by Chris Fowler
Construction of the ultimate cult centre—the sarsen structure at Stonehenge—leaves little doubt regarding unified control of the prodigies of labour and skill it materialized. Motivation behind the project remains uncertain beyond production of an eternal, solar-orientated monument in the Wessex post circle tradition; suggestions that it functioned as a pilgrimage shrine for healing (Catling 2007) must be questioned in view of the evidence for the nature of early pilgrimage adduced above. It may not be coincidental, however, that the smaller diameter of the sarsen circle (30m as against the consistent 38m of the great Wessex post circles) finds close parallel in a site that almost uniquely possesses tabular stones of comparable height—the Stones of Stenness. Given the suggested germinal role of the Orcadian ceremonial complex in Grooved Ware ideology, is it possible that the sarsen structure records usurpation of the origin myth? Construction of a new axis mundi combining elements of both Wessex post circles and the cult progenitor would equate esoteric cosmological (and possibly metallurgical (Parker Pearson 2008)) knowledge with mythic ancestry. And, as the monument survived (or was completed) after the ideological change associated with Beakers had led to a return of individual burial, we can track the geography of its pilgrimage assembly in the surrounding landscape through the coombe-edge placement of round barrows (Loveday 2006b).
CONCLUSION
By focusing on the monuments that characterize Neolithic Britain it has been possible to record the increasing complexity of the religious ideas that permeated life—from kin-based formulations, through kin-enlarged beliefs mediated by and transmitted from, pilgrimage centres, to an expansive, intensely ceremonial ideology that seemingly relegated ancestry in favour of a solar focus. Pilgrimage was the vital agency of change. Its material outcomes—intensity of construction, monumentalization and long-distance replication—can be read more widely: in the 60–80km distance across which materials were brought to embellish Newgrange; in the exceptional and varied tombs sited close to the metsa resembling a human head at Antequera in Andalucía, and in the concentration of different monument types in the Carnac region; in the replication of Knowth at Knockroe (O’Sullivan 2004), and conceivably the great menhir-capped Table des Marchand by the idiosyncratically massive portal dolmen of the Irish Sea zone. Perhaps most importantly, pilgrimage opens up the possibility of recognizing ultimate prototypes—the birth places of the origin myths that generated ritual.
REFERENCES
Allen, M. and Gardiner, J. 2002. A sense of time: cultural markers in the Mesolithic of southern England? In B. David and M. Wilson (eds), Inscribed landscapes: marking and making places, 139–153. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Barclay, A. and Bayliss, A. 1999. Cursus monuments and the radiocarbon problem. In A. Barclay and J. Harding (eds), Pathways and ceremonies. The cursus monuments of Britain and Ireland, 411–429. Oxford: Oxbow.
Barclay, A. and Hey, G. 1999. Cattle, cursus monuments and the river: the development of ritual and domestic landscapes in the Upper Thames Valley. In A. Barclay and J. Harding (eds), Pathways and ceremonies. The cursus monuments of Britain and Ireland, 67–76. Oxford: Oxbow.
Bellwood, P. 1987. The Polynesians: prehistory of an island people. London: Thames and Hudson.
Boal, B.M. 1982. The Konds. Warminster: Aris and Phillips.
Bradley, R. 1990. The passage of arms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bradley, R. 2000. The archaeology of natural places. London: Routledge.
Bradley, R. and Edmonds, M. 1993. Interpreting the axe trade: production and exchange in Neolithic Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Burl, A. 1987. The Stonehenge people. London: Dent.
Card, N. 2010. Colour, cups and tiles—recent discoveries at the Ness of Brodgar. Past 66, 1–3.
Carmichael, D.L., Hubert, J. Reeves, B., and Schanche, A. 1994. Sacred sites, sacred places. London: Routledge.
Catling, C. 2007. Message in the Stones. Current Archaeology 212, 12–19.
Cleal, R., Cooper, J. and Williams, D. 1994. Shells and sherds: identification of inclusions in Grooved Ware with associated radiocarbon dates, from Amesbury, Wiltshire. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 60, 445–448.
Coles, B. and Coles, J. 1986. Sweet Track to Glastonbury: the Somerset Levels in prehistory. London: Thames and Hudson.
Conant, K.J. 1959 Carolingian and Romanesque architecture 800–1200. Harmondsworth: Pelican.
Cooper, I. and Hunt, L. 2005. An engraved Neolithic plaque with Grooved Ware associations. Past 50, 14–15.
