Landscape
in the
Longue
Durée

A History and
Theory of Pebbles
in a Pebbled
Heathland Landscape

Christopher Tilley

UCLPRESS
<figure><img src="image_1.png" /></figure>
Landscape in the Longue Durée
<figure><img src="image_2.png" /></figure>
# 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
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.

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Christopher Tilley, *Landscape in the Longue Durée*. London, UCL Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787350816

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ISBN: 978-1-78735-083-0 (Hbk.)

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ISBN: 978-1-78735-081-6 (PDF)

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787350816
This book is dedicated to the memory of George Carter
and Priscilla Hull

<figure><img src="image_3.png" /><figcaption>George Carter (1886–1974) (Source: Carter archive)</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>Priscilla Hull (1920–2013) (Source: Carter archive)</figcaption></figure>
# 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 integrated 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 bedrock of which consists entirely of pebbles.

From an archaeological point of view the landscape being discussed 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 forgotten. 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
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 making 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
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 identified 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, dating 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 endangered 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 excavations 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 vehicles 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
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
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.
<figure><img src="image_5.png" /></figure>
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 Karolína Pauknerová, directed the excavations at Tor Cairn in 2008–9. The excavations in 2010 at Little Tor Cairn and at Twin Cairn A in 2011 were directed by Karolína Pauknerová 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 Pauknerová. Excavations at Jacob’s Well and at the Colaton Raleigh enclosure that took place in 2010 and 2011 were also directed by Tilley and Pauknerová.

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 Lisá, Vladimír Machovič, Richard Macphail, Antonín Majer, Petr Pokorný, Rob Scaife, Roger Taylor, Keith Wilkinson and Jiří Woitsch for their specialist reports and advice that are only briefly summarized 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 Karolína Pauknerová.
I am grateful to Jane Russell for finds drawings. Mark Roberts, assisted by L. Peyre, conducted a geophysical survey of the Colaton Raleigh enclosure. 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. Karolína Pauknerová 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 undertaken 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 pebble samples.

I am particularly indebted to Jan Oke and Lesley Strong for carrying out the laborious work of planning the Aylesbeare double-axe and ox-hide pebble platforms, and to Jan together with Karolína Pauknerová 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 analyses. 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 excavation team. I undertook the interviews with people with pebble structures 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 aerial 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 Karolína Pauknerová.

Mike Rowlands and Charles Stewart kindly read a draft version of the introduction and conclusions to the book and provided very
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.
<figure><img src="image_6.png" /></figure>
# 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
<table><tr><td>13 A vernacular pebbled landscape</td><td>381</td></tr><tr><td>14 The heathlands in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries</td><td>397</td></tr><tr><td>15 Woven flame and pebble grid: an artist's interaction with archaeology and the heathlands</td><td>413</td></tr><tr><td>16 Conclusions: the longue durée and a theory of pebbles in a pebbled landscape</td><td>428</td></tr><tr><td><i>References</i></td><td>449</td></tr><tr><td><i>Index</i></td><td>470</td></tr></table>
Figures

<table><tr><td>1.1</td><td>The location of the Pebblebed heathlands</td><td>20</td></tr><tr><td>1.2</td><td>View west to the Haldon Hills and Dartmoor</td><td>21</td></tr><tr><td>1.3</td><td>Dumpdon Hill</td><td>22</td></tr><tr><td>1.4</td><td>High Peak from the heathlands</td><td>23</td></tr><tr><td>1.5a</td><td>Gravels of the East Hill ridge</td><td>23</td></tr><tr><td>1.5b</td><td>The pebbles of the Pebblebeds</td><td>24</td></tr><tr><td>1.6</td><td>The red cliffs at Budleigh Salterton with the Pebblebed exposure</td><td>26</td></tr><tr><td>1.7</td><td>The course of the Triassic river across southern England</td><td>28</td></tr><tr><td>1.8</td><td>The yellow band running through the cliffs at the top of the Pebblebeds</td><td>29</td></tr><tr><td>1.9</td><td>The distribution of flint finds on the heathlands and in their vicinity</td><td>32</td></tr><tr><td>1.10</td><td>The distribution of Bronze Age pebble cairns</td><td>37</td></tr><tr><td>1.11</td><td>Examples of large heathland cairns</td><td>42</td></tr><tr><td>1.12</td><td>The western scarp of the heathlands</td><td>43</td></tr><tr><td>1.13</td><td>Cairn intervisibility across the heathlands</td><td>44</td></tr><tr><td>1.14</td><td>Low tide in the Exe estuary</td><td>46</td></tr><tr><td>1.15</td><td>Sunrise and sunset seen from the heathlands</td><td>49</td></tr><tr><td>2.1</td><td>Carter as a young man</td><td>53</td></tr><tr><td>2.2</td><td>Carter in India as Municipal Commissioner</td><td>54</td></tr><tr><td>2.3a</td><td>One of the large chert stones from the east of the river Otter</td><td>56</td></tr><tr><td>2.3b</td><td>Lifting the stone</td><td>57</td></tr><tr><td>2.4</td><td>Carter's map of cairn locations on Woodbury Common</td><td>58</td></tr><tr><td>2.5</td><td>Carter's excavation team at work</td><td>59</td></tr><tr><td>2.6</td><td>Carter's three daughters excavating on Aylesbeare Common</td><td>59</td></tr><tr><td>2.7</td><td>Carter's plan of cairn AA6</td><td>60</td></tr><tr><td>2.8</td><td>Carter's watercolour plan of Woodbury P</td><td>61</td></tr><tr><td>2.9</td><td>Carter's sketch of the cairn in Jubilee Park, Budleigh Salterton</td><td>62</td></tr><tr><td>2.10</td><td>Carter's plan of the Longo Lines</td><td>63</td></tr><tr><td>2.11</td><td>Carter's sketch of mounds in the vicinity of Woodbury ε</td><td>64</td></tr></table>
<table>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td>2.12</td>
      <td>Carter's sketch plan of his 'holy triangle' on East Budleigh Common and part of his annotated Ordnance Survey map of East Budleigh and Withycombe Raleigh Common</td>
      <td>65</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>2.13</td>
      <td>Carter's photograph of one of his 'twin altars' at Squabmoor</td>
      <td>66</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>2.14</td>
      <td>Carter's plan and cross-section of his cairn 'Milestone 9'</td>
      <td>67</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>2.15</td>
      <td>Carter's 1932 photograph of cairn QL</td>
      <td>69</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>2.16</td>
      <td>Carter's geometric plan of Woodbury Z</td>
      <td>71</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>2.17</td>
      <td>Carter's plan and analysis of Sheeplays 271</td>
      <td>73</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>2.18</td>
      <td>Carter's geometric analysis of barrows in the Broad Down (Farway) cemetery</td>
      <td>76</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>2.19</td>
      <td>Carter's geometric analysis of Stonehenge I</td>
      <td>76</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>2.20</td>
      <td>Carter's analysis of the Soldier's Ring, Wiltshire</td>
      <td>77</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>2.21</td>
      <td>Carter's published plan of the cairn QL</td>
      <td>79</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>2.22</td>
      <td>Carter in later life</td>
      <td>84</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>3.1</td>
      <td>Woodbury ε</td>
      <td>86</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>3.2</td>
      <td>Carter's section through Woodbury ε</td>
      <td>87</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>3.3</td>
      <td>The comb-decorated Beaker sherds and arrowhead found in Woodbury ε</td>
      <td>87</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>3.4</td>
      <td>The distribution of pebble cairns on Colaton Raleigh Common</td>
      <td>88</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>3.5</td>
      <td>Tor Cairn and Little Tor Cairn: excavated area</td>
      <td>90</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>3.6</td>
      <td>Examples of 'special' pebbles and a blue stone</td>
      <td>91</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>3.7</td>
      <td>Tor Cairn: sections and their locations</td>
      <td>93</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>3.8</td>
      <td>Tor Cairn: simplified scheme of layers and contexts</td>
      <td>93</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>3.9</td>
      <td>Tor Cairn sections</td>
      <td>94</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>3.10</td>
      <td>The distribution of blue stones in Tor Cairn</td>
      <td>95</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>3.11</td>
      <td>Tor Cairn: plan showing burnt areas and central pit</td>
      <td>97</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>3.12</td>
      <td>The top of the pebble-filled pit</td>
      <td>98</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>3.13</td>
      <td>Tor Cairn: flint finds</td>
      <td>104</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>3.14</td>
      <td>Tor Cairn: the distribution of artefacts and other finds</td>
      <td>105</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>3.15</td>
      <td>Tor Cairn: the flaked pebble from the centre</td>
      <td>106</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>3.16</td>
      <td>The largest pebble in Tor Cairn</td>
      <td>106</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>3.17</td>
      <td>Tor Cairn: pebble flake from central pit</td>
      <td>107</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>3.18</td>
      <td>The ventifact finds</td>
      <td>108</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>3.19</td>
      <td>Tor Cairn: the contents of the pebble-filled pit</td>
      <td>109</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>3.20</td>
      <td>Little Tor Cairn: excavation quadrants</td>
      <td>110</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>3.21</td>
      <td>North-south section through Little Tor Cairn</td>
      <td>111</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>3.22</td>
      <td>Twin Cairn A and Twin Cairn B prior to excavation</td>
      <td>113</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>3.23</td>
      <td>Twin Cairn A: excavated areas</td>
      <td>115</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>3.24</td>
      <td>Twin Cairn A: section drawings</td>
      <td>116</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>
<table><tr><td>3.25</td><td>Twin Cairn A: plans</td><td>118</td></tr><tr><td>4.1</td><td>The location of the pebble sampling locations from the natural</td><td>131</td></tr><tr><td>4.2</td><td>Examples of excavated natural test samples</td><td>132</td></tr><tr><td>4.3</td><td>The relative frequencies of pebbles according to length</td><td>139</td></tr><tr><td>4.4</td><td>The relative frequencies of the pebbles according to weight</td><td>141</td></tr><tr><td>4.5</td><td>The relative frequencies of the pebbles according to shape</td><td>143</td></tr><tr><td>4.6</td><td>The relative frequencies of the pebbles according to colour</td><td>146</td></tr><tr><td>4.7</td><td>Examples of observed and expected frequencies in chi-square tests for shape, weight and length</td><td>150</td></tr><tr><td>4.8</td><td>Examples of observed and expected frequencies in chi-square tests for pebble colour, shape and weight</td><td>152</td></tr><tr><td>5.1</td><td>Painted pebbles from the 1970s</td><td>159</td></tr><tr><td>5.2</td><td>Wendy's pebble beach</td><td>160</td></tr><tr><td>5.3</td><td>Alan's huge curated pebble</td><td>162</td></tr><tr><td>5.4</td><td>Examples of blue stones from Tor Cairn</td><td>167</td></tr><tr><td>5.5</td><td>Schematic diagram of categories of 'special' pebbles</td><td>171</td></tr><tr><td>5.6</td><td>Pebble 'eyes'</td><td>172</td></tr><tr><td>5.7</td><td>Special pebble from Little Tor Cairn</td><td>175</td></tr><tr><td>5.8</td><td>Special pebble from Tor Cairn</td><td>176</td></tr><tr><td>5.9</td><td>Special pebble from Little Tor Cairn</td><td>177</td></tr><tr><td>5.10</td><td>Special pebble from Twin Cairn A</td><td>178</td></tr><tr><td>5.11</td><td>Special pebble from Twin Cairn A</td><td>179</td></tr><tr><td>5.12</td><td>Special pebble from Twin Cairn A</td><td>179</td></tr><tr><td>5.13</td><td>Pebble with a 'prawn'</td><td>181</td></tr><tr><td>6.1</td><td>The location of Jacob's Well</td><td>191</td></tr><tr><td>6.2</td><td>Carter's watercolour plan of Jacob's Well</td><td>192</td></tr><tr><td>6.3</td><td>Carter's section drawing of Jacob's Well</td><td>193</td></tr><tr><td>6.4</td><td>Plan of Carter's trench through Jacob's Well</td><td>194</td></tr><tr><td>6.5</td><td>Carter's photo of the trench through the burnt mound</td><td>195</td></tr><tr><td>6.6</td><td>The flaked 'idol' or magic stone found by Carter</td><td>196</td></tr><tr><td>6.7</td><td>The flaked pebble</td><td>197</td></tr><tr><td>6.8</td><td>The four oak stakes recovered by Carter</td><td>197</td></tr><tr><td>6.9</td><td>Carter's reconstruction diagram of the wooden shrine</td><td>199</td></tr><tr><td>6.10</td><td>Sketch plan of Jacob's Well and its surroundings</td><td>201</td></tr><tr><td>6.11</td><td>Jacob's Well: plan</td><td>202</td></tr><tr><td>6.12</td><td>Jacob's Well: section</td><td>203</td></tr><tr><td>6.13</td><td>Jacob's Well: peat level</td><td>204</td></tr><tr><td>6.14</td><td>Sample of washed fire-cracked and crushed pebbles</td><td>209</td></tr><tr><td>6.15</td><td>Aylesbeare platform 1 during excavation</td><td>215</td></tr></table>
<table>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td>6.16</td>
      <td>Aylesbeare 2</td>
      <td>216</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>6.17</td>
      <td>Aylesbeare 5</td>
      <td>217</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>6.18</td>
      <td>Aylesbeare Common summit area</td>
      <td>218</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>6.19</td>
      <td>The trapezoidal platform with horns</td>
      <td>219</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>6.20</td>
      <td>The double-axe platform</td>
      <td>220</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>6.21</td>
      <td>The ox-hide platform</td>
      <td>221</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>6.22</td>
      <td>The locations of the Aylesbeare platforms</td>
      <td>222</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>6.23</td>
      <td>Plan of the trapezoidal platform</td>
      <td>223</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>6.24</td>
      <td>Sections through the three platforms</td>
      <td>224</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>6.25</td>
      <td>Plan of the double-axe platform</td>
      <td>226</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>6.26</td>
      <td>Plan of the ox-hide platform</td>
      <td>228</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>6.27</td>
      <td>Double axes and images of objects with horns</td>
      <td>234</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>6.28</td>
      <td>Pendants with horns from middle and eastern Europe</td>
      <td>237</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>6.29</td>
      <td>The double axe from Mount Howe, Topsham</td>
      <td>241</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>6.30</td>
      <td>Mount Howe on the Exe estuary</td>
      <td>242</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>6.31</td>
      <td>Conceptual model of the Pebblebed landscape</td>
      <td>246</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>8.1</td>
      <td>Simplified geological map with the environmental sampling locations</td>
      <td>269</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>8.2</td>
      <td>Aerial photograph of the Pebblebeds landscape</td>
      <td>271</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>8.3</td>
      <td>Percentage pollen diagram from Jacob's Well</td>
      <td>279</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>8.4</td>
      <td>Wistman's Wood on Dartmoor</td>
      <td>280</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>8.5</td>
      <td>Pebblebeds heath and light woodland</td>
      <td>285</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>9.1</td>
      <td>Plan of Woodbury Castle</td>
      <td>291</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>9.2</td>
      <td>The ramparts of Woodbury Castle</td>
      <td>292</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>9.3</td>
      <td>Woodbury Castle: section through the inner rampart</td>
      <td>295</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>9.4</td>
      <td>Section through the cross-ridge dyke</td>
      <td>296</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>9.5</td>
      <td>The Colaton Raleigh enclosure</td>
      <td>297</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>9.6</td>
      <td>The location of the Colaton Raleigh enclosure in relation to the pebble cairns</td>
      <td>298</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>9.7</td>
      <td>East Devon hillforts: locations and intervisibility</td>
      <td>300</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>9.8</td>
      <td>Sketch of the topographic locations of the hillforts</td>
      <td>309</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>9.9</td>
      <td>Hawkesdown Hill from the east</td>
      <td>310</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>9.10</td>
      <td>The shape of the East Devon hillforts</td>
      <td>310</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>9.11</td>
      <td>Plan of Musbury</td>
      <td>312</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>9.12</td>
      <td>Looking across Blackburn Castle</td>
      <td>313</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>9.13</td>
      <td>Looking south across Cadbury Castle</td>
      <td>313</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>9.14</td>
      <td>The entrance to Sidbury Castle</td>
      <td>315</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>9.15</td>
      <td>Dumpdon: view out from entrance</td>
      <td>316</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>9.16</td>
      <td>Complex hillfort entrances</td>
      <td>316</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>9.17</td>
      <td>The massive Hembury ramparts</td>
      <td>317</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>9.18</td>
      <td>The structure at Blackburn Castle</td>
      <td>321</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>
<table>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td>10.1</td>
      <td>The location of landscaping mounds</td>
      <td>331</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>10.2</td>
      <td>Landscaping/tree mound 17</td>
      <td>332</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>10.3</td>
      <td>Massive landscaping mound adjacent to the B3180 road</td>
      <td>333</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>10.4</td>
      <td>The northwest mound at Four Firs</td>
      <td>334</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>10.5</td>
      <td>Section through the northeast mound at Four Firs</td>
      <td>335</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>10.6</td>
      <td>Landscaping mound to the south of the Woodbury to Yettington road</td>
      <td>337</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>10.7</td>
      <td>Stukeley's drawing of Bush Barrow</td>
      <td>338</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>10.8</td>
      <td>Colt Hoare's illustration of Hackpen Barrow</td>
      <td>338</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>10.9</td>
      <td>Landscaping mound 12</td>
      <td>340</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>10.10</td>
      <td>The possible Seven Stones in Bicton Gardens</td>
      <td>341</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>10.11</td>
      <td>Part of the ha-ha at Bicton</td>
      <td>344</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>10.12</td>
      <td>View from the orangery to the obelisk at Bicton</td>
      <td>344</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>11.1</td>
      <td>Location map of Aylesbeare Common with survey area</td>
      <td>347</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>11.2</td>
      <td>GPS survey map of Aylesbeare Common survey area</td>
      <td>348</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>11.3</td>
      <td>The rectangular structure exposed in the scrape</td>
      <td>349</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>11.4</td>
      <td>The circular structures exposed in the scrape</td>
      <td>349</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>11.5</td>
      <td>Part of Carter's annotated 1906 Ordnance Survey map</td>
      <td>350</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>11.6</td>
      <td>Carter's photograph of 'Simcoe's tent structure'</td>
      <td>351</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>11.7</td>
      <td>Carter's photograph of Simcoe's tent showing detail of ditch</td>
      <td>352</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>11.8</td>
      <td>Hutchinson's 1861 sketch map of the 'Soldiers' pits'</td>
      <td>353</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>11.9</td>
      <td>Plan of the excavated sites and sections</td>
      <td>355</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>11.10</td>
      <td>Circular ditches A and B: profiles</td>
      <td>356</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>11.11</td>
      <td>Feature C: profile</td>
      <td>356</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>11.12</td>
      <td>Feature C: section</td>
      <td>356</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>11.13</td>
      <td>British Army bell tents</td>
      <td>357</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>11.14</td>
      <td>The bog barrow</td>
      <td>358</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>11.15</td>
      <td>Profile of the bog barrow showing Carter's trench</td>
      <td>358</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>11.16</td>
      <td>Section of the bog barrow</td>
      <td>359</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>11.17</td>
      <td>Part of a pit from Carter's section</td>
      <td>360</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>11.18</td>
      <td>The pebble rectangular structure fully exposed</td>
      <td>361</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>11.19</td>
      <td>Plan of the rectangular structure</td>
      <td>362</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>11.20</td>
      <td>Sketch plan of the rhomboid pavement and path</td>
      <td>364</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>11.21</td>
      <td>Photograph of the rhomboid pavement and path</td>
      <td>365</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>11.22</td>
      <td>The circular structures marked with flags</td>
      <td>366</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>11.23</td>
      <td>Plan of the circles</td>
      <td>367</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>11.24</td>
      <td>Profile of ditch and bank of the northern circle</td>
      <td>367</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>12.1</td>
      <td>Hardy's sketch map of Egdon Heath</td>
      <td>376</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>13.1</td>
      <td>Pebble quarries on the heathlands</td>
      <td>382</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>13.2a</td>
      <td>The pebble path John Long built at Lympstone</td>
      <td>383</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>
<table>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td>13.2b The pebble floor in the 'Bear Hut'</td>
      <td>386</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>13.2c Aylesbeare village hall: entrance lobby with a pebble 'mat' in a diamond design</td>
      <td>387</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>13.2d Pebble wall, Saltings, Budleigh Salterton</td>
      <td>388</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>13.3a Budleigh Salterton seafront: drainage guttering</td>
      <td>388</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>13.3b Pebble barn with brick quoins</td>
      <td>389</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>13.3c New pebble decorative wall in East Budleigh</td>
      <td>390</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>13.3d Pebble wall with arches and doorways</td>
      <td>390</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>13.4a Pebble path, Quay area, Lympstone</td>
      <td>391</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>13.4b Decorative path, Station Road, Newton Poppleford</td>
      <td>392</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>13.4c St Gregory's church wall, Newton Poppleford</td>
      <td>393</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>13.4d Pebble farmyard, Dotton</td>
      <td>394</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>13.5a Typical Topsham pebble path</td>
      <td>395</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>13.5b Decorative pebble path in front garden at Topsham</td>
      <td>395</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>13.5c Gilbrook estate, Woodbury: new pebble boundary wall</td>
      <td>396</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>13.5d Woodbury: pebble wall with limestone topping</td>
      <td>396</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>14.1 Black Hill quarry in the 1960s</td>
      <td>400</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>14.2 Black Hill quarry in July 2010</td>
      <td>400</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>14.3 Marks on the landscape created by trench digging</td>
      <td>405</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>14.4 The distribution of modern mounds</td>
      <td>406</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>14.5 Results of a heathland wildfire</td>
      <td>409</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>15.1 Weather from the west</td>
      <td>415</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>15.2 'Museum of curiosity' diary collection</td>
      <td>417</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>15.3 Soil samples</td>
      <td>418</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>15.4 Paper and pebbles</td>
      <td>420</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>15.5 A pebble print on fabric</td>
      <td>421</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>15.6 'Woven Flame'</td>
      <td>424</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>15.7 Pebble grid</td>
      <td>425</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>15.8 Bovey Tracey exhibition</td>
      <td>426</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>16.1 A pebble tower</td>
      <td>429</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>16.2 Beach huts</td>
      <td>430</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>16.3 Lighthouse</td>
      <td>431</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>16.4 Crab</td>
      <td>432</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>16.5 Balloon and bird by beach artist</td>
      <td>432</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>
# Tables

