Journal of Neolithic Archaeology
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Ritual Cooperation and Ritual Collectivity: The Social Structure of the Middle and Younger Funnel Beaker North Group (3500 – 2800 BC)
Get PDFA model about the social development of a TRB society – the change from a society with individual and group diversity around 3400 BC to a more stratified social formation around 3000 BC – is shown to be the outcome of both burial evidence on the North Friesian Islands as well as information on enclosures, decoration diversity and economic variables from further regions of the southern TRB North group.While the former is linked to ideological concepts of “ritual cooperation”, the later ideology might be labelled “ritual collectiveness”. Expressions of “ritual cooperation” are causewayed enclosures and different burial customs, the means of “ritual collectiveness” passage graves
Who was who in the Neolithic
Get PDFDeath was no great leveller in the TRB. Prominent ancestors reposed in solitude under huge earthen mounds or shared stone chambers with select members of their community. Others were buried in flat graves, settlement pits or otherwise obscured from view – clearly relegated to future oblivion and known to us only through accidents of archaeological discovery. The paper explores these apparent differences – can we account for such varying treatment of individuals who apparently belonged to the same community, shared the same daily life, followed the same cultural traditions and espoused the same world views
Dichtezentren und lokale Gruppierungen - Eine Karte zu den Großsteingräbern Mittel- und Nordeuropas
Get PDFUntil today a detailed mapping of the megalithic structures from the 4th millenium BC in northern Europe seems a desideratum. The DFG-Priority Program 1400 “Early Monumentality and Social Differentiation” is currently working on the Neolithic of the northern European plain. One important aim is to record and analyse the archaeological evidence within the working region in a systematical way. As a first step, an account of all megaliths available is of crucial importance. The map presented here reveals remarkable spatial patterns that may serve as a starting point for further research
Passage graves, statues and standing stones: megaliths and social identities in prehistoric Scotland and Ireland
Get PDFThis paper contrasts two ways of thinking about the passage graves of Scotland and Ireland and the relationships between them. The first considers their characteristic structure in terms of architectural style, chronology and distribution. It seems that these features are closely integrated with one another, and in the past this method has led to the idea that the people who built the monuments formed part of a single network. That approach has much in common with Childe’s conception of a culture. For many years it was employed in discussion of monuments on either side of the Irish Sea. An alternative approach is to consider the meanings that could have been attached to particular structural devices. The feature that connects many of these monuments is the use of standing stones, either as components of the kerb delimiting a cairn, or as a ring of freestanding orthostats enclosing the other elements. These stone settings are rarely discussed, but comparison with the evidence from other parts of Atlantic Europe suggests that they could have been regarded as statues, even though they lack obvious anthropomorphic elements. The same idea is present in British and Irish folklore. It raises the possibility that there were conceptual links between these different styles of architecture and that they lasted over a considerable period of time, during which individual sites were modified and reused. Thus the factor that links these different monuments may have been the idea that rings of upright stones stood for living creatures. Whether they ‘represented’ particular figures in the past, ancestors or mythical beings we shall never know, but the use of these images on both sides of the Irish Sea could have fostered a shared identity among the people who used these monuments
The Gallery Graves of Hesse and Westphalia: Expressions of different Identity (ies)?
Get PDFThe concept of identity, in many aspects, has been intensively discussed for several years for its applicability in prehistoric archaeology. In this paper, I would like to try to take up some of these aspects with reference to the late Neolithic gallery graves of Hesse and Westphalia. Some selected facets are examined to enlighten distinct scales of identity: a structural analysis of building techniques, deposition of grave goods and burial rites together with their spatial distribution offers comparisons to coexistent neighbouring communities with collective burials. These comparisons finally may point out identity-forming features
A Virtual and a Practiced Neolithic? Material Culture Symbolism, Monumentality and Identities in the Western Baltic Region
Get PDFBesides the economic, technical and social innovations most Neolithic societies of the old world are separated from Pre-Neolithic societies by a new stage of the manipulation of material objects and structures as media of symbolic communication. Since the Neolithic, the proportion of intentional production and use of material symbols clearly rises compared to unintentional symbol production. Particularly the extensive symbolism on utilitarian, everyday artefacts like pottery is much more elaborated. Proceeding from these observations, the early Neolithic period in northern Central Europe / Southern Scandinavia, that is the time from 4100 to 3500 BC, is more or less a time of continuation of Pre-Neolithic behavioural patterns. At this time Neolithic innovations are known and implemented, but not yet in a quantity that would practically change cultural behaviour and thus identity towards what has been defined as Neolithic above. It is probably not earlier than 3500 BC that a real “Neolithic Package” consisting of large-scale monumental buildings storing cultural memories, an extensive and genuine variability in material culture symbolism, especially pottery and stone tool production, appear together with an increase of economic impact and supra-regional contacts. Thus it is possible to speak of a “Virtual Neolithic” preceding the “Realised Neolithic” since 3500 BC
Is a social differentiation detectable in the TRB culture?
