i Landscape in the Longue Durée ii iii Landscape in the Longue Durée A History and Theory of Pebbles in a Pebbled Heathland Landscape Christopher Tilley With contributions by Michael J. Allen, Allen Environmental Archaeology and Visiting Research Fellow in Environmental Archaeology, Bournemouth University, UK; Jill Cobley, Department of Archaeology, University of Exeter, UK; Andrew Meirion Jones, Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton, UK; Karolína Pauknerová, Centre for Theoretical Study, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic; Clarissa Sanfelice Rahmeier, Department of Humanities and Law, Escola Superior de Propoganda e Marketing, São Paulo, Brazil; and Priscilla Trenchard, Woodbury Salterton, Devon, UK i v First published in 2017 by UCL Press University College London Gower Street London WC1E 6BT Available to download free: www.ucl.ac.uk/ ucl- press Text © Christopher Tilley, 2017 ‘Pebble’ from The Collected Poems 1956–1998 by Zbigniew Herbert. Translated and edited by Alissa Valles. © 2007 The Estate of Zbigniew Herbert. Translation © 2007 by HarperCollins Publishers LLC. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers and Atlantic Books Ltd. Images © Authors and copyright holders named in captions, 2017 A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library. This book is published under a Creative Commons 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: Christopher Tilley, Landscape in the Longue Durée . London, UCL Press, 2017. https:// doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787350816 Further details about Creative Commons licenses are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ ISBN: 978- 1- 78735- 083- 0 (Hbk.) ISBN: 978- 1- 78735- 082- 3 (Pbk.) ISBN: 978- 1- 78735- 081- 6 (PDF) ISBN: 978- 1- 78735- 084- 7 (epub) ISBN: 978- 1- 78735- 085- 4 (mobi) ISBN: 978- 1- 78735- 086- 1 (html) DOI: https:// doi.org/ 10.14324/ 111.9781787350816 v This book is dedicated to the memory of George Carter and Priscilla Hull George Carter (1886–1974) (Source: Carter archive) v i Priscilla Hull (1920–2013) (Source: Carter archive) v i i vii Preface This book presents the results of an archaeological research project that took place between 2008 and 2011 on the Pebblebed heathlands of East Devon. This ran in tandem with an anthropological project in the same landscape published in a companion volume to this (Tilley and Cameron- Daum 2017). The original idea was to integrate and publish the results of the archaeological and anthropological research together. However, it became clear as the work proceeded that this would result in a book of unmanageable size, hence the decision to publish two books directed to two different audiences. In one sense this is both ironic and regrettable as it reinforces the entrenched disciplinary boundaries that the research was designed to dissolve. However, both volumes are thoroughly inte- grated in that the major theme of embodied identities in a landscape resides at their core and I hope that some will wish to read them together. It was very much the case that insights derived from the anthropological project informed the archaeological research and vice versa. Both are concerned to understand the materiality of a unique landscape the bed- rock of which consists entirely of pebbles. From an archaeological point of view the landscape being dis- cussed was virtually a black hole. George Carter, an enthusiastic and utterly unconventional amateur archaeologist who published only two short papers in the Proceedings of the Devon Archaeological Society , undertook the only excavations that had taken place here, mostly in the 1930s (Carter 1936, 1938). Even these had long since been forgot- ten. There was only one radiocarbon date from the Iron Age hillfort of Woodbury Castle at which rescue excavations had been undertaken in 1971 following road-widening works, the only excavation of any kind that had been conducted since Carter’s day. Beyond this the only information available was a catalogue of some of the prehistoric and historic sites in the National Monuments Record and in the Devon Historic Monuments Archives, giving some basic information, together with Grinsell’s (1983) list of barrows of South and East Devon that PREFACE viii v i i i proved to be unreliable. It seems likely that Grinsell spent very little time on the East Devon heathlands, unusual for a man who had so devotedly paced almost every barrow in southern England. He seems to have largely relied on a thin undergraduate dissertation for infor- mation about cairn distribution. The