Posts com a Tag ‘SRAKA Marko (Res)’
The Birth of Neolithic Britain: An Interpretive Account – THOMAS (DP)
THOMAS, Julian. The Birth of Neolithic Britain: An Interpretive Account. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Resenha de: SRAKA, Marko. Documenta Praehistorica, n.21, 2014.
The Birth of Neolithic Britain is the fourth major work by the acclaimed Julian Thomas, one of the leading proponents of interpretive archaeology or archaeology informed by philosophy, anthropology and discussions in the arts and social sciences in general.
After exposing the assumption and prejudices of archaeologists’ narratives of the Neolithic and presenting innovative explanations of the shift from hunting-gathering to farming as well as other issues in Rethinking the Neolithic (1991; reworked and updated version Understanding the Neolithic in 1999), questioning Western conceptualisations of time, identity, materiality with the help of archaeological case studies in the ‘Heideggerian’ Time, Culture and Identity (1996) and further contextualised archaeology as part of a (post)modern worldview in Archaeology and Modernity (2004), this book seems to be a relevant continuation of Thomas’s work. This is probably the first significant work on Neolithisation since Graeme Barker’s global overview The Agricultural Revolution in Prehistory (2006, Oxford: Oxford University Press), this time with a focus on Europe and particularly Britain.
The book is divided into thirteen lengthy chapters organised and titled in a way which adds clarity to the structure of the text: (1) Introduction: The Problem, (2) The Neolithisation of Southern Europe, (3) The Neolithisation of Northern Europe, (4) The Neolithisation of Europe: Themes, (5) The Neolithic Transition in Britain: A Critical Historiography, (6) Mesolithic Prelude?, (7) Times and Places, (8) Contact, Interaction, and Seafaring, (9) Architecture: Halls and Houses, (10) Architecture: Timber Structures, Long Mounds, and Megaliths, (11) Portable Artefacts: Tradition and Transmission, (12) Plants and Animals: Diet and Social Capital, and (13) Conclusion: A Narrative for the Mesolithic-Neolithic Transition in Britain.
While not claiming to be a complete survey of Neolithic archaeology in Britain, much less Europe, the extent of the bibliography alone, comprising some 1400 references, is an indicator that this is a detailed study, dealing with a diverse variety of geographical regions, themes, approaches and explanations related to the Neolithisation process. Fundamentally, this book represents a critical overview of the diverse narratives and empirical data used to explain the complex process of transformations from predominantly hunting and gathering to predominantly farming lifeways in Britain and Europe.
Chapters 1–4, dealing with Neolithisation in different parts of Europe are, as the author suggests, intended to present the “progressive transformations” of the Neolithic through time, the diversity of Neolithic societies across Europe and provide “… comparative case studies against which the British evidence can be set” (p. 7). In the first three chapters, the author comments on a wide variety of empirical evidence and presents his own explanations of the data, starting with the Franchthi cave in Greece and progressing through the continent to the megalithic monuments of Brittany. In chapter 4, the author presents “… unifying themes that characterized the opening of the Neolithic in various parts of Europe” (p. 101) starting with an overview of how the Neolithic was and is defined and Neolithisation conceptualised, then focusing on the different perspectives of migrationism and genetic evidence, the transmission of knowledge and skills, Mesolithic lifeways, the ‘Neolithic frontier’, subsistence strategies and feasting, houses and ‘house societies’ etc. In chapter 5, the author focuses exclusively on Britain with a ‘critical historiography’ in which he reviews the history of research of the British Neolithic, beginning with Sir John Lubbock, and considers the work of major authorities on the subject: Childe, Piggott, Hawkes, Clark, Humphrey, Whittle, Dennell, Kinnes, Hodder and, reflectively, himself. He then comments extensively on the migrationist and diffusionist arguments of Cooney, Sheridan and Rowley- Conwy, whom he labels ‘revisionists’. Chapter 6 sets the stage for the rest of the book by presenting the evidence of Mesolithic lifeways. In the earlier part of chapter 7, the author dedicates a lot of attention to the results of the Bayesian modeling approach to 14C calendar chronologies (Whittle A., Healy F. & Bayliss A. 2011. Gathering time: dating the Early Neolithic enclosures of Southern Britain and Ireland, cited in the Bibliography) and reviews the dating evidence from early British Neolithic sites. The rest of the book, constituting roughly one third of the whole volume, comprises a detailed consideration of the empirical evidence and ideas about a range of themes, starting with contact, interaction and seafaring in chapter 8, followed by architecture (halls, houses, timber structures, long mounds and megaliths), portable artefacts (ceramics, stone tools), landscapes, plant and animal remains. Of special notice here is the hypothesis that “… livestock in general, and cattle in particular, may have been one of the principal factors that attracted hunters and gatherers to the Neolithic way of life” (p. 430).