Get PDFAlthough the TRB culture is uniform with all its diversity, none of its aspects displays a distinct social differentiation, whether in the distribution of pottery forms and decoration, or in the contents of flat and megalithic graves.I will discuss here the question “Is a social differentiation detectable in the TRB culture?”. That this is probably the case, is suggested by the title of the current DFG Priority Program “Early Monumentality and social Differentiation”. Most of my experience is based on the TRB West Group, which is found to the west of the Elbe, but I think that things are no different in the TRB North Group in Schleswig-Holstein, Denmark and southern Sweden, to which regions I will often refer (fig. 1).I also give a brief tour d’horizon of different aspects of the material remains of the TRB culture and related subjects
Megaliths, Monuments, and Materiality
Get PDFStones, and especially the arrangement of large stones in relation to one another, have long been the focus of attention in megalith studies, a concern reflected in the name itself. It is, however, a blinkered view. Many so-called megalithic monuments embody other carefully selected materials in their construction, including turf, soil, rubble, and timber. In considering long barrows, Paul Ashbee noted that it was a false distinction to separate earthen long barrows from stone-chambered long barrows as the builders of long barrows inevitably used materials available within their local environments. Alternatively, writing mainly about the Irish material, Arthur ApSimon suggested a development from timber to stone implying a chronological progression in the preferred use of materials. Whether environmental or evolutionary, it is certain that many monuments interchangeably combine stone and wood in their construction in a way that forces us to consider what these and other materials meant to the megalith builders. Was it simply about what was available? Or what was fashionable? Or were there deeper sets of meanings relating to how different materials were perceived and understood within the cosmological systems that lie behind the design, construction, and use of long barrows, passage graves, dolmens and other related monuments? Focusing upon wood and stone, it is argued here that both were components of a cyclical world view of life and death that was embedded in the fabric and structure of monuments
The first monumental cemeteries of western Europe : the „Passy type“ necropolis in the Paris basin around 4500 BC
Get PDFIn the Seine-Yonne basin at around 4500 B.C. numerous cemeteries appeared, including giant “enclosures” which as a funerary manifestation would have no later equivalent in Europe. These constructions, whether tumuli, palisade enclosures, or mixed systems, sometimes exceed 300 m in length but contain very few burials. Beyond the classic interpretation, which sees high investment in a few individuals as reflecting a hierarchical society, structural analysis of these cemeteries shows the repetition of an elementary module, associated with consistent attributes, evoking hunting and more broadly, the wild. An exercise of association and exclusion brings into play the morphology and arrangements of the monuments, the gender of the inhumed individuals and their attributes. In the male monuments, a central figure is thus distinguished, sometimes with original physical characteristics and accompanied by an enigmatic insignia: a pointed bone instrument with a wide base, trivially called an “Eiffel Tower”. This figure is surrounded by other individuals interpreted as hunters on the basis of the accompanying objects. Other individuals probably served as no more than passive figurants, rather like foils. In any case, the monumental cemeteries of the 5th millennium correspond to the earliest human groups for which we can identify diverse and repetitive statuses
Flintbek LA 3, biography of a monument
Get PDFThe article consists of two main parts. First, the development and absolute chronology of the site Flintbek LA 3 is presented with a particular focus on the stragraphical situations and the building sequence of this monument. A model, based on Bayes’ – statistics has been choosen to calibrate the new AMS-dates within a sequence. Thereby, the well known cart tracks preserved under the last tumulus could be dated accurately to 3460-3385 cal BC. After a discussion of this quite young age, it is argued that the Flintbek traces still belong to the oldest evidence of the innovation of wheel and wagon in the world. Another part of the article concerns the meaning of the burial site Flintbek LA 3 and the shifts of its connotations through time. This is done by developing a model of a “cultural biography”