Richards and Thomas 1984

Any paper focusing on structured deposition really has to begin with Richards and Thomas's 1984 paper ‘Ritual activity and structured deposition in Later Neolithic Wessex’ (figure 1). As we shall see, Richards and Thomas did not necessarily ‘invent’ the concept, in its broader sense at least – their work drew substantially on the earliest postprocessual theorizations of depositional practice, and indeed, with hindsight, elements of the concept can be detected in some even older research. They did, however, coin the term ‘structured deposition’, and pushed interpretations of past material culture patterning into completely new territory.

Figure 1 The University of Liverpool library copy of the book in which Richards and Thomas's 1984 paper was published.

As the title of their paper suggests, Richards and Thomas were concerned with the relationship between ‘ritual’ activity and the deposition of material culture. They began by highlighting the problem of interpreting the Late Neolithic henges of Wessex. A core question at that time was whether these monuments had a ‘ritual’ function. The generally unusual character of henges suggested that they may well have had a special ceremonial purpose. However, the large amounts of ‘rubbish’ and post-built structures found at some sites had confused the issue, suggesting a possible ‘domestic’ function as well or instead (Richards and Thomas 1984, 189; see also Bradley 2005, 10–16).

Richards and Thomas moved on to discuss the problems associated with the definition of ‘ritual’ generally, noting the tendency for it to be used as ‘a catch-all designation for anything which defies a crudely utilitarian explanation’ (Richards and Thomas 1984, 189). One way out of this situation, they argued, was to employ ‘a systematic approach to ritual, which is specific to archaeology itself and allows the examination of both symbolism and structure as embodied in material culture’ (ibid.). The fundamental element of the argument they put forward was the fact that ‘as ritual activities involve highly formalised, repetitive behaviour, we would expect any depositional patterns [associated with these] observed in the archaeological record to maintain a high level of structure’ (ibid., 191) – the original core concept of ‘structured deposition’.

The site they selected to test out these ideas was Durrington Walls (figure 2), a well-known and extensively excavated henge in southern England (Wainwright and Longworth 1971; see papers in Larsson and Parker Pearson 2007 for a summary of recent excavations). The materials with which they chose to investigate the ‘ritual’ patterning of material culture were pottery (Grooved Ware), animal bone and, to a lesser extent, flint. In order to assess the deposition of pottery at Durrington Walls, Richards and Thomas defined a Grooved Ware ‘design structure’ with six ‘stages’ (types) of decoration (ibid., 194–95). Essentially, different types predominated in different places (figure 3). They noted that other forms of material culture (flint and bone tools) displayed a similar degree of variability (ibid.). On the basis of this patterning, they argued that ‘the deposition of particular items was being controlled across the site’ (ibid., 204). The second level of patterning investigated was the distribution of flint and pottery specifically within the Southern Circle. They highlighted ‘a striking pattern of mutual avoidance . . . the post holes containing the highest frequencies of flint flakes are those which contain little or no Grooved Ware’ (ibid.). Interpreting these findings, they argued that ‘such clear patterning surely points to a pattern of formal deposition’ (ibid.).

Figure 2 Plan of Durrington Walls, as excavated prior to 1984 (Richards and Thomas 1984, figure 12.2).

Figure 3 Spatial representation of the variation in Grooved Ware design stages between features at Durrington Walls (Richards and Thomas 1984, figure 12.3).

The distribution of animal bones was, in many senses, fairly ‘complex’ (ibid., 207) to interpret. Overall, as with the pottery, they argued on the basis of differential distributions that ‘a set of rules governed the deposition of appropriate elements in different parts of the site’ (ibid.), going on to suggest that ‘part of the symbolic restructuring of the world which took place within henges involved the deliberate selection of wild animals, their use in feasting and their purposeful deposition in specified locations’ (ibid.). Interestingly, following on from this, they briefly considered other examples elsewhere of odd deposits involving animal remains, which they noted were often associated with other ‘high-quality’ or ‘unusual’ material. They concluded by saying that ‘the deposition of valued items – in isolated pits, in pits inside causewayed enclosures, in henges and in long barrow ditches – seems to have been an important element of ritual practice’ (ibid., 214).

In summing up the results of their analysis, Richards and Thomas reiterated their key point: ‘our analyses were designed to show whether the finds from Durrington Walls exhibit the clearcut spatial patterning that might be expected in a ritual context. The results of this investigation do suggest that this is the case . . . ritual is not beyond the realm of archaeological inference’ (ibid., 215).

Rereading Richards and Thomas 1984 in 2012

On rereading Richards and Thomas's classic paper in 2012, it comes across as a very optimistic study, with a considerable amount of work behind it. It made a number of important interpretive points, and took the analysis of material culture patterning into new territory. As discussed above, its influence has been long-lasting for very good reasons. At the same time, however, the paper does come across as slightly naive in places, and arguably flawed in others (see also Brück 1999b, 316; Thomas 1999, 81; 2007, 149; 2011; Albarella and Serjeantson 2002; Pollard 2008, 43). Before highlighting three of the main problematic issues, I want to make it very clear that comparable problems would be expected in any paper which is almost three decades old, especially one written so close to the beginning of a pioneering phase of archaeological theorization which was explicitly experimental in its methodology. It is worth noting that Thomas recently revisited the paper (having gone back to excavate at Durrington Walls) himself, and consequently has touched briefly upon some of these problems as well (Thomas 2011, 380–83).

The first point of criticism concerns the paper's approach to archaeological process. One key omission is the almost total absence of any serious consideration of the effects of time in creating the patterns observed (see also Thomas 2011, 380). Elements of the site are compared unilaterally, without any consideration of the fact that they may not always have been in use at once, in a monument which even then was thought to have been in use for several centuries (Wainwright and Longworth 1971, 225; Richards and Thomas 1984, 214). Additionally, the paper might also be criticized for its comparisons of depositional patterning between contexts which are not necessarily directly comparable; for example, the ways in which material culture would have come to be deposited in the Ditch, the Southern Circle and the Midden would almost certainly have been very different.

