Caves in Context
eBook - ePub

Caves in Context

The Cultural Significance of Caves and Rockshelters in Europe

Knut Andreas Bergsvik, Robin Skeates, Robin Skeates

Share book
  1. 304 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Caves in Context

The Cultural Significance of Caves and Rockshelters in Europe

Knut Andreas Bergsvik, Robin Skeates, Robin Skeates

Book details
Book preview
Table of contents
Citations

About This Book

Caves in Context provides the thriving inter-disciplinary field of cave studies with a European-scale survey of current research in cave archaeology. It is unified by a contemporary theoretical emphasis on the cultural significance and diversity of caves over space and time. Caves and rockshelters are found all over Europe, and have frequently been occupied by human groups, from prehistory right up to the present day. Some appear to have only traces of short occupations, while others contain deep cultural deposits, indicating longer and multiple occupations. Above all, there is great variability in their human use, both secular and sacred. The aim of this book is to explore the multiple significances of these natural places in a range of chronological, spatial, and cultural contexts across Europe. The volume demonstrates, through a diversity of archaeological approaches and examples, that cave studies, whist necessarily focussed, can also be of significance to wider, contemporary, archaeological research agendas, particularly when a contextual approach is adopted. The book is also of relevance to other scholars working in the related fields of speleology, earth sciences, landscape studies, and anthropology, which together comprise the inter-disciplinary field of cave studies.

Frequently asked questions

How do I cancel my subscription?
Simply head over to the account section in settings and click on “Cancel Subscription” - it’s as simple as that. After you cancel, your membership will stay active for the remainder of the time you’ve paid for. Learn more here.
Can/how do I download books?
At the moment all of our mobile-responsive ePub books are available to download via the app. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now. Learn more here.
What is the difference between the pricing plans?
Both plans give you full access to the library and all of Perlego’s features. The only differences are the price and subscription period: With the annual plan you’ll save around 30% compared to 12 months on the monthly plan.
What is Perlego?
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, we’ve got you covered! Learn more here.
Do you support text-to-speech?
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Is Caves in Context an online PDF/ePUB?
Yes, you can access Caves in Context by Knut Andreas Bergsvik, Robin Skeates, Robin Skeates in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Ciencias sociales & Arqueología. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Publisher
Oxbow Books
Year
2012
ISBN
9781842179451
Chapter 1
Caves in context: an introduction
Knut Andreas Bergsvik and Robin Skeates