<table><tr><td>1.1</td><td>The dimensions and locations of the Pebblebed cairns</td><td>39</td></tr><tr><td>1.2</td><td>The visibility of principal ridges and hills from the cairns</td><td>47</td></tr><tr><td>1.3</td><td>The visibility of the ridge and hill gaps from the cairns and the main directions from which they look most impressive</td><td>48</td></tr><tr><td>4.1</td><td>The pebble sampling locations across the heathlands</td><td>133</td></tr><tr><td>4.2</td><td>Test samples of large pebbles</td><td>134</td></tr><tr><td>4.3</td><td>The weights of the pebbles in Twin Cairn A</td><td>138</td></tr><tr><td>4.4</td><td>The lengths of the pebbles in Twin Cairn A</td><td>139</td></tr><tr><td>4.5</td><td>Percentages of broken pebbles in Twin Cairn A</td><td>140</td></tr><tr><td>4.6</td><td>Frequencies and percentages of coloured and special pebbles in Twin Cairn A</td><td>145</td></tr><tr><td>4.7</td><td>Examples of chi-square statistics for pebble shape, weight, length and colour</td><td>149</td></tr><tr><td>4.8</td><td>Examples of chi-square statistics for the three cairns for shape, weight, length and colour</td><td>151</td></tr><tr><td>5.1</td><td>Answers that differed from our colour classification</td><td>169</td></tr><tr><td>5.2</td><td>Percentages of different classes of special pebbles recorded in the cairns and sections through the Aylesbeare platforms</td><td>173</td></tr><tr><td>5.3</td><td>The number of times informants chose special pebbles</td><td>182</td></tr><tr><td>6.1</td><td>Radiocarbon dates for Jacob's Well</td><td>199</td></tr><tr><td>6.2</td><td>Total weights of material from excavation spits</td><td>206</td></tr><tr><td>6.3</td><td>Maximum lengths of the fire-cracked pebbles</td><td>207</td></tr><tr><td>6.4</td><td>Frequencies of whole pebbles and those with some area of the cortex remaining</td><td>208</td></tr><tr><td>6.5</td><td>Contrasts between Jacob's Well and the pebble cairns</td><td>214</td></tr><tr><td>6.6</td><td>Pebble lengths from the three platforms</td><td>230</td></tr><tr><td>6.7</td><td>Pebble weights from the three platforms</td><td>230</td></tr><tr><td>6.8</td><td>Pebble weights from the natural in two test squares</td><td>231</td></tr><tr><td>6.9</td><td>Pebble lengths from the natural in two test squares</td><td>231</td></tr></table>
<table><tr><td>8.1</td><td>Comparison of density of environmental data sets in chalkland landscapes</td><td>268</td></tr><tr><td>8.2</td><td>Palaeo-environmental data sets from the Pebblebeds</td><td>270</td></tr><tr><td>9.1</td><td>East Devon hillforts and enclosures: locations and topography</td><td>301</td></tr><tr><td>9.2</td><td>East Devon hillforts: views out from the enclosures and entrances and to the sea</td><td>302</td></tr><tr><td>9.3</td><td>East Devon hillforts: the size and characteristics of the enclosure interiors</td><td>304</td></tr><tr><td>9.4</td><td>Types of East Devon hillforts</td><td>306</td></tr><tr><td>9.5</td><td>East Devon hillforts: outworks, elaborated entrances, rampart dimensions and long axis of interiors</td><td>307</td></tr><tr><td>11.1</td><td>Radiocarbon dates for the bog barrow on Aylesbeare common</td><td>360</td></tr><tr><td>13.1</td><td>Pebble structures documented in the East Devon area</td><td>384</td></tr></table>
Introduction

The pebble is a perfect creature
Equal to itself
Mindful of its limits
Filled exactly-
With a pebbly meaning
With a scent which does not remind one of anything
Does not frighten anything away does not arouse desire
Its ardour and coldness
Are just and full of dignity
I feel a heavy remorse
When I hold it in my hand
And its noble body
Is permeated by false warmth
Pebbles cannot be tamed
To the end they will look at us
With a calm and very clear eye

This poem by the Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert (2007) is a perfect illustration of the relationship between persons and things that this book attempts to explore in relation to the material medium of a landscape made up of pebbles in the longue durée. A pebble represents perfection. But why might a pebble be considered perfect compared with other kinds of stone? What is the relationship here between a subject and an object? How mindful is the pebble: has the pebble a meaning that inheres in itself, transcending a human desire to pin down its meaning? Does this reside, somehow, in its brute materiality?
In the poem, pebbles are thoroughly anthropomorphized but remain ambiguous in character. Unlike persons, they cannot be tamed. They are noble and dignified in this respect. In an aloof manner they look at us and simultaneously delude. They have a scent of their own, are cold, but have a false warmth in human hands. A dialectic exists in the poem between the objectivity of the pebble and the inevitable subjectivity of its meaningful relationship to persons. Things posited in themselves and for themselves, in their material interiority, can never have any meaning.

In giving meaning to the pebble we inevitably find a reflection of our selves in its material Otherness. In this sense the pebble always bears a mindful relationship to our social being and sensing body, through the medium of body of a thing that cannot think or sense and has no feeling. The pebble remains in itself and for itself in a relation of interiority. But on the other hand, persons and things are mutually constitutive, co-present and co-beings, but they are not equal. There is no equal or 'symmetrical' relationship between the two (cf. Olsen 2010; Olsen et al. 2012). This is because grasping the meaning of a thing is quite literally an embodied relationship. In other words, the pebble can never be known in the abstract. For a pebble to be meaningful to us, or others, we need to sense its own materiality, its stony difference, in relation to our fleshy bodies. When we do that the pebble no longer remains an object that is not subject to human will but becomes a quasi-subject with which we can interact, something that in this way becomes meaningful and comes alive or has some kind of agency. To know a pebble is thus to grasp it in the hands, to scent the thing, to gaze at it, to experience its pebble voice activated when we touch it with another thing. To know a pebble is also to reflect on what we can make from it, what we can make a pebble do for us and what, in the process, the pebble gives to us, the potentialities that it affords, the stories that unfold from its very materiality and difference. But we cannot tell any stories that we like: a pebble is a smooth stone. If the stone is entirely rough or jagged it is no longer a pebble but a different kind of thing altogether. This is precisely why we need to be mindful that the pebble has its limits and because of this has 'a pebbly meaning' that requires human representation to unfold.

Pebbles are like no other kind of stone and have an especial place in our contemporary culture. There are innumerable paintings and photographs of them. They appear on cards and posters, in shop-window displays, as ornaments in homes and gardens, as table numbers in pubs, sometimes as giant street sculptures in various forms. Some people collect pebbles and sometimes polish them in special machines. Pebbles are painted and kept in the pocket as talismans. No other kind of stone has
generated so much interest. Who, apart from geologists, has collections
of granite or limestone or sandstone rocks? A quick search of the internet
will generate thousands of products designed in the form of pebbles, or
the use of pebble designs on an extraordinarily diverse range of products.
A short list, in no particular order:

pebble sofas
pebble candles
pebble dresses
pebble chimes
pebble tea-towel
pebble tray
pebble T-shirt
pebble bath mat
pebble blinds
pebble wine label
pebble soap
cocoa pebbles cereal
fruity pebbles sweets
pebble linoleum
pebble ironing-board cover
pebble shower curtains
pebble toilet bags
pebble phone
pebble deck chairs
pebble bathroom cleaner
pebble tissues
pebble face wipes
pebble water bottle
pebble tablecloths
pebble place mats
pebble coasters
pebble swimming costumes.

Manipulated within the advertising and marketing industries, there
appears to be almost no end to the products that might be fashioned in
the form of pebbles, or adorned with pebble designs. Can you imagine a
granite tissue or a limestone cereal? Where are the sandstone face wipes
and candles and shower curtains?

There is quite obviously something very special about pebbles, an
appeal that cannot be matched by any other type of stone. Those who
market and sell things to us must of necessity generate a feeling of well-
being on the part of the consumer. Pebbles, from this perspective, are
always happy stones. They are happy because they are quintessentially
the stones we associate with the sea and holidays: playful rather than
functional or utilitarian stones. Pebbles are dancing stones. They can be
made to skim across water, unlike most other types of stones that just
sink. More generally they signify informality, freedom and leisure rather
than the world of work, hence the swimming costumes, dresses and T-
shirt designs.

Extending beyond seaside holidays they have become domestic
stones intended to be used in and to decorate the home. They are asso-
ciated with friends and family, dining and social occasions. Pebbles are
intimate and sociable stones, hence the table mats, coasters and trays,
candles and blinds. As such they are also appropriate for outdoor domes-
tic activities in the garden, hence the deck chair designs, outdoor table-
cloths etc.

More broadly they have aesthetic value as ornaments and func-
tional use-value as paperweights or doorstops to people who collect
them. A whole body of beach artists make patterns out of them. Others
such as the New Zealand sculptor Chris Booth specialize in making things
out of pebbles (Booth 2007). There is a fundamental association with
water and bodily cleansing, embodied experiences of water. So pebbles
are particularly appropriate as designs for bathroom linoleum, as shower
curtains and mats and are associated with products that cleanse the
home and the body – soap, face wipes, etc.

Pebbles are said to feel good and promote well-being: they are ther-
apeutic stones. Many self-help books concerned with the promotion of
psychic well-being use pebbles as metaphors in their titles, hence the title
of the compilation of quotations and insights by the mystic, Sadhguru,
*Pebbles of Wisdom* (2015). On the cover, carefully arranged wise pebbles
curve across the sea. Another book, *A Pebble for Your Pocket* by Thich Nhat
Hanh (2001), is a collection of ‘mindful stories for children and grown-
ups’ to do with contemplation and divine wisdom. Academics are not
immune, either, from using pebble metaphors. Zalasiewicz’s *The Planet
in a Pebble* (2010) is a geological history of the earth that begins with the
humble story of a Welsh pebble and then wades through vast expanses of
geological time: pebbles are good to think.

This book is a 4,000-year history of pebbles and the manner in
which they have been used and thought through by people. Pebbles are
usually found only on the beach, in the liminal space between land and
the sea. What happens when pebbles instead extend inland and create
a ridge brushing against the sky? The book explores the multiple qualities and associations of pebbles in the past and the present through the investigation of a unique landscape of pebbles over the long term. It is a study of long-term relationships created through the lives of pebbles and the lives of people in a pebbled landscape. This is a matter of the ways in which different generations have appropriated and materialized pebbles in often quite distinct and disjunctive modes. The focus is also on the capacity of pebbles themselves to attract particular types of responses stemming from their materiality, responses that transcend the simple notion that time unfolds itself in terms of either continuities or ruptures. This is not a matter of objectification but subjectification in the relation between persons and things in which time itself is subjectified, a theme elaborated on in the conclusions.

## Landscape in the longue durée

The title of the book pays homage, of course, to the general perspective of the *Annales* school of historiography, but differs substantially from the approach in a number of important respects. As a starting point it identifies archaeological research as essentially historical rather than ‘scientific’ in character. In other words, I take it as the purpose of archaeology to make sense of the past in the present through the creation of a narrative, in the case of this book one that tells a story of a pebbled landscape over the long term.

The work of the *Annales* school has been extensively discussed elsewhere (e.g. Trevor-Roper 1973; Stoianovich 1976; Burke 1990; Hodder 1987; Burguière 2009) and specifically in relation to archaeology excellent discussions can be found in the volume edited by Knapp (Knapp 1992a). Unfortunately, that book seems to have been little followed in the development of a historical analysis subsequently by archaeologists. Rather than discuss this perspective again in any detail, I hope it will suffice to list below ten very general points informing the discussions in the rest of the book that I find important in the *Annales* approach:

1. An emphasis on long-term diachronic processes: that is, long-term patterns rather than short-term events.

2. Finding the general in the details of the particular.

3. Reading the past from the vantage point of the present to gain insights.
4. The general stress on the collective and social nature of human actions rather than individual events/actions/thoughts.

5. The emphasis put on material culture as another way of telling and understanding. This is because archaeological evidence, fragmentary though it is, provides us very importantly with a material record of actual practice: what people do rather than what they say they do. This is to put stress on enduring material components of thought and action.

6. The importance given to interdisciplinary insights that link archaeology, history, anthropology, sociology, geography, psychology and other disciplines. The outcome is that all historical knowledge is essentially synthetic in character.

7. A striving for synthesis and comparison in relation to the manner in which material circumstances relate to human experience.

8. The idea that time is not uniform, a kind of universal measuring scale that is homogeneous and linear in character, but subjective and made up of different rhythms: some short-, some medium- and some very long-term indeed, which intermingle and criss-cross. There is no present divorced from a past that is supposedly gone for ever. The past is always a material presence and we are always surrounded by things of the past that, in fact, are constitutive of our present. Only the people who made these things are gone for good, but they also live on through the medium of things. This is discussed further below.

9. The recognition of the often habitual, repetitive and unconscious nature of human 'mentalities' relating to symbolism and the manner in which cultural traditions get played out in spaces. Braudel liked to say that space is the best kind of way of slowing down history (cited in Ricoeur 2004: 152). To put it another way more pertinent to this study, landscape and place slow history down through its material sedimentation.

10. The attempt to integrate the local and regional into a broader perspective best exemplified by Braudel's masterly study of the Mediterranean (Braudel 1992).

What I find inadequate is the frequent recourse to various forms of technological and economic and demographic reductionism and a misguided faith in quantitative and statistical approaches to historical evidence, especially in the work of later members of the *Annales* school (see discussion of Knapp on this; Knapp 1992b: 6ff.).
Going beyond the ten general points listed above, the book much
more specifically develops a perspective directly inspired by existential-
ist and phenomenological philosophical theoretical traditions that are
themselves heavily influenced by a Marxist emphasis on material prac-
tices. Again, for the sake of brevity, I list a further seven points informing
the discussions throughout the subsequent chapters:

1. A stress on materiality that insists that what we need to study is the real rather than representations of the real. What this means is a return to the things themselves, in the case of this book pebbles in a pebbled landscape. We do not base our knowledge on their pre-existing representation in a field of discourse constituted by the abstractions of texts, maps, photographs, plans, GIS analyses and so forth. In this respect synthetic archaeological texts and indeed a great body of the research represented in the *Annales* school are built solely on representations of representations, providing only a simulacrum of the real, or in other words a copy of a copy of something that never really existed in the first place.

2. An insistence that knowledge of the past in the present is only to be satisfactorily gained through the direct medium of the sensual and sensing body that is always already our primary research tool. The starting point is our experience of the world through our human involvement and participatory immersion within it: being there, touching and being touched in both a literal and metaphorical understanding of the sensation of touch. Our sensuous carnal relationships to the world end in both landscapes and objects. So the body is both the cognitive and the existential ground of culture. Perception begins in the pre-objective material and subjective human body and ends in landscapes and things (Merleau-Ponty 1962; Cszordas 1990; Abram 1996; Marrato 2012; Tilley and Cameron-Daum 2017).