Second, in pushing the interpretation of material culture patterning to new limits, it might also be argued that the case for that patterning was slightly overstated. For example, while it is certainly true that within the Southern Circle some post-holes with large amounts of flint contained small amounts of pottery and vice versa (visible to the left in figure 4), overall it is difficult to support the suggestion of ‘a pattern of mutual avoidance’ (ibid., 204). In fact, 31 out of 52 post-holes contained directly comparable quantities (here defined as a difference of < 2%) of both materials (visible to the right of figure 4).

Figure 4 Graphic representation of the relative amounts of pottery and flint in each post-hole within Circles A and B of the Southern Circle. In order to make the two materials directly comparable, the quantity of sherds/flakes in each post-hole was calculated as a percentage of the total number. To make the graph more straightforward to read, the x-axis has been arranged in order of the percentage difference between the two materials rather than in order of feature number; those with large differences fall to the left-hand side, those with small to the right. Data from Richards and Thomas (1984, figure 12.6).

Interestingly, a final point of criticism – one which is absolutely fundamental to this paper – was actually touched upon by Richards and Thomas themselves right at the end of their discussion in 1984. It concerns the interpretive leap made from (a) an observation of patterns of variability within excavated material to (b) the assertion that these patterns were created intentionally through ‘ritual’ deposition. Having reiterated the key argument of their paper – that ‘the performance of ritual involves formalised repetitive actions which may be detected archaeologically through a highly structured mode of deposition’ – they went on to point out, somewhat contradictorily, that ‘domestic activity may also involve a high degree of structure’ (ibid., 215). The difference between the archaeological signature of ‘ritual’ and everyday ‘domestic’ activities might thus be seen as, ultimately, very much blurred.

The issue of how to interpret material patterning – and whether it was created intentionally or not – is one which will be considered in detail towards the end of this paper. Next, in order to understand better where Richards and Thomas were coming from in their paper, and also to begin this history of ‘structured deposition’ at the beginning, we turn to other discussions of depositional practice immediately prior to 1984.

Postprocessualism and the origins of ‘structured deposition’

Processes of deposition (and thus also their interpretation) are a fundamental element of archaeology. As a result, archaeologists have tried to ‘capture’ them in various ways – from Worsaae's ‘closed assemblages’, through Pitt-Rivers's sequencing of material culture via section drawings, to Wheeler's regimented boxes – since controlled excavation began (Lucas 2001; Trigger 2006). Significantly, many authors also speculated on the purposes of Neolithic depositional practice in particular over the course of the twentieth century, often alluding to possible ‘ritual’ motives, if not always exactly in those words (e.g. Stone and Young 1948; Field, Matthews and Smith 1964, 369; Case 1973).

In terms of the more immediate origins of Richards and Thomas's conceptualization of ‘structured deposition’, it is possible to identify two main strands of influence. The first is the general postprocessual theorization of the relationship between ideology/belief and the deposition of material culture, focused mainly on ethnoarchaeological studies. The second is a widespread movement within British prehistoric archaeology towards an interest in Late Neolithic ‘ritual’ and the idea that ‘deposition’ may have constituted a meaningful practice in itself.

Postprocessual archaeology developed, at least in part, directly out of a dissatisfaction with earlier theorizations of material culture patterning. In what is probably the clearest outline of the early postprocessual agenda, Hodder explicitly criticized Clarke for suggesting that ‘depositional theory can be separated from interpretive theory’ (1982b, 6), and the New Archaeology for viewing patterning within archaeological deposits as merely a passive reflection of what people had done in the past (ibid., 4). In making the case for an ‘active’ role of material culture, it was argued that artefacts had the capacity to intervene in people's ideologies and social worlds.

Much early postprocessual ethnoarchaeological work focused on deposition, and the role played by ideology/beliefs/symbolism in creating patterning within the modern ‘archaeological’ record. For example, in her 1981 paper concerned with ‘possibilities for the future’ in animal bone analysis, Moore discussed how the beliefs of gypsies structured the way in which they disposed of their rubbish (1981, 90). In that imagined future, she went on to publish her highly influential study of rubbish disposal in Kenya, within which she outlined the ways that the Marakwet people's conceptual boundaries and beliefs served to create highly structured material patterning in and around their compounds (Moore 1982; 1986; see figure 5). Around the same time, Hodder was attempting to get at very similar issues in his own ethnoarchaeological work amongst the Nuba (e.g. Hodder 1982a, 155–61).

Figure 5 Rubbish disposal patterns within ‘a typical Endo compound’ (after Moore 1986, figure 17).

The second strand of influence detectable within Richards and Thomas's formulation of ‘structured deposition’ was more directly related to developments in British prehistory. Given the character of British Neolithic archaeology – known more for its ceremonial monuments than for its often ephemeral ‘domestic’ sites – it is unsurprising that there should be a deep-seated interest in ‘ritual’ amongst those working in the period. However, in the first few years of the 1980s, the topic took on a new significance (e.g. Braithwaite 1984; Thorpe and Richards 1984). Around the same time, roughly the same group of archaeologists began to take seriously the idea that ‘deposition’ in itself may have been an important social practice. For example, in a discussion which was in many ways several years ahead of its time, Bradley (1975, 34 and 20) considered the deliberate filling of pits at various sites in southern England, and the placement of the skulls of red deer within the henge at Maumbury Rings. A key distinction drawn by several authors was that between what were often termed ‘formal’ deposits of rare/unusual objects (large slabs of decorated pottery, polished flint axes, complete skulls and so on) and more abstract material patterning (e.g. the overrepresentation of particular flint tools) created by the selection of certain objects for deposition (see, for example, Cleal 1984, 148; Thomas 1984, 167). Alongside this work, similar issues were also being considered – if not as heavily theorized – within the Iron Age, particularly in relation to the deposition of material within grain storage pits (Cunliffe 1983, 157–65; Grant 1984; Walker 1984).

