The Place of Origin of the Windmill Hill Culture

Extract

The most recent views on the origin of the Windmill Hill culture have been set out by Mr Stuart Piggott in the last Proceedings of this Society. The point he stresses significantly is that the origin of the Windmill Hill, or Neolithic A culture cannot any longer be regarded as a single one; already in the earlier, A1 phase, there are at least two distinct elements present, which when combined and influenced by the Peterborough culture produced the later A2 phase. He is willing tentatively to accept the possibility of the close relationship that I suggested last year between the A1 element represented by the plain, baggy pots of the lowest levels at the type station, Hembury, and elsewhere, and the néolithique ancien, or Cortaillod culture, of the Swiss Lakes. The second element is represented by carinated bowls of his form D and G with lip diameter greater than that of the shoulder, but apparently by nothing else. If it is agreed to accept a distinct origin for the simple ‘baggy’ A1 pottery, which carries with it the associated interrupted ditch camps and antler combs, the D–G bowls are clearly left alone. Piggott demonstrates how these bowls can be derived by an admirable typological sequence directly from the tulip-beaker of the well-known Michelsberg culture centred on Switzerland and the Rhine. The tulip-beaker grows more sharply shouldered and shallower, and, therefore, more nearly conforming to the D–G bowls as one passes down the Rhine from south to north. But for this typological and geographical series Piggott claims absolutely no chronological significance. Surely such a denial must make the whole story meaningless ? Either the low carinated form developed from the tall tulip-beaker as the culture extended northwards and is therefore appreciably later in beginning than the tall form, although this persisted along side it, or else it did not, and the two forms need have no connection with one another–a reductio ad absurdum.