“The formation of more bounded social groups accumulating discrete herds of cattle suggests an increasingly competitive social milieu”, which expressed itself in “feasting, gift-giving, strategic marriages, and the struggle for prestige”, but also in “inter-personal violence … linked to the emergence of endemic raiding, acquiring livestock and labour by foul means as well as fair” (p. 418). Cattle can thus be regarded as Neolithic ‘social capital’. Considering the emphasis on practices related to cattle herding, this book would benefit from more discussion of lipid analyses and dairying (e.g., the work of Richard P. Evershed, Mark S. Copley and Lucy J. E. Cramp).
Innovative ideas and novel explanations of the empirical evidence from Europe and Britain can be found in every chapter, and it would not be fair to isolate a one in particular here. Generally, the explanations can be characterised as coming predominantly from a well-argued, indigenist neolithisation perspective, although the author specifically denies his is an ‘indigenist’ (p. 419), and it is true that he presents a balanced and well-argued account in which the distinction between ‘indigenist’ and ‘migrationist’ perspectives cease to be valid. The overall picture this narrative presents is of a “mosaic” of different lifeways in which various social entities, such as the “LBK social network” (p. 47), or different identities are conceived as permeable and fluid concepts. We notice a very pragmatic use of socialtheory- informed archaeology, so that the text is not overburdened with philosophical discussions. Actually, there are almost no references to philosophical, sociological or anthropological works. Certain narrative elements bear a resemblance to an archaeological ‘school of thought’ which could be called ‘Symmetrical’ or ‘Relational’ archaeology: “… while Neolithic societies in Europe were extremely diverse, they were generally characterized by a new kind of relationship between humans and non-humans … Although post-glacial hunters had been deeply embedded in and attuned to their material world, there was a qualitative difference in the ways in which Neolithic people used material things to articulate social relationships, to extend human presence, and to frame and channel social interaction. We might say that while Mesolithic societies were principally composed of relationships amongst people, and that they operated in worlds of animals and things, Neolithic societies became heterogeneous meshworks in which people, things, and animals were mutually implicated to a greater degree” (p. 421–422). This passage perhaps best illustrates the way in which neolithisation is explained in the book.
Interestingly, books dealing with neolithisation, and this one is no exception, usually review only the earliest Neolithic evidence in individual regions, even if on an widening geographical scale, this means considering evidence separated by several millennia.
Neolithisation, or the transformation from hunter- gatherer to farmer’s lifeways, is therefore seen as a universal global phenomenon, which it certainly is, and is approached from a comparative perspective.
However, much could be gained also from a more ‘historical’ consideration of roughly contemporary evidence. In this book, for instance, there could be more consideration of the circular enclosures of the Lengyel, Stroked Pottery, Michelsberg, Chasséen, Funnel Beaker and other cultures, some of which are contemporary with the early British Neolithic and are sometimes seen as precursors to the early Neolithic enclosures in Britain. Furthermore, this book adheres to the conventional model of European neolithisation, at least in the structure of the first few chapters, beginning in Greece and ending in Britain. In his review of the book, Detlef Gronenborn (Antiquity 88(341) 2014: 989–990) notices the lack of consideration of recent archaeogenetic research, which he says, “… may demonstrate a hesitance within British Neolithic archaeology to accept the growing evidence which indicates that, for several millennia, some regions of Europe experienced major population changes”.
Rather than focusing on the still sketchy and interspersed archaeogenetic evidence, some of which is nevertheless presented in the book (p. 109–113), we would rather focus on a different issue, related perhaps to Gronenborn’s observation cited above. While we personally applaud the enthusiasm with which Thomas writes about the Gathering Time project of Alasdair Whittle and his colleagues and agree with its impact on the “post-Gathering Time era of Neolithic studies” (p. 3), we noticed a comparable lack of consideration of other, perhaps no less revolutioDocumenta Praehistorica XLI (2014) book review 307 nary approaches to Neolithic studies. For example, no mention is made of the recent work by Stephen Shennan and his team at University College London (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/euroevol) dealing with the Neolithic from a more demographic and cultural evolutionary perspective and pointing to links between population fluctuations and cultural change.
