Monumentalising Life in the Neolithic

Narratives of Continuity and Change

Anne Birgitte Gebaer, Lasse Sørensen, Anne Teather, António Carlos Valera, Anne Birgitte Gebaer, Lasse Sørensen, Anne Teather, António Carlos Valera

• Editorial: Oxbow Books
• Año: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781789254952
• Categoría: Social Sciences
• Categoría: Archaeology

One of the principal characteristics of the European Neolithic is the development of monumentality in association with innovations in material culture and changes in subsistence from hunting and gathering to farming and pastoralism. The papers in this volume discuss the latest insights into why monumental architecture became an integral part of early farming societies in Europe and beyond. One of the topics is how we define monuments and how our arguments and recent research on temporality impacts on our interpretation of the Neolithic period. Different interpretations of Göbekli Tepe are examples of this discussion as well as our understanding of special landmarks such as flint mines. The latest evidence on the economic and paleoenvironmental context, carbon 14 dates as well as analytical methods are employed in illuminating the emergence of monumentalism in Neolithic Europe. Studies are taking place on a macro and micro scale in areas as diverse as Great Britain, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Germany, the Dutch wetlands, Portugal and Malta involving a range of monuments from long barrows and megalithic tombs to roundels and enclosures. Transformation from a natural to a built environment by monumentalizing part of the landscape is discussed as well as changes in megalithic architecture in relation to shifts in the social structure. An ethnographic study of megaliths in Nagaland discuss monument building as an act of social construction. Other studies look into the role of monuments as expressions of cosmology and active loci of ceremonial performances. Also, a couple of papers analyse the social processes in the transformation of society in the aftermath of the initial boom in monument construction and the related changes in subsistence and social structure in northern Europe. The aim of the publication is to explore different theories about the relationship between monumentality and the Neolithic way of life through these studies encompassing a wide range of types of monuments over vast areas of Europe and beyond.

1

Neolithic monumentality for the 21st century

Anne Teather

Abstract

Prehistoric monuments are some of the most evocative structures standing today. It is unsurprising that they have received enduring attention from archaeologists and a central place in interpretations of the past. Yet, we often uncritically accept the views that monuments occupied a pivotal position in past societies, and that their endurance over millennia was a deliberate manifestation of their past social purpose. In this paper, I critically review our hierarchical approach to site types in the Neolithic as a triumvirate of monuments, settlements and localities where economic resources were exploited. I argue that these in turn have been used to define symbolic, social and economic functions respectively and this approach particularly diminishes the role and morphology of economic sites in the past. From an examination of the morphology of ditches and shafts and a review of temporal approaches to construction, it is proposed that the differences between such sites is less marked, particularly in the late Neolithic. The paper concludes that we need to take a more balanced approach to investigating site types, as it is only with a more even focus of scrutiny that we will be able to offer broader understandings of past communities.

Introduction

Widely thought of as one of the defining characteristics of the European Neolithic, the emergence of monument building is associated with the innovations in material culture and shift in subsistence practices from hunting and gathering, to farming and pastoralism that feature strongly in accounts of this period. However, recent studies and analyses of the Neolithic have increasingly separated the study of monuments from investigations of sites that are not monuments. For example, in discussing the Neolithic landscape of Southern Scandinavia, Hinz (2018, 211–2) elaborates this idea, ‘the site types that dominate the archaeological record include permanent settlements with their fields, monumental burial sites, such as earthen long barrows, megalithic graves, and causewayed enclosures, accompanied by sites with specific (economic) character, for example, flint acquisition/processing sites’. Hinz’s view reflects a conventional categorisation of Neolithic sites into a functional (and implicitly hierarchical) triumvirate of monuments, settlements and localities where economic resources were exploited. These three categories effectively represent symbolic, social and economic functions respectively.

While it is now rarely suggested that Neolithic monuments solely had an economic function (as stock enclosures, for example) or a single ritual or symbolic function, many have been interpreted as having had a societal function that may also have served, at least in part, an economic purpose. These include providing social areas for gathering and trade purposes (as has been proposed for causewayed enclosures); or monuments such as chambered tombs also having had a functional mortuary role in housing the human dead. Similarly, economic and functional interpretations are juxtaposed and as such bolster each other to create a stronger argument. For example, a causewayed enclosure may have been for people to meet to trade goods, and the size of an enclosure is a functional indication of how many people accumulated there. We build interpretations through aggregating evidence and with reference to other evidence, and like a decoupage, paste an overlapping picture of past human lives.