Caves in context

The premise for this volume is that the archaeology of caves in Europe needs to be more consciously and comprehensively studied ‘in context’, for the benefit of both speleology and archaeology. This ‘necessity of adopting a contextual approach to the study of the human use of caves’ was first emphasized in the 1990s (Tolan-Smith and Bonsall 1997, 218; cf. Skeates 1994), but still needs reiterating today. One problem is that cave studies are so well established as a specialized field of research that it is now possible to investigate caves in relative isolation, including as a sub-discipline of archaeology (e.g. Inskeep 1979; CAPRA 1999–2007; Gunn 2004). Another problem is that cave archaeology is now dominated by scientific data collection and analysis, to the detriment of interpretative approaches to their social and cultural significance. As a consequence, archaeological cave studies can be accused of a loss of meaning and relevance to the social sciences in general and to archaeology in particular, especially in contrast to their dynamic development in the mid-nineteenth century, when they were entangled in some key scholarly debates. In this volume, then, we hope to demonstrate, through a diversity of European archaeological approaches and examples, that cave studies, whist necessarily focussed, can also be of significance to wider, contemporary, archaeological research agendas, particularly when a contextual approach is adopted.
Meanings and the search for them lie at the heart of scholarly uses of the term ‘context’. In general, ‘context’ is used to refer to the ambience, arena, background, circumstances, conditions, environment, framework, habitus, relations, situation, or surroundings that determine or clarify the meaning of a thing. And so, for linguists, ‘context’ refers to the ‘parts [of a text] that precede or follow a passage and fix its meaning’ (OED); hence when that passage is taken ‘out of context’ it can be misleading; while for ‘contextualist’ philosophers, attributions of knowledge are determined by the specific contexts in which they occur. In field archaeology, ‘context’ refers to any discrete stratigraphic unit identified and recorded during the excavation of an archaeological site, such as a layer or a pit – whose stratigraphic relationships over space and time are of fundamental importance to reconstructing the historical development of that site (e.g. Harris 1979; Drewett 1999, 107). By contrast, in theory-led post-processual (or interpretative) archaeology, this idea of context is extended to refer to the whole web of associations of a particular material thing or practice being studied, with the goal of ‘contextual archaeology’ being the weaving together of a rich interpretative network of associations and contrasts within which to situate that past thing or practice's particular, ‘context-dependent’, meanings (e.g. Butzer 1982; Hodder 1986, 118–146; 1987; Barrett 1987; Conkey 1997; Barrowclough and Malone 2007). This takes us back to the Latin root of the term ‘contextual’, meaning woven together, closely connected, or continuous; but the approach is also informed by Clifford Geertz's (1973) ethnographic method of ‘thick description’, in which both a human behaviour and its context are explained, so as to make the behaviour meaningful to an outsider.
Not all of the contributors to this volume use the concept of context in a theoretically explicit manner. Nevertheless, together, they do help to define at least six contextual dimensions of relevance to cave archaeology. First, there is the ‘architectural’ context of cave and rockshelter structures, their natural and cultural formation processes (or ‘speleogenesis’), and their typological relation to other architectural forms (such as megalithic tombs), all of which frame and add significance to the various human activities carried out in and around them, which in turn affect the culturally diverse values and names ascribed to caves. Second, the caves themselves may offer exceptionally good contexts in terms of detailed stratigraphic resolution and their sometimes favourable conditions for preservation of organic material. Third, there is the spatial context of caves, both as architectural spaces and as meaningful places in the landscape, connected to (or maginalized from) other landforms, resources, and patterns of human behaviour. Fourth, there is the temporal context of the human use of caves, including the history of their occupation, transformation, and remembrance (or forgetting) both seasonally and over the long-term of centuries and millennia. Fifth, there is the (overlapping) socio-economic context of caves: the meaningful place of caves within wider cosmologies, ritual actions, economic strategies, social practices, power relations, identities, and memories. And, sixth, there is the scholarly context of cave archaeology, in relation to the dynamic history of science and of archaeology.

