10th September 2011, 04:06 PM
For an indication of how ephemeral Neo structures can be see that site in Bridlington that was published recently, not in office so can't remember title/author of monograph (A place by the Sea, or sonething like that). Site I'm on at the moment has a strip of preserved Neo ground surface across it (joys of upstanding earthworks) and its really quite a revelation as to how much lower the rest of the site to either side is, and this is on a level gravel terrace! Where did all the landscape go in the last 5000 years? (hopefully supported shortly by a suite of OSL and C14 dates, before PP spots another nit-picking opportunity) - so I'm with Jack, mostly. A suspiciously high percentage of Neo 'houses' have been recorded under later earthwork monuments. Sites like Balbridie have benefitted from particularly deeply-dug structural features...but I've been wondering what happens when you strip away the shallower parts (the external wall-trench) - you end up with something looking in plan almost exactly like the mysterious series of parallel short linear cropmarks forming the north-east end of the Thornborough postpit-alignment, so maybe Balbridie isn't as 'domestic' as Jack's suggesting, particularly since large buildings like that do not seem to represent the norm in British Neolithic vernacular architecture. I've got half a dozen neolithic 'houses' lurking in my backlogue, and they're all pathetic little huts or, in a couple of cases, suggested as being more tent-like structures