archaeological establishment had dismissed Carter as an unwelcome crank, yet he had made some spectacular finds and was the only person who had carried out extensive fieldwork in the area. He had undertaken the difficult task of excavating pebble cairns and mak- ing some highly original observations about them with regard to pebble patterning and the structured distribution of what he called blue stones. This seemed well worth following up. Despite its unique geology the Pebblebed landscape itself was little known. Most visitors walked only in the vicinity of the main prehistoric site, Woodbury Castle, and on a weekday one could walk across the entire area rarely seeing anyone else apart from the Royal Marines on their train- ing exercises. It was serendipity and my dog, Tor, that took me first to the heath in October 2004 and I was quite astonished to find myself in a peb- bled landscape, so I started to ‘walk the past in the present’ and undertook a landscape study of the cairns (published in Tilley 2010: ch. 6). This led on to the field research and excavations of the Pebblebeds project. In 2007 I visited the Fairlynch local history museum in Budleigh Salterton and was pleasantly surprised to find a small room almost entirely devoted to a display of George Carter’s archaeological and geo- logical investigations and finds from the area, together with a photograph of him. Previously I had visited the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter searching for archival information about him but had discovered very little. Having made enquiries about the Fairlynch display I found out that one of his daughters, Priscilla Hull, who had co-founded the museum, was responsible for the Carter exhibition. So I went to visit Priscilla, who lived nearby, to ask whether she might have any of his papers or photographs. I also wanted to know about a site called Jacob’s Well, some photographs of which, a flaked pebble and some wooden stakes, were part of the display but about which there was otherwise no information. Priscilla, a very sprightly lady who was then 87, talked at length about her father. She did have many of his papers and photographs that she told me she had rescued from being thrown away and was delighted that I wanted to look at them. So I visited her house, where she spread out his papers on a long table in the living-room once a week for six months. Later she gave them all to me for safe keeping. They proved to ix PREFACE i x be a treasure trove of unpublished information, directly leading on to the excavations at Jacob’s Well and other sites discussed in this book. One of the things that Priscilla wanted me to do was to date the wooden stakes that her father had found at Jacob’s Well. She said that she had taken them to Exeter Museum, where the wood had been iden- tified as being oak but nobody was interested enough to help her date them. So two of the stakes were dated and we knew that Jacob’s Well was a Bronze Age site. Over the years of the project we managed to take Priscilla to some of the sites we were excavating and to Jacob’s Well, which her father had excavated on digs that she had participated in as a young girl. I also regularly updated her on what we had found, dat- ing and other matters. It is to my great regret that she did not live long enough to see this book published. The project excavations started in June 2008 at a small pebble cairn in an isolated area of the heathland visited by few members of the public, that was later christened Tor Cairn. There were no tracks to the cairn across the dense gorse and heather. To reach it required going down into a deep valley on a Royal Marine sheep track, crossing a stream with the track then leading up to a much larger cairn on the top of a spur. Thereafter it was wading down-slope along the top of the spur through the dense and spiky gorse and heather. The cairn was barely discernible and there was some doubt whether it was really a cairn at all until the vegetation cover was removed. The walk from the nearest parking place carrying all the equipment and tools took twenty minutes. Since the excavations were taking place in a Site of Special Scientific Interest that was also designated as a Special Protection Area for endan- gered bird species, this necessitated a bird survey to be undertaken ten days in advance of the work in June. The understanding was that if any ground-nesting birds were discovered in the vicinity of the cairn the exca- vations would have to be abandoned. This made planning for the work almost impossible. In following years the excavations