Approaches to cave archaeology in Europe

The history of cave archaeology in Europe can be traced in some regions back to the first half of the nineteenth century, when a few prominent scientists began to explore caves and their deposits as part of broader geological, palaeontological, and antiquarian research agendas, including the great debate over the antiquity of humankind (e.g. Daniel 1981, 48–55; Grayson 1983; Simek 2004; Trigger 2006, 138–156; Ahronson and Charles-Edwards 2010; Prijatelj 2010). Caves soon came to be regarded as significant archaeological resources, valued in particular for the common stratification of their deposits which facilitated the relative chronological ordering of faunal remains and cultural material, and for their often protected and non-acid sedimentary environments which ensured the relatively good preservation of inorganic and organic materials – values which have endured to this day. Over the years, a wide range of professionals and enthusiasts have made archaeological discoveries in hundreds of caves across Europe. In Sardinia, for example, over 100 cave excavations have been undertaken since 1873, not only by the state-funded staff of archaeological superintendencies and university departments, but also by members of regional speleological societies and by local archaeology enthusiasts (Skeates – this volume). In Norway, priests and other educated men excavated caves and published the results during the latter part of the nineteenth century until the enterprise was taken over by professional archaeologists in 1907 (Bergsvik 2005; Bergsvik and Storvik – this volume). Sometimes, discoveries of caves have been accidental. But, since the mid 1990s, systematic archaeological field surveys – some specifically focussed on caves – have added significantly to our contextual understanding of the place of archaeological caves in present-day and ancient landscapes (e.g. Bicho et al.; Bonsall et al. – this volume; Holderness et al. 2006). Cave studies are, consequently, now seeing a resurgence in various parts of Europe, particularly as part of larger multi-disciplinary studies of natural and cultural landscapes.
Over this long history, a diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches to cave archaeology has developed, in part related to wider traditions of archaeological research associated with different periods and regions of study (cf. Watson 2001; Kornfeld et al. 2007). In this volume, we acknowledge and accept this diversity, whilst also promoting a contextual approach. Indeed, to deny this diversity would be to misrepresent the scholarly context within which cave archaeology is practiced in Europe today.
In terms of theory, the big three paradigms of archaeological thought – commonly labelled as ‘culture-historical’ (or ‘traditional’), ‘processual’ (or ‘cognitive-processual’), and ‘postprocessual’ or ‘interpretive’ (e.g. Shanks and Hodder 1995) – all remain very much alive in interpretations of cave archaeology in Europe. For example, Manko's approach to caves and their deposits is fundamentally culture-historical, being characterised by an interest in the ‘when’ and ‘where’ of past cultures, based on the identification of distinctive assemblages of material remains and their attribution to individual archaeological cultures. Manko consequently argues – based upon detailed categorizations and comparisons of cave stratigraphies, stone artefact types, and faunal remains – that Skalisty rockshelter in the Crimean mountains was used in the Final Palaeolithic primarily as a long-term base camp by hunters using a forest-based economic strategy and the Shankobien lithic industry (whose origins he traces to the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East), but that short visits were also made to the site – contemporaneously – by hunters belonging to a different cultural tradition (but with similar origins) using a different (steppe-based) economic strategy and a different (Taubodrakian) lithic industry. By contrast, Manem's approach to caves might be described as cognitive-processual, being characterised both by a critique of traditional archaeology and by a rigorous use of scientific and experimental method to reveal something about how people thought and acted in the past. Reacting against traditional interpretations of French Bronze Age caves as dwelling places (as opposed to places of ritual deposition), Manem consequently sets out to distinguish domestic from ritual uses of caves with reference to the different ‘operational chains’ (chaînes opératoires) implicit in the manufacturing of pottery deposited at different types of cave sites. He identifies a restricted number of operational chains (1–5) in pottery made through homogeneous domestic production at Bronze Age sites around the English Channel, in contrast to a greater diversity of technical know-how characteristic of pottery produced and used at meeting places with a ritual function, such as the Bronze Age burial cave of Duffaits in the Charente, where 16 operational chains were identified in the pottery. Another example of a cognitive-processual approach is provided by Ordoño, who used a detailed geographical analysis to investigate changes in human territorial behaviour between the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic in Cantabrian Iberia.
