraisal of our understanding of Neolithic architecture (Neolithic Study Group Autumn Meeting 2018) and the growing failure of traditionally assigned architectural labels, this proposal is perfectly positioned to apply a material culture approach to Yorkshire's fourth millennium BC ritual structures which at the time of writing present a bewildering collection of both domestic and ritual architectural elements. Inspired by trends to understand earlier Neolithic society as transient semi-mobile pastoralists (Edmonds 1999), this project wishes to investigate these sites in an 'open-minded' way, through the breaking down of architectural categories. This will permit the consideration of occupational 'fluidity' between differing sites. Through a comparative approach to sites with differing temporal activity patterns, our understanding of the processes involved in repetitive short-term actions (typically found at domestic pit sites) can be applied to barrow ditches which often remain 'open' to deposition for longer periods of time. Can barrow ditches be broken down into repetitive action too? And how would this change how we perceive occupation and the ways people went about their lives?