The legacy of structured deposition: interpretations, 1985–2011

The following section charts the subsequent development of ‘structured deposition’, highlighting the various ways in which the concept has been transformed. Within this historical overview, I offer relatively little in the way of direct critique. It is not necessarily my intention to comment on individual papers and the specific approaches taken within them, but rather to highlight general trends and interests over the past three decades. The enormous success and staying power of the concept has ensured that huge numbers of papers, book chapters and site reports have been devoted to discussions of deposition. I have attempted to mention all of the key texts within the historical overview which follows, but cannot claim to have conducted an entirely exhaustive review.

As a result of this multiplicity of publications, a wide variety of equivalent terms has been used in place of, and often interchangeably with, the term ‘structured deposition’: ceremonial, deliberate, formal, formalized, intentional, non-utilitarian, odd, peculiar, placed, ritual, selected, special, symbolic, token and unusual deposits have all featured as well. Any history of ‘structured’ deposition must necessarily incorporate all of these, since this list of words in itself speaks volumes about the adaptability of the original idea. As we shall see, what people mean by structured deposition (and these various associated terms) also varies a great deal.

It is important to make clear from the outset that my focus in this paper is specifically ‘structured deposition’ (i.e. a particular concept in the present) rather than ‘ritual’ deposition (i.e. a suite of practices in the past) more broadly conceived; I do of course acknowledge that there can be a very close connection between the two. Consequently, I do not touch on the full spectrum of archaeological discussions concerning ‘ritual’ deposition (e.g. Walker 1995; Berggren and Nilsson Stutz 2010; Schiffer 2010) or indeed socially meaningful artefactual patterning (e.g. Clarke 1972; Grøn 2003). Equally, I focus exclusively on the Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age archaeology of Britain, in relation to which the vast majority discussions of ‘structured deposition’ (specifically) have taken place. It is worth pointing out that this restricted geographical and temporal focus is primarily a consequence of recent scholarly traditions, rather than because similar deposits are not identified in other places and periods (see, for example, Clarke 1997; Chapman 2000; Pearce 2008; Berggren and Nilsson Stutz 2010; Stiftelsen Kulturmiljövård 2011). Equally, I deal primarily with certain types of deposit – material usually associated with settlements and monuments (often in amongst a wide variety of ‘rubbish’), rather than deposits which are more isolated (e.g. metalwork and metalwork hoards – see, for example, Fontijn 2002; Yates and Bradley 2010) – again because the latter have not usually been discussed under the banner of ‘structured deposition’.

In an attempt to represent the variety of interpretations associated with the concept of structured deposition as simply as possible, in the remainder of this paper I have characterized the deposits under discussion by using two main terms (italicized in the text throughout). It is vital to emphasize that they are primarily designed to describe interpretations in the present rather than practices in the past. The first category I have termed odd deposits (following Brück 1999a); an example of this might be the burial of a complete horse, whose head had been removed and placed next to a complete dog, on the base of an Iron Age storage pit within a hill fort (Grant 1984, 534). The second category I have termed material culture patterning; an example of this might be subtly different distributions of flint tools (7.8%, 5.1% and 9.1% of the whole assemblage) within each of the three circuits of a causewayed enclosure (Whittle, Pollard and Grigson 1999, 370). It is important to stress that these two ‘types’ should not be seen as distinct, but as representing two ends of what is in fact a continuous spectrum.

In drawing a distinction between these two ends of a spectrum, I am mindful of Bell's work on ‘ritualization’ (1992), which has subsequently been taken up fairly widely within archaeology (e.g. Bradley 2005; Lamdin-Whymark 2008; Berggren and Nilsson Stutz 2010). In investigating ‘ritual’ practice within social anthropology, Bell suggests that ritual should be seen not as a clearly defined category, but as a relational and context-specific concept that is brought about through practices of ‘ritualization’. She argues (Bell 1992, 74) that ‘ritualization is a way of acting that is designed and orchestrated to distinguish and privilege what is being done in comparison to other, usually more quotidian, activities’. In Bell's terms, odd deposits would be viewed as the result of clearly ritualized practices, since they were (arguably) consciously made ‘different’ from the rest. The processes through which material culture patterning came about are more complicated to tie down (as we shall see below), but certainly could be the result of ‘quotidian’ or non-ritualized practices. My own understanding of material culture patterning in relation to both ‘ritual’/‘ritualized’ and ‘non-ritual’/‘everyday’ practice is outlined in more detail within the later sections of the paper.

Finally, it is worth noting that again, for simplicity's sake, in the history which follows I have usually chosen to deal with work which focuses on the Neolithic separately from that which focuses on the Bronze and Iron Ages. This is not because I see these two strains of discussion as separate, but to ensure that my reading of a complex series of developments can be presented as clearly as possible.

