Normanton
Golf Course
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An overriding theme at Normanton was the development of boundaries and division of land through time. Central to this process was the small rise in the valley bottom located near the junction of two streams. This area appeared, at first, to be the focus of small scale insubstantial activity which may have carried on over a period of several hundred years starting in the Bronze Age, if not before. This rise was defined and enclosed by a substantial ditch in the mid-Iron Age and was occupied in one form or another until its abandonment in the late Iron Age, some 400 years later. The abandonment of the enclosure appeared to coincide with the division of the surrounding landscape. This firstly involved the establishment of boundaries to the north at the very end of the Iron Age, which was then followed in the Roman period by a system of ditches which formalised existing natural boundaries. In both these phases the enclosure was retained as an element within the landscape either as a functional unit or as a defined space. It was only later in the Roman period that the enclosure disappeared as a physical component to make way for a more open, regular field system.
This concept of place rather than activity was a recurring theme. The natural boundary to the south, which the enclosure was so close to, was possibly reused in the 7th century to define the township limits. As such this same watercourse marks the present parish boundary.
This raises several questions regarding the nature of the enclosure. Why was it placed where it was and what was it for? Answers to these questions can be offered on a number of different levels. These range from traditional functional and economic models to symbolic and political ones. In reality the creation and development of the enclosure at Normanton and the importance of the place was probably a combination of all of these factors. An understanding of the dynamics which have created the site probably lie in its relationship with other enclosures and boundaries in the surrounding area.
Hinterland Study
The recognition of many supposedly Iron Age settlements has been through cropmark evidence. This in itself is not without its own problems and without recourse to excavation relies purely on analogy with other known examples. This reinforces a type site approach to archaeology of this period. The representation of archaeological sites as cropmarks is also not a certain phenomenon. There is a marked lack of visible cropmarks on clay soil which contrasts with the many recorded on sand and gravel. In this respect the pattern of identified boundaries and enclosures would appear to be geologically determined. The distribution of urban centres also increases the bias in cropmark sites.
The fieldwork at Normanton has also shown that cropmark evidence should not be considered as providing either a representative picture of what survives beneath the ploughsoil, nor an accurate picture of the pattern of settlement and land division for any particular period. Its value lies in indicating the presence of major archaeological features in certain areas within a far denser unseen buried landscape.
With this in mind, an attempt was made to put the results from Normanton Golf Course into context by studying cropmarks visible on aerial photographs within a sample area of 3.5km from the centre of the site. These were rectified and plotted onto the Ordnance Survey map. The results of this exercise are shown in Figure 66. A list of rectified aerial photographs is included in Appendix L.
The results from this survey showed an informative scatter of ditches and possible enclosures across a large area. Despite this, a definitive pattern into which the results of Normanton investigation could be placed was not forthcoming. Several elements, however, were worthy of note.
Approximately 700m to the southeast of Zone 2, a second enclosure (Plate 18) was located on top of the high ground (PRN 887, SE 400 221) near Syndale. This feature was rectilinear in plan and measured approximately 70m by 55m. Other anomalies which could have represented pits and gullies could be seen both inside and outside the enclosure. If this feature was occupied at any point during the Iron Age or early Romano-British period then it would have been contemporary with at least one phase of the Normanton enclosure. Interestingly, the Syndale enclosure lies 170m on the southern side of Whin Beck and is located only 100m from the Sewerbridge Beck on its northern side. Sewerbridge Beck is recorded as representing another township boundary of possibly early medieval date. The close location of both enclosures to either side of a natural boundary may not be a coincidence, particularly when the streams that form these boundaries are later redefined as important political and territorial divisions in the early medieval period. A similar phenomenon is visible to the east of Old Syndale (PRN886, SE 407 215) and at Ackton (PRN 4092, SE 413 223) where two other enclosures are visible near similar boundaries. This may suggest that at certain times enclosures may have been positioned to emphasise or protect important divisions in the landscape. The fragmentary nature of these cropmarks must mask a more complex and continuous pattern of land division which would only be visible using different investigative techniques.
Plate 18. Aerial photograph of Syndale enclosure.
Interpretation of Iron Age Sites
Iron Age studies have traditionally fallen into a type-site mentality (Hingley 1994). A functional approach has led to a search for predetermined patterns in feature types, finds assemblages and settlement types with little regard to trying to understand archaeological sites within their own regional, local and intra-site context. Consequently, the interpretation is already predetermined and it has just become a matter of slotting the latest site into an existing classification. This has affected the policy of data retrieval employed in the excavation of such sites. This is a factor can be seen recurring in the PPG 16 environment where sites are commonly excavated without a research agenda and little time is allowed to provide an interpretational context in post-excavation. Sampling strategies and recovery levels employed on excavation sites are often arbitrary and may not be appropriate to answer specific questions regarding sequence and form. In particular the 2% sample may succeed in recording the presence and date of archaeological remains but may fail in identifying their nature, extent and quality (Chadwick 1999). The methodology employed, therefore, may preset a traditional interpretation.