We could characterise Gathering Time as a bottomup approach and the EUROEVOL project as a topdown approach in the utilisation of 14C data and ultimately in Neolithic studies. However, both kinds of approach are needed, we think, if we are to understand the complex process of neolithisation from a multiscalar perspective. Furthermore, there is a lack in the book of at least a comment or a critique of the research on the impact of climate changes on the demographics and lifeways of Neolithic communities, mainly in continental Europe (Bernhard Weninger and others, also Detlef Gronenborn) but also Britain (e.g., Bonsall C. et al. 2002. Climate change and the adoption of agriculture in north-west Europe, cited in the Bibliography).
There is no question, however, that the Birth of Neolithic Britain is a big step forward in understanding the transformations from hunting/gathering to farming regionally, continentally and globally. It represents a holistic synthesis of the current understanding of the neolithisation process in Britain and should be on the bookshelf of every student and researcher interested not only in the British but the European Neolithic as well.
Marko Sraka – University of Ljubljana
[IF]
Space and Time in Mediterranean Prehistory – SOUVATZI; HADJI (DP)
SOUVATZI, Stella; HADJI, Athena (Eds.). Space and Time in Mediterranean Prehistory (Routledge Studies in Archaeology). London: Routledge, 2014. 304p. Resenha de: SRAKA, Marko. Documenta Praehistorica, v.41, 2014.
The collection of papers Space and Time in Mediterranean Prehistory is an outcome of the collaboration between Stella Souvatzi, who regularly writes on spatiality within social archaeological themes such as households, as in her recent book A Social Archaeology of Households in Neolithic Greece, and Athena Hadji, whose Berkeley PhD thesis was entitled on The Construction of Time in Aegean Archaeology.
The editors invited researchers from a predominantly interpretative (post-processual) archaeological tradition who deal with Mediterranean prehistory and included a few selected revised contributions to the similarly named session at the 16th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists in the Hague. The collection of papers contains 15 chapters by archaeologists, anthropologists and an architect.
This timely volume is an anticipated continuation of the critique of space and time as passive and homogenous backdrops to human life, and treats them as socially constructed, as well as inseparable from human lives and experience. It not only restates the urgency of a theoretical discussion of the conceptualisation of space and time in archaeology, but attempts, perhaps for the first time in archaeology, to treat them as inseparable and as essential to understanding past social relations at different scales. The volume is also innovative in its focus on the whole of the prehistoric Mediterranean, which is too often fragmented in narratives along national, linguistic, academic and other boundaries. The volume stems from
“… the ever-growing interest in space and spatiality across the social sciences; the comparative neglect of time and temporality; the lack in the existing literature of an explicit and balanced focus on both space and time; and the large amount of new information coming from the prehistoric Mediterranean”, which serves “… as an empirical archaeological background for the application and detailed analysis” (Preface, p. xv).
The first chapter, written by the editors, serves as a theoretical introduction to the volume and reviews some focal points of research into Mediterranean prehistory, which is then further developed in the following chapter by Robert Chapman. Although not complete in its coverage of the theoretical discussions, the editors’ introduction separately presents the conceptualisation of both space and time first in the social sciences in general and then within theoretical archaeology. The volume is an engaging and diverse collection of papers, and the reader can find plenty of useful information and thought-provoking ideas. The editors point to diverse and interesting topics and concepts applied to Mediterranean prehistory in this volume (p. 19–20): houses, households, settlements and communities (Stavrides, Harkness, Watkins, Düring, Marketou, Márquez- Romero & Jiménez-Jáimez and Athanasiou), urban space and planning (Athanasiou), architecture and the built environment (Harkness, Meegan and Márquez- Romero & Jiménez-Jáimez), the social production of space and the dialectical relationship between people and space (Stavrides), embodied space, movement (Harkness, Meegan and Skeates), cultural diversity and differences, social transitions, meaning, identity and memory (Skeates, Miller Bonney, Marketou, Murrieta-Flores and Yasur-Landau and Cline), the concepts of time in terms of social memory, identity and continuity, the transmission of social knowledge and reproduction of architecture (Meegan, Watkins, Düring, Miller Bonney Murrieta-Flores, Márquez- Romero & Jiménez-Jáimez and Yasur-Landau & Cline) as well as residential mobility, discontinuity, abandonment and destruction (Skeates and Marketou).