The late 1980s: a slow start and some ‘heavy’ theorization

Interestingly, for the five or so years immediately following the publication of Richards and Thomas's 1984 paper, there were relatively few published discussions of their ideas. While people continued to consider ‘deliberate’ deposition as a practice (e.g. Pryor, French and Taylor 1985; Evans 1988, 47), it was not until the early 1990s that structured deposition really took off as a concept (see the next section). A delay in the widespread uptake of key theoretical concepts within prehistoric archaeology in Britain more generally has been noted elsewhere (Cooper, in press). In this particular case, it was perhaps inevitable that there would be a pause, as people took stock of the ideas put forward in 1984, recalibrated them to suit their own sites, carried out the relevant analyses and then published that work. Additionally, following the initial impact of postprocessualism in the early 1980s, several of the main protagonists went on to publish book-length texts developing the theoretical agenda (Hodder 1986; Shanks and Tilley 1987a; 1987b). A prominent discussion within these and associated papers (e.g. Barrett 1988; Hodder 1989) was the extent to which material culture could be read as a kind of ‘text’. Consequently, ideas relevant to, and in some cases at least partly derived from, Richards and Thomas's work were being discussed, but mostly in abstract theoretical terms rather than specifically in relation to the Neolithic.

Having highlighted a delay in its uptake, it is important to stress that the more specific concept of structured deposition was not ignored entirely during this period. Thomas and Whittle's (1986) reanalysis of West Kennett long barrow, for instance, explicitly built upon Richards and Thomas's ideas. They identified ‘significant patterning in pottery deposition in the five chambers according to style and decorative motifs’ (ibid., 130), which they viewed as having been designed to convey specific meanings associated with ‘age, sex or other social divisions’ (ibid., 153). Equally, in his study of the material culture deposited at Stonehenge, Burl (1987, 95) also cited their argument, embellishing it in his own imaginative style: ‘this was not rubbish but material deliberately gathered together in magical combinations that would generate power and protection’. The concept of deposition as a meaningful practice was also beginning to solidify within Iron Age research at this time: ‘put bluntly, people were doing something “pretty weird” in Iron Age Wessex pits, which is not that incomparable to the “oddity” of Neolithic deposition’ (Hill 1989, 21).

Early to mid-1990s: consolidation and expansion

The early to mid-1990s saw significant and sustained work on structured deposition within the Neolithic, a full expansion of discussion into the Bronze and Iron Ages, and the publication of three key books (Bradley 1990; Thomas 1991; Hill 1995).

Neolithic

In terms of continued work within the Neolithic, Thomas's book Rethinking the Neolithic (1991) set the agenda for many years to come. Chapter 4 – ‘Pits, pots and dirt. A genealogy of depositional practices’ – was given over entirely to an extended discussion of deposition. His fundamental point was that ‘deposition was a social and cultural practice in itself’ (ibid., 56, italics original), and in making it he placed intentional deposits firmly at the centre of subsequent debates. The initial focus of Thomas's chapter was on pits, rather than on impressive ceremonial monuments. Pits represented a particularly good type of feature through which to make the argument that deposition was a fundamental practice at that time, since it was possible to suggest that – unlike henges and so on – they had no clear function other than deposition (ibid., 59–60). In making this argument, Thomas focused predominantly on odd deposits (see definition above). By citing instances in which pristine bone pins, decorated chalk plaques, human bones and even the remains of brown bears had been placed in pits (ibid., 62), he was able to suggest that their burial had in itself been a meaningful act. In the same year, Barrett, Bradley and Green (1991) also dwelt substantially on deposition within pits. Like Thomas, they too used odd deposits (large slabs of pottery ‘placed’ with decoration upwards, complete antler picks and so on) to suggest that ‘formal’ deposition had occurred (ibid., 77). However, notably, in an attempt to show that ‘ritual’ was not something which occurred only in monumental contexts, they also used broader material culture patterning (variable distributions of artefact types, animal bones and so on) within pits to argue that depositional practices comparable to those described at Durrington Walls had occurred (ibid., 83–84). In the accompanying specialist reports volume, Brown (1991) in particular discussed structured deposition at considerable length. Echoing Richards and Thomas's original study, he focused on the ‘mutual avoidance of symbolically disassociated [artefact] types’ within pits and so on (ibid., 120), viewing material culture as having been used to convey complex social ‘statements’ about gender relations.

In the latter half of chapter 4, Thomas (1991, 70) moved from pits back into more familiar territory: ‘it is in the context of henge-monuments that the formality of structured deposition is most pronounced and hence most easily recognised’. Expanding his previous work at Durrington Walls, he discussed deposition within the comparable monuments of Maumbury Rings and Woodhenge (ibid, 71). As at Durrington Walls, particular combinations and variability in the distribution of material culture across these sites were seen as having been meaningfully constituted, ‘concerned with drawing contrasts and emphasizing boundaries between inside and outside, tame and wild, culture and nature, and with an emphasis on entrances and transitions’ (ibid., 72). This dual theme (a) of uneven patterning of material culture being viewed as having been intentionally created to convey a message and (b) of entrances and particular cardinal points being stressed through deposition subsequently became highly prominent, being developed in a number of key papers relating to the Sanctuary (Pollard 1992), Woodhenge (Pollard 1995; see figure 6) and Mount Pleasant (Thomas 1996). A quote from one of Pollard's abstracts (1995, 137) nicely sums up the sort of argument being made: ‘deposition is seen as a process through which a variety of connotations and symbolic references were incorporated in the monument [Woodhenge], in addition to contributing towards a complex classification of space that served to order ceremonial and ritual practices’.

Figure 6 The distribution of Grooved Ware at Woodhenge (Pollard 1995, figure 4).

Bronze and Iron Ages

Due to its ambitious scope, Bradley's book The passage of arms (1990) – which investigated ‘hoard and votive deposits’ throughout prehistory across north-western Europe – perhaps even more than Thomas's work placed the practice of deposition firmly at the centre of prehistoric archaeology. Notably, it expanded discussion into new periods, focusing mainly on the Bronze Age, but also on the Iron Age (and the Neolithic). Bradley did not always deal with deposits which are ‘structured’ in Richards and Thomas's original sense: the ‘votive’ deposition of a hoard of bronze jewellery in a bog is not quite the same thing as the patterned deposition of broken pottery and animal bones within a henge ditch. However, in focusing on (a) deposition as a meaningful practice, (b) the identification of ‘ritual’ deposits and (c) particular combinations of objects he did touch on many directly comparable issues.

