At Stonehenge The Petrification Of The Wooden Structure: Its Replacement In

At Stonehenge the petrification of the wooden structure: its replacement in stone begins around 2500BC (Pryor 2003, 235) a process that also occurred with later Greek temples. At Durrington Walls a circular banked and ditched enclosure surrounded a circular timber structure (Sherratt 1994, 195).
Around 2500BC the Beaker culture appears bringing its characteristic decorated pottery beaker (and contents?), as in the round barrow at Irthlingborough, as well as metalwork (Parker Pearson 2005, 70, 74). The earliest metal items were axes, daggers and awls and many of them were evidently status items since they were never sharpened or used (Parker Pearson 2005, 73). The Amesbury archer was accompanied by 5 beakers and 3 copper daggers (Parker Pearson 2005, 75). In Stonehenge's last phases, around 1600BC, Z & Y holes are dug but were never used to receive stones (Pryor 2003, 262). Although the monuments of the Neolithic continued to provide a backdrop to life the ritual landscape, at least in Wiltshire, was beginning to be transformed into a pattern of little fields by the MBA.
In this brief, selective survey of life from c.4000 1400BC we have observed a shift in lifestyles from gatherer-hunters in a largely wooded British Isles perhaps through a phase of mixed activities to an agricultural lifestyle in a landscape being cleared of trees. A focus on the land and new technologies such as pottery, flint and axe production preceded the emphasis of connections to the land and the dead through communal burials in long barrows and the use of causewayed enclosures perhaps as meeting points for rituals and feasting. Although interpreting the social structures of these periods is difficult, there seems always to be some selection in burial. Changes in the type of monuments through the Neolithic saw the development of cursuses, barrows and henges used to create sacred landscapes such as that around Stonehenge or Avebury. There may have been increases in fighting and stratification at this time a shown by arrowheads and fortifications and more individual burials with goods. The monumental focus continued while the Beaker culture and metalworking also emerged in the Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age. This eventually seems to have completed a shift in focus from ritual, communal landscapes to personal goods and display and a working landscape.
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