3. An emphasis on performativity in human relations or in other words the notion that identities are constituted through performative practices (Butler 1980). We learn through making and doing and through direct observation of others. Landscapes and the things within them are part of us and we are part of them, we are *of them* (Heidegger 1962; Thomas 1996).

4. An interpretative stress on the agency of landscapes and component parts of those landscapes. A landscape made up of pebbles with a particular topography, vegetation, soil, climate, etc. cannot be thought in any way we might like, nor does it determine the way it is thought
through. We thus eschew any simplistic idealism or cultural relativ-
ism or crude adaptational and functional deterministic perspective.

5. The relationship between persons and things involves an entangled, complex, material field involving the intertwining of the flesh of the body and the flesh of the world (Merleau-Ponty 1962, 1968; Tilley 2004, 2008, 2010). This is a dialectic of embodiment and objectification (Bourdieu 1977), a bringing forth of things into the world. We do not find a pre-existing world of things and landscapes to study but create both. As such, landscapes and things are material entities that shift and change and have different contours and produce different experiences. This has profound consequences for a theory of things and is a point discussed extensively in the conclusions.

6. An emphasis on our determinate situatedness in the world: everything that we do, say or think is from a point of view and therefore always limited in terms of a particular perspective and relation to the world (Casey 1993).

7. Our relation to the world always involves an intermingling of all our perceptual senses, and this synaesthetic experience is itself intimately linked to our kinaesthetic bodily involvement in it (Tilley 2008).

There are different ways in which we can conceive of the importance of cultural traditions and collective memories of the past. One form is the recall of traditions and memories that sit in the mind and is linked to individual and collective experiences of the past in the present. Another is to place emphasis on memories that sit in the body in the world, that is, they are embodied, and do not require acts of recollection (Connerton 1989; Casey 2000; Ricoeur 2004). They instead involve the manner in which bodies engage with the materiality of landscapes and things. Such bodily memories born out of bodily experiences transcend time and directly link past and present through the medium of embodied interactions, producing an active habitual immanence mediating relationships between people and things and landscapes. This point is again one that will be elaborated in the conclusions to the study, but I want to sketch out the position a little more here since it is crucial to the argument.

Time and the longue durée

A common-sense understanding of the 'longue durée' might be that it
simply refers to the long term, a long period of chronological time. This
notion of clock or objective chronological time is ultimately uninteresting
and helps us to explain and understand nothing. It is empty time, time as a container segmented by dates and events, before and afters.

The *Annales* approach to time as exemplified by Braudel is far more subtle than that. Braudel hierarchically distinguished between time as duration; long, continuous and almost imperceptible historical time rhythms; long historical economic cycles and rhythms, and much briefer short-term changes in which time, as historical motion, speeds up in the form of events and then dissipates. This was a distinction between long-term geographic and environmental structures, medium-term socioeconomic cycles (involving, in the case of the Mediterranean, such matters as linked movements in economics and demographic structures – such matters as cereal price curves, demographic curves with reciprocal movements of industrial production, ground rents, seaport duties, etc.) and short-term sociopolitical events.

His concern was the interrelationship between historical change and the near-permanent in history (Braudel 1992: 651). This was a matter of conceptualizing the interrelationship between rhythms of material life and fluctuations of human existence. Different times and their histories thus both overlap and develop simultaneously: ‘in seeking to grasp all the different vibrations, waves of past time which ought ideally to accumulate like the divisions in the mechanism of a clock, the seconds, the minutes, the hours and days – perhaps we shall find the whole fabric slipping away between our fingers’ (652). Beyond this he notes that there are not ‘two or three measures of time, there are dozens, each of them attached to a particular history’ (657). Dates might be assigned to the beginnings and ends of particular historical rhythms and economic cycles, but according to how one conceptualized time and place they were arbitrary and open to debate and re-evaluation. The notion of duration here is linked to both continuity and heterogeneity as conditions of experience. In other words, duration is multiple rather than singular in character, characterized by coexisting times rather than a singular time.

As regards the Mediterranean, its geography, climate, topography and physical regularities partly constitute the longue durée and they severely constrain possibilities for material, institutional and cultural changes. These are the ‘constants’ of history and produce enduring ‘mentalties’ or structures of feeling: ‘all western writers who have at some time in their lives encountered the Mediterranean have been struck with its historical or rather timeless character, its longue durée’ (658). Thus the fishermen who sit round in a bar today waiting for the wind to change are doing the same thing as was done in antiquity, and the wild countryside
takes us back into the ‘mists of time’ (658). The Mediterranean world of the sixteenth century was overwhelmingly a world of peasants, tenant farmers and landowners: ‘peasants and crops, in other words, food supplies and the size of the population, silently determined the destiny of the age ... still waters run deep and we should not be misled by surface flurries’ (660).

Braudel thus splits apart any notion of a unitary historical time. In its place we have a multiplicity of times that are interwoven and inflect each other. A notion of an embodied human time, perhaps implicit in his view of long-term history, allows us to take his perspective further. The notion of time informing this study is phenomenologically understood as *temporality*, the times of bodies, sensual relations and human experience. This time of the body and of intersubjective material relations is a time of the self and a time of others, a lived time and one of the times of landscape.

There has been insufficient attention to such an understanding of time in archaeology, which is rather surprising given that it has always defined itself in terms of deep time as opposed to the superficial times of anthropology and sociology and indeed history. It has thus claimed superiority: only archaeologists can adequately study things in time. Unfortunately, the primary concern has always been pragmatic – dating things and ordering them in chronological succession in an untensed and inhuman time of duration in which notions of past or present or future are irrelevant. This is what Gell refers to as ‘B series time’ in the analytic philosophical tradition, as opposed to the ‘A series time’ of existentialist and phenomenological philosophies informing anthropological discussions (Gell 1992b).

Human time in archaeology has been valably discussed in terms of narrative and object biographies (e.g. Barrett 1994), adaptations of the practice theory of Bourdieu (1977) and Giddens (1984) stressing the sequencing and the timing of human projects in relation to making and using things, time as arising from the social use of things (Gosden 1994), processes of remembering and forgetting through things (Rowlands 1993, 1999; Jones 2007), conceptions of how the past may have been understood in the past (Bradley 2002) and through a Heideggerian conception of time as fundamental to an ontology of social Being, an essential part of that being how people relate to and do things with things (Thomas 1996: chs. 2 and 3).

The temporality of social life, produced in concrete practices that actively produce space-time rather than taking place in space and in time, has been stressed by a number of anthropologists (Bourdieu 1977;
Munn 1992; Thomas 1996; Hirsch and Stewart 2005). Time has thus been understood as fluid and in flux and multiple rather than singular in character. However, as Robbins points out, virtually all anthropological studies in which time is actually considered as an integral part of social practices assume continuity between past and present (Robbins 2007). There is little sense of rupture or discontinuity and this is true of Munn's own account of spatiotemporal relations on Gawa, in which she successfully integrates a consideration of land and sea, the body, gardens and food consumption, ceremonial exchange and witchcraft (Munn 1986). The wider theoretical question of the relationship between past, present and future in the longue durée and in relation to a study of things has only been tangentially addressed.

Bergson (1991) influentially stressed time as *la durée* or duration. The carnal human body exists in time, it fuses through its material being, past, present and future, which interpenetrate each other. The body experiences a flux of sensations in time linking matter to memory. So how we understand the world links matter to memory. Our understanding is embedded in the manner in which we encounter and remember the world through our embodied experience of it. Time is embodied through memories. These either may be consciously recalled or are a product of inscribed corporeality and habit (81–2). Through the moving corporeal body past and present interpenetrate each other and lead to the future. Both duration and simultaneity constitute the self. Through the body the present passes at the same time as it is present. So the paradox is that the past becomes contemporary, or is in the same time, as the present that it once was part of.

Deleuze, building on Bergson's position, explores the paradox further and I am indebted to the brilliant discussion of Hodges (2008) for the following brief account. One of the paradoxes of time resides in the following: 'the past would never be constituted if it did not coexist with the present whose past it is' (Deleuze 1991: 59). Past and present from this perspective coexist in the same time, contrary to a common-sense understanding that, philosophically at least, turns out to be a non-sense. The past thus can only exist and come into being in the present, but the present itself does not exist in itself because it is past. Acts of remembering (as recall or part of bodily habit) bring forth the past as present: 'all of the past coexists with the new present in relation to which it is now past ... each past is contemporaneous with the present that it was, the whole past coexists with the present in relation to which it is past, but the past element of the past in general pre-exists the passing present' (Deleuze 1994: 107–8). Hodges explains the paradox: 'the only place the
past can exist is in the present – it has nowhere else to be – even though
the present is *not* 'present', of course. This generalized past, therefore,
does not exist in actuality, but is the *virtual* form of the past, accessible
through various acts of remembering' (Hodges 2008: 411). So differ-
ent times can coexist with each other, some are deep and are of a very
long-term nature, others are much shallower and of shorter duration.
Such times are themselves fundamentally non-chronological in charac-
ter. These are the times of making interpretative sense of past as present
and present as past: *'la durée* underpins human existence and the phys-
ical conditions which shape it; while the experience, appropriation and
representation of "time" reside largely in the domain of everyday prac-
tice, neurological, cognitive and embodied processing' (414). The longue
durée thus has emergent properties that actualize themselves in particu-
lar practices that take place in particular historical contexts in particular
landscapes.

I take seriously in this book that the past may be considered in
some respects to be coeval with the present. It is not over and done with,
something that is finished and completed. This co-presence is activated
through the temporalizing practices of persons in particular social and
historical contexts. This perspective I wish to link to another – that the
embodied perception and experience of things and landscapes may
also be considered coeval and outside a chronological spatialized and
homogeneous notion of time. This is very different from thinking about
cultural memory as recall or simply being a matter of remembering or
forgetting. These need to be differentiated from social practices in which
referential meaning and significance gets assigned: this pebble sculpture
is a representation of a prehistoric axe, that is a modern representation of
a crab or an ice-cream cone. In these cases we find only *difference* rather
than similarity.

An embodied history

Connerton (1989) is rightly critical of the kind of approach to history
that puts all the weight on thought and ‘inscribing practices’, privileging
historical texts as the font of all knowledge. He draws the important dis-
tinction between ‘inscribing practices’ and ‘incorporating practices’, prac-
tices relating to the body and habit in which the past is ‘sedimented in
the body’ (72). Habit memory of the body is mnemonic in character and
repetitive, or memory without thought, but this memory is performed
through the body and leaves little historical trace.
Casey puts forward one of the best discussions of bodily memory from a phenomenological perspective. His definition is that it is ‘an active immanence of the past in the body that informs present bodily actions in an efficacious, orienting and regular manner’ (Casey 2000: 149). It works through the movements of the body in the world through habitual enactment and has an active rather than a passive character, part of social being. It is a ‘settled disposition’ to act in a particular way, an effective history within the body that is efficacious in the world (151). It is essential in allowing us to go on in the world and allowing us to feel familiar in that world. It is a matter of ‘immersion in memorial depths beyond – or rather, beneath and before – the two-dimensional flatlands of recollected scenes’ (167). The past becomes present in these body memories and becomes the future. This is not some kind of pale reflection of the past in the present but the past in the fullness of its plenitude, a co-immanence of past and present, an entanglement of the two. It is not a repetition of the past in the present. Bodily memories unlike recollected memories are fundamental and primary to social being. Unlike memories recalled in the mind they are not subject to memory loss or being unreliable, since they arise out of embodied practice.

Beyond body memory, Casey refers to three primary mnemonic modes: reminding, reminiscing and recognizing. These are in between the polarities of memory in the mind and memory of the body and remind us that memory itself is not fixed or static but slips into and out of differing forms of consciousness and bodily being in relation to differing temporalities (Ricoeur 2004: 38ff.).

Olsen rightly points out in a discussion of Connerton that although he usefully stresses the materiality of body memory, he has almost nothing to say about the manner in which this relates to the materiality of things and their durable persistence in the world (Olsen 2010: 122). The same criticism can be made of Casey and Ricoeur. Archaeology, above all, demonstrates that the past is still present, a past in the present, memory made material and a memory that is co-immanent (see excellent discussions in Rowlands 1993; Bradley 2002; Meskell 2004; Jones 2007; Olsen 2010: ch. 6). It provides the possibility of another way of telling about the relation of past to present through its focus on material things. In general, archaeology has set itself an agenda of trying to understand the past in itself and for itself in terms of the realities of a deep past time. But archaeology also has to be about the relationship of present to past in its intellectual, material and sensory embodied dimensions. The ‘common-sense’ approach usually adopted takes no account of this, implicitly asserting that the past is separated from the present. It is
something completed, gone for ever, and thus can be objectively recon-
stituted from the traces that remain. If we abandon this train of thought
rooted in a chronological time then we are forced to ask the question of
how archaeology and history can provide us with knowledge of the past
if it is no longer where or what or when we thought it might be in a dead
time divorced from the present.

In a study of things and landscapes in the longue durée the following
are inevitably involved: (a) we are practically engaged: landscapes are good
to work with; (b) we are cognitively engaged: landscapes are good to think;
(c) as a consequence of this our bodies are materially entrapped by that
which we study, in the specific case of this book by a landscape of pebbles;
(d) the concomitant of this is a collapsing of an abstract notion of time, the
consequence of which is that we realize that the past is in and of the present
and the present is in and of the past. We live through the past in the present
and the present in the past. Like it or not, we are always participants and
involved physically and imaginatively. This direct physical and imaginative
involvement with past and present simultaneously is that which permits us
to make sense of both and forms the basis of all our understanding.

Approaches to long-term history have always been dominated by a
stress on changing technologies, environments, economic relations and
demographics in various ways that are deemed to be the key variables, or
they may emphasize instead cultural memory, social processes of collec-
tive remembering and forgetting (Halbwachs 1992; Nora 1996; Ricoeur
2004; Erll 2011). The position taken in this book takes as its main focus
the significance of embodied relationships between people, landscapes
and things over the long term and the manner in which they persist and
survive. In other words, it is a history of human embodiment. While the
particular cognized meaning and significance of landscapes and things
may alter, shift and change in cycles, long-term embodied relations per-
sist because they arise from sensuous human involvement, engagement
and participation in a material world with material effects. They arise
from the very nature of the things themselves.

The structure of the book

The book is divided into two parts. Part I is concerned with the prehis-
tory of the heathlands until the end of the Iron Age. Part II discusses the
heathlands in modernity, broadly the last 300 years. The gap is largely
due to the lack of useful earlier historical information about the heath-
lands until the modern era.
Chapter 1 introduces the Pebblebed landscape, discussing its geology and topography, the landscape relationships of prehistoric sites and basic find evidence from the Mesolithic until the Iron Age. Chapter 2 discusses the life and work of George Carter, assessing the importance of his archaeological work and the way it was received in his day. This is almost entirely based on unpublished manuscripts. Since Carter could not publish his own work, I felt duty bound to salvage it and present it for him in summary form. This is intended as a contribution to the history of early twentieth-century British archaeology and also provides some of the empirical background to other chapters where his work is discussed further (Chapters 3, 6 and 11).

Chapters 3–5 discuss the excavation and analysis of three pebble cairns. The deeply embodied social and symbolic significance of pebbles in a landscape of pebbles is emphasized. Chapter 6 discusses the Early and Middle Bronze Age burnt mound of Jacob's Well and a series of spectacular pebble platforms or sculptures of Middle Bronze Age date. In Chapters 6 and 7 the evidence from East Devon is discussed in much more general terms in relation to the southern British and European Bronze Age. The concern here is to call into question the dominant social model of wealthy elites controlling metals and prestige goods. An alternative way of assessing wealth and value is put forward. Chapter 8 sets out an environmental reconstruction of the prehistoric landscape from the Neolithic until the Late Bronze Age. Chapter 9 assesses the major Iron Age hilltop enclosure on the heathlands, Woodbury Castle, in terms of a broad regional analysis of the wider East Devon landscape before the Roman occupation.

Chapters 10–12 discuss the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century use of the pebbled heathlands and their relationship to the Bicton estate, owned by the richest landowners in Devon. The discussions in Chapters 13–15 and the introduction to Chapter 16 take the account up to the present. The rest of the conclusion presents a model of continuity and change in the embodied use of pebbles in this landscape and engages with contemporary debates with regard to how we might develop a theory of material culture or of the meaning and significance of things.

In Chapter 12 I discuss the work of Thomas Hardy in relation to understanding the character of the nineteenth-century heathland. This is presented in the firm belief that we have much to learn about landscapes from novelists as an antidote to the sometimes impoverished accounts that archaeologists and historians provide. Hardy provides a brilliant understanding of embodiment in a heathland setting. In a similar manner Priscilla Trenchard’s account of her own contemporary artistic work
on the heathlands in Chapter 15 contributes significantly to an understanding of a modern poetics of embodiment in relation to pebbles.

The book is unusual from an archaeological point of view in that rather than discussing artefacts the chief focus of the research is unmodified natural things – pebbles. This is material that in a landscape made up of pebbles might ordinarily be considered just locally available building material and of no other significance. In an excavation such material might have been regarded in a cursory way, dug out and piled up on a spoil heap without any analysis. What would matter would be finds of things made by people, to which much time and care would be devoted in, for example, the serried rows of illustrated pot sherds or flints adorning countless excavation reports – they often have no other purpose.

Instead we devoted huge amounts of time to analysing this supposedly worthless natural stuff. During the course of the project I visited another excavation where pebbles had been found in a tree-throw hole together with a Neolithic pot. I asked if I might see the pebbles. They were all buried and lost on the spoil heap. The pot, of course, had been carefully preserved. This is symptomatic of an attitude of mind differently evaluating the worth of natural and cultural things. In my opinion half the evidence that might have made sense of that pot had been destroyed. This attitude to the natural world, dismissing it as insignificant, has dramatically changed in the archaeological study of landscape over the course of the last two decades. It still seems to persist in relation to things. This difference between a natural thing and a cultural thing and how meaning is created in relation to both is a key aspect of any study of the meaning of things in general, a point taken up in the conclusions to the book.

It should be evident that this book is multi-faceted. It presents new empirical evidence based on archaeological survey and excavation in both *Parts I* and *II*. It presents a study of landscape over the long term, a fresh evaluation of aspects of the Bronze and Iron Ages, and a new theoretical contribution to an understanding of things.

