It's Grooved Ware Time!!

 

I promised you a post on Grooved Ware, so I'd better get on with it before I get bogged down in such delights as Cairnholy I & II, The Motte of Urr, Caerlaverock Castle and the 'Coo Palace'...

So here we go.  A whistle-stop guide to Grooved Ware...

My source for this post is a pretty up-to-date account entitled Grooved Ware in Britain and Ireland, edited by Rosamund Cleal and Ann MacSween (Neolithic Studies Group Seminar Papers 3, Oxbow, 1999), and I'll open with a quote from one of the editors:-

   'The whole phenomenon of Grooved Ware was clearly one which transcended distance' (Cleal, 1999).

That's certainly true.  Grooved Ware has been found from the Orkney Islands in the north to the south of England.  It's a Late Neolithic pottery form which is known for its wide range of decorative motifs, which include spirals and lattice work, all laid out in structured compositions.  Some of these decorative forms are illustrated below, which is based on an existing drawing featured in Brindly, 1999:-

The earliest decorative forms are thought to be influenced by motifs found on Passage Grave art, such as that seen on the Irish tombs of Newgrange and Knowth. and these early forms of Grooved Ware are believed to be contemporary with the later phases of Passage Grave use. 

Similar motifs occur on other forms of material culture, including the Knowth macehead and the chalk 'drums' from Folkton.  These motifs remained in use on Grooved Ware for several centuries after they fell out of favour in the passage graves.

Grooved Ware remained in use between 2900 and 2100 Cal BC.  Its likely place of origin was Orkney, though the finished article itself doesn't seem to have been transported over particularly long distances.  Rather, the decorative motifs appear to have been picked up, replicated and re-invented throughout the history of its use, throughout the British Isles.

Its distribution tends to be riverine and coastal, but large quantities are also found on the large ceremonial complexes such as Avebury, Stonehenge and Cranborne Chase.  Hence its traditional association with henges.  But it is not exclusively found in this context.  It also occurs in midden deposits located near river estuaries, and it is also deliberately deposited in 'domestic' or settlement contexts. 

It has also been recovered in significant quantities in close proximity to the later Early Bronze Age round barrows.  Here, it is often found redeposited in the mounds or ditches of barrows like those in the barrow cemetery near Stonehenge shown below:-

 

 

To quote a line from the Cleal & MacSween volume:  'What this concentration on sites with later barrows represents is presumably the importance of certain places in the landscape, places which saw repeated visits or use over many generations.'  This was most certainly true of the area around Stonehenge, which lies not far away from the earlier Grooved Ware 'hotspot' of Durrington Walls and which was an area which saw repeated and intensive use right into the Bronze Age.

And the demise of Grooved Ware?  Much has been made of the cultural conflict between the traditional 'Grooved Ware'-using elite and the challenge made to their authority by the intrusive 'Beaker' culture.  Beakers are found in association with individual burials which provide a contrast with the supposedly-communal monumental tradition embodied by the henges.  Beakers certainly replaced Grooved ware, but the two types overlapped by 2-300 years.  So the idea of a catastrophic rupture in the pre-existing system seems to be a little bit over-the-score.  And the re-use of Grooved Ware sacred sites by the builders of later Bronze Age monuments may suggest continuity as opposed to dislocation.

As is usual in the case of archaeology and prehistory, the jury's still out.  The whole topic of Grooved Ware, Beakers and the monuments from which they've been recovered remains open to debate.  There are, of course, numerous books upon the matter.  Once again, I'd suggest Parker Pearson's Bronze Age Britain (Batsford, 1993) as an ideal place to start, or if pottery's the thing that floats your boat, the Alex Gibson volume on The Prehistoric Pottery of Great Britain and Ireland is always a good bet.*

I'll end with another quote, which is quoted in the Cleal volume and which itself quotes one of the great names of British Archaeology, Alexander Keiller (1889-1955), who once said of Grooved Ware, that it is a type of artefact of which we' know paradoxically so much and yet understand so little'.  It's quite refreshing to think that in all this time, the world of archaeology hasn't really changed very much!!


*  Unfortunately, Gibson's volume now retails for between £47 and £100 plus pounds secondhand, so I guess a library's a better bet if you're interested in checking it out.  Oh, and don't get me started on the way in which the prices of archaeological and historical textbooks rise exponentially once they drop out of print. For the serious scholar, as opposed to the opportunistic book investor, it's really frustrating!!! 

