by Chris Fowler
Ingold, T. 1993. The temporality of landscape. World Archaeology 25(2), 152–174.
Ingold, T. 1996. Growing plants and raising animals: an anthropological perspective on domestication. In D.R. Harris (ed.), The origins and spread of agriculture and pastoralism in Eurasia, 12–24. London: UCL Press.
Ingold, T. 2000. The perception of the environment: essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill. London and New York: Routledge.
Johnston, R. 2005. A social archaeology of garden plots in the Bronze Age of northern and western Britain. World Archaeology 37(2), 211–223.
Jones, G. 2005. Garden cultivation of staple crops and its implications for settlement location and continuity. World Archaeology 37(2), 164–176.
Knappett, C. 2005. Thinking through material culture: an interdisciplinary perspective. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Knappett, C. 2006. Beyond skin: layering and networking in art and archaeology. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 16(2), 239–251.
Kotsakis, K. 1999. What tells can tell: social space and settlement in the Greek Neolithic. In P. Halstead (ed.), Neolithic society in Greece, 66–76. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.
Kreuz, A., Marinova, E., Schäfer, E., and Wiethold, J. 2005. A comparison of early Neolithic crop and weed assemblages from the Linearbandkeramik and the Bulgarian Neolithic cultures: differences and similarities. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 14(4), 237–258.
Latour, B. 2005. Reassembling the social: an introduction to actor-network theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Leković, V. 1985. The Starčevo mortuary practices—new perspectives. Godišnjak Centra za Balkanološka Istraživanja 27, 157–172.
Macphail, R. 2007. Soils and deposits: micromorphology. In A. Whittle (ed.), The early Neolithic on the Great Hungarian Plain: investigations of the Körös culture site of Ecsegfalva 23, County Békés, 189–225. Budapest: Publicationes Instituti Archaeologici Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae Budapestini.
Malinowski, B. 1965. Coral gardens and their magic: a study of methods of tilling the soil and agricultural rites in the Trobriand Islands. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Marinova, E. 2007. Archaeobotanical data from the early Neolithic of Bulgaria. In S. Colledge and J. Conolly (eds), The origins and spread of domestic plants in southwest Asia and Europe, 93–109. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.
Marx, K. 1967. Capital, Vol. 2. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Miller, D. 1987. Material culture and mass consumption. Cambridge: Blackwell.
Pappa, M., Halstead, P., Kotsakis, K., and Urem-Kotsou, D. 2004. Evidence for large-scale feasting at late Neolithic Makriyalos, N Greece. In P. Halstead and J. Barrett (eds), Food, cuisine and society in prehistoric Greece, 16–44. Oxford: Oxbow.
Pike-Tay, A., Gál, E., and Whittle, A. 2004. Body part representation and seasonality: sheep/goat, bird and fish remains from early Neolithic Ecsegfalva 23, SE Hungary. Journal of Taphonomy 2(1–4), 221–246.
Rival, L. 1993. The growth of family trees: understanding Huaorani perceptions of the forest. Man 28(4), 635–652.
Stevanović, M. 1997. The age of clay: the social dynamics of house destruction. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 16, 334–395.
Thissen, L. 2005. The role of pottery in agropastoralist communities in early Neolithic southern Romania. In D. Bailey, A. Whittle, and V. Cummings (eds), (Un)settling the Neolithic, 71–78. Oxford: Oxbow.
Thomas, J. 1999. Understanding the Neolithic. London: Routledge.
Thomas, J. 2003. Thoughts on the ‘repacked’ Neolithic Revolution. Antiquity 77(295), 67–74.
Valamoti, S. M. 2005. Grain versus chaff: identifying a contrast between grain-rich and chaff-rich sites in the Neolithic of northern Greece. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 14(4), 259–267.
Valamoti, S. M. 2007. Detecting seasonal movement from animal dung: an investigation in Neolithic northern Greece. Antiquity 81(314), 1053–1063.
Valamoti, S. M. and Kotsakis, K. 2007. Transition to agriculture in the Aegean: the archaeobotanical evidence. In S. Colledge and J. Conolly (eds), The origins and spread of domestic plants in southwest Asia and Europe, 75–91. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.