The argument is meant to gradually unfold but many of the chapters, apart from *Chapters 3–6*, which need to be considered together, can admittedly be read on their own and are relatively independent of each other. It has proved to be difficult to stop writing this text and entire chapters that were originally meant to be included in it have had to be cut.
# Part I

## The heathlands in prehistory
<figure><img src="image_7.png" /></figure>
# The Pebblebed landscape

The landscape of the East Devon Pebblebed heathlands, whose bedrock is composed entirely of water-rounded pebbles, is geologically unique in the UK. Today they form a low ridge forming the watershed between the river Otter to the east and the Exe estuary to the west. The ridge is approximately 13 km long N–S, extending inland from the coast; it is 2–3 km wide and almost continuous. It is broken up today by pockets of improved agricultural land. The heathland soils are thin, poor and acidic and most of the area has never been cultivated. The western side of the Pebblebeds are defined by a distinct scarp slope about 20 m or so high rising up quite steeply from the undulating lowlands that extend to the Exe. The highest point on the western scarp is marked by the Iron Age hillfort of Woodbury Castle (183 m). The heathlands dip away gently to the south and the east toward the Otter valley and the sea. To the north they run down into the Clyst valley. The overall dip of the land across the greater part of the heathland area is from the northwest (high) to the southeast (low). At the base of the western scarp there is a spring line. To the east the sloping heathlands are broken up by small valleys. These sometimes originate in broader and boggy irregular basins. The heathland area is highly porous and drains quickly. Small east to west or northwest to southeast fast-flowing perennial streams now occur in the valleys where the water has cut down to underlying clays and marls. Further up beyond the surface streams, there are dry valleys formed in permafrost conditions during glacial periods. Wherever the surface mantle of vegetation is absent or disturbed, along the stream beds, on exposures on the often steep sides of valleys, and on paths and trackways crossing the heathlands, pebbles are exposed at the surface (Figure 1.1).
<figure><img src="image_8.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1.1** The location of the Pebblebed heathlands showing some of the main places mentioned in the text (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

The Pebblebed heathlands are surrounded by rich pasturelands on clays and marls and arable fields on the surrounding Otter sandstones. The boundary between these lowland areas and the heath itself, on which the vegetation is gorse and heather, pine and birch, is abrupt and distinct. Today it is mostly marked by hedged banks and fencing. Contemporary farms and villages are sited along the stream courses where they emerge from the heathland habitat. Parish boundaries typically extend from the rich pastureland and arable fields up on to the heathlands, formerly common land both to the west up the scarp slope and to the east up the dip slope, ensuring that each had its share of fertile agricultural land as well as uncultivated grazing land. Although few animals graze the heaths today, in the past they provided important and substantial areas of rough grazing during the summer months. The heathland habitat is a mosaic of dry heath where the principal vegetation is gorse and heather and the lowland heath characterized by bog valley plant communities,
birch and alder. Substantial areas of the dry heath have been afforested with conifers since the 1920s. The natural woodland cover of the heath is deciduous. Pine trees were introduced in the late eighteenth century as landscaping features (see Chapter 10).

This area of Devon has long been noted for its long, warm summers and mild winters. Today during the summer months temperatures reach on average 20 degrees C or more during July and August. Given the proximity of the sea, winters are mild with little snow and few frosts. Temperatures range between 3 and 8 degrees C. Situated in the rain shadow of Dartmoor, with prevailing winds being southwesterly, the area is relatively dry. The rainfall average is about 800 mm, peaking during the winter months.

## Looking out to a world beyond

Standing on the western high scarp of the Pebblebeds there is a magnificent and panoramic view of the surrounding landscape. To the west one looks across the course of the Exe estuary to the unbroken ridge of the Haldon Hills running along its eastern edge (Figure 1.1; Figure 1.2).

<figure><img src="image_9.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1.2** View west to the Haldon Hills with the peaks of Dartmoor beyond from the western scarp edge of the heathlands near to Woodbury Castle (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
Further west still, over the line of the Haldon Hills, there are glimpses of the tor-crowned high peaks of Dartmoor. High Willhays and Ugborough Beacon are just visible some 48 km distant. To the northwest, the Raddon Hills, capped by a Neolithic causewayed enclosure and later Iron Age hillfort, frame the near landscape. To the north, the line of the Blackdown Hills is prominent, with another Neolithic causewayed enclosure and Iron Age hillfort at Hembury occupying a prominent southern spur. Way beyond the highest point on Exmoor, Dunkery Beacon, some 58 km distant, and the Quantock Hills can be seen on a clear day.

To the northeast, the hill island of Dumpdon (Figure 1.3) crowned by a hillfort and possibly another Neolithic causewayed enclosure is prominent in the Honiton gap created through the Blackdown Hills by the river Otter. To the east the landscape is framed by the broad Otter valley and the almost unbroken line of the East Hill and Peak Hill ridges, which block any view further in this direction (Figure 1.15a). Between these two ridges there is a prominent gap through which the sun rises at the equinoxes. This is a prominent landscape feature visible for long distances from the west and north, as far away as the southern edge of Exmoor to the northwest (Figure 1.15b). To the southeast, High Peak, with its distinctive triangular-shaped profile, is a dominant coastal landmark (Figure 1.4). Beyond it there are more distant views across Lyme

<figure><img src="image_10.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1.3** Dumpdon Hill in the Honiton Gap seen from the west
(Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_11.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1.4** High Peak seen across the heathlands from the northwest
(Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_12.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1.5a** Gravels of the East Hill ridge (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_13.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1.5b** The pebbles of the Pebblebeds (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

Bay to the Isle of Portland 70 km distant – glimpses into other worlds and different landscapes.

But for the most part, views out from the remaining and lower areas of the Pebblebed ridge are strikingly restricted by the higher hills that surround it: the unbroken line of the Haldon Hills to the west, the more irregular line of the Blackdown and Raddon Hills to the north, and the East Hill and Peak Hill ridges to the east. These all rise up fairly abruptly above river valleys and are flat-topped. The eastern scarp slopes of the Haldon Hills and the western scarp of the Peak and East Hill ridges appear remarkably uniform from the Pebblebeds. This contrasts markedly with their appearance from the other side, where all these ridges are deeply indented with coombes and valley systems. Their most uniform and regular scarp slopes face towards the Pebblebeds and are framed by the surrounding hills, creating a sense of interiority and difference: a landscape that is peculiarly distinctive, framed and bounded, a world apart. When the Otter and Exe valleys fill with mists, the ridge and the hilltops are dramatically transformed, appearing to be islands enveloped in a grey sea.

What makes this landscape so special is not only the local presence of the Pebblebed heathland but also the hills that physically and visually hem it in with the significant gap on the eastern side. None of
the surrounding ridges and hills have any Pebblebed outcrops or exposures. To the west, the Haldon Hills are covered by grey and white flinty gravels. The Blackdown Hills to the north and the East Hill and Peak Hill ridges to the east are capped with substantial layers of clay with flints and chert derived from the underlying greensand (paradoxically grey to grey-brown to yellow in colour), as is High Peak to the southeast (Woodward and Ussher 1911: 62ff.). All these surrounding hills thus contrast greatly with the much lower, rolling Pebblebed heathlands in terms of their far greater height, their much more pronounced scarp slopes and the sharp, angular and jagged stones that cover them. Sensorially encountering the bones of this landscape, we move from the smooth and rolling heathlands covered with smooth, rounded and multicoloured pebbles, to higher flat-topped hills with steep scarps covered with brittle, irregular and jagged material of fairly uniform and dull colour, an important series of visual, tactile and colour contrasts (Figure 1.5).

Another contrast occurs between the stones that may be observed along the ridges and the hills and those exposed along the rivers. The numerous river cliffs that occur along the lower course of the Otter are all exposures of the red Otter sandstones, as are those found along the Exe estuary at Lympstone. Along the Exe there are very limited exposures compared with those along the lower course of the Otter. Immediately to the north and south of Ottery St Mary these are grey-green in colour. Beyond here all the way to the south to the sea, where the river passes the Pebblebed heathlands to the west, these river cliffs are all bright red in colour. They occur along the Otter's eastern side except in a short stretch between Newton Poppleford and Colaton Raleigh, where they are on the western side. By contrast, nowhere along the course of the Otter can the exposed stratum of the Pebblebeds be seen.

Walking north, east or west off the heathlands, one notes that the pebbles rapidly disappear under the surrounding marls. None are exposed along the sands and muds of the Exe. Redeposited material down-washed from the Pebblebeds occurs locally in the river bed along the Otter river valley, particularly in its lower stretches from Ottery St Mary southward to the sea at Budleigh Salterton. In the upper reaches of the river the pebbles are few and the river bed is largely made up of angular gravels derived from the clay with flint capping of East Hill. Lower down the river in some places between Tipton St John and Colaton Raleigh, Pebblebed material locally dominates. Newton Poppleford is named after the ford crossing the pebbles, or 'popples', derived from the Pebblebeds, that are numerous here along the river course. Everywhere in the surroundings of the heathlands, pebbles are numerous in arable
fields and gardens, down-washed into the soils formed on the surround-
ing red Otter sandstones.

The geology of the Pebblebeds and its significance

There are very few natural inland rock exposures in this area of East
Devon, and none are very large. The only places where the underlying
rocks can be seen occur in the river cliffs along the Otter and the Exe
valleys and along a few valleys with streams flowing east into the river
Otter. The Steamer Steps cliffs to the west of Budleigh Salterton rise
up sharply from the beach in a series of staggered ledges to West Down
Beacon (129 m), the highest point before the land drops to the west and
the Exe estuary. The cliff exposure here provides a dramatic and huge
cross-section through the landscape - elsewhere almost always mantled
in soil and covered in vegetation. An inspection of the sea cliffs thus per-
mits a unique glimpse of another concealed world, the hard structure, or
the 'bones' of the land beneath the constantly changing soft, damp and
fleshy surface (Figure 1.6).

<figure><img src="image_14.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1.6** The red cliffs at Budleigh Salterton. The Pebblebeds formation can be clearly seen in the lower part of the cliff face (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
From Exmouth eastward, the cliffs and headlands are composed of the relatively soft and warm red-coloured Devonian New Red Sandstone formation. West Down Beacon marks the point where the geologically famous Triassic Budleigh Salterton (or Bunter) Pebblebeds first outcrop and attain their maximum thickness in the cliff face of up to 26 m (Selwood et al. 1984: 96). This strip of pebbles dips diagonally down through the otherwise red sandstone cliffs in a distinctive band, dipping and narrowing to the east. It finally disappears in the cliff face near to the edge of a small valley cut down to the beach by the stream at Budleigh Salterton. It marks the eastern limit of the Pebblebed outcrop.

The contrast between this band of pebbles and the New Red Sandstone appearing both above and below it could not be greater. The fine-grained red sandstone is smooth and uniform in colour. The only variation in its surface appearance is caused by localized honeycomb wind weathering creating numerous rounded hollows eating into the cliff's face. The Pebblebed formation in the middle is dense and infinitely varied in terms of texture and the forms and colours of the stones. They are composed of well-rounded spherical or oval, clearly water-worn pebbles bedded in a coarse and gritty or finer and sandier matrix. Within the sand and grit lenses, pebble-filled channels can be observed, proof of the riverine origins of these formations.

The Pebblebeds were laid down by a huge river that flowed north through a hot red sandy desert about 240 million years ago (Figure 1.7). The direction of river flow is based on the discovery of fossils in the pebbles: bra chiopods, bivalves and trilobites, whose probable origin was in the moun tains of Brittany, northern France (Vickery 1864; Audley-Charles 1970: 52; Audley-Charles 1992). This river (or rivers) was huge, stretching from East Devon as far east as the Isle of Wight. Side streams probably flowed into it from Dartmoor, south and north Wales, bringing down material. Mountains lay to the west and north of what is now Devon and Somerset, forming part of the supercontinent Pangaea. It flowed from Brittany and Normandy and northward extensions of these areas in the English Channel, across the middle of England. The delta of the river, where it entered what may have been an open sea, was in the Cheshire basin/north Midlands. Almost all its course is only known today through geological bore holes and quarries. The only area where part of the river channel, now upraised, is exposed at the surface is the East Devon Pebblebed landscape.

The river consisted of braided channels and alluvial fans, was subject to flash floods and fast flowing. The large size of some of the pebbles is evidence for this and the fact that they are well rounded suggests a long
<figure><img src="image_15.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1.7** The course of the huge Triassic river across southern England (adapted from Audley-Charles 1970)</figcaption></figure>

transport history. The climate of the British Isles throughout the Triassic was hot, with alternating dry and wet seasons, and was tropical to sub-tropical in character.

Larger and smaller pebbles embedded in a coarse to fine gravel and sand matrix comprise the Budleigh Salterton Pebblebed formation that in the area of Black Hill quarry on the western scarp attains a maximum thickness of 31 m (Selwood et al. 1984: 96). Metaquartzite pebbles and cobbles up to 0.45 m in diameter make up the greater part of the material (up to 90 per cent). Other pebbles and cobbles of schorl, vein quartz (up to 7 per cent), porphyries, tourmaline, feldspathic conglomerate and sandstone are present. There is little variation in the relative proportion of these types of pebbles throughout the exposures. Pebbled strata are commonly interleaved with horizontally bedded red-brown gravel and silty sand layers. These are more frequent towards the top of the formation. The frequency of pebbles to matrix varies between 80 per cent and 20 per cent (Henson 1970: 175).

The quartzites are the product of low-level regional metamorphism. In other words, the sand grains of which they are composed have been comparatively little altered by subsequent heat and pressure. The pebbles are poorly sorted, so very large ones and smaller ones may be found
side by side. The mean size of the pebbles declines northwards along the Pebblebed heathlands from about 16 cm at the coast to 10 cm inland to the north (Henson 1970: 97; Edwards and Scrivener 1999: 88) and from the lower to the upper strata of the exposure (Ussher 1913: 89).

At the top of the Pebblebed formation, visible in the cliffs at Budleigh Salterton, there is a striking bright-yellow band of sandstone appearing immediately beneath the Otter (new red sandstones) (Figure 1.8). Below

<figure><img src="image_16.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1.8** The yellow band running along the top of the Pebblebed formation seen in the cliffs at Budleigh Salterton (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
this there is a thin black deflation layer including ventifacts up to 7 cm thick. These are wind-faceted and polished pebbles with two or more smooth faces with a distinctive ridge between them, and one rough face. Some, termed *dreikanter*, have a very distinctive triangular appearance with three facets at the top; others have four or more. The dark colour of these pebbles when newly exposed is only a surface varnish caused by desert weathering. When split open they are ordinary quartzites like the others (Perkins 1971: 130; Leonard *et al.* 1982). They lay exposed on the floor of the Triassic desert and were wind-polished. The side of the pebbles that lay on the desert floor is typically rough and unpolished with shatter pitting of the surface, while the faces exposed to the polishing actions of the desert sands are beautifully smooth.

The pebbles seen on the beach at Budleigh Salterton are all derived from the cliffs above. Long shore drift and violent storms have swept them eastwards into a substantial ridge backing up to Otter Point and Otter Ledge to the east of the mouth of the river Otter and almost blocking its passage to the sea. Formerly a port, mud flats and marshes have formed behind the great pebble ridge. The beach is approximately 40 m wide and up to 3.5 m above high-water mark.

Despite the derivation of the pebbles on the beach from those in the cliffs there are substantial differences. First, many of the cliff pebbles have numerous shatter marks originating in the transport of the pebbles along the river course. These are rapidly removed and scoured by the waves. Second, while the cliff pebbles are ungraded, with smaller and large pebbles occurring next to each other, those on the beach are sorted by wave action, with smaller pebbles occurring next to the sea and the largest ones higher up the beach nearer to the cliffs with mean pebble size decreasing to the east. Third, the surfaces of the pebbles in the cliffs are stained brown by the gravel and sandy matrix in which they occur. Those on the beach are scoured clean by wave action and the salt and are much more brightly coloured. Many of the pebbles in the cliffs are fractured or broken. Those on the beach are smoother and well rounded, with wave action removing any rough, fractured edges. Fourth, the beach pebbles tend to be flatter and more rounded in form, again a product of abrasive wave action. Statistical sampling has shown that mean roundness values are lowest for cliff samples, with little variation along the beach (Carr and Blackley 1975: 306). By contrast, length variation was considerable, varying from sample to sample, reflecting the composition of the Pebblebeds themselves.

Bunter, the term for this geological formation, derives from the German for 'brightly coloured'. The variation in colours of the pebbles is
quite extraordinary, although curiously somewhat little remarked in con-
temporary geological accounts. All the colours of the rainbow and more
are here. The pebbles range in colour from pure black to pure white.
Brown, red, green, yellow, blue and grey pebbles all occur. Some have
mottled surfaces with many different colours. Others have striking and
intricate quartz veins and inclusions. This, above all, is what makes the
pebbles of the Pebblebed formation on the beach and throughout their
inland distribution so distinctive compared with beach pebbles found
elsewhere throughout Britain.

The modern rational geological account of the Pebblebeds, referred
to above, is of recent date, little more than a hundred years old. Like the
modern geologist, the prehistoric cosmologist might have attempted to
understand what was under his or her feet by asking some 'geological'
questions and making similar observations. Observing fallen pebbles
from the cliffs, the origin of those on the beach might have been easily
deduced. But why the great uplifted ridge of pebbles running inland and
also seen in watercourses and exposed patches so distant from the sea?
What were their origins, when smooth, rounded pebbles are normally
only found by the sea? The logical premises for interpretation would, of
course, have been radically different, but the answer might have been
the same: these were the remains of an ancient river or beach thrust up
towards the sky.

The Mesolithic and Neolithic (9500-2400 BC)

Mesolithic and Neolithic finds from the Pebblebed heathlands consist
of a few finds of Neolithic axes and mixed surface flint scatters near to
Blackhill on the western scarp, containing both Mesolithic and Neolithic
material and two Mesolithic flint scatters to the south and southwest of
Woodbury Castle (Smith 1956; Wymer and Bonsall 1977). These are all
on the highest areas of the heathlands. Beyond the heathlands Mesolithic
material was recovered from the excavations at Hembury of the Neolithic
causewayed enclosure and Iron Age hillfort (Berridge 1986).