Over the course of the early to mid-1990s a number of papers focused on Iron Age material culture deposition as it reflected ideologies and the social use of space (e.g. Hingley 1990; Parker Pearson and Richards 1994; Parker Pearson 1996). Broadly speaking, there was an assumption within this work that activity areas could be inferred directly from material culture patterning (e.g. the differential distribution of fineware pottery) in roundhouses, and that on the basis of this evidence it was possible to infer gender hierarchies and so on. Odd deposits (complete animal carcasses and so on) were also drawn in at times, to reinforce arguments about east–west spatial oppositions, for example (Parker Pearson and Richards 1994, 54). It must be said that many of these interpretations of deposition come across as rather uncritical, and it is certainly possible to critique them (see Brück 1999a; Pope 2007; Webley 2007). ‘Special’ deposits in the Bronze Age were also discussed at this time (Needham 1992).

Hill's 1995 book Ritual and rubbish in the Iron Age of Wessex (an extended version of his 1993 Ph.D. thesis) represented the most extensive examination of structured deposition published so far at that point, and arguably remains so today. Within this short review, it is difficult to do justice to the full extent and complexity of Hill's analysis and interpretations. He drew direct inspiration from Neolithic research, where he suggested that it was much easier to argue for the existence of ‘odd’ deposits (Hill 1995, 5). Hill adopted an explicitly critical approach to the formation of the archaeological record, problematizing the notion of ‘rubbish’ (ibid., 1) and questioning the temporality of deposition through which material would actually have come to be deposited (ibid., 4). Like Richards and Thomas (1984), Hill was interested in the material visibility of ‘ritual’, yet he correctly took a more complex view of its archaeological signature: ‘discovering significant degrees of structure and symbolism in archaeological deposits is not a secure basis for their interpretation as ritual deposits’ (ibid., 4). He was also more rigorous in his identification of what he termed ‘special’ (ibid., 27) and ‘non-average’ (ibid., 34) deposits, ultimately noting that the former (unusual assemblages of pottery, certain groups of animal bones, two or more small finds, and human bones – ibid., 40) were often correlated with the latter (pit layers with especially large numbers of sherds, for example – ibid., 95; see figure 7). He also explored the idea that ‘special’ deposits were sometimes used in order to emphasize the symbolism of settlement boundaries/entrances and so on (ibid., 76–83; see also Hill 1994). These spatial patterns – notably identified in both vertical and horizontal dimensions – were viewed as meaningfully ‘structured’ (e.g. Hill 1995, 96). In the final three chapters of the book, Hill summarized his overall impression of what was going on. It is interesting to note a number of points of close comparison with some of the Neolithic interpretations we have already discussed: these deposits represented an ‘explicit articulation of key classifying principles through the deposition of material in particular parts of sites’ (ibid., 113) and so on. Very similar readings of material culture patterning were being made in relation to archaeology from very different contexts.

Figure 7 Schematic diagram of the deposits within Pit 7372 at Winnal Down (Hill 1995, figure 7.10).

Hill's study, like Bradley's (1990) before it, set the agenda for many years. Its influence on subsequent papers is clear, with ‘deliberate’ deposition in settlement boundaries, ‘unusual’ deposits of pottery in pits and so on distinctive features of Iron Age research (e.g. Fitzpatrick 1997; Gwilt 1997). In her study of human remains in Late Bronze Age Britain, published in the same year as Hill's book, Brück (1995, 254) also drew direct inspiration from Neolithic research. Again like Hill, she stressed the need to be cautious in identifying ‘ritual’, since ‘most day-to-day activities, including refuse disposal . . . may result in structured deposits in the archaeological record’ (ibid., 254).

Late 1990s to early 2000s: pushing the boundaries and the beginnings of critique

If the previous period was one of consolidation, in the late 1990s and the early 2000s there is a sense that structured deposition had become very much part of the later prehistoric interpretive furniture. The fact that deliberate and meaningful deposition had happened was, broadly speaking, taken for granted. One significant consequence of this widespread acceptance was that people no longer spent as much effort proving its existence, and thus time and space were freed up in which to push interpretation further (sometimes to the extreme).

Mid-2000s to the present day: the resurgence of ‘the everyday’ and hyperinterpretation

Recent work on structured deposition in both the Neolithic and the Bronze Age/Iron Age has been characterized by interpretations which, seemingly, are heading in two very different directions. On the one hand, people have come to look in much more detail at what might be termed the ‘everyday’ processes which might lead to structured deposition. On the other, however, there has at the same time been a movement towards what, following Fleming (2006), might be termed a ‘hyperinterpretive’ approach to material-culture meanings. There is also, still, a lingering aura of ‘ritual’ that arguably biases interpretation of deposition, especially within Neolithic monuments.

Rethinking structured deposition

In this section, my aim is to question some of the things which have been taken for granted about structured deposition since 1984, and to turn the spotlight onto those issues associated with it which I view as problematic. In doing so, I hope to initiate a debate – one of the main reasons why I wanted to publish this paper in Archaeological dialogues – in order to reinvigorate the concept for the 21st century.

Over the past 28 years, as I see it, three main issues have arisen which need to be addressed:

1. 1 There has been a tendency to conceptualize different types of deposit, which formed through quite different processes and may well have had quite different meanings, in similar ways, under the banner of ‘structured deposition’. We need to be more explicit about where on the sliding scale from odd deposits to material culture patterning (as I have termed it here) various acts of deposition should be situated, and distinguish between them more clearly.

