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时代（EBA）的伟大仪式和葬礼纪念碑吸引了相当多的学术和公众的关注，但更广泛的社会世界的日常生活，生存和定居，他们创造了仍然知之甚少，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，以及他们生活在哪里。这些都不是容易回答的问题。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大不列颠及北爱尔兰联合王国时期日常活动的短暂性形成了鲜明对比（约公元前3800 - 1500年），由于这个原因，考古学对这些时期社会生活的叙述往往围绕着在高度可见的纪念碑上的“活动”进行。在一个以史前仪式纪念碑而闻名的景观中的定居和相关活动的记录：威尔特郡的上肯尼特山谷，巨石阵和埃夫伯里世界遗产（WHS）的埃夫伯里部分。该项目旨在查明新石器时代和欧亚大陆时期该地区核心地区人类住区的范围、规模、密度、特点和克里思;人们在景观中的生活与其渐进的纪念性建筑之间的关系，即纪念性建筑如何结构化定居点（例如，吸引人们进入该地区），以及定居赋予地方历史的方式，这些历史可能导致它们随后转变为纪念性空间;并更好地界定这种活动发生的环境。另一个关注点是了解这一景观中的生命是如何与我们所知道的受到特别关注的某些自然特征相联系的，例如萨尔森石的独特分布。为了探讨这些问题，将在一系列地形带的一系列地点进行有针对性的实地考察。其中一些是已知的新石器时代定居点地点;其他地点疑似在山体冲刷和洪水沉积物下保存了良好的定居点和环境证据;以及看起来是从定居点发展起来的纪念碑遗址。这项工作将涉及不同的人工制品网格表面收集，以绘制活动痕迹，地球物理调查，矿床取芯，测试坑和全面挖掘。处理这个日期的日常活动留下的短暂痕迹将需要新的调查方法，理论化和解释证据;这是一个挑战，该项目寻求拥抱，与发展的方法，然后可以应用于其他地方的观点。在与亚历山大凯勒博物馆合作，该项目将整合，分析并首次全面出版关于该地区燧石散落地点的早期实地考察。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，国家信托基金和英国遗产在20世纪90年代和21世纪初的耕地回归之前，以及20世纪初业余考古学家的收藏。与国家信托基金的合作和一个专门的外联方案将确保这项工作的成果传达给当地乃至国际的利益攸关方社区。这项工作还将为未来管理脆弱的定居痕迹提供信息。该项目将由来自南安普顿和莱斯特大学的研究人员指导，并得到来自国民信托基金、根特大学和艾伦环境考古学的同事的支持。它将建立在埃文斯和惠特尔以前对该地区的冰川后环境历史和新石器时代考古学，以及长石项目（1999-2003年）和更广泛的WHS内的巨石阵滨江项目（2004-2009年）的工作基础上。

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).