Yet, sites that are deemed to have less ‘cultural importance’, for example natural landscape features such as caves, and sites of raw material exploitation like mines or quarries, have commonly been viewed as being less interpretively important in the present, and by analogy of less social importance in the past. With a focus on the British Neolithic, this paper seeks to critically examine what we define as monuments. Through discussing the language and concepts of monumentality and how our arguments and recent research on temporality impacts on our interpretations of this period, I will argue that our current approach is biased in favour of the monuments of the past. We need to take a more balanced approach to investigating site types as it is only with a more even focus of scrutiny that we will be able to offer broader understandings of past communities.

What is a prehistoric monument?

At the very end of the 20th century, Thomas (1999, 34) reviewed how prehistoric monuments had been interpreted by archaeologists as direct reflections of the societies that built them. While Renfrew (1973, 556) saw these monuments as ‘the natural counterparts of other features of society’, Bradley’s (1985) focus was on their temporal properties, including the permanence of their architecture and their longevity in the landscape. Thomas (1999, 35–37) argued that monuments framed social relationships through transforming and controlling human spatial experience, and that would probably also have been reflected in non-monumental architectural spaces. Therefore, while these interpretive positions differed, there was a consensus that monuments reflect one or another aspect of the social environment of the time of their construction. More recent work has focused on the enduring importance of monuments evidenced through their later modification and reuse (e.g. Gillings et al. 2019) and also their relationship to other non-monumental archaeological evidence (e.g. such as settlement, French et al. 2012). These are informative perspectives, although the separation between interpretations of monuments on the one hand and the morphology and characterisation of monuments on the other is a division that is rarely considered. What attributes or combination of features makes something a monument, rather than a settlement or a place of economic exploitation?

For prehistorians, the term ‘monument’ usually refers to a visually salient and impressive megalithic, timber or earthen structure that exhibits purposeful and often standardised architectural design. Additionally, a monument should be of demonstrable effort to construct and have required the mobilisation and organisation of a substantial number of people in order to create it. A further, though not essential attribute, is that a monument should have a discernible social purpose – for example, to serve as a gathering place, or to facilitate mortuary activity or social cohesion activities such as feasting and/or displays of power. There are often structural similarities in monumental architecture across geographical distances that allow archaeologists to establish typologies of monuments, and there may be additional similarities in surface decoration, such as rock art and/or applied pigment. Finally, the longevity of monuments in the landscape may be evidenced through continued or repeated use, suggesting that some monuments retained an enduring importance after their initial use. In summary, a monument is a type of prehistoric archaeological site whose construction typically followed a normative design, required considerable effort to create and was likely to have had enduring social meaning for both its creators and for succeeding generations of people.

In the English language, the word ‘monument’ originates from Latin monere, that means to remind. Similarly, Latin origins have resulted in Swedish (minnesmärke), Norwegian (minnesmerke) and Danish (mindesmarke) terms that confirm that the word for monument is strongly related to memorialisation; in German, the common term denkmal is a composite word of denken (to think) and Mal (either meaning an occasion, or alternatively a sign or mark). Hence the original meanings of the English and European terms for ‘monument’ are inextricably bound up with the notion of committing a past event to memory (or in some instances of commemorating an individual’s life). The temporality of a monument is therefore interpretively fixed at its moment of construction as a memorial, rather than evolving and transforming through social time. To elucidate this point: a war memorial containing a Christian cross, common in Britain today, contains the same symbolism as that found in a church. Yet, however monumental churches and cathedrals may be, they were not constructed to be memorials, but rather to serve as places for the living to meet and worship. That churches are continuously used, rebuilt and increasingly repurposed is due partly to their central locations in urban or rural environments, and their history of being habitual places where people gathered. A few churches become memorialised as historically and culturally important in their own right; but again, this may be largely because of their association with manifestations of political and social power. For example, Westminster Abbey in London is the traditional place that English monarchs are crowned and their mortal remains buried. Returning to prehistoric ‘monuments’, the present-day motivations for classifying monuments are primarily for typological and curatorial convenience, rather than to increase understandings. An unfortunate consequence is that our terminology for these past structures is far too focused on a specific approach to temporality; one that I will explore and challenge in this paper.