Warnier, J.–P. 2001. A praxeological approach to subjectivation in a material world. Journal of Material Culture 6(5), 5–24.
Whittle, A. 2007. On the waterfront. In A. Whittle (ed.), The early Neolithic on the Great Hungarian Plain: investigations of the Körös culture site of Ecsegfalva 23, County Békés, 727–752. Budapest: Publicationes Instituti Archaeologici Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae Budapestini.
Whittle, A. and Zalai-Gaál, I. 2007. Fieldwork and excavations. In A. Whittle (ed.), The early Neolithic on the Great Hungarian Plain: investigations of the Körös culture site of Ecsegfalva 23, County Békés, 123–188. Budapest: Publicationes Instituti Archaeologici Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae Budapestini.
Woodburn, J. 1980. Hunters and gatherers today and reconstruction of the past. In E. Geller (ed.), Soviet and Western anthropology. London: Duckworth.
CHAPTER 24
RELIGIOUS ROUTINE AND PILGRIMAGE IN THE BRITISH ISLES
ROY LOVEDAY
RELIGION, which probably permeated all aspects of Neolithic life, presents a challenge to archaeology since the particularities of myth are intangible and the signals of iconography largely impenetrable. However, the material residues of ritual (formalized, repetitive, symbolic action) can be recovered and analysed, as Richards and Thomas (1984) demonstrated at Durrington Walls. From this seminal work an archaeology of religion has arisen. Ritual, which had become a term of derision associated with superficial analysis, now dominates the discourse and structured deposits appear ubiquitous. Caution is needed, though. Patterned disposal might equally reflect sequential activities or notions of purity/impurity integral to gender relations. It may be unwise therefore to apply too readily a concept devised to explain deposit formation at a highly specialized Wessex henge enclosure in wholly different social and temporal contexts (Garrow 2007). Equally, we must accept that most religious routines, however nested into cultural norms, will have remained wholly intangible (e.g. sowing, harvesting, and hearthside rites). Therefore, to adequately contextualize the limited evidence we have for religious process and development in the Neolithic, the following discussion will be temporally structured and will centre upon Great Britain, an area noted for the progressive elaboration of ritual (i.e. demonstrably non-functional) architecture.
EARLY NEOLITHIC BRITAIN (4000–C. 3500 BC)—AN AGE OF ANCESTORS
Tombs are, and undoubtedly were, the most dramatically visible evidence of people in the early Neolithic landscape (cf. Cummings et al., this volume). The collective burial of partial, disarticulated remains, when coupled with the common presence of human skeletal material in other contexts, is a clear indicator of belief in a pervasive ancestral presence (cf. Fowler and Scarre, this volume). Yet as the number of individuals represented in burials beneath long mounds varied considerably and recent dating programmes point to short, almost simultaneous deposition (Whittle and Bayliss 2007), it appears that long-held notions of lineage ossuaries are unfounded. Rather, a token ancestral presence may have sufficed to dedicate a mound, itself the critical element symbolically recording lineage identity through reference to much earlier continental long houses (Hodder 1984). The accompanying ideology remains intangible but undoubtedly far exceeded simplistic notions of ‘ancestor worship’ that arise from a western reading of ethnographic practices (Carmichael et al. 1994). Rather, in common with virtually all recorded indigenous religions, it is probable that a stratified world of the ‘others’ was envisaged with remote creator deities, more immediate elemental ones (e.g. storm, rain, wind), ubiquitous spirits in daily contact with humans, and the ancestors as intermediaries.
A window into this numinous world is afforded by cattle bones, particularly crania, found in significant locations and combinations within many Wessex longbarrows and causewayed
enclosures (e.g. three ox skulls along the axial line of the Beckhampton Road long barrow, Wiltshire). The motive for placement was almost certainly religious, akin to North American plains Indians’ deployment of bison skulls. Orientation of Wessex longbarrows almost wholly within the range of the lunar maximum rising arc (Burl 1987, 27–28) suggest a further element of belief, but, in view of a widespread, more generalized easterly trend (Hodder 1984; Smyth 2006), could simply reflect ideas associated with the morning sky. In Scotland, northern England, and Ireland a regionally distinct and demanding rite is indicated by the deliberate burning of houses, post enclosures, and longbarrow architectural components, presumably at the close of ritual cycles (Noble 2006, 45–70).
