Banks - Enclosures in Neolithic Europe

Banks at Knap Hill Neolithic causewayed enclosure from the NW — Banks at Knap Hill Neolithic causewayed enclosure (Wiltshire, United Kingdom). View from the NW. Copyright © Victor Jimenez Jaimez 2015 – Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Knap Hill is an Early Neolithic causewayed enclosure in Wiltshire (United Kingdom). Because its banks are so well preserved, it has always been visible at plain sight. That explains why there are written records of its existence as far back as the 17th century, and why it was one of the first Neolithic ditched enclosures in Europe to be excavated by archaeologists – the Cunningtons in 1908-9. It was showed then that the causeways or interruptions in the layout of the banks and the ditches were not a by-product of erosion or other post-abandonment processes, but an intentional design decision.