In this respect the enclosure at Normanton, by analogy with other sites, such as Great Ayton Moor, Roxby and Coxhoe, would be classified as a "bog-standard enclosed farmstead" (see Appendix E). The archaeological evidence from the site suggests that such a simple description provides little by way of explanation for the from and development of the enclosure.
The traditional (inductive) approach of accepting the archaeological record as a prima facie translation of what really went on has been questioned by Hingley (1994) and Hills (1994). These authors emphasise the need to look at how certain deposits and feature types have found their way into the archaeological record by focussing on the post-depositional processes which may have created the sometimes superficial patterns upon which many archaeologists base their assumptions. Examples of this include assessing economic practices and wealth from faunal assemblages which may have been selectively placed in pits and ditches, or describing spatial organisation from finds scatters which are of a secondary nature and may relate to waste disposal as opposed to use. Another criticism levelled at the traditional approach to Iron Age studies was the tendency to construct patterns of social organisation based on site analogy without regard to chronology or local factors. Hills remarks on the fact that most of the material used in the Iron Age, even on the finds-rich sites of Wessex, never makes its way into the archaeological record (1995).
One reason for the prevalence of the traditional approach lies in the nature of the archaeological evidence itself. Most of the recent and not so recent work on Iron Age sites has taken place in southern England where the archaeological record for this period and others is rich and accessible. The resulting type-sites (e.g. Little Woodbury, Danebury, Gussage All Saints) and their models of settlement have conditioned the interpretation of the Iron Age throughout the country. This appears to be unrepresentative of the picture elsewhere where there is a marked difference in the history, chronology and density of population and settlement as well as very different Bronze Age traditions from which they have developed. Recent work by Hill and Hingley suggests a more complex picture of Iron Age society and its settlement evidence.
A preliminary survey of the Iron Age in the North gives a dramatically different picture where the settlement pattern is characterised by few recognised, let alone excavated, examples of settlements or cemeteries and poorly represented material culture, including pottery and metalwork. The lack of typologically classifiable material culture has led to Cunliffe and others defining an area from the whole of the north midlands to Scotland simply as the territory of the Brigantes , identified only by their lack of a diagnostic pottery type. A survey of excavated sites and cropmarks reveals a more complex picture of Iron Age society with a marked variation in settlement forms throughout the area. For example, the single enclosures of Cleveland and Durham as opposed to Ladder settlements in East Yorkshire. The lack of excavated examples is a severe problem in studying this period in the north and west of England.
Factors Contributing to Variation in Material Culture
There are many factors which may have created differing patterns of settlement across the country at this time. Not least would have been the late Bronze Age society, culture and traditions in a particular area. Elements of material culture, settlement form, ritual practice and social organisation in the late Bronze Age must have had some bearing on the form of a society in later periods as it developed through time. In particular the arrangement of territories, political or ritual divisions in the landscape and their expression as boundaries. Similarly the nature of Romano-British settlement and the impact of Romanisation may have had more to do with the values and dynamics of the native Iron Age population than the allure and power of Roman institutions and their material culture.
Regional factors such as geography, topography and type of land and soil would have affected subsistence strategies and settlement form. Available and acceptable local resources may have affected the range of material culture and its subsequent survival into the archaeological record, for example, wooden tools or containers as opposed to pottery or metalwork. Other factors such as access to water, communication, the proximity of one settlement to another would also affect patterns of social organisation and trade. With this in mind it is certainly fair to say that too much has been assumed about the Iron Age, especially in northern England.
Limitations of the Data
The location and study of Iron Age settlement has not on the whole been dictated by research. Most excavated sites in recent years have resulted form commercial development on peripheral urban or greenfield sites. These combined with those discovered during quarrying or gravel extraction allude to the probability that there is a significant bias in the distribution of excavated material from which we form our assumptions about settlement patterns.
Research priorities have also affected the distribution of excavated archaeological sites. For example the understanding of Iron Age society in East Yorkshire has been hampered by the marked preference in excavating the materially rich Arras cemeteries to the exclusion of settlement sites which can clearly be seen from cropmarks. This preference to excavate the richer and more unusual sites has led to a distortion in our understanding of Iron Age settlement. Only more recent work by Dent (1995) has attempted to provide context to these discoveries by using cropmarks to study other aspects of the buried landscape.
This distortion is unfortunate as the evidence derived from research excavations is often a valuable source of comparable data for archaeologists working on the commercial projects who do not always have access to the time, resources and specialist expertise afforded to many research excavations. Dalton Parlours is a good example, its size, unusual development and later succession by a Roman Villa complex may be more a reflection of its own social and economic importance within a localised, politically defined, Iron Age landscape as opposed to an accurate reflection of a general pattern, if indeed one exists.