Virtually no emphatic placed deposits have been found in early Neolithic houses in the British Isles that might add a domestic element to religious practice, and this is also true of pit groups of this period (Garrow 2007). An axe placed blade-up in the foundation trench of house 4 at Corbally, Co. Kildare, Ireland, is an isolated example amongst the many Neolithic houses recently excavated there (Smyth 2006); material in other house trenches may equally be trapped discard, although cremated human and animal bone in the packing of a post hole in the house at Yarnton, Oxfordshire, appears deliberate (Hey et al. 2003, 81–82). Artefacts that could reasonably be considered to have fertility connotations—carved balls, ‘phalli’, and cups—are absent from house sites. A number come from the causewayed enclosure of Windmill Hill, Wiltshire, but mostly from later levels. Nevertheless, the carved wooden hermaphroditic ‘god dolly’ deposited at the point where the wooden Sweet Track at Westhay, Somerset, was subsiding beneath water confirms a contemporary fertility element to beliefs, and indicates the potential of the lost organic component (Coles and Coles 1986; see also Fowler and Scarre, this volume, who regard it as late Neolithic). The adjacent presence of a fine jadeite axe recalls the great number of axes apparently deposited in rivers (Bradley 1990).
MIDDLE NEOLITHIC BRITAIN (C. 3500–2800 BC)—AN AGE OF NEW GENEALOGIES
Monument complexes, as against scattered longbarrows and causewayed enclosures, make their first appearance in the middle Neolithic. Exceptionally long parallel-sided enclosures that reference house plans—cursuses—were laid out and followed by small circular hengiform sites. During the late Neolithic, henge monuments of substantial size were often added and followed in the early Bronze Age by round barrows that cluster, or were aligned, alongside the earlier linear monument. In addition to the very considerable enduring sanctity that this records (from c. 3500–2000 BC), other features set these centres apart. Late Neolithic cremation burials can reach unprecedented numbers, the monuments often differ from local sites but find distant parallels, and construction is not limited to the immediate locality but extends over a significant swathe of surrounding countryside. The extensively investigated complex at Dorchester upon Thames, Oxfordshire, exemplifies the pattern (Whittle et al. 1992; Loveday 1999), with 156 cremations coming from seven small hengiform sites (the highest number from a single location in Britain), a cursus that finds its closest parallels 120km away at Maxey in Cambridgeshire (Fig. 24.1), and a henge only comparable with others 300km to the north in Yorkshire. In addition, the complex is surrounded by a landscape of smaller cursuses set some 5–7km distant. Extensive regional fieldwork and aerial reconnaissance make it clear that this is a real pattern and not simply a product of focused excavation.
FIG. 24.1. The Maxey-Etton (a,b,c), Dorchester upon Thames (d), and Fornham All Saints (e) complexes.
In the absence of adjacent settlement evidence, the features that set Dorchester upon Thames and sites like it apart would, if encountered in an historical context, be held to signal a cult site of supra-local significance—a pilgrimage centre. These we know were often situated in a sacred landscape (18 by 12km around Varanasi; 30 by 9km around Mecca), attracted smaller shrines/offering sites (Mecca; Delphi), retained their sanctity during periods of religious change (a new sun temple built alongside the ancient shrine at Patchacamarca; mosques at Varanasi and Jerusalem), and influenced monument design across great distances (the basilica at Compostela in north-west Spain was replicated on each of the pilgrimage roads leading to it through France in complete distinction from local architecture (Conant 1959)). But can we safely extrapolate the material outcomes of pilgrimage, however generalized, from these historic early state contexts to prehistory?
The term pilgrimage simply describes out of the ordinary journeying to a sacred locale (natural or built), but through the overlay of contemporary and well recorded historical practices (by definition in complex societies) it now carries connotations of considerable, even extreme, distance, and motives of individual enlightenment or healing. Implicit are assumptions of open access and individual spirituality that probably had little relevance to earlier manifestations, not least because of the dangers of passing through potentially hostile territory (cf. Schulting and Wysocki 2005). It is vital, then, to consider what could have constituted pilgrimage in those contexts.