By contrast again, other contributors to this volume adopt – at least in part – a more interpretive approach to caves, characterised by a critical recognition that methodological and personal biases inevitably affect archaeological research and by an interest in the perceptions and experiences of past people. So, Bjerck, for example, questions the impact of flash photography on cave archaeology: arguing that it foregrounds things never observed in dark and inaccessible caves by people in the past. He also provides a consciously subjective phenomenological description of his personal experience of entering, being in, and exiting caves containing Bronze Age paintings in North Norway. Mlekuž likewise explores how the properties ‘afforded’ by different caves and rockshelters (such as shelter, protection, enclosure, and passage to the underworld) were perceived, experienced, and acted upon by people whilst routinely performing practical tasks in and around these sites in the landscape.
The research methods used today in European cave archaeology are also varied. In addition to the widespread adaptation of well-established speleological and above-ground archaeological field techniques to the prospection, excavation, and recording of caves, archaeologists have incorporated many other approaches in their research designs, both before and after excavation. For example, Ordoño undertook a site location analysis where he recorded factors such as cave orientation, altitude, distance to water sources, and accessible biotopes. Gradoli and Meaden drew upon studies of place-names, folklore, and local traditions to locate caves and rockshelters of archaeological significance in the territory of Seulo in central Sardinia; while Buhagiar found it essential to combine the skills of the archaeologist and of the documentary historian to understand the human uses of caves in Malta during the later Middle Ages. Post-excavation research on the archaeological deposits of Barakaevskaya cave in the north-west Caucasus has also been multidisciplinary: involving radiocarbon dating, use-wear analysis, physical anthropology, archaeozoology, geomorphology, sedimentology, and palynology to obtain new and detailed scientific information on the chronology, palaeoecology, and palaeoeconomy of the Neanderthal/Mousterian occupation of this site (Levkovskaya et al. – this volume). Several of the authors have also done extensive work on museum archives and collections in order to compile regional overviews of cave research (Bergsvik and Storvik; Orschiedt; Skeates; Weiss-Krejci – this volume).
The contextual approach of archaeology has the potential to unite these various methods and theories, particularly in the case of works of synthesis that aim to summarize and interpret knowledge about the archaeology of caves. For example, Bonsall, Pickard and Ritchie explicitly place their analysis of long-term changes in cave forms, deposits, and human uses in the area of Oban Bay in western Scotland in the context of wider geomorphological processes (such as sea level changes and talus formation) and cultural processes (such as the transition to agriculture and monument building); while Skeates outlines the contextual web of relations within which occupied caves in Sardinia were situated over the course of prehistory, particularly in relation to wider landscapes, lifeways, and beliefs. Indeed, all of the chapters in this volume contribute to the much-needed contextualization of caves, ranging from: studies of single caves or rockshelters occupied over various timescales (Arias and Ontañón; Bicho et al.; Levkovskaya et al.; Manko); to studies of single site types (painted caves, burial caves, and cave-settlements) in particular regions and periods (Buhagiar; Bjerck; Orschiedt; Weiss-Krejci); to studies of different caves in a single archaeological period (Bergsvik and Storvik; Manem); to syntheses of long-term human uses of caves in particular regions (Bonsall et al.; Gradoli and Meanden; Haug; Ordoño; Skeates).
We also want to emphasize the variable conditions for establishing a contextual relationship between the use of caves and the utilisation of other landscapes. For some regions and periods treated in this volume, data from caves and rockshelters are the most important sources of knowledge, either because geological or human processes have destroyed much of the archaeological evidence at open-air locations, or because surveys and excavations have focussed on these sites. According to Ordoño, 88 per cent of the known Palaeolithic sites in Cantabria are caves and rockshelters. Similarly, Mlekuž notes that the archaeological record of the karst region of North-East Italy and Western Slovenia almost exclusively consists of such sites. In other regions, such as western Norway, the situation is the other way around. Here, open-air sites predominate heavily over the number of caves and rockshelters, partly as a result of open-air sites being much more systematically and intensively surveyed than cave sites (Bergsvik and Storvik – this volume).

The thematic scope of this volume

Although not encyclopaedic in intention, the chapters in this volume do cover a wide range of geographical regions, cultural periods, and interpretive themes relating to current research on the archaeology of caves in Europe. Four major regions of Europe are used as the basis for ordering the chapters: the British Isles and Scandinavia (Bergsvik and Storvik; Bjerck; Bonsall et al.; Haug); Iberia and France (Arias and Ontañón; Bicho et al.; Manem; Ordoño; Weiss-Krejci); the Central Mediterranean (Buhagiar; Gradoli and Meaden; Mlekuž; Skeates); and Central and Eastern Europe (Levkovskaya et al.; Manko; Orschiedt). The majority of Europe's major archaeological periods are also covered: the Lower Palaeolithic (Arias and Ontañón); the Middle Palaeolithic (Levkovskaya et al.; Ordoño; Orschiedt); the Upper Palaeolithic (Arias and Ontañón; Bicho et al.; Bonsall et al.; Orschiedt; Skeates); the Mesolithic (Arias and Ontañón; Bergsvik and Storvik; Bonsall et al...

Table of contents