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5. Conclusions

A number of observations have been made in this study, but a unifying theme has been that there does appear to be evidence for the separation of different aspects of life on a farm in the later Bronze Age. This separation seems to have occurred in a multitude of ways: humans from animals, peace from warfare, prestigious from everyday and public from private.

However, there are also aspects of the archaeological evidence that do not reflect such separation — the pottery, for one. Fine wares and heavy duty wares appear in the same hut, and everyday wares appear across the hut platform, in keeping with their name. Flint flakes and fire-cracked flint pieces also appear in all spaces on the site, which could point to the status of flint in this period (it continued to have a great many uses despite the availability of bronze). Not only this, but the ubiquity of flint in chalk hills and the size of individual pieces meant that work with flint could be done anywhere. In a sense it was a 'portable activity', and the necessity of its use, and that of pottery, in many different contexts meant that as artefacts they transcended status divisions.

Consideration of access can allow us to draw new conclusions about sites that have not been approached in this way before. It has been observed (Anthony Ward pers. comm., 12 Feb 2009) that stiles could have provided an alternative means of access between the exterior spaces of the hut platform, without necessarily leaving an obvious archaeological signature. While this creates a methodological problem with regard to the use of access analysis in terms of human movement, the presence of stiles would have had little effect upon the permeability of boundaries for animals. As such, suggestions about human interaction at the site made on the basis of access analysis data must remain tentative, but those relating to animal husbandry may not need to be subject to such a degree of uncertainty. It remains important to decide upon a firm interpretation of the phasing of the site, and my interpretation must at present continue to be one of many possibilities.


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