D’Anna, A. 1977. Les statues-menhirs et stèles anthropomorphes du Midi de la France. Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.
Defoe, D. 1971. A tour through the whole island of Great Britain 1724–1726. Harmondsworth Penguin.
De Heusch, L. 2005. Forms of sacralized power in Africa. In D. Quigley (ed.), The character of kingship, 25–38. Oxford and New York: Berg.
Drucker-Brown, S. 2005. King house: the mobile polity in northern Ghana. In D. Quigley (ed.), The character of kingship, 171–186. Oxford and New York: Berg.
Garrow, D. 2007. Placing pits: landscape occupation and depositional practices during the Neolithic in East Anglia. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 73, 1–24.
Gibson, A. 2004. Round in circles. Timber circles, henges and stone circles: some possible relationships and transformations. In R. Cleal and J. Pollard (eds), Monuments and material culture, 70–82. East Knoyle, Salisbury: Hobnob Press.
Gibson, A. and Bayliss, A. 2009. Recent research at Duggleby Howe, North Yorkshire. Archaeological Journal 166, 39–74.
Green, M. 2000. A landscape revealed. 10,000 years on a chalkland farm. Stroud: Tempus.
Harding, J. 1996. Reconsidering the Neolithic round barrows of Eastern Yorkshire. Northern Archaeology 13/14, 67–79.
Harding, J. 2003. Henge monuments of the British Isles. Stroud: Tempus.
Harding, J., Johnson, B. and Goodrick, G. 2006. Neolithic cosmology and the monument complex of Thornborough, North Yorkshire. Archaeoastronomy 20, 28–53.
Helms, M. 1988. Ulysses’ sail. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Henshall, A. 1985. The chambered cairns. In C. Renfrew (ed.), The prehistory of Orkney BC 4000–1000 AD, 83–117. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Hey, G., Mulville, J., and Robinson, M. 2003. Diet and culture in southern Britain. In M. Parker Pearson (ed.), Food, culture and identity in the Neolithic and early Bronze Age, 79–88. Oxford: Archaeopress.
Hodder, I. 1984. Burials, houses, women and men in the European Neolithic. In D. Miller and C. Tilley (eds), Ideology, power and prehistory, 51–68. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kinnes, I. 1979. Round barrows and ring ditches in the British Neolithic. London: British Museum.
Kristiansen, K. and Larsson, T. 2005. The rise of Bronze Age society. Travels, transmissions and transformations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Loveday, R. 1999. Dorchester-on-Thames—ritual complex or ritual landscape? In A. Barclay and J. Harding (eds), Pathways and ceremonies. The cursus monuments of Britain and Ireland, 49–66. Oxford: Oxbow.
Loveday, R. 2004. Spiralling outwards—the problems and possibilities of a later Neolithic Leitmotiv. In A. Gibson and A. Sheridan (eds), From sickles to circles. Britain and Ireland in the Age of Stonehenge, 123–141. Stroud: Tempus.
Loveday, R. 2006a. Inscribed across the landscape. The cursus enigma. Stroud: Tempus.
Loveday, R. 2006b. The Valley of the Grand. British Archaeology 88, 22–23.
Loveday, R. 2009. From ritual to riches: the route to individual power in eastern Yorkshire? In K. Brophy and G. Barclay (eds), Defining a regional Neolithic. The evidence from Britain and Ireland, 35–52. Oxford: Oxbow.
Loveday, R., Gibson, A., Marshall, P.D., Bayliss, A., Bronk Ramsey, C., and van der Plicht, H. 2007. The Antler Maceheads Dating Project. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 73, 381–392.
Lynch, F. and
Musson, C. 2004. A prehistoric and early medieval complex at Llandegai, near Bangor, North Wales. Archaeologia Cambrensis 150 (2001), 17–142.
Mair, L. 1977. African kingdoms. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Noble, G. 2006. Neolithic Scotland. Timber, stone, earth and fire. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
O’Sullivan, M. 1997. Megalithic art in Ireland and Brittany: divergence or convergence? In J.L. L’Helgouac’h, C-T. Le Roux, and J. Lecornec (eds), Art et symboles du megalithisme européen, 81–96. Révue Archéologique de l’Ouest, Supplement 8.
O’Sullivan, M. 2004. Little and large: comparing Knockroe with Knowth. In H. Roche, E. Grogan, J. Bardley, J. Coles, and B. Raferty (eds), From megaliths to metals, 44–50. Oxford: Oxbow.
