Understanding Pit Sites: Storage, Surplus and Social Complexity in Prehistoric Western Europe
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Understanding Pit Sites: Storage, Surplus and Social Complexity in Prehistoric Western Europe Víctor Jiménez-Jáimez 1
& José
Suárez-Padilla 1
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract Pits are virtually omnipresent in the archaeological record. In Prehistoric Europe, pits occasionally form large concentrations known as ‘pit sites’, where they are the most visible, sometimes the sole, remnants of past human activity. How can we interpret the social roles played by places comprising hundreds or even thousands of pits? A critical point of contention in these debates is how certain we are that all or most pits on a site indeed acted as grain storage pits for most of their use-lives. However, it is not easy to distinguish between pits used for storage and pits destined for other purposes. This paper represents an attempt to circumvent, to an extent, this problem. We will do so by turning our attention away from the problem of accuracy and by focusing on external consistency instead. We gather up-to-date experimental, ethnographic and historical data about the challenges that the storage of grain poses and how pits can help people to overcome them. Then, we discuss their advantages and disadvantages relative to other methods: why would anybody use airtight pits instead of, for instance, weather-proofed raised granaries? Next, we examine the social and economic contexts in which storage pits are an effective solution as opposed to those in which their performance is suboptimal. The conclusions drawn serve as a background against which to evaluate the external consistency of current interpretations concerning three selected case studies in Prehistoric Western Europe. Keywords Archaeology . Prehistory . Storage of grain . Pit site . Surplus . Social complexity
* Víctor Jiménez-Jáimez [email protected] José Suárez-Padilla [email protected]
1
Área de Prehistoria, Departamento de Ciencias Históricas, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Málaga, Campus de Teatinos s/n, 29071 Málaga, Spain
Jiménez-Jáimez and Suárez-Padilla
Introduction Pits constitute one of the most pervasive archaeological features of prehistoric sites both in the Old and the New World. They may appear in settlements, in the proximity of vital resources, in sacred places and around funerary contexts. Their importance for archaeological inference can hardly be overstated. Whatever functions, meanings or social roles pits played, they must have been associated with widespread and recurrent practices. What were they used for? What purposes did they serve? In European archaeology, they are most commonly interpreted as airtight receptacles for the storage of grain. Given the reliance of many agrarian societies on cereal cultivation, this has significant interpretative ramifications. Crucially, in Prehistoric Europe, pits occasionally form large concentrations known as ‘pit sites’, where they are the most visible, sometimes the sole, remnants of past human activity (Fig. 1). If we follow the generally accepted vi
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