Figure 1.9 shows the distribution of all known flint finds from the heathlands and along the Otter valley to the east. These range from the Mesolithic to the Iron Age and very few are broadly dateable diagnostic finds. There are concentrations along the lower Otter valley but they also occur all over the landscape from the highest points of the heathlands to the surrounding lowlands. Given the character of the heathland vegetation, making the collection of flints impossible except in disturbed areas,
<figure><img src="image_17.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1.9** The distribution of flint finds on the Pebblebed heathlands and in their vicinity. Data sources: Devon Historic Environment Record, Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, *Proceedings of the Devon Archaeological Society*, Fairlynch Museum, Budleigh Salterton, East Devon Pebblebeds Project: fieldwalking survey of heathlands</figcaption></figure>
it is interesting to note that the frequency of find spots is nevertheless as common as in arable land to the east, illustrating their extensive prehistoric visitation and use.

It is worth mentioning here in a book concerned with pebbles and their significance one class of ceremonial artefact long held as being diagnostic of the Mesolithic: pebble maceheads with hour-glass perforations. These are recorded across all of southern England from Cornwall to Kent. In Wymer and Bonsall's (1977) catalogue 10 are recorded from Cornwall, three from Devon, 16 from Dorset, 22 from Wiltshire and between 4 and 12 in other southern English counties. Sometimes, as at Portland in Dorset, they form part of excavated Mesolithic assemblages (Palmer 1999). In other cases they are isolated finds.

They represent the first direct evidence that we have of an interest in and ceremonial use of pebbles. Although some are recorded from coastal sites, others are found far inland and at a considerable distance from the sea. They must represent long-distance movement or exchange between hunter-gatherer groups, something that is also known from the widespread distribution of Portland chert across southern England during the Mesolithic (Palmer 1970). None are so far recorded from East Devon. The sources of the pebbles used, their colours and characteristics (see Chapter 5) would clearly repay further study.

Neolithic flint scatters are recorded along the coast to the west of High Peak and to the south and north of Otterton, on Mutter's Moor, part of the Peak Hill ridge, at Patterson's Cross just to the north of Ottery St Mary, and a series of others much further north along the Exe valley around Nether Exe (Griffith and Quinnell 1999b; Miles 1976; Pearce 1979). In addition to these surface flint scatters, Neolithic settlement and ritual deposition in pits is documented from the A30 excavations at Castle Hill and Long Range (Fitzpatrick et al. 1999), at Hayes Farm, Clyst Honiton and at Pixie's Parlour, Ottery St Mary (Mudd and Joyce 2014). A pit at Hayes Farm contained 16 clay loom weights, sherds from a carinated bowl, burnt sheep/goat bones, parts of a bird and charred plant remains (Hart et al. 2014: 7-9). At Pixie's Parlour a 5-m-long and 2-m-wide pit interpreted as a possible tree-throw hole contained 57 sherds of earlier Neolithic pottery with a wide variety of different fabrics, some as far away as the vicinity of Dartmoor, and 56 pieces of worked flint (Mudd and Joyce 2014: 17).

A house structure together with possible enclosures (for animals? The land was never ploughed) on top of the Haldon Hills (Gent and Quinnell 1999b; Willock 1933, 1937) has long been known at Haldon Belvedere. Recent excavations on the outskirts of Ottery St Mary carried
out ahead of a housing development have provided additional rare evidence of Early Neolithic occupation. Around 40 pits and post pits, some of which were arranged in arcs, were associated with pot sherds, many of which were from carinated bowls (DAS Newsletter 2013: 6–7).

There are three known Neolithic causewayed enclosures and/or hilltop settlements on High Peak, and at Hembury and Raddon, a much greater distance away to the northwest (Gent and Quinnell 1999b). There is the possibility that another may exist under the Iron Age hillfort of Dumpdon in the Honiton gap to the northeast of the heathlands.

High Peak (Figure 1.4) is the highest and most distinctive point along this stretch of the East Devon coastline. Although it is considerably lower (157 m) than either the Peak Hill or East Hill ridges (highest point 246 m) to its north it appears both higher and more prominent because of its relative isolation, distinctive triangular shape and coastal situation. Excavations on High Peak revealed traces of a possible Neolithic causewayed enclosure on top of the hill, virtually all of which has been subsequently destroyed along with the ramparts of an Iron Age/Dark Age hillfort by coastal erosion. The Neolithic remains included a short ditch segment rock-cut in its lower part through the greensand and underlying chert beds with a primary fill that included charcoal, bone fragments and flint flakes with pottery in the upper fill (Pollard 1966: 41). Pollard also identified ‘cooking areas’ with flint and pottery scatters and three pits. The pottery recovered included sherds of gabbroic ware originating in the Lizard peninsula, Cornwall but this seems to have been rare, constituting only 3 per cent of the total assemblage (Quinnell and Taylor in Rainbird et al. 2013: 37) compared with 10 per cent of this material at Hembury (see below) (Quinnell and Taylor in Rainbird et al. 2013: 37). A few sherds contained temper with a granite (Dartmoor) source and the bulk was manufactured locally: some of the clay was of Lias origin, the nearest source being the Devon/Dorset border to the east (Quinnell and Taylor in Rainbird et al. 2013: 37). Most flints were of local material but they included two pieces of Portland chert and black flint derived from Beer (Pollard 1966: 47–8; Tingle 1998). Among the groundstone axe fragments there is more exotic material: a jadeite piece with an Alpine origin and a picrate piece from Callington, Cornwall. Other groundstone axes were made from the local greensand. A number of pebbles, some showing signs of usage, from the Budleigh Salterton Pebblebeds, were found among the Neolithic material (Pollard 1966: 52). Recent excavations in 2012 recovered 22 pebbles derived from the Pebblebeds and local beach deposits, one of which with faint polishing may have been used as a rubber (Taylor in Rainbird et al. 2013: 42).
As elsewhere in southern England, causewayed enclosures began to be built in the thirty-seventh century cal. BC (Whittle 2007: 137–8; Whittle et al. 2007). Radiocarbon dates have suggested that the Neolithic settlements on High Peak and Hembury were roughly contemporary but they were from bulk samples and not very reliable. The enclosure at Raddon is somewhat later (Gent and Quinnell 1999a: 64). The causewayed enclosure at Hembury occupies the southern tip of a prominent spur of the Blackdown Hills with extensive views to the south across the Pebblebed heathlands to the sea. Liddell’s excavations revealed eight ditch and low bank sections with intervening causeways cutting across the spur, and house structures and substantial occupation debris inside indicating permanent settlement (Liddell 1929–1932a, 1929–32b, 1929–32c, 1936). A second ditch line was found to the north, as well as additional ditches, by Todd’s re-examination of the northern part of the spur, indicating the presence of multiple enclosures (Todd 1984).

Artefact finds included pottery tempered with local quartzites derived from crushed Bunter pebbles, imported gabbroic pottery from the Lizard peninsula, Cornwall, implements made from Beer flint and a few of Portland chert. Others were from closer flint sources only a few kilometres away; greenstone axes of Cornish origin; and from North Devon, querns and rubbing stones from the local Pebblebeds, beads of steatite, and jet, possibly from Spain and Brittany (Liddell 1929–32a, 1929–32b, 1929–32c).

The excavated materials from High Peak and Hembury indicate a systematic gathering of raw materials and artefacts from (1) the immediate locality; (2) the Pebblebed heathland that had to be crossed to move between these two places, and (3) more distant sources at a variable distance away – Beer Head, Portland, Exmoor, Dartmoor, Cornwall, and those from very distant origins as far away as the Alps and Spain. Materials and artefacts used in these two Neolithic enclosures thus brought together and incorporated elements drawn from the immediate and more distant landscapes at various scales of movement. Some of these, such as the Pebblebed heathlands and Beer Head (for high-quality black flint), could be visited in a day. Other more distant places (Portland, Dartmoor, Exmoor) could be seen on the far horizon from the vantage point of the heathlands or High Peak. Finally there were artefacts and materials brought from places that could never be experienced by people remaining in place or travelling only through the local landscape.

This pattern of raw material utilization seems to contrast with the Neolithic and Bronze Age domestic assemblages found during the A30 and gas pipeline excavations to the north of the heathlands in which
stone material other than flaked flint and chert is rare and of local origin (Mepham 1999: 210–21; McSloy 2014: 55–62.). It appears that the curation and use of pebbles was confined to meeting places and settlements of especial significance and ceremonial importance. During the Neolithic the pebbles were associated with the living, whereas in the Early Bronze Age they became associated with ritual monuments in the landscape: pebble cairns.

## Bronze Age cairns and settlement (2200–500 BC)

There are 32 recorded Bronze Age pebble cairns on the East Devon Pebblebed heathlands (Figure 1.10). These were the first structures to be built from pebbles. There is no known evidence of monument construction during the Neolithic or of other mortuary practices. The excavations at High Peak, Raddon and Hembury revealed no human remains from the enclosure ditches or interiors. One rectilinear structure at Castle Hill just to the north of the heathlands excavated in advance of the A30 road construction has been suggested to be a ‘long mortuary enclosure’, but there is a lack of evidence to suggest such a funerary use (Fitzpatrick et al. 1999: 213). Another rectilinear enclosure has been suggested to be part of a possible cursus monument, but again the evidence is equivocal.

It remains the case that the first funerary structures and monuments to be constructed in this area of East Devon are cairns and barrows of Early Bronze Age date. The distribution of the cairns is entirely confined to the heathlands. There are also a number of ring ditches just beyond the limits of the present-day heathlands, revealed as cropmarks, through an important campaign of aerial photography undertaken by Griffith since 1983 (Griffith 1999: 8). These ring ditches may be earthen barrows or, alternatively, traces of round houses. Although the A30 excavations revealed the presence of round houses with circular timber post settings, Bronze Age barrows or other evidence of funerary activity was almost absent from this lowland area.

The partial excavation of a ring ditch at land southeast of Broad Oak, Ottery St Mary, provided no positive evidence of the presence of a barrow (Mudd and Joyce 2014: 32–4) and it is probably also a round house. Recent excavations and geophysical survey have revealed the presence of a small sub-rectangular enclosure on the top of a low knoll just to the west of the river Otter at Colaton Raleigh dated to the Middle Bronze Age from residues on a biconical urn. This is an exceptionally early
<figure><img src="image_18.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1.10** The distribution of Bronze Age pebble cairns on the heathlands (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
date for enclosures of this type in Devon (Farnell and Quinnell 2015). Further north along the Otter river valley other lowland Middle Bronze Age enclosures have been recorded at Patteson's Cross and Castle Hill. The former contained a single round house supported by wooden posts. The latter was a much larger rectangular feature set within a system of rectilinear fields (Fitzpatrick et al. 1999). Thus although there is a complete absence of Bronze Age settlements on the heathlands contrasting with the surrounding lowlands to the east and the north, we know that Middle to Late Bronze Age settlements existed on the heathland fringe, suggesting seasonal use rather than settlement of the heathland area by Bronze Age inhabitants.

The Pebblebed heathlands appear to have been a reserved area for the construction of ritual structures and the burial of the dead from surrounding areas. There are, however, three exceptions to this general picture. One is the discovery of a pit at Salston, Ottery St Mary, on flat ground at the valley edge to the west of the river Otter. The pit was about 0.5 m in diameter and 0.2 m deep. It contained cremated human bone and mostly oak charcoal. The remains were of an adult woman with a radiocarbon date of 1948–1772 cal. BC. There were no associated grave goods or evidence of a mound or barrow above the pit (Mudd and Joyce 2014: 24). Excavations in advance of a new town at Cranbrook situated 8 km to the northwest of the heathlands revealed an Early Bronze Age ring ditch on top of a prominent knoll that may have surrounded a mound. It surrounded a central pit containing a beaker and a stone bracer. A ring ditch at Hayes Farm, Clyst Honiton, to the northwest of the heathlands, may represent another lowland Early Bronze Age earthen barrow. It was superseded by a rectangular enclosure with associated fields (Hart et al. 2014).

In addition to the prehistoric heathland cairns there are 14 late eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century landscaping mounds that resemble prehistoric barrows or cairns. At least two of the prehistoric pebble cairns have landscaping additions (see Chapter 10, Figure 10.1). Furthermore, there are numerous modern mounds of military origin, or dumps of farm or building materials, that under the current dense vegetation cover of gorse and heather cover, up to 2 m high, sometimes also resemble cairns (Figure 14.4). The area has been used for military training, and occasionally military occupation, for the last 200 years (see Chapter 11). This makes the process of recording pebble cairns of genuine prehistoric date based on field survey alone often difficult and frustrating. There may be many more than those recorded on the map: only a few of the ‘thirty spots’ (Carter 1936: 1) that Carter mentions that
he excavated in the 1930s ‘of dimensions barely perceptible except on waste cleared by fire’ (Carter 1936: 1) have been possible to locate today despite intensive field walking of the area over a three-year period. He left no record or map of their precise location (see Chapter 2).

At least nine of the cairns have a surrounding ditch and in three cases this appears to have been a modern addition. The cairns vary in diameter from small, discreet structures 4–8 m in diameter to much more substantial cairns, three of which are over 20 m in diameter. Two of the largest cairns, including the very largest (32 m in diameter), appear today as flat-topped rather than rounded in profile but this is almost certainly the result of later landscaping activities, following which Scots pines were planted on top of them. The smaller cairns are rarely more than 1 m high, whereas the larger cairns vary in height between 1.5 and 3.5 m (Table 1.1; Figure 1.10).

<table><caption>Table 1.1 The dimensions (height and diameter, in metres) and height above sea level (HASL) of the Pebblebed cairns and location and other notes.</caption><thead><tr><td>No.</td><td>Height</td><td>Diameter</td><td>HASL</td><td>Location and other notes</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1</td><td>0.6</td><td>13.0</td><td>159</td><td>On summit of ridge with panoramic views. Ploughed out</td></tr><tr><td>2</td><td>–</td><td>–</td><td>150</td><td>As above. Ploughed out</td></tr><tr><td>3</td><td>1.0</td><td>3.8</td><td>110</td><td>Highest of a staggered row of seven cairns running down slope from NW-SE. on Venn Ottery Hill. Towards top of W (high)-E (low) slope. Above boggy area and spring line to E. Land drops steeply to E of cairn row that overlooks Otter valley. 18.5 metres NNE of 4</td></tr><tr><td>4</td><td>1.2</td><td>7.5</td><td>110</td><td>7.5 m NW of 5</td></tr><tr><td>5</td><td>1.0</td><td>7.0</td><td>105</td><td>5 m N of 6</td></tr><tr><td>6</td><td>1.0</td><td>5.0</td><td>105</td><td>1 m N of 7</td></tr><tr><td>7</td><td>0.7</td><td>4.0</td><td>105</td><td>57 m NW of 8</td></tr><tr><td>8</td><td>1.0</td><td>4.0</td><td>100</td><td>24 m NW of 9</td></tr><tr><td>9</td><td>0.6</td><td>3.8</td><td>100</td><td>24 m SE of 8</td></tr><tr><td>10</td><td>1.8</td><td>20.0</td><td>160</td><td>Edge of flat summit area of Aylesbeare Common. Surrounded by ditch. Land drops to south from which cairn skylined</td></tr></tbody></table>

(Continued)
<table><caption>Table 1.1 (Cont.)</caption><thead><tr><td>No.</td><td>Height</td><td>Diameter</td><td>HASL</td><td>Location and other notes</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>11</td><td>1.5</td><td>25.0</td><td>160</td><td>Centre of Aylesbeare Common hill summit. Surrounding ditch map be a landscaping addition. Formerly planted with Scots pines. One dead trunk known as the Lone Pine, a local landmark, stood until 2009, when it fell in a storm</td></tr><tr><td>12</td><td>0.8</td><td>3.5</td><td>110</td><td>Twin Cairn A. Near top of gentle NW-SE spur with valleys to E and W. Excavated cairn (2011 Pebblebeds project)</td></tr><tr><td>13</td><td>1.0</td><td>4.8</td><td>110</td><td>Twin Cairn B. 7 m below Twin Cairn A</td></tr><tr><td>14</td><td>1.5</td><td>12.0</td><td>95</td><td>Great Tor Cairn. On top and in centre of spur with valleys to E and W. Overlooks enclosure (cropmark) site to SW. Excavated by Pebblebeds project in 2011</td></tr><tr><td>15</td><td>0.6</td><td>6.0</td><td>90</td><td>Tor Cairn. On western side of NW-SE sloping spur with valleys to E and W. Overlooks excavated enclosure (cropmark site) to SW. Excavated cairn (2008-9 Pebblebeds project)</td></tr><tr><td>16</td><td>0.4</td><td>2.6</td><td>90</td><td>Little Tor Cairn. 4.6 m south of 15. Excavated cairn (2009-10 Pebblebeds project)</td></tr><tr><td>17</td><td>0.5</td><td>7.0</td><td>120</td><td>Carter's Woodbury e. Centre of spur on SE-facing slope, valleys to E and W. Cairn excavated by Carter in 1930 and 1937-8</td></tr><tr><td>18</td><td>2.3</td><td>20.0</td><td>175</td><td>On high point on western edge of Pebblebed escarpment. Has added eighteenth-century landscaping ditch and planted with Scots pines</td></tr><tr><td>19</td><td>3.7</td><td>32.0</td><td>175</td><td>The Beacon. Situated on high point on western edge of Pebblebed escarpment. Modified as a fire beacon and has surrounding landscaping ditch. Planted with Scots pines</td></tr><tr><td>20</td><td>1.0</td><td>2.8</td><td>95</td><td>Carter's 'holy mound'. Approx. 20 m south of bog and stream source. Land dips to E and rises to W. On edge of Pebblebed heath beside arable fields. Excavated by Carter. Trench still visible in centre of cairn</td></tr></tbody></table>
<table><thead><tr><td>No.</td><td>Height</td><td>Diameter</td><td>HASL</td><td>Location and other notes</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>21</td><td>3.0</td><td>16.0</td><td>110</td><td>On flat area with steep valley and stream to south. Cut on N side by Woodbury to Yettington road, near to a milestone on road edge. Excavated by Carter in 1960. Trench still visible</td></tr><tr><td>22</td><td>1.5</td><td>5.0</td><td>90</td><td>In valley bottom in boggy ground</td></tr><tr><td>23</td><td>1.5</td><td>5.0</td><td>90</td><td>In valley bottom in boggy ground. About 50 m to E of 22</td></tr><tr><td>24</td><td>1.8</td><td>23.0</td><td>140</td><td>Jacob's Well. Burnt mound. Oval-shaped over spring at foot of western edge of Pebblebed escarpment in bog. Land rises steeply to E. Excavated by Carter in 1938, whose central trench survives, and in 2010 by Pebblebeds project</td></tr><tr><td>25</td><td>1.3</td><td>8.0</td><td>150</td><td>Western end of a row of three adjacent cairns. Near end and in centre of gently sloping W-E ridge. Surrounding ditch</td></tr><tr><td>26</td><td>1.7</td><td>8.0</td><td>150</td><td>In middle of row. Surrounding ditch</td></tr><tr><td>27</td><td>2.0</td><td>8.0</td><td>150</td><td>At E end of row. Surrounding ditch</td></tr><tr><td>28</td><td>0.4</td><td>5.0</td><td>110</td><td>On flat low area with stream in valley to north</td></tr><tr><td>29</td><td>0.4</td><td>5.0</td><td>110</td><td>As 28</td></tr><tr><td>30</td><td>1.5</td><td>9.0</td><td>120</td><td>In centre of sloping spur above Bystock stream which runs in deep valley to N. Dry valley to W. Rise to S. Drop to E. Dip to N and W. This is at N end of a row of three cairns that align NE-SW</td></tr><tr><td>31</td><td>0.8</td><td>2.0</td><td>120</td><td>As above</td></tr><tr><td>32</td><td>0.8</td><td>5.8</td><td>120</td><td>S end of row</td></tr></tbody></table>

Note: Cairn numbers refer to Figure 1.10.

