Has anyone considered whether some ditches have no deliberate function but are merely incidental artefacts, created by the removal of material for constructing banks or mounds?
Could be, but depending on which side of the ditch the spoil is deposited reflects something very important; if it's on the inside of the ditch it surely suggests a defensive purpose. If the spoil is on the outside it suggests something quite different - certainly not defensive. Anyone who has walked along the Avebury Bank will have done the same thing as the people who constructed it did - they will have looked down and across the ditch into the area it encloses. That's the same now as it was some 4000 years ago.So, question, what were people looking down on? Answer, whatever was important to them at the time... and what might that have been?
