The Windmill Hill culture was a name given to a people inhabiting southern

Britain Britain most often refers to: * The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands * Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...

, in particular in the Salisbury Plain area close to Stonehenge, c.

3000 BC The 30th century BC was a century that lasted from the year 3000 BC to 2901 BC. Events * Before 3000 BC: An image of a deity (detail from a cong) recovered from Tomb 12 in Fanshan, Yuyao, Zhejiang, is made during the Neolithic period by the Li ...

. They were an agrarian

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several p ...

people; their name comes from Windmill Hill, a

causewayed enclosure A causewayed enclosure is a type of large prehistoric earthwork common to the early Neolithic in Europe. It is an enclosure marked out by ditches and banks, with a number of causeways crossing the ditches. More than 100 examples are recorded i ...

near

Avebury Avebury () is a Neolithic henge monument containing three stone circles, around the village of Avebury in Wiltshire, in southwest England. One of the best known prehistoric sites in Britain, it contains the largest megalithic stone circle in ...

. Together with another Neolithic tribe from East Anglia, a tribe whose worship involved stone circles, it is thought that they were responsible for the earliest work on the Stonehenge site. The material record left by these people includes large circular hill-top enclosures,

long barrow Long barrows are a style of monument constructed across Western Europe in the fifth and fourth millennia BCE, during the Early Neolithic period. Typically constructed from earth and either timber or stone, those using the latter material repre ...

s, leaf-shaped arrowheads, and polished stone axes. They raised cattle, sheep, pigs, and dogs, and grew wheat and mined flints. Since the term was first coined by archaeologists, further excavation and analysis has indicated that it consisted of several discrete

cultures Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.Tylo ...

such as the Hembury and Abingdon cultures; and that "Windmill Hill culture" is too general a term.

References

External links

Stonehenge builders
archived in June 2002 Archaeological cultures of Western Europe Stone Age Britain {{England-hist-stub

See also

References

External links