The small cairns occur in the middle of low sloping spurs bounded by valleys. They typically occur on sloping ground and do not command panoramic views. The larger ones were clearly intended as monumental constructions punctuating and marking the landscape and visible for long distances. They occur on ridge tops and localized high points, so there is an important association between cairn size and height. The small cairns
<figure><img src="image_19.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1.11** Examples of large heathland cairns: (a): the summit cairn on Aylesbeare Common with the lone pine (now fallen) (Fig 1.10: 11); (b): large cairn to the west of the Aylesbeare summit cairn (Fig 1.10: 10); (c): the Beacon on the western scarp edge of the heathlands (Fig 1.10: 19); (d): Great Tor Cairn, Colaton Raleigh Common seen from the east (Fig. 1.10: 14). The small track leading up to it has been created by the Royal Marines (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

(see Chapter 3) are of later Beaker/earlier Bronze Age date c. 2000–1700 BC). In terms of Needham’s (1996) revision of British Chalcolithic and Bronze Age chronology used as a general chronological framework in this book, they all fall into the early part of his period 3. The very largest cairns are in all probability (none have been excavated) of Early Bronze Age date, period 4 according to Needham’s scheme (c. 1700–1500 BC) (see Chapters 3 and 8). Thus through time the cairns move up in the landscape and assume a monumental form.

The large ridge-top cairns all occur in the western and northern areas of the overall distribution. Cairns 18 and 19 (Figures 1.10 and 1.11; 1.12) are both situated on the edge of the steep western scarp slope, are unusual in that they can be seen skylined on the horizon far away to the west, from both the Exe valley and from the top of the Haldon and Raddon Hills. They punctuate the skyline and must have been located so as to be highly visible landmarks when seen from the west or the northwest.
<figure><img src="image_20.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1.12** The western scarp of the heathlands looking northeast. The Beacon (cairn 19) can be seen among the trees in the middle of the photo. The clump of trees beyond mark the position of cairn 18 on the scarp edge (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

These cairns are also visible from long distances away to the east and can be seen from the East Hill and Peak Hill ridges. They also have the highest degree of intervisibility with others on the Pebblebed heathlands (Figure 1.13). Other large cairns are sited in the landscape so as to be most visually impressive when seen from long distances away only from the east. Few can be seen from more than a short distance away to either the north or south. Some groups consisting entirely of small cairns such as those on the slopes of Venn Ottery Hill and others on Bicton Common and Withycombe Raleigh Common are not intervisible with any others, whereas those in the southeast in Colaton Raleigh Common are only locally intervisible.

Six of the cairns occur singly (Figure 1.10: 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21). There are five pairs and three groups of three or more cairns. As a whole these cairns occupy every major topographic situation in the landscape:

1. highest points on the western escarpment (18, 19);

2. flat ridge summits (1, 2, 10, 11);

3. in the middle of and towards ends of sloping ridge tops (25-7);
<figure><img src="image_21.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1.13** Cairn intervisibility across the heathlands (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
4. upper sloping sides of ridges (28–9; 30–2);

5. on low sloping spurs between valleys (12–17);

6. on upper slopes of valley sides (3–9);

7. in valley bottoms and bogs (22–4).

The earliest and small dated cairns are all found on spurs (location 5 above). The very largest and presumed later cairns are on the highest points of the scarp edge and hill summits. Small cairns are located on sides of ridges, upper slopes of valley sides and valley bottoms. The close associations of these cairns with valleys and/or water sources is strong. Cairn 18, although situated on the western escarpment edge, is also set just to the north of a shallow valley that gives birth to a stream. Cairns 22–3 are set almost at the bottom of the head of another stream valley above a substantial boggy area. Cairns 12–17 are all on southeast sloping spurs between valleys and near to the source of streams. The cairns, as a whole, then, occupy both high and ‘dry’ locations in the landscape and are associated with water and valleys that give birth to streams running in beds of pebbles. The cairns are all associated with streams draining the Pebblebed heathlands that flow east or southeast to join the river Otter in its passage to the sea. There are only a few barrows/ring ditches known from the marls due west of the heathlands between them and the river Exe. Others cluster in the vicinity of Exeter along the Exe valley itself to the northwest (Griffith and Quinnell 1999c: map 6.5). The cairns on the Pebblebed heathlands are linked with each other and the Otter by valleys and streams that have their sources near to or beside them.

The Exe estuary to the west of the Pebblebed ridge is a wide and shallow valley of muds and shifting sands (Figure 1.14). The Otter valley, by contrast, is a valley of pebbles and gravels. Along its course it mixes and combines pebble material washed down from the heathlands and more jagged flints and cherts from the East Hill and Peak Hill ridges. It flows beneath Dumpdon Hill, and its northern tributary, the Tale, is born, or has its source, on the eastern side of the spur occupied by the Early Neolithic Hembury causewayed enclosure. The Otter flows to the east of High Peak with another Neolithic enclosure, before entering the sea near to the east of the cliffs at Budleigh Salterton, where the Pebblebeds are most dramatically exposed.

The sea, to the south, is visible from most of the cairn locations. The Peak Hill and East Hill ridges flanking the Otter valley to the east are visible from all but a few (Table 1.2). A series of larger and smaller flint cairns once crowned the tops of these ridges, but because of afforestation only a couple now survive on East Hill (see Chapter 3). Grinsell (1983)
<figure><img src="image_22.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1.14** Low tide in the Exe estuary exposing the shifting sandbanks and mud: looking across the Exe estuary towards the west and the line of the Haldon Hills with Dartmoor beyond (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

records the former presence of at least 6 from the Peak Hill ridge and 14 running along the spine of East Hill. There are extensive views from these ridge tops across the Otter valley. Some of these cairns on these ridge spines would certainly have been visible from almost all the pebble cairns on the heathlands below them. By contrast the Haldon Hills and Hembury are visible from only those cairns situated on ridgetop locations or along the western scarp of the heathlands. None occur on the Hembury spur. On the Haldon Hills there are at least twenty-six small cairns (Grinsell 1983: 13; Finneran and Turner 2003: 242–3). Because of their small size, distance and their specific locations (mostly on the upper and western slopes of Little and Great Haldon), none of these are visible from the cairns on the Pebblebed heathlands. All these cairns running along the East Hill, Peak Hill and Haldon ridges, constructed of angular and dull materials, would have made a striking visual and tactile contrast with the brightly coloured Pebblebed cairns, perhaps objectifying in their material form different social identities and relationships to the east of the Otter and to the west of the Exe: differing landscapes and social worlds (see Chapters 3 and 8).
<table><caption>Table 1.2 The visibility of principal hills and ridges from the Pebblebed cairns.</caption><thead><tr><th>No.</th><th>High Peak</th><th>Peak Hill Ridge</th><th>East Hill Ridge</th><th>Dumpdon Hill</th><th>Hembury</th><th>Haldon Hills</th><th>Raddon Hills</th><th>Sea</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1–2</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td></tr><tr><td>3–9</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td></td><td></td><td>+</td></tr><tr><td>10–11</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td></tr><tr><td>12–13</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>+</td></tr><tr><td>14–16</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>+</td></tr><tr><td>17</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td></td><td></td><td>+</td><td></td><td>+</td></tr><tr><td>18</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td></td><td></td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td></tr><tr><td>19</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td></tr><tr><td>20</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>21</td><td>?</td><td>+</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>22–3</td><td>+</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>24</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>25–7</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>+</td></tr><tr><td>29–32</td><td>?</td><td>+</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

Notes: Cairn numbers refer to Figure 1.10.

? = Probable but trees now block view.

## Ancestral hills and the birth and death of the sun

It is striking that High Peak is visible from almost all the pebble cairns on the heathlands, whatever their position in the landscape. Given the presence of the Neolithic occupation and probable causewayed enclosure on its summit, this peak was likely a hill of paramount significance to the Bronze Age populations living in the vicinity of the Pebblebeds. It is situated to the east, southeast or east-southeast of all the cairns and may be suggested to have been associated with the rising sun.

Celestial events and in particular the birth or rising of the sun in the east and its setting or death in the west were, and still, are, an important part of the experience of the Pebblebed heathlands. The sun at the mid-summer solstice rises to the northeast towards the northern end of the East Hill ridge. It then slowly slips to the south along the ridge. Sunrise at the spring and autumn equinoxes would first be visible through the
<table><caption>Table 1.3 The visibility of the ridge and hill gaps from the cairns and the main directions from which they look most impressive.</caption><thead><tr><th>No.</th><th>Sidmouth Gap</th><th>Peak Hill Gap</th><th>Honiton Gap</th><th>Most impressive from</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1–2</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>n/a; destroyed</td></tr><tr><td>3–9</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>East but small</td></tr><tr><td>10–11</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>East and 10 to south</td></tr><tr><td>12–13</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>East but small</td></tr><tr><td>14–16</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>14: east or west;<br>15–16 very small</td></tr><tr><td>17</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>East or west, but<br>small</td></tr><tr><td>18</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>East or west</td></tr><tr><td>19</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>East or west</td></tr><tr><td>20</td><td></td><td>+</td><td></td><td>Very small</td></tr><tr><td>21</td><td></td><td>+*</td><td></td><td>South</td></tr><tr><td>22–3</td><td></td><td>+</td><td></td><td>n/a; in valley bottom</td></tr><tr><td>24</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>n/a; in bog at base of<br>scarp</td></tr><tr><td>25–7</td><td>+*</td><td>+*</td><td>+*</td><td>South or north*</td></tr><tr><td>29–32</td><td></td><td>+*</td><td></td><td>West but small</td></tr></tbody></table>

Notes: Cairn numbers refer to Figure 1.10.

* = extrapolated because of presence of modern plantations.

Sidmouth gap between the Peak Hill and East Hill ridges and visible from some of the cairns (Table 1.3). The ridges on either side frame and intensify the effect. The sunrise can be seen most dramatically at this time of year from the large summit cairns on Aylesbeare Common (Figure 1.15; Figure 1.10: 10–11). Thereafter the sun slips down the Peak Hill ridge and shines through the gap between the Peak Hill and High Peak in the late spring and autumn. By midwinter it rises to the southeast out of the sea just to the west of High Peak.

At the midwinter solstice the sun sets in the southwest behind the Haldon Hills in the dip between Great Haldon to the north and Little Haldon to the south. At the spring and autumn equinoxes it sets due west and can be seen dipping down behind Great Haldon and the high peaks of Dartmoor beyond, an event visible from the large pebble cairns situated on the western scarp edge. At midsummer the sun, having passed along
<figure><img src="image_23.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1.15** Sunrise and sunset seen from the heathlands:
(a): midsummer solstice sunrise over the northern end of the East Hill ridge seen from Aylesbeare Common summit cairns (Fig. 1.10: 11; Fig. 1.12a); (b): the sunrise at the spring equinox through the Sidmouth gap seen from the Aylesbeare Common summit cairn (Fig. 1.10: 11; Fig. 1.12a); (c): midwinter solstice sunrise over Tor Cairn (foreground) and Little Tor Cairn (background); (d): midwinter solstice sunset between Little Haldon (left) and Great Haldon (right) (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

the line of the Haldon Hills, sets to the northwest in the gap between the Raddon and Blackdown Hills (Figure 1.15).

The only prehistoric cairns from which all these celestial events could be seen are the two summit cairns on Aylesbeare Common (the view is now blocked in some directions by pine plantations) and the largest cairn on the heathlands known as the Beacon (Figure 1.10: 19). From other cairns such as Tor Cairn and Little Tor Cairn in the southeast of the heathlands or those on the side of Venn Ottery Hill, while the rising of the sun over the hills surrounding the heathlands is visible, its setting is not because of the manner in which the heathlands rise to the north and the west. The fact that the rising of the sun is the most dramatic event in relation to the surrounding landscape and that this can be seen from all the cairns, whereas the setting of the sun can be seen only from a
few suggests that a view of the *rising sun* was of particular importance in relation to the locations of cairns in the landscape.

During the course of the year the sun effectively moves back and forth (north and south), rising over the East Hill and Peak Hill ridges and between them at the equinox. It moves back and forth (north and south) along the line of the Haldon Hills to the west, setting over them at different points during the course of the year. The only time when it is seen to be born from the sea to the south is at midwinter sunrise. At this time of the year it has a 'wet' birth. Seen from the visual perspective of the heathlands it always has a 'dry' death. This may be of great significance in relation to fire rituals taking place at the prehistoric cairns (see Chapter 3).

The presence of these three gaps to the east of the barrow distribution thus points to the significance of the rising sun as seen from the cairns at significant points during the year. The gaps through the hills effectively served to frame and thus dramatize and animate these important celestial events and the brilliant changes in the colour of the sky from red to yellow. By contrast, the setting sun in the west over the Haldon Hills, visible from relatively few of the barrows, is not framed by any dramatic gaps. The Raddon Hills, with their Neolithic causewayed enclosure, may have represented another, more distant place of ancestral significance. Situated to the northwest of the barrows they might have been associated with the setting of the sun on the summer solstice. However, the effect would not have been dramatic and was visible only from a few of the barrows (Table 1.2).

Dumpdon Hill, despite its quite considerable distance from the cairns, about 20 km away, is visible from a surprising number of them (Table 1.2). This, like High Peak, is a hill island situated in the middle of the Honiton Gap. As is the case with High Peak, the river Otter runs beneath it, but to the west rather than the east. Dumpdon Hill is, like Hembury and High Peak, crowned by a hillfort. This is a very likely location for another Neolithic hilltop enclosure. Like High Peak, this hill may have had an especial ancestral significance for the Bronze Age pebble cairn builders.
2

George Carter and the archaeology
of East Devon

George Carter is the pioneer and founding figure in the archaeology of the East Devon Pebblebeds, carrying out extensive research in the area from the early 1920s into the late 1960s. He was most active during the twenties and thirties, before the outbreak of the Second World War, carrying out many excavations of pebbled mounds on Woodbury and Aylesbeare Commons and elsewhere. He did not have much time or patience for establishment archaeological ideas and positions and fell out with some of the leading archaeologists of his day who did not appreciate the value of his work. Sadly, he is now a forgotten figure in British archaeology. He was a man with ideas and interpretative approaches that in many respects were well ahead of their time. His work is central to the Pebblebeds project because nobody else had ever excavated a pebble cairn before, or since, or tried to interpret their meaning and significance. Spurned by the archaeological establishment, Carter may well have the last laugh from his grave! Eighty years later, much of what we know about the prehistory of the Pebblebed heathlands is due solely to his efforts. This chapter presents a brief review of Carter's work and his interpretations of the material that he found as a background to the rest of the book.

Biography

George Carter (1886–1974) was born in Exmouth, East Devon, the son of John Carter, a house builder who built a large estate of back-to-back houses for working-class people on reclaimed land beside the Exe estuary during the period 1896–1934, an area known today as the ‘colony’. John
Carter worked by building a house and then mortgaging it, using the money to build the next. The houses were then rented out. At the time of his death John Carter owned some 550 properties, most of them in the colony, but also some of a similar type in Budleigh Salterton. John Carter was a prominent local figure, a councillor and chairman of the former Exmouth Urban District Council for a number of years. John's brother Harry ran a steamship company that imported coal into Exmouth and the Carter family owned various brickworks in the town.

George Carter was educated at West Buckland boarding school, 10 miles to the east of Barnstaple in north Devon, on the southwest fringes of Exmoor. Throughout his childhood, during the school holidays he developed an intimate knowledge of the East Devon Pebblebeds, which were within easy walking distance of his home. In 1904 he went to Oxford for three years and took a degree in modern constitutional history. Subsequently he spent a year at Oxford studying geography before applying to the Indian civil service (Figure 2.1). In 1909 he went to India and was posted to Bombay and spent two and a half years in the Ahmadnagar district near Poona. There he met his wife, Ivy Octavia Wakefield, daughter of a third-generation family of Anglo-Indian colonial administrators. From there he was transferred to the province of Hyderabad Sind (in present-day Pakistan), being appointed as Municipal Commissioner (Figure 2.2). He had an extraordinarily wide range of interests but was particularly interested in the archaeology, anthropology, history and folklore of Sind province. He carried out archaeological excavations, documented houses and other material forms, customary practices and cosmological beliefs, collected, recorded, interpreted and translated myths and stories, writing a string of published papers on these subjects (e.g. Carter 1916, 1919a, 1919b, 1922, 1923, 1924a, 1924b). He also left behind much unpublished material in the form of manuscripts, notes, photographs, sketch maps and diagrams.

Carter was eventually transferred back from Hyderabad to Bombay, where his second daughter, Priscilla, was born in 1920. He did not enjoy this new posting and took early retirement in 1926, returning to England to live in Budleigh Salterton, East Devon. He studied to be a barrister at Gray's Inn in London and passed the examinations but never practised. Instead his day job became running the family letting company in Exmouth and gradually winding up the estate, which had incurred large debts, but his passion was investigating the prehistory and geology of the East Devon Pebblebed heathlands.