General patterns in settlement form and organisation can be seen but whether they are superficial or meaningful depends on a closer regard to context and chronology. A list of enclosure sites referred to in this discussion and their summaries is presented in Appendix M.
Many Iron Age settlements have been identified during the excavation of Romano-British rural settlements and enclosures. This concept of continuity is an important aspect in understanding the landscape but also poses several problems. Why did certain settlements continue in use and others did not? There may be a continuity of occupation but is there continuity of function? These questions have relevance to the site at Normanton where the enclosure continues as an element of the landscape well into the Romano-British period.
Very few Iron Age settlements or enclosures have been completely excavated. This is also the case for some of the type-sites of southern England. At Little Woodbury only two thirds of the interior of the enclosure was excavated, yet, from this, a model of single farmstead enclosure was constructed and applied across the nation. Similar concepts of subsistence, settlement and ritual were created and used in a similar way from the results of excavations at Danebury. Wainwright, after fully excavating the kite-shaped enclosure at Tollard Royal, Cranbourne Chase, remarked on how, if he had only excavated a sample of the interior of the enclosure, the site would either have been interpreted as a stock enclosure or a heavily occupied site depending on where he put his trenches (Wainwright, 1968, 139). It would appear therefore that within many enclosed settlements there is a distinct spatial organization of activity and features which can only be fully appreciated with complete excavation. Without this a reliable interpretation of the site cannot be offered. This is an important factor when assessing some of the enclosures excavated in the northeast where little more than selected transects across the ditches, entranceways and central area have been carried out, for example, West Burradon, Coxhoe, Great Ayton Moor, Roxby.
Many enclosed settlement sites have also provided evidence for pre-enclosure structures and features, for example, Haddenham, West Brandon, Little Waltham, South Elmsall. This presents a further problem in their interpretation. With the lack of horizontally stratified deposits which is so characteristic of rural archaeology, the only way to establish the chronology of the site is through direct stratigraphic relationships and a reliance on datable finds. Where these do not exist, as is the case on many sites, it is difficult to establish, with certainty, whether features and structures are contemporary with the enclosure or pre- or post-date it. A recourse to other forms of analysis such as feature morphology and spatial distribution within the enclosure is often the only way to provide a possible sequence.
This has also created problems in defining the limits and nature of the pre-enclosure settlement. Where an enclosure site has been identified from cropmarks and/or geophysical survey the excavation that follows is usually centred upon the ditches and internal area with little margin for extra-enclosure features. At Dalton Parlours the suggested sequence involved the enclosure of pre-existing structures rather than the two elements being created simultaneously.
The level of sampling of the archaeological features is also an issue. The selective deposition of bone and artefacts in selected areas of enclosure ditches is a phenomenon recognised on a number of sites such as Harrow Hill (Manning, 1995), Winard Down (Hill, 1995) and may have occurred within a ritual context. It is in this regard that Hill suggests that a minimum of 25% of the enclosure should be excavated in attempt to establish patterns within the data. On many sites a 10% minimum sample is already required. In the context of many of the rural sites of West Yorkshire it could be argued that the enclosure ditches provide one of the few deposit traps where datable material and other finds are likely to be recovered, irrespective of a possible ritual origin. The enclosure at Normanton, it should be added, contained very little in the way of material despite extensive sampling.
A major factor which limits the understanding of most Iron Age sites is that of modern truncation by ploughing. Many ephemeral features within settlements and enclosures have simply disappeared without trace which leads Knight (1984) to comment that any clear area within an enclosure should not be assumed to have been devoid of structures or divisions when the settlement was in use. These ephemeral features could include hedges, light weight fences, houses, animal pens, granaries, hearths or middens. The issue of truncation has long been recognised in the interpretation of roundhouse buildings where, in a number of cases at Little Watham (Drury, 1978), internal roof supports for structures are lacking on the ground. Consequently floor surfaces and occupation levels are rarely found associated with structures with the loss of primary deposits.
The lack of faunal material from excavated settlements in the northern England is a particular problem. Unfavourable soil conditions on many sites that have been excavated in recent years have left only the remains of burnt bone, leaving in most incidences, no trace of animal waste. Those bones that have been found have often been within disused storage pits or the enclosure ditch. Recent work by Hill (1995) has suggested that the deposition of some bone assemblages within disused pits may be far more deliberate than the casual disposal of rubbish and in this respect may not be representative general subsistence patterns, for example, assemblages from Harrow Hill and Danebury.
