Grooved Ware in south-east England: social geographies, chronology and interpretation

In the last 25 years, the number of sites with Grooved Ware finds in south-east England has tripled, and the scale of the overall assemblage in the region has increased five-fold. To some extent, this expansion of the evidence-base is an outcome of large-scale commercial field projects since the mid-1990s, especially in Kent and West Sussex, yet just as striking is the absence of Grooved Ware from many extensive excavation areas. It is also apparent that the occurrence of Grooved Ware is marked by very uneven scales of deposition: most of the Grooved Ware in south-east England has been recovered from just five sites: Betchworth, Surrey; Claypit Lane Westhampnett and North Bersted in West Sussex, and White Horse Stone and Ringlemere in Kent (the latter accounting for about half of the total). This raises a range of questions concerning the character of Grooved Ware-using communities in the region, and the particular social and temporal contexts of Grooved Ware use. This paper presents, for the first time, a detailed regional review of the geographical and chronological presence/absence of Grooved Ware ceramics, and the kinds of social practices and modes of inhabitation evident at ‘Grooved Ware sites’ in relation to wider interpretations of society and social change in south-east England during the 3rd millennium BC.