EXARC Journal (Aug 2024)
Nesshenge: an Experimental Neolithic Henge with 15 Years of Exposure
Abstract
Our understanding of the planning processes involved before any Neolithic structure was physically built, from the moment when it was conceived in a person’s mind up to the point of its construction requires further investigation for which experimental archaeology can provide some direction. During the British Neolithic period, circa 4000-2500 BC, we witness the building of numerous ceremonial, domestic and funerary structures which dominated the landscape. The exact number of structures created is unknown, although it is possible that we could be looking at a figure in the thousands (Hill, 2024). If we accept that the architectural form of these structures was so designed that their appearance alone indicated the specific types of rituals or domestic usages that could be legitimately held there (see Fleming, 1973, p.189; Bradley, 2007, pp. 46-50), then accordingly, their respective designs would have been well thought out: their architecture had to meet the visual and experiential expectations of the people. Overall, one is led to consider the possibility that any form of construction was the result of deliberate thinking and that the Neolithic builders were working to specific plans or blueprints in advance of any building work. Furthermore, moving from design to physical form required setting out, a technique which implied measuring of some description. This is where we hit the major drawback to this assertion, which experimental archaeology can offer insight. The British Neolithic communities were preliterate, and they have left behind no written records or any sculptured, pictorial reliefs at their building works which could be interpreted as evidence of “architectural” schematics. Nor do we find surveyor marks or hints of measuring-notches scratched on the surfaces of those orthostats used to build their monuments. We have yet to recover any material evidence of a British Neolithic numeracy system that could have supported those prehistoric surveying and setting out techniques that must have been needed to build complex monuments such as Stonehenge. Such a difficult subject should not be ignored and experimental archaeology may offer a solution for consideration.