took place from late August through September, after the bird-nesting season was over. The restrictions imposed by Natural England seemed somewhat draconian in view of the fact that this was only a small group of six people digging in one tiny area of the heathlands, walking to the site carrying all their tools and equipment, and only working during office hours. The team contrasted themselves with the Royal Marines, who had a near constant presence on the heathlands during both day and night, were allowed to camp out there, could move anywhere off tracks, drive vehi- cles to their various training areas and sometimes created a lot of noise and disturbance. So there appeared to be one set of rules applied to some PREFACE x x who had an inalienable right to be on the heathlands at any time that did not apply to us who were potentially dangerous outsiders. Excavations on some days took place against a background of the booming of grenades in the near distance. The walk to the excavation site required passing through an area of woodland regularly used by the Marines as a harbour (rest) area during the night and through other areas used for camouflage and concealment, sniper training and map- reading exercises. At times the juxtaposition of the excavation team car- rying buckets, brushes and spades, and the Royal Marines holding their rifles with their helmets and jackets stuffed full of bracken, hiding and crawling through the gorse, or with recruits laying out their kit for early morning inspection, seemed quite bizarre. Tiring of carrying the excavation and surveying equipment on and off site every day we soon took advantage of the dense gorse cover by hiding it near to the site. Nothing was ever stolen. After the first year, excavation work was often undertaken at multiple sites across the heath- land and the excavation team expanded to include local volunteers who had attended talks given by me to the Fairlynch Museum and other local history societies. One of these, Jan Oke, a local children’s author, helped me undertake an archaeological survey of the entire heathland during 2008–10. After the project was over she went on to study for a degree in archaeology at Exeter University. Another volunteer, Jill Cobley, under- taking a PhD at Exeter University on antiquarian archaeologists in Devon that is now completed, aided by her husband Jim, happily accepted the task of carrying out a survey of all the contemporary pebble structures in the villages and towns surrounding the heathland. The records are now lodged in the Devon Local History Archives in Exeter. During the course of the project, groups of the Devon Young Archaeologists visited us and took part in the excavations. Open days were established and advertised by Jim Cobley, who personally guided groups of people to the sites. A temporary project exhibition was set up in the Fairlynch Museum and a website was created. The response by the public to the project work was overwhelmingly enthusiastic. Wayne Bennett produced a fantastic glossy pebble poster that was to be used to create publicity for the project and sold to generate some finance for the excavations. In the end the printing costs far outweighed any returns and we never sold many. I still have several hundred now used as scrap paper. The project was run on a shoe-string budget throughout, since no research council funding was forthcoming. All the money that was avail- able was spent on radiocarbon dating and environmental analyses with 23 new dates being obtained. Members of the project team who were not xi PREFACE x i local volunteers were accommodated in my house and garden, and in a flat belonging to Jan Oke in Exmouth and by Jenny Moon in her house in Lympstone. Members of the project team took it in turns to cook food in the evening and paid for it and their travelling and other expenses themselves. The manner in which centres and peripheries are created and maintained in the field of archaeology is interesting. Sites and land- scapes about which we already know a great deal seem to attract fund- ing, while those about which we know very little do not. I suppose it is a question of a safe bet. Small grants that had been provided during 2009–10 by the Historic Environment Department of Devon County Council were terminated when the austerity measures introduced by the Conservative-led Coalition Government began to bite, so even the hire of a digger and driver for topsoil removal and replacement on a cropmark (enclosure) site in 2011 had to be funded by me. It all seemed at the time like a struggle against the odds