Many contributors deal with similar topics and concepts, but approach them from different spatio-temporal scales. The editors (p. 19) recognise the importance of time perspectivism and of
“… a multiscalar approach to both space and time that will explore linkages between a whole range of spatial an temporal relationships”, critique the overuse of the large-scale, long-term approach and express the “… lack of a sense of short-term and small-scale social action and the bewildering and contradictory complexity of everyday lived reality”.
However, many contributors retain the large-scale, long-term approach, even if enriched by perspectives offered by local contexts, by selecting case studies from across the Mediterranean region or the millennia-long periods of prehistory (Watkins, Düring, Bonney). Some articles are more descriptive (Marketou, Yasur-Landau & Cline) with the addition, of course, of a theoretical commentary.
A critical weakness of the volume is the lack of more contributions from archaeologists more affiliated with what it is known as archaeological science, since space and time are central concepts for archaeology in general. The volume would certainly benefit from being more of a bridge between theory and practice in archaeology. When discussing time, the authors, informed of the development in anthropological theory, go further than most other theoreticians; for example, they present a critique of the established dichotomy of linear versus cyclical time, one identified with Western thought and the other with ‘traditional’ or ‘primitive’ societies, as well as the dichotomy of objective and subjective time (p. 6). But they do not problematise the related dichotomy of abstract and substantial time or measured time (chronology) and experienced time, which was established by proponents of interpretative archaeology Michael Shanks and Christopher Tilley in their book Social Theory and Archaeology (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press) and which continues to polarise the treatment of time and perpetuates “The Two Cultures” (cf. C. P. Snow’s 1959 lecture) divide in archaeology. Substantial versus abstract time is of course a valid observation, but it tends to alienate proponents of social archaeology on the one and archaeological science on the other hand. The editors as well as the contributors (with a couple of exceptions: Skeates, Murrieta-Flores) do not attempt to bridge this gap. Most of the articles are written from a phenomenological perspective, which is not contradictory to, and would benefit from, ‘scientific’ approaches, such as a variety of spatial GIS analyses and temporal Bayesian modelling of calendar chronologies.
Nevertheless, this collection of papers is innovative in that it specifically tries to link the top-down with the bottom-up, the large-scale with the small-scale, the long-term with short-term, and most importantly, structure with agency. As expected, the contributors achieve this with varying success. The diversity of themes and views conveyed by individual papers preclude further summary in the context of this short review. We would, however, like to highlight the excellent paper by Patricia Murrieta-Flores (chapter 11). The author of the paper Space and Temporality in Herding Societies (p. 196-213) discusses prehistoric pastoralism and transhumance since the Chalcolithic in the Sierra Morena mountain range of the Iberian Peninsula and integrates space and time through GIS analyses. Time is introduced into the spatial GIS analysis with the help of cost-time models and by accounting for the different types of pasture available during different seasons. The analyses show patterns of regular distances between settlements in travel time. Furthermore, by mapping megaliths, she is able to show that they are located along preferred herding routes. According to the author, “For herders, to travel through the landscape is also to travel through time, as movement resonates with the seasonal changes of the landscape”.
Furthermore, “Through time, the monuments as works of the ancestors might have served as material reminders of the deep past, of a temporality that extended beyond the seasonal cycle, where every movement acquired time depth, becoming the reiteration of the actual movements of the ancestors” (p. 209). The monuments along the herding routes thus connect the immediate here-and-now experience of the traveling herder with social memory, the deep past and the ancestors, who perhaps tracked the same routes. In a way, the herder travels both through space and time. We believe this paper is the closest to the ideal to which the volume aspires, namely the multiscalar integration of spacetime with social archaeology, and goes a step further with the much needed bridging of the divide between social archaeology and archaeological science.
In the last chapter, which serves as a discussion (p.262–291), Stephanie Koerner provides a useful commentary on the major themes and concepts in the volume and ‘contextualises’ the volume within the framework of a broader interdisciplinary discourse of space and time and how these relate to concepts such as structure and agency. The discussion is a challenging yet compelling philosophical text, which adds the finishing touches to the whole volume by stressing the relevance of issues explored in the volume not just for archaeology, but for the social sciences in general. Space and Time in Mediterranean Prehistory is an exciting and innovative collection of papers that should be read by students and researchers interested in the prehistoric Mediterranean, conceptualisations of space and time and those interested in social archaeology and anthropology in general.
Marko Sraka – University of Ljubljana
[IF]