Parker Pearson, M., Cleal, R., Marshall, P., Needham, S., Pollard, J., Richards, C., Ruggles, C., Sheridan, A., Thomas, J., Tilley, C., Welham, K., Chamberlain, A., Chenery, C., Evans, J., Knüsel, C., Linford, N., Masrtin, L., Montgomery, J., Payne, A., and Richards, M. 2007. The Age of Stonehenge. Antiquity 81, 617–639.
Parker Pearson, M. 2008. When did copper first come to Britain? British Archaeology 101, 125.
Quigley, D. (ed.) 2005. The character of kingship. Oxford and New York: Berg.
Reeves, B. 1994. Ninaistakis–the Nitsitapii’s sacred mountain: traditional native religious activities and land/tourism conflicts. In D.L. Carmichael, J. Hubert, B. Reeves, and A. Schanche (eds), Sacred sites, sacred places, 265–295. London: Routledge.
Renfrew, C. 1985. Epilogue. In C. Renfrew (ed.), The prehistory of Orkney BC 4000–1000 AD, 243–261. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Richards, C. 2005. Dwelling among the monuments. Cambridge: McDonald Institute of Archaeological Research.
Richards, C. and Thomas, J. 1984. Ritual activity and structured deposition in Later Neolithic Wessex. In R. Bradley and J. Gardiner (eds), Neolithic studies. A review of some current research, 189–218. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports.
Schulting, R.J. and Wysocki, M. 2005. ‘In this chambered tumulus were cleft skulls’: an assessment of the evidence for cranial trauma in the British Neolithic. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 71, 107–138.
Sheridan, A. 2004. Neolithic connections along and across the Irish Sea. In V. Cummings and C. Fowler (eds), The Neolithic of the Irish Sea. Materiality and traditions of practice, 9–21. Oxford: Oxbow.
Smyth, J. 2006. The role of the house in early Neolithic Ireland. Journal of European Archaeology 9, 229–258.
Stupecki, L.P. 1997. Sacred space in the cultural landscape of Slavic peoples in the pre-Christian Period. In J. Chapman and P. Dolukhanov (eds), Landscapes in flux. Central and eastern Europe in antiquity, 59–76. Oxford: Oxbow.
Thaw, S., Jaarola, M., Searle, J.B. and Dobney, K.M. 2004. The origin of the Orkney vole microtus arvalis orcadensi: a proxy for reconstructing human movements. In R.A. Housely and G. Coles (eds), Atlantic connections and adaptions. Economies, environments and subsistence in lands bordering the north Atlantic, 114–119. Oxford: Oxbow.
Thomas, A. 2014 Art and architecture at the Ness of Brodgar. British Archaeology 138, 16–21.
Whittle, A., Atkinson, R.J.C., Chambers, R. and Thomas, N. 1992. Excavations in the Neolithic and Bronze Age complex at Dorchester on Thames, Oxfordshire, 1947–1952 and 1981. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 58, 143–201.
Whittle, A. and Bayliss, A. (eds) 2007. Histories of the dead: building chronologies for five southern British long barrows. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 17 (Supplement).
Woodward, A. 1992. Shrines and sacrifice. London: Batsford/English Heritage.
Materiality and Social Relations
CHAPTER 25
INVENTION AND EUROPEAN KNAPPING TRADITIONS*
MARJORIE DE GROOTH
KNAPPING TECHNIQUES
During the Neolithic, the making of tools from flint and other siliceous rocks was organized according to two great conceptual schemes. In the first, the flakes and, more commonly, blades detached from a prepared core were either used as such, or retouched further into specific tool shapes. In the second, blocks of flint were shaped into tools, mostly by bifacial reduction. The second method served mainly to produce rough-outs for axes. This article will focus on the knapping traditions connected with blade production. The different techniques, i.e. the physical actions used in flint knapping, together with the underlying conceptual schemes (often referred to as methods) can be studied by merging the results of three different approaches (Inizan et al. 1992; Beuker 2010):
•observing characteristic traces present on blades, cores, and knapping waste in archaeological assemblages (Andrefsky 1998);
•conjoining or refitting lithic material recovered from knapping sites (Cziesla et al. 1990);
•replicating blanks and tools by systematic experiments (Gallet 1998).
Knapping techniques are defined on the basis of how force is applied, the nature of the knapping tools, and the gestures made by the knapper (Inizan et al. 1992).