Monuments and temporality

Recent research aimed at creating a more refined chronology for monument construction has had a sweeping and perhaps unintended impact on our interpretations of Neolithic society. I have previously expressed concerns regarding the role of a new historicism in archaeology and its application in methodologies in the examination of archaeological deposits (Teather 2018). Yet in terms of built structures, the temporality of monuments themselves and their social role has come under increased scrutiny. This tension between interpretations of a prehistoric monument perceived as a planned structure, set against evidence that monuments were subject to different forms of construction and modification over time, was the subject of vigorous academic debate during the 1990s by many scholars (e.g. Bradley 1984; 2002; Tilley 1994; Thomas 1996; 1999). The current turn to historical particularism could be argued to reflect that of the late 1980s and a subject attended to in some detail by Barrett (1991). Almost 30 years ago, Barrett (1991, 13) reflected that Avebury ‘was not conceived as an entity, a plan in the mind of some autocratic chief’. He argued (1991, 132) that even large building projects such as those at Avebury or Durrington Walls might only have represented people spending minimal time away from mundane activities. Yet the recent intensive radiocarbon dating exercises that have taken place on many British Neolithic sites (principally enclosures and burial mounds) challenges this view. This work has shown that most monuments were built and used, at least in their primary intended role, within a short timeframe of perhaps only two or three generations or up to 75 years (Bayliss et al. 2007; Whittle et al. 2007; 2011). Therefore, the dominant narrative has changed from interpretations of multi-phase or emerging monumentality driven by the consequences of social change. Instead, the favoured interpretations now focus on monuments having a framed chronological temporality that encompasses both causewayed enclosures and chambered tombs within the Neolithic as a whole, and with a social temporality measured in a few generations or a single life-span. Like smaller cogs in a bigger wheel, people are imagined working their lives and perhaps those lives of their children, at building and using one monument.

The question of the temporality of monuments is therefore critical for any interpretation of a past society. A swift design and execution of the building of a monument suggests a greater control over effort and a larger population; whereas a piecemeal approach where elements can be manipulated or altered during construction can allow for a more dispersed, mobile population and a more fluid cultural and social structure. Temporality impacts on demography, effort and expenditure; returning us seamlessly towards processual arguments that concern labour; person-hours, economic surplus and the subsistence requirements of a workforce (see below). How long it took to build a monument is perhaps the most fundamental key in constructing past societies. While these arguments have a profound impact on how we may view monuments, they form a discrete branch of theoretical concern that is rarely applied to analyses of settlements or areas of raw resource exploitation. A review of settlement theory is out of the scope of this short paper and I will focus instead on the temporality of economic exploitation.

The cultural and economic impact of quarrying and flint mining

Localities of natural resource exploitation such as flint mines now largely sit outside normative interpretations of archaeological activity, though they were thoroughly investigated as part of the New Archaeology research programme. During the 1970s excavations at the late Neolithic flint mines at Grime’s Graves in Norfolk, England, ideas of craft specialisation and mining as a Neolithic industry were proposed. Mercer’s (1981, 20, 112–113) calculations on the human effort required for extraction of the 1971 shaft of 12.1 m depth (15–16 men over 2–3 months), the area of cultivation of cereal required to sustain the workforce (one hectare) and the estimate of axes from a single shaft (between 1.12 and 2 tons of axes from 8 tons of flint) are impressive. Yet the picture they draw of Neolithic mining is almost entirely devoid of human behaviour apart from people as industrial work units. This was partially acknowledged by Mercer, who commented when discussing the presence of Grooved Ware in a lamenting tone, ‘little has emerged of a cultural unit (in a Childean sense)’ (Mercer 1981, 113). This dissatisfaction in not finding evidence of other ‘household’ activities led to his conclusion that ‘the overwhelming impression gained from the site is one implying the work of a highly institutionalised and ‘professional’ mining community’ (Mercer 1981, 112).

The British Museum excavations at Grime’s Graves from 1972–1976 were published as five fascicules of which the fifth contains the most social interpretation (Longworth and Varndell 1996, 79–89). In many respects this is similar in tone to Mercer’s work, concentrating on factual data concerning the amount of flint extracted and calculations of the labour required. The lack of settlement evidence at mining sites in general had led to the understanding that the subsistence activities required to sustain daily life did not take place i...