Early pilgrimage
Sources pertaining to pre-Christian Europe offer insights into early pilgrimage activity. Tacitus, for example, in the Germania noted that:
the Semnones’… antiquity is confirmed by a religious observance. At a set time, deputations from all the tribes of the same stock gather in a grove hallowed by the auguries of their ancestors and immemorial awe… The grove is the centre of their whole religion. It is regarded as the cradle of their race and the dwelling place of the supreme god.
This ancient site defined an entire people who travelled from the limits of their own territory to attend the sacred assembly held there. That was equally true of pagan Irish, Scandinavian, and west Slav events, and others worldwide. Each combined seasonal sacrifice with assemblies and feasting, vital to the development of ethnos and fulfilment of the near universal dictate to ‘marry out’ (e.g. the Konds of southern Orissa, India, whose Meria sacrifice accompanied by a strict truce between frequently warring villages formed the sole basis of corporate, as against purely lineage, identity (Boal 1982)). Importantly, this presents a consistent picture of pilgrimage as calendrical and collective rather than open and individual. It is in this form we should expect to encounter it in the Neolithic. Activity at marginally located causewayed enclosures, with its frequent non-rational elements (Andersen, this volume), had possessed the germ of such festival-pilgrimage, but material culture, with a few exceptions (e.g. in Wessex), remained predominantly local. By the middle Neolithic, however, large-scale clearances suggest communal grazing and perhaps transhumance. These locales are likely to have been elevated as symbolic points of reference—arenas for seasonal social interaction invested with emotional attachment and marked at significant junctures by monument construction (Barclay and Hey 1999, 70–71; Noble 2006, 183–193). Attendant iconic features such as conical hills and mountains, caves, springs, and confluences, which are regarded as hierophanies worldwide (places of communication between this world and upper or lower ‘realms’ (Bradley 2000)), would thus have entered the consciousness of a wider community.
Dorchester upon Thames is notable in this regard. In addition to the adjacent confluence of the Thame and Thames, two very distinctive hills dominate the flat plain here and are visible up to 20km away (Loveday 1999). Their form recalls similar hills/mountains that in the Celtic west often carry the name paps (breasts) (e.g. Paps of Anu, Co. Kerry, Ireland). It is quite common, particularly amongst hunter-gatherer groups, for deities and ancestors to be recognized in the topography. Direct approach to such sites, however, is usually restricted to shamans/medicine men who may heighten their jurisdiction over spiritual spheres by undertaking a vigil at the perceived hierophany—the ‘vision quest’ of indigenous North Americans (Reeves 1994; Bradley 2000). Knowledge of that revelation would be pivotal to increasing the renown of place, as indeed it is in the world religions, and to encouraging group engagement in monument building.
Shamans in their role as
negotiators with the ‘others’ are also closely associated with achieving individual goals, in particular the cure of disease, but this function was, and is, enacted at domestic or village level, often utilizing local sacred springs. It appears not to have been an early motor for pilgrimage: only in the Roman period did local spring shrines associated with healing develop a certainly inter-regional aspect (Woodward 1992, 53, 58). As with indigenous religions worldwide, Neolithic pilgrimage ceremonies seem certain to have been conduits for common, not individual, advantage.
To these three elements fuelling early pilgrimage—seasonal assemblies, transhumant/pastoral attachment to distant iconic landscape, and vision questing—can be added a fourth that could further heighten a sense of place: encounter with evidence of earlier ritual activity. A number of postholes of Mesolithic date have now been recorded in Britain (Allen and Gardiner 2002). A feature within henge A at Llandegai, Gwynedd, appears to have determined the orientation of that monument (Lynch and Musson 2004, 36, 39), and the alignment of the large posts found under the car park at Stonehenge is effectively identical to that of the Greater Cursus 700m away. In neither case can the posts have survived the three to four millennia separation. Other elements must have perpetuated memory of these features. In the latter case, the fact that the nearby Heel Stone, alone amongst the substantial stones on the site, attracted no finishing suggests it could also be of considerably earlier date and was thus sacrosanct. That may be equally true of similar standing stones elsewhere (e.g. several of the rare Mesolithic finds from Orkney come from the Stenness area (Noble 2006, 173), where the Watch Stone marks the causeway between the lochs).
Cult site development