and I had a strong sense of fellow feeling with George Carter and the manner in which the establishment had treated him. I take full responsibility for the published text. In those chapters not written entirely by me the names of other authors involved or the individual authorship of the chapter is given at the head. A series of online appendices accompanying this book may be downloaded from UCL Press. These are referred to in the book as ‘See Taylor, Appendix 1’, for example. x i i x i i i xiii Acknowledgements So many people have been involved in this project and I want to thank them all and fully acknowledge their individual contributions. Firstly I am deeply indebted to the members of the excavation team who took part over some or all of the four years: Wayne Bennett, Henry Broughton, Jill Cobley, Paolo Favero, Davina and Paul Freedman, Shisachila Imchen, Andy Jones, Titika Malkogeorgou, Jenny Moon, Jan Oke, Clarissa Sanfelice Rahmeier, Thais Rocha da Silva, Mike Rowlands, Louisa Sherman, Lesley Strong, Priscilla Trenchard and David Wengrow. Andy Jones, assisted by Davina Freedman and Karol í na Pauknerov á , directed the excavations at Tor Cairn in 2008–9. The exca- vations in 2010 at Little Tor Cairn and at Twin Cairn A in 2011 were directed by Karol í na Pauknerov á and Chris Tilley. The excavations on Aylesbeare Common military structures and the pebble platforms took place in September 2009 and September 2010. Andy Jones directed the excavations of the military structures during 2009 and in 2010 the excavations of these and the pebble platforms were directed by Tilley and Pauknerov á . Excavations at Jacob’s Well and at the Colaton Raleigh enclosure that took place in 2010 and 2011 were also directed by Tilley and Pauknerov á All the various pebble analyses were conducted by Chris Tilley and Clarissa Sanfelice Rahmeier. Pebbles from the natural test samples were all recorded by Chris Tilley, assisted at various times by Kate Cameron- Daum, Jan Oke and Juan Rojas Meyer. I am indebted to Mike Allen, R.Y. Banerjea, Dana Challinor, Simon Hillson, Lenka Lis á , Vladim í r Machovi č , Richard Macphail, Anton í n Majer, Petr Pokorn ý , Rob Scaife, Roger Taylor, Keith Wilkinson and Ji ří Woitsch for their specialist reports and advice that are only briefly sum- marized in the text but are published in individual site reports in the on-line appendices to this book. Keith Wilkinson took the environmental samples at Jacob’s Well and on Aylesbeare Common and in the bog at Longo Bottom. At Tor Cairn they were taken by Mike Allen and at other sites by Karol í na Pauknerov á ACKnoWLEDgEMEnTS xiv x i v I am grateful to Jane Russell for finds drawings. Mark Roberts, assisted by L. Peyre, conducted a geophysical survey of the Colaton Raleigh enclos- ure. Toby Taylor of the RSPB swaled an area adjacent to the topspoil scrape on Aylesbeare Common preceding the excavations in 2009, permitting a ground walking survey. He also located the position of three previously discovered pebble platforms for us in 2010. Hazel Riley (English Heritage) conducted a GPS survey of the Aylesbeare Common summit area. A huge thanks to Jan Oke for her help with field survey over the years in all seasons and weathers. Karol í na Pauknerov á has been an invaluable and tireless source of support during the excavations, in writing up the results, drawing the diagrams and generally making sense of it all. She also organized all the environmental analyses under- taken in Prague and crucially, through her expertise, recognized the presence of the tar layer at Jacob’s Well that might so easily have been missed. She also undertook some of the burning experiments with peb- ble samples. I am particularly indebted to Jan Oke and Lesley Strong for carry- ing out the laborious work of planning the Aylesbeare double-axe and ox- hide pebble platforms, and to Jan together with Karol í na Pauknerov á for the trapezoidal platform. Clarissa Sanfelice Rahmeier undertook the massive task of transferring pebble data from Tor Cairn and Little Tor Cairn site notebooks to Excel spreadsheets for the quantitative ana- lyses. Clive Orton advised on the appropriate tests. I recorded all the pebbles from Twin Cairn A, the sections through the Aylesbeare pebble platforms, analysed and counted the ‘special’ pebbles and quantified the pebble classes from all the sites. Clarissa conducted the ‘special’ pebble tests and colour tests among staff and students in the Department of Anthropology, University College London and with members of the exca- vation team. I undertook the interviews with people with