SITE AND SCENE: EVALUATING THE CONTEXT OF VISIBILITY IN MONUMENT PLACEMENT DURING THE NEOLITHIC AND BRONZE AGE OF WEST PENWITH, CORNWALL ENGLAND. A Thesis Submitted to the Committee on Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Faculty of Arts and Science TRENT UNIVERSITY Peterborough, Ontario, Canada © Copyright by Chelsee Arbour 2011 Anthropology M.A. Graduate Program May 2011 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington OttawaONK1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-82179-4 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-82179-4 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. 1*1 Canada ABSTRACT Site and Scene: Evaluating the context of visibility in monument placement during the Neolithic and Bronze Age of West Penwith, Cornwall England Chelsee Arbour Landscape archaeology has often been divided into two seemingly opposing ways of assessing the use of space in the past; empirical analysis largely conducted using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and experiential assessments of landscape derived from phenomenological frameworks of field survey. This study combines these two approaches in order to assess whether visibility from and/or to sites was a significant factor in monument location choice during the Neolithic and the Bronze Age of West Penwith, England. Viewsheds from sites for both periods as well as for a sample of random points generated in GIS, supplemented with descriptive observations taken in the field, were used to assess various components of visibility in this area; such as visibility to the sea, to prominent topographic features, to certain landuse types (i.e. farmland), as well as between monument types. It is suggested that monuments in the Neolithic were built to reference, and be a part of, the sacred landscape, as well as to refer to and memorialized community relations both in West Penwith and across the Irish Sea. Monuments in the Bronze Age appear to have a strong focus to land in West Penwith, as well as consistent views to other monuments. It was suggested that this shift represents an emphasis on communities and ancestors within West Penwith as opposed to earlier relations across the sea. Keywords: Landscape archaeology, Geographical Information Systems (GIS), phenomenological framework, Neolithic, Bronze Age, Monuments, Viewsheds, Visibility, West Penwith, England. II ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are several individuals who contributed to the completion of this thesis. First and foremost, thank you to my thesis supervisor, Dr. James Conolly. Your direction, patience and feedback were without a doubt instrumental in the completion of this thesis. To my supervisory committee, Dr. Eugene Morin, Dr. Marit Munson and Dr. Susan Jamison, thank you for all of your advice throughout the writing of this thesis. Your feedback helped shape my project into what it has become. To Dr. Leigh Simmons, my external examiner, thank you for agreeing to sit on my community at such short notice. The comments and feedback I received from each of you has provided me with the strength to write in a way that I thought was not allowed within academia. Thank you to Kristine Williams for all of your help organizing my field survey, as well as for your tireless patience and unfailing support throughout this process. To Bryn Tapper, thank you for everything. Your willingness to read and provide constructive criticism on multiple chapters and drafts helped me stay grounded throughout the writing of this thesis. Your love and support is a gift, one that I treasure beyond anything else. Thank you to the staff of the Cornwall Council Historic Environment Service for the welcoming and critical local perspective. Special thanks to Bryn Tapper, for all of your hard work and diligence, Jane Powning for your kindness and foresight, Andy Jones for your willingness to discuss many of the issues that are critical to this thesis and Steve Hartgroves for encouraging to me come over in the first place. Thank you to Cheryl Straffon-editor of mavmevron, Jim Woods, Mary Martin, John Tobin, Neville Wherry, Tim Osborne, Bernard and Julian Ellis, Mr. Rodda, Neville iii Noye, Bruce MacTurk and Elema Hathway, Gill Plumbley, Jesse Harasta, Paul Kavanagh, Nuala Henderson, Chris Nelson, Katie Wonnacott, Richard Lord for all of your understanding and aid in the completion of my field survey. Thanks to Peter Bikoulis for your tireless council and assistance, to Jeff Dillane, Zack Knox and Chris Carleton for your guidance and recommendations on GIS, and Celise Chilcote for your feedback on the final chapter of this thesis. Thank you to Miranda Brunton for all of your guidance on how to format images and to Elspeth Ready for discussing statistical methods with me. To Vicky Chalmers, Katie Valincourt, Jennifer Hawbolt, Mandy Till, Azar Jazistani, Julie Carter, and of course the gaggle, thank you for your unwavering friendship and inexhaustible humor. Thank you as well to all of my peers for your generous advice and support. Special thanks to Catriona Robertson, Ian Lewis, Liz Thurston, Matt Mills, Celise Chilcote, Melissa Wallace, Miranda Burton and Elspeth Ready. Without Sunday dinners, random Belly-Stone insanity and FireFly/movie nights, my ability to laugh in the face of adversity would never have manifest. Last but not least, thank you to my father, Richard Arbour, and my family. You have always supported me and your love will always guide me through. I left Canada in order to understand how people in the past organized and understood the landscape of West Penwith and their world at large. I came back to Canada with less insight and more questions than before I left, but through journey I also discovered how to look at myself. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract / ii Acknowledgements / iii Table of contents / v List of Tables / vii List of figures / x 1 Introduction / 1 1.1 Objective/1 1.2 Region of study /1 1.3 Hypothesis / 9 1.4 Missing pieces / 10 1.5 Chapter breakdown / 10 2 Site and Seen: visibility in archaeology / 12 2.1 Landscape studies /12 2.1.2: Visibility in Landscape studies /15 2.2: Geographical Information Systems (GIS) /18 2.2.1: Visibility Studies and GIS / 20 2.2.2: Visibility maps: aka viewsheds / 23 2.2.3: Limitations and criticisms of GIS models of visibility / 25 2.3: Archaeology in the phenomenal world / 33 2.3.1: The philosophers of Phenomenology / 34 2.3.2: Phenomenological frameworks and visibility studies in archaeology / 38 2.3.3: Critiques of phenomenology in archaeology / 42 2.4: Landscape studies that merge computer-based models with humanistic approaches / 44 2.5: Concluding remarks on visibility studies / 46 3 The prehistory of West Penwith and its relationship to the Cornish tradition of monumentality / 49 3.1: Introduction/49 3.2: The Neolithic and Bronze Age of Britain and Ireland / 49 3.2.1: Settlement and Subsistence / 50 3.3: A brief synopsis of monumentality in Britain and Ireland / 55 3.4: Topography and palaeo-environmental reconstruction of Cornwall in the Neolithic and Bronze Age / 61 3.4.1: Topography and Palaeo-environmental reconstruction of West Penwith in the Neolithic and Bronze Age / 67 3.5: Monumentality in Cornwall and West Penwith / 70 3.6: The history of monument destruction in West Penwith / 83 3.7: Concluding remarks / 85 v 4 The model, data and method / 87 4.1: The model: visibility and monumentality in West Penwith / 87 4.2: The dataset and method / 88 4.2.1: Preliminary work prior to the 2009 field season / 96 4.2.2: The phenomenological framework of the field survey and testing the viewsheds in the field / 97 4.2.3: Post-field season GIS work /101 4.3: Limitations and future work / 107 5 Results of the Topographic Analysis /112 5.1: The topographic context of sites during the Neolithic and the Bronze Age in West Penwith/112 5.2: Elevation/112