2. 2 In most discussions of structured deposition, there has been a tendency to attribute enhanced meaningfulness to material culture patterning. Generally speaking, variability has been viewed as both intentionally created and symbolically relevant. We need to devote more attention and effort to examining the validity of any such meanings proposed, and to think through whether and how they could actually have been conveyed in practice.

3. 3 When investigating depositional patterning within the material record, there has been a tendency to place interpretive emphasis on just one section of what should in fact be a broad spectrum of explanations for it. We need to engage more critically with the past processes which led to material culture patterning, and shift our expectations as to the material signature(s) of ‘everyday’ practices. While the latter have, since the very beginning, always been acknowledged, they have broadly been ignored at the expense of other (‘ritual’) acts of deposition, and thus remain undertheorized and underexplored. In Bell's (1992) terms, we need to focus not just on the ‘ritualized’ but also on the non-ritualized (or ‘quotidian’) practices as well.

I will deal with each of these three points – which, as we shall see, are intimately related – in turn below. At the root of much of what I will be saying is a dissatisfaction with the balance so far achieved between what might be characterized as the ‘ritual’ and the ‘everyday’. It is important to stress that I am not wanting to reinstate any kind of ritual/domestic divide, which has been very effectively critiqued within archaeology in recent years. Brück (1999b), for example, has made the important point that any characterization of practices as being either ‘ritual’ or ‘rational’ is a consequence of post-Enlightenment thought; this distinction may not have had any validity in the prehistoric past and so should not be imposed upon it. Equally, Bradley (2005) has shown how practices that we might be tempted to divide up into the ‘ritual’ and the ‘domestic’ spheres were in fact closely linked in many elements of prehistoric life.

‘Ritual’ practices (including deposition) are also very hard to define. Bell (1992; 1997) in particular has shown how, within anthropology, ‘ritual’ can mean many different things to many different researchers, and the same is certainly true for archaeology. Similarly, she has also argued that amongst people studied ethnographically, what is considered ‘ritual’ and what is not is both context-specific and relationally determined; again, the same can almost certainly be said for the people we study archaeologically as well. Nevertheless, Bell argues (1992, 6) that ritual is still a meaningful sphere of study, and develops a distinction between ‘quotidian’ and ‘ritualized’ practices in order to get towards it (ibid., 74). Similarly, I have maintained my use of the ritual/everyday opposition because it represents a clear way of framing the argument, especially since that opposition (or something very similar), as we have just seen, has seemingly been in most archaeologists’ minds when discussing structured deposition.

It is important to stress that in reasserting the ‘everyday’ or ‘mundane’ elements of deposition, I am in no way seeking to deny the ‘ritual’ or ‘symbolically meaningful’ aspects. Rather, by emphasizing both (overlapping) spheres, and thus facilitating more varied (and arguably more accurate) interpretations of structured deposition, it should be possible to work towards a better appreciation of the signatures of past practice, and thus ultimately to create richer understandings of the past.

Exploring the full spectrum of structured deposition

Right from the start of this paper, I have characterized the types of deposit we encounter by using two different terms – odd deposits and material culture patterning. As explained above, I see these as representing convenient terms to characterize either end of a continuous spectrum. From the very beginning, there has been a tendency to discuss these two ‘types’ of deposit together, to elide them as examples of just one phenomenon – structured deposition. As mentioned above, despite the serious theoretical attention and methodological prominence they gave to more abstract material culture patterning, Richards and Thomas were still tempted to mention odd deposits (bear bones, pristine arrowheads, polished axes and so on) in their argument (1984, 206). The latter were ultimately used in order to bolster the suggestion that the former could be understood as meaningful.

A certain asymmetry generally resides within the elision of these two ‘types’ of deposition – odd deposits are almost always used to support the meaningfulness of material culture patterning. Pollard (1995, 145), for example, used carefully ‘placed’ bundles of antler picks in the ditch at Woodhenge (a deposit which would probably be placed towards the odd deposit end of the spectrum) as evidence to support his argument that the broader distributions of animal bone and other materials at the site (deposits more towards the material culture patterning end) could be seen as intentionally constituted and meaningful. Similarly, odd deposits – including groups of ‘nested’ sherds and bundles of cattle ribs (Whittle, Pollard and Grigson 1999, 357 and 364), complete pots, quernstones and polissoirs (Pryor 1998, 33 and 107), ‘token’ deposits of human bone (Brück 2006) and so on – have all been mentioned alongside rather less clearly ‘odd’ material culture patterning for similar reasons.

It is important to stress that, in most cases, the use of odd deposits to bolster the argument that material culture patterning was indeed meaningful has been implicit rather than explicit. The underlying assumption is that people did deliberately deposit seemingly valuable or symbolically rich objects in the ground, and that therefore deposition can be seen as a meaningful practice in the past. This much is, I think, undeniable. However, once the argument moves on from this point, to the suggestion that most or all material culture patterning in henges, causewayed enclosures, settlement boundaries and so on can be interpreted as being symbolically meaningful and/or as having been intentionally created, it becomes, for me, much more difficult to accept. As we will see in the next two sections, material culture patterning can come about by other means. In eliding the different ends of the depositional spectrum, and treating all structured deposits as essentially one category, we have, I feel, curtailed the interpretive possibilities open to us and thus made structured deposition a less helpful means through which to interrogate the past. This tendency has also contributed to the situation where the identification of structured deposition is viewed as an interpretation in itself; a ‘black box’ which holds the truth but is hard to access. Often, it now seems to be considered enough to identify a ‘structured deposit’ and leave it at that – people did funny things in the past, end of story. For me, it is in studies which have maintained an interpretive distinction between these two ‘types’ of deposit, enabling discussion of the dynamic between them (e.g. Hill 1995; and especially Brück 1999a), that the most effective discussions of past depositional practice have come about.