pebble struc- tures in their gardens, with advice on which to choose being given by Jill Cobley, who created the pebble archive of all such structures in the area. I am most grateful to all those people I interviewed for so enthusiastically discussing their pebbles with me. Benjamin Tilley created a wonderful project website. Jill Cobley transcribed the quotations from Hutchinson’s diary, Jon Hanna kindly took me up in his light aircraft with Wayne Bennett in order to take aer- ial photographs. Base maps for the artefact and site distributions were drawn by Wayne Bennett, who also drew Figures 1.1, 6.9 and 10.1. All the other line diagrams were drawn by Karol í na Pauknerov á Mike Rowlands and Charles Stewart kindly read a draft version of the introduction and conclusions to the book and provided very xv ACKnoWLEDgEMEnTS x v useful comments that have been invaluable to improving the argu- ments. Two anonymous reviewers commented on sample chapters of the manuscript and one of these provided further extensive comments on a draft version of the entire text. I am most grateful for the com- ments received, which have led to a series of invaluable revisions of parts of it. I am very grateful to the Devon Archaeological Society for the loan of some surveying and excavation equipment. Bill Horner, Frances Griffith and Cressida Whitton (Devon County Council: Historic Environment) gave much support and advice. Bungy Williams (Commons Warden) undertook machine cutting of the vegetation around Tor Cairn and Little Tor Cairn prior to the excavations and transported numerous bags of pebble and environmental samples on and off site for analysis in his Land Rover over the years. He also kindly drove Priscilla Hull all the way to Tor Cairn so that she could experi- ence the excavations herself. Many thanks to Jim Cobley for advertising the excavations and guid- ing visitors to the various sites over the years, and making arrangements to drive Priscilla safely to Jacob’s Well, a difficult journey down a very steep hill slope to the very edge of the bog. George Perrott (Clinton Devon Farms Manager) kindly cut a crop of clover ley prior to excavation at the enclosure site. Paul Irish expertly removed and replaced the topsoil. I thank Tom Sunderland and Natural England for a derogation order allowing the work to take place in an SSSI and SPA over the years, and am very grateful to Clinton Devon Estates for permission to exca- vate on their land. Many thanks to Christopher Feeney for his expertise in copy- editing, Sarah Rendell at OOH for her help during the production of the book and Chris Penfold and Jaimee Biggins at UCL Press for their support and advice. Funding permitting the radiocarbon dating and specialist reports was kindly given by the late Mrs Priscilla Hull, Richard, John and Elizabeth Carter, and a series of small grants from the Devon County Council Historic Environment Department. Last, but certainly not least, I am immensely grateful to my late wife Karin and to Alice and Benjamin Tilley for so cheerfully welcoming guests into our home, which on an annual basis became transformed into a dormitory. When I knew in late 2011 that Karin had terminal cancer at the age of 54 I was so shocked that it was impossible to do anything. Only a few weeks before her death Karin told me that I must finish the pro- ject and ensure that it was published. I have followed her advice, always the wisest. x v i x v i i xvii Contents List of figures xix List of tables xxv Introduction 1 Part I: The heathlands in prehistory 17 1 The Pebblebed landscape 19 2 George Carter and the archaeology of East Devon 51 3 Early Bronze Age pebble cairns 85 4 Analysis of the pebbles 130 5 The poetics of pebbles 153 6 Burnt mounds and pebble sculptures 190 7 The value of pebbles in an original affluent society 249 8 How landscape defines communities in prehistory: an environmental reconstruction of the prehistoric Pebblebeds landscape 266 9 Signing the land: Woodbury Castle and hilltop enclosures in the Iron Age of East Devon 290 Part II: The heathlands in modernity 327 10 Landscaping the heathlands 329 11 Early military occupation and use of the heathlands 346 12 The embodied poetics of a nineteenth-century heathlands landscape 370 ConTEnTS xviii x v i i i 13 A vernacular pebbled landscape 381 14 The heathlands in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries 397 15 Woven flame and pebble grid: an artist’s interaction with archaeology and the heathlands 413 16 Conclusions: the longue dur é e and a theory of pebbles in a pebbled landscape 428 References 449 Index 470