Carter's extensive knowledge of the anthropology, folklore and customs of Sind province was to have a lasting influence throughout his life
<figure><img src="image_24.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2.1** Carter as a young man (Source: Carter archive)</figcaption></figure>

and was fundamental to all his subsequent archaeological research on
the East Devon Pebblebeds. For example, in an article entitled ‘Pebbled
Mounds’ published in the *Journal of the Anthropological Society of
Bombay* (1934b) he discusses the elaborate instructions contained in the
*Satapatha Brahmana*, one of the sacred Hindu texts, for the method of
building a burial mound. He introduces this article with the following
comment: ‘Increasingly efforts are being made to elucidate pre-history,
but attention is often paid rather to the recovery of material objects which
<figure><img src="image_25.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2.2** Carter in India in his role as Municipal Commissioner
(Source: Carter archive)</figcaption></figure>

can be studied at leisure (often as works of art), than to the more laborious unravelling of contemporary ritual' (Carter 1934b: 1). Elsewhere he writes 'the advance in the technique of fieldwork has outstripped the interpretation of evidence brought to light' (Carter 1942: 2). These are veiled and not so veiled criticisms of the kind of archaeology prevalent in the 1930s, and since, in which the discipline becomes little more than a technical practice for recovering material remains from the earth rather than a field of study in which one attempts to understand and imagina-tively interpret that material from a social perspective. Carter clearly had a keen interest in excavating the past and recovering things, but he was equally passionate about the necessity for providing an interpretative understanding of what he had found. He used direct ethnographic analogies, drawn from his experiences and research in India, combined with a deep knowledge of Greek and Roman Classical sources, in order to understand the material he was recovering from the Pebblebed heathlands in an innovative manner.

**Carter's archaeological work in East Devon**

Carter published only some of his excavation reports but much information survives in the form of unpublished manuscripts, notes,
photographs, sketches and plans, and part of the purpose of this section
is to document and make publicly accessible some of this work. He left
behind four unfinished book manuscripts: (i) *ISCA: Notes on an Original
Preliminary Interpretation of the History of Devon in the Late Bronze Age*
(written about 1934). There are two typewritten versions of the same
manuscript with summaries of some of his excavations in East Devon
from the 1930s. Some of this material is published in Carter (1936).
Parts are typed, while other parts consist of handwritten notes. There is
also a handwritten MS of the same text with additional illustrations; (ii)
*On the Track of Pythagoras: A Study of Certain Antiquities of the Bronze
Age* (about 1936); (iii) *The Flank of Archaeology* (about 1939/40) and
*On the Impossibility of Accepted Bronze Age Chronology* (about 1941).
The texts lack consecutive page numbering except in individual chap-
ters/sections of some of them. These were essentially reworkings, with
additions, of the same material derived from his East Devon fieldwork,
plus observations made on prehistoric monuments elsewhere in Britain
but mainly in southwest and central southern England. Essentially
Carter was writing the same book over and over again with different
emphases and arguments, with the substantive core of evidence remain-
ing his archaeological fieldwork in East Devon. All these manuscripts
gathered dust but Carter did not give up entirely. As late as 1972, only
two years before his death at the age of 88 he was rewriting notes on
his excavations of the Woodbury ε pebble cairn for Leslie Grinsell, who
was compiling a catalogue of Bronze Age barrows in the area (Grinsell
1983). None of the manuscripts is completely finished and all contain
numerous asides, handwritten notes and appendices. Photographs and
illustrations are often removed, as they must have been taken out of one
manuscript ready to go into the next. *ISCA* contains some of the material
published by Carter about pebble cairns in the *Proceedings of the Devon
Archaeological Exploration Society* (Carter 1936) (see Chapters 3–7).
*The Flank of Archaeology* contains details of his excavations of the pebble
platforms on Aylesbeare Common published in the *Devon Proceedings*
of 1938 (see Chapters 6 and 11). His important excavations at the burnt
mound of Jacob's Well (see Chapter 6) survive as a series of loose notes
and photographs and were never published.

In *ISCA Carter presents a list of mounds and other ‘objects of interest’ on Woodbury Common. The list comprises 56 places with one or more sites, mainly small pebble cairns/mounds, but also the Iron Age hillfort of Woodbury Castle and its cross dyke (see Chapter 9), prominent cairns such as the Beacon (Figure 1.10: 19), springs, landscaping mounds at Four Firs (see Chapter 11), pits and two large chert stones*
<figure><img src="image_26.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2.3a** One of the large chert stones from the east of the river Otter that Carter found and excavated at Wheathill Plantation to the west of Hayes Wood on the Pebblebed heathlands (Source: Carter archive)</figcaption></figure>

alien to the area, east of Hayes Wood, that he has recorded (Figure 2.3). Some are numbered, others are given letters, others multiple letters (QL, QN) and some letters and numbers (AA1, AA8). Unfortunately, there is no map and locations are vague, for example ‘two mounds east of Four Firs’, ‘three mounds, not on one line, north of the Exmouth Reservoir’, ‘a mound on Hayes wood’ (Figure 2.4).

In this manuscript Carter gives a preliminary account of his excavations of the pebble mounds/cairns, some of which were later published in the *Devon Proceedings*. His excavation work in the book covers the period 1930–2. In 1930 he cut trenches across six pebble mounds between 10 September and 22 November. In most, except Woodbury ε where he recovered Beaker sherds and a tanged and barbed arrowhead (see Chapter 3), he found no artefacts. Between 1 January and 13 June 1931 he examined a further seven mounds and from April to May 1932 another five, a prodigious rate of work. In addition he excavated two flint cairns on the Haldon Hills to the east of the Exe during this period. The excavation teams consisted of Carter, sometimes assisted by his gardener, family members and interested friends (Fig. 2.3; Fig. 2.5; Fig. 2.6).
<figure><img src="image_27.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2.3b** Lifting the stone (Source: Carter archive)</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_28.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2.4** Carter’s illustration from the manuscript of *On the Track of Pythagoras* of Woodbury Common. It is annotated as ‘diagram illustrative of the position of mound Woodbury ε’ (top right; this was the cairn that he excavated containing sherds of Beaker date). Note the geometrical lines between the marked pebble cairns. This is the only surviving map showing the relative positions of some of the sites that he excavated in this area of the Pebblebed heathlands in the early 1930s (Source: Carter archive)</figcaption></figure>

Woodbury AA6 is recorded as being near the SE corner of a plantation about 274 m to the south of Four Firs. It was ‘semi-lunate’ in form, consisting of a shallow pit with a surrounding low bank 0.3 m high and with an overall diameter of 5 m. Partly within and outside this structure was an elongated N–S platform mainly composed of sand and paved with pebbles. A lump of manganese was found in a central pit (Carter 1936: 1–3). The pebble mound was erected over an area with multiple fires and pebble-filled pits. He observed geometric ‘pebble patterns’ at three levels in this structure and symbolic arrangements of blue stones (see below) (Figure 2.7).

In *On the Track of Pythagoras* he reports on other excavations. Woodbury P was just west of Hayes Wood, consisting of a mound covering a chamber cut into New Red Sandstone lined with pebbles in ‘the
<figure><img src="image_29.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2.5** Carter's excavation team at work (early 1930s) (Source: Carter archive)</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_30.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2.6** Carter's three daughters, left to right, Priscilla, Mary and Ruth, excavating on Aylesbeare Common in 1937 (Source: Carter archive)</figcaption></figure>

form of a cup with a rim of chert' (Figure 2.8). The infill consisted of a lump of pyrolusite, a worked flint and a pellet of charcoal. Woodbury U on Dalditch common was a pebble mound with a bluestone. He states that it was dug into previously around 1900 by a Captain Ferrand, with finds consisting of a riveted dagger, a worked lump of chert, a perforated stone
<figure><img src="image_31.png" /><figcaption>Figure 2.7 Carter's plan of cairn AA6 (Source: Carter archive)</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_32.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2.8** Carter's watercolour plan of Woodbury P from *On the Track of Pythagoras* (Source: Carter archive)</figcaption></figure>

and some charcoal. This material is now in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter (see Pearce 1983, vol. II: 576, plate 15: 123 and 584, plate 23: 186).

In *The Flank of Archaeology* Carter reports on additional excavations to the east of the Pebblebed heathlands. On Easter Monday 1938 he examined a destroyed cairn at Moorlands, Broad Down, discovering the remains of a fire strewn with worked flints where people 'for luck or some other religious purpose each cast on the mound a flint, the emblem of the spirit of fire, or the abode of fire'. At Otterton Brake he reports that he found 'at the highest point of wasteland overlooking the sea a diamond shaped mound a foot high and 26ft long and broad'. This was a chert cairn. Underneath it he found nine irregularly cracked quartzite pebbles brought from the Pebblebeds to the west of the Otter a few miles away. In a central pit there was a piece of puddingstone and eight flints. This alien puddingstone he suggests was brought from up to 200 miles away in Wiltshire for a magical purpose. The cairn in his view was not used for burial but was a focus of magical rites.

Elsewhere in a note on a site that he refers to as the Quartz Deck field, Jubilee Park, Budleigh Salterton, he reports finding a pebble pavement covering a pebble-filled pit and a fire pit (Figure 2.9). Another site that he wrote about was the Longo Lines (SY 049 871 centred). The manuscript was published in the local newspaper, the *Exmouth Journal* (10 June 1933). This name was given by Carter to a series of earthworks crossing an SE sloping spur of the Pebblebed heathlands surrounded by
<figure><img src="image_33.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2.9** Carter's sketch of the cairn in Jubilee Park, Budleigh Salterton (Source: Carter archive)</figcaption></figure>

boggy valleys to the west, east and south (due west of Kettle Plantation). The place name, like others such as Jacob's Well, does not appear on any map and its origin is obscure, but it does not appear to be one given to the place by Carter himself. He states that 'to those interested in place-names, I would mention that Longo Bottom, the lowlying bog, appears to preserve the Gaelic *lon*, a marsh or morass'. Carter planned these earthworks (Figure 2.10), suggesting they were of Neolithic date, a possible causewayed enclosure. He describes them as 'two shallow trenches stretching across a spur of hilly moorland projecting into Longo Bottom and two deep broad trenches, which run across the spur'. However, there were no banks associated with them and no definite causeways. Carter was writing just after a new class of Neolithic monument, causewayed enclosures, was recognized in the 1920s, hence his suggestion of a Neolithic date. He also records the presence of a number of small pebble cairns on the same spur. In 2010 a wildfire burnt off the heathland vegetation from the entire area and the lines as planned by Carter were clearly recognizable. They are probably multiple sunken trackways crossing the spur. They clearly pre-date modern military use of the area
<figure><img src="image_34.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2.10** Carter's plan of the Longo Lines on Colaton Raleigh Common (Source: Carter archive)</figcaption></figure>

after the Second World War and are most unusual, since multiple sunken ways do not occur anywhere else across the Pebblebed heathlands. Since Carter's day this entire area has been subject to military trench digging that has effectively destroyed any other evidence of prehistoric activity on this spur. To the south of Longo Bottom, a short distance to the west of Kettle Plantation, Carter recorded the presence of a mound in a bog and two further mounds on the same spur as the Woodbury ε cairn that he had excavated (Figure 2.11). It has not been possible to locate any of these sites today.

Between 1951 and 1953 Carter undertook excavations at Little Silver, Combe Raleigh parish, East Devon, a Romano-British site. Returning to investigate the East Devon Pebblebeds in 1956 he undertook a series of exploratory excavations at Squabmoor, writing up the findings in a sketch pad with photographs: 'A cemetery with classical affinities at Squabmoor' (1956). He published some of the results in the *Exmouth Journal* (20 October 1956). The sites were on the most westerly part of East Budleigh Common and discovered after swaling. He describes the area as being
<figure><img src="image_35.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2.11** Carter’s sketch of the position of mounds in the vicinity of the pebble cairn Woodbury ε from a handwritten version of ISCA (Source: Carter archive)</figcaption></figure>

‘a cemetery spreading over the southwestern slopes of a hill crossed by two deserted Neolithic trackways ... pebble cairns stood at the apices of a triangle. At the NE apex there were Arae Geminae (the phrase used by Vergil to denote the altars where the cult of the dead was performed consisting of twin altars (cairns) for ancestor worship. At the south apex, Altaria, altar for the gods above (this word denotes the raised altar on which oblations were offered to the celestial gods) and at the west apex, Ara fossata: pit for the subterranean gods’ (Exmouth Journal, 20 October 1956: 3).

He termed this area the ‘Holy Triangle’ (Figure 2.12).

The twin altars ‘consisted of two closely packed adjacent pavements of stone at the exact ground level. They were aligned on a true east–west line. The western pavement was oval in form measuring 3ft 8in by 2 foot 10in. The eastern pavement was circular with a radius of 1ft 6in.’ Carter found no artefacts but traces of fire and burning under what were obviously two small pebble cairns that he excavated (Figure 2.13). He also recorded the presence of other pebble cairns in this southeastern part of the Pebblebed heathlands (Figure 2.10).
<figure><img src="image_36.png" /></figure>

<figure><img src="image_37.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2.12** (a): Carter's sketch plan of his 'holy triangle' on East Budleigh Common from his Squabmoor excavation sketch pad; (b): part of Carter's annotated 6-inch 1925 Ordnance Survey map of East Budleigh and Withycombe Raleigh Common showing the location of the 'holy triangle' and sites he identified in the vicinity. Sites T1–3 and T9–10 are extant pebble cairns. The other sites cannot be located today (Source: Carter archive)</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_38.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2.13** Carter's photograph of one of his 'twin altars' at Squabmoor, from his excavation sketch pad (Source: Carter archive)</figcaption></figure>

Carter's last excavation took place in the summer of 1960. This was of the 'Milestone 9 Cairn, Woodbury Common'. Situated at SY 0390 8620, this cairn (Figure 1.10: 21) is 12 m in diameter and 2.1 m high with a rounded top. It is partly cut by the Woodbury to Yettington road to the north of it. In the side of the road beside the mound there is an eighteenth-century milestone erected by the Rolle family, who diverted the road from its previous position to the south of the cairn. Prior to Carter's work the cairn had already been dug into around 1870, when a N–S trench 1.5 m long was cut through its centre together with one of similar size W–E. Carter excavated a trench about 1.5 m square at the centre of the mound and discovered multiple pebble layers over a heavily burnt area resting on fine sand (Figure 2.14). He also reports finding a small 'cairn' in the base of the 1870 excavation trench, in all probability a pebble-filled pit. There were no finds and little charcoal. The structural sequence can be reinterpreted as follows: the cairn was built on a layer of inverted turfs. It covered a pebble-filled pit and a fire preceded the subsequent construction of the pebble layers.
<figure><img src="image_39.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2.14** (a) Carter's plan of his Milestone 9 pebble cairn; (b): Carter's diagrammatic cross-section of Milestone 9. Both illustrations are loose drawings (Source: Carter archive)</figcaption></figure>
Carter's interpretations

Carter linked a diffusion of Indo-European languages in Europe with the movement or diffusion of either peoples or customs across the continent, suggesting that the earliest Aryans in Britain were the Celts. Diffusionist models of social change and development dominated archaeological thought at this time, and in this respect Carter's ideas were not unusual; Stonehenge for example had long been thought to have been constructed as a result of Mycenaean influences. Carter interpreted the East Devon material in terms of Indo-Aryan burial rites described at length in the *Satapatha Brahmana* and elsewhere. The pebbled platforms he discovered on Aylesbeare Common with their double-headed axe shapes (see Chapter 6) were likened by him to the *vedi* or sacrificial mound of the Indo-Aryans. The *vedi* formed a material link between the worship of Agni as god and the performance of sacrifice as a holy rite. The prescribed rite was for ceremonies involving the use of fire as a purifying force, and Carter says that he found evidence of prolonged burning under many of the pebbled mounds and platforms he excavated. In Vedic rites the fire bird was sacred and Carter interpreted the patterning of pebbles under one mound he excavated on Woodbury Common QL (Figure 2.15; 2.21) as the partial representation of a bird. Vedic mounds were constructed in layers just like the pebble cairns and in both cases pebbles themselves were sacred materials. In Vedic rites pebbles were used in the construction of the sacrificial fire as symbolic pegs on the edge of the 'resting place of the fire to peg it down and keep it steady'. He maintained that the primary purpose of the pebbled mounds that he had investigated was not for burial but for the ceremonial worship of fire.

In *On the Flank of Archaeology* Carter writes as follows about the pebble pavements on Aylesbeare Common that he excavated:

In form the pebbled pavement is analogous to the *vedi* or sacrificial mound of the Indo-Aryans, as described in the *Satapatha Brahmana*, the *vedi* was the link between the worship of Agni (Ignis) as God and the due performance of a sacrifice as a holy rite. A sacrifice was the symbolical presenting of oneself before God; not only must it be proper and complete, but it was spiritually capable of personification (Vishnu). Sacrifice was made for a purpose; it was work, both in performance and persuasiveness. Vishnu could be refractory and tired, elusive and therefore to be compelled. Compulsion was obtained in the prescribed form of the altar. He would hide himself in the roots of plants but at no great depth. Thus the altar site must
<figure><img src="image_40.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2.15** Carter's 1932 photograph of cairn QL taken in August, looking north to the Iron Age hillfort of Woodbury Castle covered in trees. Note the complete absence of heathland vegetation following swaling (Source: Carter archive)</figcaption></figure>

be cleaned of living plants and the altar need be no more than three inches deep. Fire on one side and metrical chants on three would prevent the escape of Vishnu.

The altar should measure a fathom (vyama, a man's span) across on the west side, for that is the size of a man, and preferably but without fixed rule, three cubits in length. The two shoulders are carried along both sides of the fire. It should be broader on the west side, contracted in the middle and broad again on the east side. Thereby one makes it pleasing to the Gods. It should be sloping towards the east and also towards the north. The altar is then strewn with sacrificial grass and the ceremony proceeds.

In the Brahmana the prescribed rite was for a ceremony involving the use of fire. On these pebbled pavements there is no trace of a fire having been lit, nor of any fire strong enough to affect the pebbles of which it was made. On the other hand the whole site was dug to a depth of three feet and prolonged fires (of turf, with the barest traces of charcoal) had been burnt there.

The attributes of Agni show him to be at once the youngest and the progenitor of the Gods. He was their messenger and the
best of the Gods. He was the lower half of sacrifice and Vishnu the
upper half ... He was the Giver, the Pathmaker, the Despoiler, the
Bright One, Abiding in Water ...

The cult of Agni and the ritual of the *vedi* were practised in
Vedic times and was a true Aryan cult ... Writers of antiquity agree
in regarding Mercury or Hermes as the great god of northern
Europe, and that too with the very attributes of the Aryan Agni. As
the great god of the Gauls, Caesar reported that there were many
shrines to him, whom they consider as the inventor of all arts, the
guide on roads and journeys, the patron of wealth and trade.

Later, after discussing much Classical literature (e.g. Tacitus,
Herodotus) he concludes that 'the common measure of all the pebbled
mounds of Woodbury Common ... and of Aylesbeare Common is an
Indo-Aryan culture. In the one case we have countless burial mounds,
and many landmarks, in the other a few mounds devoted to an Agni
(fire-water) cult. The earliest Aryans of whom we have any knowledge in
Britain were the Celts, but of their first coming there is no certainty.' Much
of this account is in a published version that appears in the *Proceedings of
the Devon Archaeological Exploration Society* (Carter 1938: 95-6).