Enhanced meaningfulness and the symbolism of structured deposits

Towards the end of the preceding history section, I discussed the fact that ‘hyperinterpretive’ accounts of material culture have risen to prominence over the past ten years. It is not in fact this strand of enhanced meaning attribution that I want to question here, however. Although I myself have not generally found these accounts especially convincing, they have usually been self-consciously ‘creative’ and are perhaps an inevitable outcome of the postprocessual opening up of interpretation (see Fleming 2006, 268). Rather, my focus here will be on the relationship between material culture patterning and ideological/symbolic meaningfulness – a subject which has been on the agenda since the early 1980s.

Historically, in discussions concerning the meaningfulness of structured deposition, two subtly different arguments have been made. The first is that people in the past deposited things differentially on a site in order to convey a set of specific meanings. The second is that people deposited things differentially on a site because of the meanings that the different parts of that site had. It is worth noting that these two strands can be viewed, quite justifiably, as two stages of essentially the same recursive cycle of meaning/practice.

The first slant of this argument was clearly visible within Richards and Thomas's original paper, where they argued, for instance, that material culture may have been deposited in specific sequences in order to ‘communicate rules and categories’ (1984, 191). In a similar vein, Shanks and Tilley had previously argued (1982, 151) that human bones were differentially deposited in chambered tombs in order to present a particular message about the make-up of society. Equally, Hill suggested an ‘explicit articulation of key classifying principles through the deposition of material culture’ (1995, 113, italics original). This view of the meaningfulness of material culture patterning clearly has its roots in the early postprocessual discussion of the active (‘textual’) role of material culture, and a contemporary desire to make the most of the archaeological record. Over time, however, the second slant has become more prominent. For example, in his discussion of Mount Pleasant, Thomas argued (1996, 202) that ‘particular kinds of vessel, decorated in particular ways, were appropriate for use in given parts of the site, or at least for deposition there’. Similarly, Whittle, Pollard and Grigson suggested (1999, 382; see figure 8) that a broad symbolic scheme of life in general was mapped onto the enclosure at Windmill Hill, affecting what could be deposited where.

Figure 8 ‘Simplified interpretation of the setting, major activities and possible meanings of the enclosure’ at Windmill Hill (Whittle, Pollard and Grigson 1999, figure 227 detail).

In these scenarios, the meaningfulness of deposition is conveyed intentionally – people either used material culture to convey specific messages, or deposited it specifically with reference to key classificatory principles (usually associated with particular parts of a site). As Brück has put it,

Again, it is not my intention here to question the possibility that material culture may have been deposited in order to convey a message or in accordance with some symbolic scheme. The issue I want to highlight is the fact that, in making these arguments, people have often felt compelled to interpret all variability as being representative of some kind of symbolic scheme. Thus, to mention just one example amongst dozens, Pollard viewed a 65–35 percentage split in the distribution of pottery at Woodhenge as being illustrative of a symbolic east–west divide within the monument (1995, 148; see figure 6). In my opinion, this general position is untenable – variability does not have to have been intended or explicitly meaningful.

Moreover, in order to accommodate the often contradictory material culture patterning observed between different material types (e.g. where pottery distributions do not match the flint), people have often been forced either to put forward extremely complex explanations and rules affecting deposition, or to resort to vague statements which are general enough to incorporate the variability. In the case of the former, it sometimes becomes difficult to understand how people in the past could possibly have remembered them all. In the case of the latter, explanations often come to seem rather banal. Equally, time is often flattened significantly, as the deposits plotted two-dimensionally across causewayed enclosures and henges are compared without full consideration of the temporality of their deposition. People have generally failed to consider the complexity of the processes which lay behind the patterning observed.

As we will see in the next section, other possible interpretations of the variability observed in the distribution of material culture are possible. Before turning to these alternative views, it is important to highlight a third strand of discussion, relating to the unintentional, yet still symbolically meaningful, patterning of material culture. These arguments have usually been made by those arguing that not all material culture patterning need necessarily be ‘ritual’. As Brück (1995, 255) puts it, ‘both ritual and [more ‘everyday’] rubbish disposal practices may be structured according to cultural principles’. Essentially the same point has been made by many other authors (e.g. Hill 1995, 16; Whittle, Pollard and Grigson 1999, 355). Moore's (1982; 1986) ethnoarchaeological work amongst the Marakwet in Kenya, which is frequently quoted, demonstrated that even ‘routine’ rubbish disposal practices could potentially be spatially ‘structured’ in relation to a society's symbolic categorization schemes (see figure 5). The Marakwet did not necessarily explicitly reference these schemes in disposing of their refuse, but those schemes did nevertheless influence the ‘archaeological’ record that was created. Essentially, the same thing is assumed to have occurred in the past.

In the next section, I turn to the final point I wish to make: that material culture patterning does not even have to have come about (unintentionally) as a result of underlying symbolic schemes. It can just happen.

The material signature of ‘everyday’ practice

Since the first study of structured deposition, variability in terms of material culture patterning has been central to almost every argument made. Richards and Thomas (1984) argued that differences in the prevalence of decoration on pottery across the site were symbolically meaningful, and that differences in the amount of pottery and flint in the Southern Circle post-holes could be taken as evidence for ritual practice. As we have seen, numerous others have made many similar points since then. I do not want to argue here against the suggestion that material culture patterning was not in the past, and cannot be today, explicitly meaningful. It can. However, I do think that in attributing enhanced meaningfulness to all patterning, we have foreclosed other interpretive possibilities (see also Brudenell and Cooper 2008; Beadsmoore, Garrow and Knight 2010). Essentially, what might be characterized as the ‘symbolic’ side of interpretation has come to dominate the ‘mundane’ to an unacceptable degree. Perhaps more importantly, it strikes me that underlying many of these arguments has been a fundamental misunderstanding of the archaeological signature of ‘everyday’ practice.