The main techniques used for Neolithic blade production are:
•direct percussion with a soft, elastic mallet, made from antler, bone, or hard wood;
•indirect percussion, in which an intermediate antler or bone tool (punch) is placed on the platform and then struck with a hard or soft hammer (Figure 25.1);
• pressure, whereby the blade is detached from the core by applying pressure on the platform with a ‘flaker’, basically a handle with an inserted tip made of antler, bone, or even copper (Figure 25.2);
•direct hard hammer percussion, in which force is applied directly with another rock. This technique is only rarely used in Neolithic blade production.
Unfortunately, the identification of knapping techniques in archaeological assemblages is not quite as straightforward as one would like. Experiments have demonstrated, on the one hand, that different techniques can produce identical or at least highly similar characteristics and, on the other hand, that a single technique may provide variable results (Tixier 1982; Gallet 1998; Pelegrin 2006). To make matters even more complicated, reports by different authors on different series of experiments are not uniform—and sometimes even downright contradictory—in their assessment of several attributes considered characteristic for a given technique, among them the shapes and sizes of butts and bulbs of force, or the longitudinal curvature of the blades (e.g. Gallet 1998; Mateiciucová 2003; Pelegrin 2006). Despite this caveat, most researchers would agree that inferences about knapping techniques, based in part on expert judgement, are feasible.
The most important distinguishing characteristics have to do with the angle between the platform (on which force was applied) and the core face (the surface from which blades were detached). The corresponding angle, between the butt and the dorsal face, on blades is commonly called angle de chasse. Cores suitable for direct percussion with a hard or soft hammer tend to display an acute angle between the striking platform and the core face. Consequently, the blades possess an acute angle de chasse. For indirect percussion, the cores need to be ‘orthogonal’, i.e. with an angle between platform and core face of c. 80-95°. Cores worked by pressure flaking may be either of the acute angle or the orthogonal type, and the angle de chasse on pressed blades varies accordingly. However, pressed blades always are extremely standardized, with parallel edges and arrises.
In practice, it is easy to distinguish direct soft hammer percussion from the other two techniques, either on the basis of the angle de chasse or because pressed blades are much more standardized, with very parallel edges and an almost straight profile. The distinction between pressed and punched blades is relatively unproblematic when the former possess an acute angle de chasse. Where orthogonal cores were used, the decision is less easy, as the differences are more of degree than of kind: punched blades tend to be thicker, ‘heavier’, less slender, and less regular than pressure-flaked blades of a similar length (Gallet 1998; Pelegrin 2006). Thus, the blades of the Blicquy culture have been alternative
ly described as being pressed or punched (Cahen et al. 1986; Allard and Bostyn 2006).
To execute a given technique successfully, a number of secondary ‘technical procedures’ (Inizan et al. 1992) are needed. They concern, amongst others, creating one or several crests (ridges) to guide the first blade removal and to predetermine the shape and curvature of the core face; preparing and maintaining the desired angle between platform and core face; rejuvenation of the core to correct knapping errors; and even the careful polishing of the blades’ surface before applying final retouches. Most of these actions may be performed in several ways, independent of the actual knapping technique, and they leave specific traces on cores and blades. For instance, maintaining the correct platform angle, removing overhangs of previous negatives, and preparing the surface for the next impact may be achieved by trimming or dorsal reduction (removing microflakes from the core face), by faceting (detaching small flakes from the platform), or by rubbing or pecking of the platform and the ridge between platform and core face (Whittaker 1994).
Specific combinations of these procedures may be regarded, to a large extent, to result from technological choices (Lemonnier 1993) rather than technical necessity. In that sense, the way the main debitage technique and supporting technical procedures are combined makes it possible to recognize knapping traditions, with all their implication for the transmission of skills and identity, through time and space—even allowing for some uncertainty regarding the actual technique employed.
Although direct percussion with a soft or hard hammer was in use for the domestic production of blades and flakes throughout the Neolithic (Wechler 1992; Allard and Bostyn 2006), the other two techniques merit greater attention, as both were applied in increasingly complex chaînes opératoires to manufacture increasingly longer blades, subsequently shaped into increasingly sophisticated tools. Of the two, indirect percussion seems the more traditional, its different styles resulting mostly from gradual transformations in technical procedures. Within the pressure tradition, however, a number of real innovations—involving not only the invention of a new technique, but the adoption of its results by the community (Ottaway 2001)—have been recognized.