Carter not only pursued these direct Vedic ethnographic analogies
to interpret the mounds and pavements that he had excavated, but he
also made a strong claim that the builders of these mounds had a sophis-
ticated knowledge of geometry which was used to lay out and site the
positions of the mounds (i.e. pebble cairns) in relation to each other in
the landscape: 'I first observed the mathematical influence in archaeol-
ogy in the field on the Ganeshkind hill-top just outside Poona in 1918'
(Carter 1942: 12) where he was surveying two stone circles.

In *The Flank of Archaeology* (written about 1939/40) he writes
of 'an accumulation of evidence which leads directly to a mental pic-
ture of the civilizing power of Greek thought among the northern and
backward people of various races, though with a common stock of Indo-
Aryan rites'. He describes his manuscript as being an 'attempt to recover
the natural religion of the Celts and to recognize the philosophy of the
Druids', and 'to estimate the age of Stonehenge and of much which
passes of the Early Bronze Age, as of the historic (and not prehistoric
period)'. Thus Carter's central claim was that the material remains that
he had excavated were expressions of two intertwined syncretic cultural
traditions, both of which had spread to Britain with the Celts: an Indo-
Aryan culture, a matter of tribal and traditional religion, accompanied
by the spread of the Celtic languages and fused with Greek/Phoenician
influences bearing the teachings of Pythagoras. The pebble cairns that he excavated were understood as being 'landmark sites' and to Carter this indicated the interrelationship of mathematics and religion in a culture superimposed on an Aryanized people. Geometrical principles could explain both the distribution of sites across the landscape and their component parts. In the case of the East Devon material this found material expression in geometrical arrangements of pebbles and blue stones (see Figure 2.4; Figure 2.12; Figure 2.16). Carter accepted from

<figure><img src="image_41.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2.16** Carter's geometric plan of Woodbury Z on Woodbury Common showing blue stones, marked in black, a cluster of pebbles on the southwest perimeter and geometric bearings to other pebble cairns. One of these plans is in ISCA, the other, larger one, reproduced here, is from *The Flank of Archaeology* (Source: Carter archive)</figcaption></figure>
the Classical sources that a Druid priesthood existed in Britain. For him they were philosophical educators within an ancient British Aryanized culture, bringing with them a primitive 'pidgin-Greek' knowledge whose primary expression was a form of primitive mathematical geometry.

Carter was convinced that everything that he had excavated should be dated to around 250 BC. For him the material evidence should not be regarded as prehistoric but rather the beginning of history that he associated with the Celts as described in Classical sources, of which he had considerable knowledge. However, this dating of the material conflicted directly with the chronology of 'establishment archaeology'. He had excavated a pebble cairn (Woodbury ε) that contained Beaker sherds conventionally dated by archaeologists in the 1930s to about 1750 BC (see Chapter 3).

For Carter such a date was unacceptably early. His privately published pamphlet *Bronze Age Chronology: A Criticism* (Carter 1942) is a brief summary of a few of the arguments put forward in his unpublished manuscript entitled *On the Impossibility of Bronze Age Chronology*. He personally sent the pamphlet to numerous public libraries and museums in an attempt to influence others. It is essentially a critical diatribe against establishment archaeology in general and Sir Cyril Fox in particular, directly criticizing some of his published excavations of Welsh barrows and the ascription of a conventional Bronze Age date to them.

In the introduction Carter points out that every example of a stone circle discussed by the Piggotts in relation to Dorset (Piggott and Piggott 1939) is in fact elliptical in form and that writing of 'horseshoe' arrangements of stones, as in discussions of the internal arrangements of the stones in Stonehenge by other archaeologists, is anachronistic since a true description of their form is in fact that of a truncated ellipse rather than a circle. In other words, the elliptical form of these stone monuments was an expression of Pythagorean geometrical principles.

He then goes on to conduct a detailed geometrical reanalysis of the site of Sheeplays 271 and other Welsh barrows published by Fox (Fox 1941), applying Pythagorean principles attempting to demonstrate that the positions of the interments, central pits and internal post circles were governed by them and conformed to other Indo-Aryan ritual practices such as the removal of turfs before constructing the mound, the orientation of the interments and the presence of a central ritual pit with no burial (Figure 2.17). His conclusions are that Fox had misdated his material on the basis of the pottery he had found by up to 1,000 years. Fox had also failed to understand the mathematical basis underlying the positions of the central pit, internal post hole palisade and interments in
<figure><img src="image_42.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2.17** Carter's plan and geometric analysis of Sheeplays 271 excavated by Sir Cyril Fox. From the privately published pamphlet *Bronze Age Chronology: A Criticism* (Source: Carter archive)</figcaption></figure>

the barrows that he had excavated. He ends by stating 'we should have the reconstructed records of our own people, our own ancestors, and not merely the eclectic reactions of connoisseurs of urns of hypothetical races [a thinly disguised reference to Fox] which are meaningless to others' (Carter 1942: 14). Furthermore, the real lack of scholarship manifested by Fox and his contemporaries was 'to attempt to interpret religious ideas absolutely, instead of first exhausting known and specific religious systems' (Carter 1942: 2). In other words, rather than attempting to understand their data in terms of direct analogies with known religions such as the Indo-Aryan beliefs documented in the *Satapatha Brahmana* or knowledge of Celtic religious beliefs documented in Classical Greek and Roman sources, conventional archaeologists considered ritual as essentially an abstract category denoting evidence they could not explain in any other way. They thus did not understand anything at all because such a category remained empty of content. Fox's work exemplifies 'an ability to date a ritual mound while admitting ignorance at the same time of any meaning in the ritual he had uncovered' (Carter 1942: 13).
In Carter's four unpublished manuscripts he successfully demonstrates that many stone circles are in fact ellipses rather than true circles. To Carter this was proof that their planning was inspired by Pythagorean principles. He writes in *On the Impossibility of Bronze Age Chronology* that 'The expressions of mathematic lore, and of the ellipse in particular, are all of one category, all in so far as they are formulary, refer to the equilateral triangle or to a technique derived from the groupings of units of length. The facts are essentially objective and typical of the early and elementary stages of Pythagoreanism.' Elsewhere he states that the 'whole system of Bronze Age chronology is in error since it is a millennium in advance of Greek thought. ... There is in Britain, in common with the Mediterranean regions, a mathematical culture which was derived from Greek sources, wholly dateable after B.C. 600, and doubtless of several periods. Most of what passes as of the Bronze Age was of the Iron Age, and in general terms, is placed about one thousand years too early.' Although the Bronze Age occurs in the titles or subtitles of all his manuscripts, it remains a moot point as to whether for him such a period existed, for the period as he understood it would belong in conventional archaeological terms solely to the Iron Age. He had no solution to an apparently missing Bronze Age period and in this respect he was, of course, desperately wrong and peculiarly stubborn in denying all evidence to the contrary.

Going far beyond the East Devon material that he had excavated and studied, Carter generalized his position to suggest that there were two types of British burials: (a) extensive gravefields of small mounds such as those that he had excavated on the East Devon Pebblebeds exactly conformable with the details of Indo-Aryan religion that were not for burial and (b) great mounds for a princely class such as the huge barrows around Stonehenge. In both there was a scrupulous observance of Aryan customs: the removal of turfs in preparing the site, the digging of holes beneath ground level, the use of worked flints of various ages as fetish stones, manifestations symbolizing for him a cult of Agni. In Britain all the evidence suggested a fusion of Aryan ritual and a mathematical, Greek-inspired culture. The practice of mathematics employed was based on the numerical system of Pythagoras, not on the rational system of Euclid. The distinctive characteristics of this were knowledge of the quindecagon as the formula on which astronomy was based, and of the ellipse as the foundation plan of many holy places, both inventions of the Greeks.

There were clear indications in the Classical texts of an oceanic route to Britain bringing these Greek-inspired ideas. He discusses at length Classical writers – Homer, Herodotus, Ptolemy, Strabo, Pliny,
Plutarch, Tacitus, Caesar and others – to demonstrate sea connections between the Mediterranean and Britain. He states in the conclusion to the manuscript of *On the Impossibility of Accepted Bronze Age Chronology* that ‘within Britain a new order of priesthood grew up. The Druids were a professed brotherhood, but when we first meet them in history, they had become the priests of the tribes and the teachers of an advanced system of education.’ Furthermore:

> To the Pythagoreans the circle was the perfect figure and therefore a fit emblem of supereminent deity. In so far as Demiourgas, the emanation of mind from Deity, giving form creatively to otherwise formless matter, reacts with matter, the figure of the circle becomes distorted by the nature of matter. Obviously, therefore, they argued, the universe as we perceive it must be teres, a form without corners, oval, or, when geometry became systematic, elliptical. ... Thus the ellipse comes into being as a mathematical form ... and as the ground plan of holy places.

The construction and arrangement of prehistoric monuments were built through the inspiration of a priestly class of Druids in Celtic society ‘with the mathematical lore reported by Caesar as *Druidum disciplina*, the science of the Druids’.

In the manuscript of *On the Track of Pythagoras* these ideas are applied to discuss the distribution of the Broad Down barrows of East Devon (Figure 2.18), the stones of Lagavulin, Islay and other stone circles, the Bronze Age barrows of Buttermere, Wiltshire, barrows to the east and northwest of Stonehenge, the stones of Stonehenge itself in phases I and II (Figure 2.19) and two polygonal or so-called ‘kite shaped enclosures’. These are the Druid’s Head South Kite enclosure with its two internal barrows three miles SW of Stonehenge, Wiltshire and the Soldier’s Ring, Blackheath Down, Cranborne Chase on the Dorset/Hampshire border (Figure 2.20). The latter two monuments must have particularly interested Carter because of their obvious angular geometrical shapes (today they are presumed to be of late Romano-British date). The text is interspersed with lengthy discussions of geometry: the nature of a triangle, that of a square, of an ellipse and a hexagon. These do not really illuminate anything.

Carter argues that there is an underlying geometrical relationship within and between both the distribution of the barrows and the stones that he analyses. The barrows are understood as being essentially landmarks and geometrical foci. An Aryanized prehistoric people used
<figure><img src="image_43.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2.18** Carter's geometric analysis of the positions of a number of barrows in the Broad Down cemetery, East Devon from *On the Track of Pythagoras* (Source: Carter archive)</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_44.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2.19** Carter's geometric analysis of Stonehenge I from *On the Track of Pythagoras* (Source: Carter archive)</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_45.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2.20** Carter's analysis of the Soldier's Ring, Wiltshire (Source: Carter archive)</figcaption></figure>

previously constructed barrows or cairns as landmarks to establish the correct positions for new ones using a system of mathematical thought based on, or influenced by, Greek teaching. Underlying their locations were geometrical methods and mutual interrelationships. Many earth-works are 'set squares or bases for the study of geometrical problems'. As such, barrows should be understood primarily as being landmarks rather than burial mounds. Discussions in *The Flank of Archaeology* involve applying geometrical principles to a study of other sites such as Ogbury hillfort, Durrington Walls and Silbury Hill in Wiltshire. These Pythagorean studies are applied to the data, made to work in some way, but he could not demonstrate that they actually explained anything and we are ultimately left with a series of tautologies.

## Blue stones

Carter not only researched the archaeology, local history and folklore of the Pebblebeds, and more widely, that of Devon, but he was also very knowledgeable about the local geology. He was the first to find rare radioactive nodules that occur in the red sandstones underlying the Budleigh
Salterton Pebblebeds, which he found on the beach as water-worn specimens (Carter 1931; Perutz 1939). During his archaeological excavations of pebble mounds or cairns, Carter recognized a particular type of stone that was different from all the others: he termed these blue stones. The use of this term by him is particularly interesting as only a few years prior to Carter starting his excavations the geologist Herbert Thomas had published his findings that the bluestones of Stonehenge were derived from the Preseli mountains of Pembrokeshire, south Wales (Thomas 1923). Carter, then, had his own blue stones but in comparison with those at Stonehenge they were tiny. Carter plotted the distribution of these blue stones in his excavations and claimed that their positioning in the cairns, like the positioning of the cairns themselves in the landscape, could be understood in terms of Pythagorean geometrical principles.

He writes in *ISCA: 'In the blue stone we have the symbolic representation of the early religion of the Aryans, the mark of the great god of the heavens, father of all nature, of the gods, of the Aryans. By it the Druids linked their Pythagorean, their pidgin-Greek philosophy with the tribal religion of the people at large' and 'Blue was the colour associated with Indra from the earliest Vedic times and Indra was the great father god of the Aryans. In Indo-Aryan thought Agni, the fire god, was thought of as a bird.' Carter used these ideas to interpret the pebble cairn Mound QL that he excavated on Woodbury Common. This was 90 m to the northeast of his AA6, discussed above. On the surface he claims to have found the diagrammatic outline of a bird (head and legs), together with other geometric arrangements of pebbles. Underneath it were pebble 'cairns', that is, pebble-filled pits and blue stones (Figure 2.21). The cairn was built over an area that had been burnt (Carter 1936: 3–4). Carter again argues that the cairn was not for burial, but a landmark (i.e. an orientation point in a trigonometrically inspired system of cairns), a site where Agni was worshipped, erected by people of Aryan affinities to whom had travelled 'a slender knowledge of Greek civilization'. The blue stones that Carter recorded at this and other sites that he excavated, notably Woodbury ε (the letter e standing for epsilon), were primarily significant to him because of their blue colour, sacred in Indo-Aryan mythologies, but they have other interesting characteristics (see Chapter 5).

In a footnote to his paper 'Pebbled Mounds' (Carter 1934b) he states that 'these pebbles [those of the Budleigh Salterton pebble beds] are mainly a pale quartzite but occasional pebbles (1: 1000) are of dark or coloured igneous rock' (Carter 1934b: 4). Elsewhere he states that 'blue stones of various shades of colour and petrological nature (though of igneous origin) occur locally ... in the Bunter Pebble Beds" (1936: 2). In
<figure><img src="image_46.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2.21** Carter's published plan of the pebble cairn QL (see Fig. 2.15 for a photograph of the cairn) that appeared in *Proceedings of the Devon Archaeological Exploration Society*, 1934. The schematic bird (head and legs) is shown to the left of the image (Source: Carter archive)</figcaption></figure>
ISCA Carter states: 'The regular use of the darker stones of the Budleigh Salterton Pebble Beds (other than black stones), which show colours ranging through many shades of blue from purple to grey, seems to indicate an insistent idea of the importance of this colour.'

## The reception of Carter's work

During his lifetime Carter only published in any detail on some of the sites that he excavated on the Pebblebeds. Early on during his work in the early 1930s he had been an active member of the Devon Archaeological Society, publishing work in its *Proceedings* in 1936 and 1938. He had acted as secretary to the excavation fund for the Hembury hillfort excavations directed by Dorothy Liddell and also took part in the excavation of the Neolithic settlement of Haldon Belvedere. It is probable that he learned modern archaeological techniques of excavation on these projects. He had extensive correspondence with Sir Cyril Fox, Director of the National Museum of Wales, and one of the leading British prehistorians of his generation, sending him some of his own research findings and interpretations of the pebble mounds. Fox even came to visit one of Carter's own excavations on the East Devon Pebblebeds and obliged him by sending him a large scale plan of one of his Welsh excavations, to which Carter took his protractor. In a letter dated 28 November 1932, Fox writes to Carter about one of his manuscripts, probably a version of ISCA: 'I do not wish for a moment to take up a superior attitude .... Now the fact is that official archaeology which you are up against works on common-sense lines and eschews visionary significances and far-fetched symbolisms .... It seems to me certain that it will never be accepted by reputable publications in this country' (letter in Carter archive). However, despite this warning Carter did manage to get at least some of his work published in the Proceedings of the Devon Archaeological Exploration Society, but after around 1935 he seems to have given up trying to find an academic reception for his work or a 'reputable publisher'. Instead he published a few of his excavations and ideas in the local newspaper, the *Exmouth Journal*, but made no concessions whatsoever to the type of audience that he was addressing in terms of his writing style and the Classical sources that he used in them (see the discussion of his Squabmoor excavations, above).

In 1949 the summer conference (actually held in September) of The Prehistoric Society was held in Exeter. The year before, Sir Cyril Fox had taken early retirement and had moved to Exeter with his wife, Aileen, who had just been appointed to a Special Lectureship in archaeology at
the university. Carter's unplanned appearance and unorthodox positions led to Lady Aileen Fox and O.G.S. Crawford, two very prominent archaeologists of their day, leaving the hall almost immediately, together with half the audience within five minutes. Aileen Fox must have known Carter well, as she had also participated in the Hembury excavations directed by Dorothy Liddell. In her biography she writes:

> The conference was not without incident. I remember the growing impatience of the audience listening to Mr G.L. Carter, a local solicitor, of 'the lunatic fringe', airing his theories about the significance of the blue stones in the geologically-mixed Bunter Pebblebeds on Woodbury Common until several people, including me, walked out. I felt the conference was important, because it had brought leading archaeologists like Stuart Piggott, Christopher Hawkes, Gordon Childe and Grahame Clark to Exeter, and had bolstered my position at the university.

(Fox 2000: 117)

Clearly Carter's appearance was most embarrassing to her, but as Grinsell later pointed out, one of Carter's 'main points: that archaeologists are inexact in their terminology, often describing stone ellipses as stone circles is now upheld' (Grinsell 1985). It is interesting to note here Grinsell's use of the word 'inexact'. Grinsell was Keeper of Bristol City Museum between 1952 and 1972 and was a key figure in the documentation and study of Bronze Age barrows in southwest and southern England, visiting virtually every known site. Despite Grinsell's own obvious personal sympathy for Carter he did not use any of the notes Carter compiled for him on his East Devon 'pebbled mounds' in his 'professional' publication of the barrows of South and East Devon. They were excluded from the catalogue, apart from Woodbury ε, which could not be dismissed as it contained Beaker sherds. He notes that Carter's interpretations were 'out of step with normal archaeological thought. It has accordingly been considered expedient to omit from this paper his pebbled mounds' (Grinsell 1983: 6). In doing so Grinsell missed a great deal, as this book demonstrates. By taking Carter seriously even in the matter of the 'objective documentation' of the distribution of barrows and cairns in the landscape, his primary concern, Grinsell must have felt that his own work might suffer the same fate of ridicule and exclusion should he use information from Carter (some of which is to be found in the National Monuments records and those of the Historic Environment records of Devon County Council). In hindsight Grinsell's objectivity in the manner