It is this last point to which the phrase ‘average practice’ in the title of this paper refers. A quote from Pryor's Etton report (1998, 254) perfectly illustrates the point I am making: ‘first and foremost, the patterning [of flint] was not homogeneous; this indicates beyond reasonable doubt that the assemblage(s) was not the result of random processes’. Similar arguments have been made many times elsewhere (e.g. Thomas 1996, 201–2; Whittle, Pollard and Grigson 1999, 370; Lamdin-Whymark 2008, 147). Because he considered this issue in the most detail, Hill's study represents perhaps the most extreme example. He states (1995, 41), for instance, ‘I would expect the majority of layers to contain thoroughly homogeneous deposits’. Crucial to his argument was the notion of an ‘average’ and ‘non-average’ pit fill, the latter being defined by standard deviations away from the mean (ibid., 34). The assumption within all of this work is that the non-homogeneous or non-even patterning of material (often identified using chi-squared tests) can be taken as evidence that those differences must have been intentionally created in the past. What I want to suggest here is that the ‘random’ processes of everyday life which Pryor mentions (above) in fact absolutely do create uneven patterning.

It is important to stress at this juncture that many of the studies mentioned above have considered the possibility that material culture patterning under discussion could have come about for relatively mundane reasons (e.g. Hill 1995, 2; Whittle, Pollard and Grigson 1999, 371; Mercer and Healy 2008, 762). However, due to the historical legacy of structured deposition's original formulation, these interpretive options have ultimately been sidelined or dismissed. In my opinion, the archaeological signature – in terms of the structure of deposits – of ‘everyday’ practice needs to be taken as seriously, and to be as heavily theorized, as the ‘symbolic’ or ‘ritual’. In order to demonstrate the point I am trying to make concerning the material signature of ‘everyday’ practice, I would like to turn briefly to two examples, one from the modern world, the other from the Neolithic.

Figure 9 shows the amount of each material deposited by the public in recycling centres across Merseyside during the 2010–11 financial year. Some materials (e.g. cardboard) were disposed of in fairly regular quantities throughout the year. Others (e.g. green waste, glass, plastic, aluminium cans) fluctuated significantly. In the case of green waste, such variability is easily explained as a result of the seasonal cycle of plant growth/gardening activity. Similarly, glass disposal peaked markedly over and after the Christmas period, as one might expect given the increased consumption of drinks during seasonal festivities. However, the variability in terms of the disposal of plastic and of aluminium cans is much harder to explain. In the case of plastic, one might expect deposition to increase over the summer (with increased consumption of bottled drinks), but the peak in November cannot be explained in this way. Similarly, it is not clear why aluminium cans should have peaked so dramatically in February.

Figure 9 Quantities of six different material types recycled each month in Merseyside during the 2010–11 financial year. In order to make the six materials directly comparable, quantities are expressed as a percentage of the total. Data from Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority.

It would be mistaken to suggest that the deposition captured within this graph is in no way a meaningful reflection of ideology or symbolism: the fact that any of these materials were brought for recycling at all reflects the ideologies of green living and sustainability; the disposal of glass at Christmas is clearly tied in to cosmology, belief systems and so on. However, importantly, what these data emphasize is that variability can in fact be the norm. These patterns of variability were not created intentionally in order to convey a symbolic message. The people making these deposits will not have been aware of the patterns they helped to create. However, that is not to say that those patterns are meaningless. They do have something significant to say about the rhythms of everyday practice and consumption – the deposition of objects is often the final stage in a long series of practices and processes, and the material culture represented can therefore fluctuate simply as a result of the inherent ebbs and flows of life.

Turning to the Neolithic, we can see comparable patterns emerging within a very different dataset. Figure 10 shows the quantities of material deposited within 138 Early Neolithic pits at Kilverstone, Norfolk (Garrow, Beadsmoore and Knight 2005; Garrow, Lucy and Gibson 2006). Figure 11 shows those quantities in a way which allows us to compare the amounts of flint and pottery in each pit directly. In some cases, the amount of both materials is closely comparable, but often the two numbers are very different. Equally, the majority of pits show significant deviations from the mean. It would certainly be possible to interpret patterns such as these as having been intentionally (and meaningfully) constituted in the past – a material-culture text designed to express contradictions within society and so on. However, it is also possible to put forward a more ‘everyday’ explanation. It is perfectly feasible to view variability in the quantities of different materials within each pit and within each different pit cluster – like the recycling dumped in Merseyside – as reflecting the fluctuations of everyday life at the site. The accumulation of pottery and flint, and the digging and filling of pits, occurred at different ‘tempos’ (see Garrow, Lucy and Gibson 2006, 74–75). Consequently, when one pit was filled, there may have been lots of all materials available in the pre-pit context. However, when the next pit was filled, it is possible that while lots of flint had been knapped, no further pots had been broken; as a result, that pit would have been sparse in terms of pottery, but rich in terms of flint (ibid.). Through these simple processes, the picture of Neolithic life captured in Figure 11 gradually emerged. Importantly, just like the recycling data presented in figure 9, while the patterns revealed probably were not meaningful to those filling the pits nearly 6,000 years ago, and were not created intentionally, they are meaningful to us in our attempts to understand ‘everyday’ past practice.

Figure 10 Pottery and flint distributions at Kilverstone, Area E (Garrow, Lucy and Gibson 2006, figure 2.7).

Figure 11 Graphic representation of the relative amounts of pottery and flint in each pit at Kilverstone, Area E. In order to make the two materials directly comparable, the quantity of sherds/flakes in each post-hole was calculated as a percentage of the total number.