The Nature of Ditches
When the archaeological assemblage is limited in this way it is not hard to see how some archaeologists, Cunliffe for example, using a processual framework, appear to regard the north and west of Britain as a form of Iron Age cul-de-sac. However, Chadwick (1995) would argue that the approach itself limits the archaeological data, both in its recovery, in terms of the methodology and sampling strategy it advocates, and in its interpretation. His work in South Yorkshire has shown that many of the enclosures and field systems within the region have a "chronological depth" with evidence for recutting and redefinition throughout the Iron Age and Romano-British periods. By looking at these features and their development within their cultural, geographical and symbolic context he suggests that the landscape at this time is far more dynamic than previously envisaged.
Ditches in this context have a functional, economic and social significance. They bound areas, control movement and require the agreement and cooperation of different groups. The recutting of boundaries, rather than representing cleaning and maintenance, often involved redigging completely backfilled ditches (Chadwick 1995). This would have been a communal act, reinforcing group identities and expressing them as features in the landscape. Ditches, therefore are seen as an expression of human activity structuring behaviour and beliefs in addition to performing functional and economic roles. This is opposed to passive, static elements in a functional and solely environmentally determined landscape.
Ritual or Secular?
It has been suggested that the enclosure at Normanton, with its unusual structures and location within marginal, wetland with few finds and a lack of domestic or agricultural activity was ritual in origin. The recognition of ritual within the Iron Age is a difficult problem although the recognition of shrine sites is one area that archaeologists have pursued vigorously over the last twenty years. However, this has been based, once again, on the type-site mentality which in itself makes many assumptions about the nature and geographical cohesiveness of Iron Age belief. Appendix N forms a summary of excavated Iron Age "shrines" in Britain.
Most possible Iron Age Shrines have been identified incidentally during the excavation of a number of Romano-Celtic Temples, often partially surviving as ephemeral postholes and bedding trench structures or merely implied by the presence of pottery, coins and brooches. Consequently from their remains a pre-Roman Iron Age shrine model has been established. In rural contexts this is basically understood to be a square temenos enclosure within which a small square, rectangular or round structure once stood. Often associated with these shrines are votive deposits of coins, brooches, iron objects and most characteristically miniature bronze shields or weapons. Many of the objects appear to have been deliberately broken prior to deposition in pits or dumps. Many of these shrines show evidence for continuity into the Roman period. Those that do not have often been identified on their unusual characteristics when compared to the surrounding archaeology, for example, rectangular structures among and slightly offset from a roundhouse settlement such as at Heathrow, Danebury and Cadbury.
Heathrow is commonly held up as the archetypal Iron Age shrine sitting within a sub-rectangular enclosure. However, it should be noted that no special or votive objects were found in association with this structure.
It would be fair to say that common elements exist between many of these sites but none of them are the same. Their recognition has been based on an inability to explain their purpose in any other way. Subsequently once one has been established as a shrine then it provides an analogy for others. The limited geographical distribution of these sites in the south of England may be a reflection of several factors:
If the first point were true then it would imply that a nationally advocated shrine-type is representative of a religious tradition which may be confined to a political, geographical or cultural area and is, therefore, not representative of other regions. This would lead to the third point, where ritual practice could be carried out in other regions in a way which, so far, has either not been recognised within the archaeological record or it has not survived.
The nature of ritual practice is another issue. Many of the activities associated with Celtic religion have been handed down from documentary Roman sources or are implied by analogy with finds from sites on the continent. These include elements of sacrifice, human and animal, ritual enclosures containing votive offerings, war booty, sacred pits and totems, prevalence with wooded clearings, sanctuaries and water offerings. It is notable that none of the identified shrines readily conforms to any of the stated practices for the period.
The notion of ritual and secular as two separate spheres of human behaviour is also a recent one. The possibility that Iron Age people undertook supposedly ritual activity as part of their everyday lives has rarely been considered, mainly because such activity would be difficult to interpret from the archaeological record when approached from a traditionally functional viewpoint. Hills' recent work on finds assemblages in Iron Age pits in Wessex has defined two issues; firstly material discarded in disused storage pits may contain patterns of deliberate deposition and association which may have served some religious function. Secondly, she proposes a model which shows a shift from an integrated ritual domestic lifestyle in the early Iron Age toward a much more separate division of sacred and profane in the later Iron Age. This move may be reflected in the comparably late dates for many of the shrine sites that have been identified as well as patterns in settlement organisation.
What can be constituted as ritual activity? Burial? Unusual patterns within the archaeological record which cannot be explained in a functional way? Is ritual behaviour accessible through the archaeological record outside the recognition of certain structural types?
To this end, the site at Hayling Island, by the excavator's own admission, could easily have been interpreted as a domestic settlement on its structural evidence alone. In fact palisade enclosures are relatively common in the northeast and are assumed to be associated with domestic settlements. Archaeologists appear to have enough problems identifying function and status of domestic structures and settlements, let alone ritual activity.
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