The 1939 Little Woodbury excavation has proved to be a watershed for many aspects of archaeology of Southern England, not least because Bersu could explain and interpret the majority of the features he found, and in so doing provided the first model of the built environment of prehistoric Britain.
It is quite common for excavations to find features and datable finds without gaining clear understanding of the site's built environment. When describing what has been found, the excavator has to use an expression like ‘evidence of prehistoric activity’; meaning ‘people did things there in prehistory’. However, if buildings can be detected, we can say ‘evidence of prehistoric occupation’; meaning ‘people lived there and did things in prehistory’. Identifying buildings can raise the status of the archaeological evidence from ‘activity’ to ‘occupation’, which is much more significant and, by providing a context for other types of evidence, is vital for the overall interpretation of the site. Thus, understanding the built environment of an archaeological site is not important just for its own sake, but also because it is vital to contextualise other evidence from the excavation.
Luckily, the post-built roundhouses and other structures first defined by Bersu at Little Woodbury have proved to be fairly ubiquitous. Finding those structures that link your site into the mainstream of archaeology has become the key to a successful excavation. Having a roundhouse means your site is part of the pattern, fits in, and can be understood as part of the big picture.
However, things were never going to be that simple, because if we look only for roundhouses, that is all we will find, and we may be tempted to think that is all there is to find.
This is bad news for those sites where no obvious roundhouses can be found, giving the excavator a problem: The site won’t fit into the big picture. The problem is usually not a shortage of postholes, but rather a lack of circles, which is what fellow archaeologists expect you to find, and increasingly is the only shape they will accept for a building.
Phase plans from Gussage All Saints showing only 1 roundhouse (in phase 2) 
The problem with postholes is that, if you have enough of them, you can normally make a circle with some of them. Failing that, an oval will probably do. This has led to the identification of some very dubious ‘roundhouses’, which, I am not the first to observe, is not helpful, and can result in a general loss of confidence in the credibility of archaeological reports.
However, an historical dependence on this methodology, and the uniformity of its results, has meant that roundhouses are now presumed, because no other explanation is deemed plausible. It is little wonder that archaeologists are driven to claim something even roughly circular is as a roundhouse – what else could it be?
 G. Bersu (1940), 'Excavations at Little Woodbury, Wiltshire. Part 1, the settlement revealed by excavation'. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 6, pp. 30 -111.
 G. J. Wainwright (1979), 'Gussage All Saints: an Iron Age settlement in Dorset'. Dept of Environment Archaeological Reports No 10.
 J. F. S. Stone (1941), ''The Deverel-Rimbury settlement on Thorny Down, Winterbourne Gunner, S. Wiltshire'. Proc Prehist Soc 7, pp. 114-33.
 Ann Ellison (1987), 'The Bronze Age settlement at Thorny Down: pots, post-holes and patterning'. Proc Prehist Soc 53, pp. 385-92.
 C. Musson (1970), 'House-plans and prehistory'. Current Archaeology, pp. 267–275.
 S. Piggott (1965). Ancient Europe. (fig. 87)