It's Grooved Ware Time!!

 

I promised you a post on Grooved Ware, so I'd better get on with it before I get bogged down in such delights as Cairnholy I & II, The Motte of Urr, Caerlaverock Castle and the 'Coo Palace'...

So here we go.  A whistle-stop guide to Grooved Ware...

My source for this post is a pretty up-to-date account entitled Grooved Ware in Britain and Ireland, edited by Rosamund Cleal and Ann MacSween (Neolithic Studies Group Seminar Papers 3, Oxbow, 1999), and I'll open with a quote from one of the editors:-

   'The whole phenomenon of Grooved Ware was clearly one which transcended distance' (Cleal, 1999).

That's certainly true.  Grooved Ware has been found from the Orkney Islands in the north to the south of England.  It's a Late Neolithic pottery form which is known for its wide range of decorative motifs, which include spirals and lattice work, all laid out in structured compositions.  Some of these decorative forms are illustrated below, which is based on an existing drawing featured in Brindly, 1999:-

The earliest decorative forms are thought to be influenced by motifs found on Passage Grave art, such as that seen on the Irish tombs of Newgrange and Knowth. and these early forms of Grooved Ware are believed to be contemporary with the later phases of Passage Grave use. 

Similar motifs occur on other forms of material culture, including the Knowth macehead and the chalk 'drums' from Folkton.  These motifs remained in use on Grooved Ware for several centuries after they fell out of favour in the passage graves.

Grooved Ware remained in use between 2900 and 2100 Cal BC.  Its likely place of origin was Orkney, though the finished article itself doesn't seem to have been transported over particularly long distances.  Rather, the decorative motifs appear to have been picked up, replicated and re-invented throughout the history of its use, throughout the British Isles.

Its distribution tends to be riverine and coastal, but large quantities are also found on the large ceremonial complexes such as Avebury, Stonehenge and Cranborne Chase.  Hence its traditional association with henges.  But it is not exclusively found in this context.  It also occurs in midden deposits located near river estuaries, and it is also deliberately deposited in 'domestic' or settlement contexts. 

It has also been recovered in significant quantities in close proximity to the later Early Bronze Age round barrows.  Here, it is often found redeposited in the mounds or ditches of barrows like those in the barrow cemetery near Stonehenge shown below:-

 

 

To quote a line from the Cleal & MacSween volume:  'What this concentration on sites with later barrows represents is presumably the importance of certain places in the landscape, places which saw repeated visits or use over many generations.'  This was most certainly true of the area around Stonehenge, which lies not far away from the earlier Grooved Ware 'hotspot' of Durrington Walls and which was an area which saw repeated and intensive use right into the Bronze Age.

And the demise of Grooved Ware?  Much has been made of the cultural conflict between the traditional 'Grooved Ware'-using elite and the challenge made to their authority by the intrusive 'Beaker' culture.  Beakers are found in association with individual burials which provide a contrast with the supposedly-communal monumental tradition embodied by the henges.  Beakers certainly replaced Grooved ware, but the two types overlapped by 2-300 years.  So the idea of a catastrophic rupture in the pre-existing system seems to be a little bit over-the-score.  And the re-use of Grooved Ware sacred sites by the builders of later Bronze Age monuments may suggest continuity as opposed to dislocation.

As is usual in the case of archaeology and prehistory, the jury's still out.  The whole topic of Grooved Ware, Beakers and the monuments from which they've been recovered remains open to debate.  There are, of course, numerous books upon the matter.  Once again, I'd suggest Parker Pearson's Bronze Age Britain (Batsford, 1993) as an ideal place to start, or if pottery's the thing that floats your boat, the Alex Gibson volume on The Prehistoric Pottery of Great Britain and Ireland is always a good bet.*

I'll end with another quote, which is quoted in the Cleal volume and which itself quotes one of the great names of British Archaeology, Alexander Keiller (1889-1955), who once said of Grooved Ware, that it is a type of artefact of which we' know paradoxically so much and yet understand so little'.  It's quite refreshing to think that in all this time, the world of archaeology hasn't really changed very much!!


*  Unfortunately, Gibson's volume now retails for between £47 and £100 plus pounds secondhand, so I guess a library's a better bet if you're interested in checking it out.  Oh, and don't get me started on the way in which the prices of archaeological and historical textbooks rise exponentially once they drop out of print. For the serious scholar, as opposed to the opportunistic book investor, it's really frustrating!!!