by Chris Fowler
CONCLUSIONS
In this chapter, I have emphasized the malleability and diversity of caves in the central Mediterranean Neolithic as cultural constructs and as places of religious belief and practice. These caves were certainly durable, but they were not as fixed as they may have appeared. Their powerful physical forms, and their cultural significances, together with human uses and experiences of them, were modified by dynamic natural processes and human interventions before, during, and after the Neolithic. Diverse meanings and values were ascribed to these caves over space and time. As dwelling and work places, for example, they framed everyday practices and cultural ideals. And as sacralized places and as ritual boundaries, they offered plentiful creative opportunities to imagine, express, and mediate a wide range of religious ideas about human relations, identities, and cosmologies: within and between social groups, with nature and the supernatural, with death and the ancestors, and with the past, present, and future. Physical and intellectual access to their potent, multi-sensory, heritage of natural and cultural resources was also sometimes selectively controlled (perhaps even contested) in the deployment of secular and political authority in ritual performances. In other words, we can, with some justification, continue to acknowledge the development of one or more somewhat distinctive sets of underground religious beliefs and practices in the central Mediterranean Neolithic of a loosely defined ‘underground religion’ (despite the limited attention given by scholars to contemporary above-ground religion). But we must also accept that, throughout this process, caves remained connected by people to broader cosmological orders, lifeways, and landscapes, albeit on their margins.
REFERENCES
Albert, E. 1982. Etude statistique des figurations de la Grotte de Porto Badisco. Rivista di Scienze Preistoriche 37, 217–222.
Barker, G. 1981. Landscape and society: prehistoric central Italy. London: Academic Press.
Barra, A., Grifoni-Cremonesi, R., Mallegni, F., Piancastelli, M., Vitiello, A., and Wilkens, B. 1989–90. La Grotta Continenza di Trasacco: I Livelli a Ceramiche. Rivista di Scienze Preistoriche 42, 31–100.
Bonanno, A. 1987. Malta: an archaeological paradise. Malta: M.J. Publications.
Cipriani, N. and Magaldi, D. 1979. Composizione mineralogica delle pitture della Grotta di Porto Badisco. Rivista di Scienze Preistoriche 34, 263–267.
De Lucia, A., Ferri, D., Geniola, A., Giove, C., Maggiore, M., Melone, N., Pesce Delfino, V., Pieri, P., and Scattarella, V. 1977. La Comunità Neolitica di Cala Colombo presso Torre a Mare (Bari). Bari: Società di Storia Patria per la Puglia.
Despott, G. 1918. Excavations conducted at Għar Dalam (Malta) in the summer of 1917. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 48, 214–221.
Evans, J.D. 1955–6. Two phases of prehistoric settlement in the western Mediterranean. University of London Institute of Archaeology Annual Report and Bulletin 13, 49–70.
Geniola, A. 1995. Ipogeo Manfredi (Polignano a Mare, Bari). In R. Grifoni Cremonesi and F. Radina (eds), Preistoria e protostoria, guide archeologiche N. 11: Puglia e Basilicata, 98–105. Forlì: ABACO Edizioni.
Graziosi, P. 1980. Le pitture preistoriche della Grotta di Porto Badisco. Firenze: Istituto Italiano di Preistoria e Protostoria.
Grifoni-Cremonesi, R. 1994. Observations on the problems related to certain cult phenomena during the Neolithic in the Italian peninsula. Journal of European Archaeology 2, 179–197.
Guerri, M. 1993. Grotta dei Cervi a Porto Badisco (Prov. di Lecce). Rivista di Scienze Preistoriche 45, 270–271.
Lo Porto, F.G. 1972. La tomba Neolitica con Idolo in Pietra di Arnesano (Lecce). Rivista di Scienze Preistoriche 27, 357–372.
Lo Porto, F.G. 1976. L’attività archeologica in Puglia. In Atti del 15º Convegno di Studi sulla Magna Grecia, 635–644. Napoli: Arte Tipografica.
Malone, C. 1985. Pots, prestige and ritual in Neolithic southern Italy. In C. Malone and S. Stoddart (eds), Papers in Italian Archaeology IV. Part ii: Prehistory, 118–151. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports.
Malone, C., Stoddart, S., Bonanno, A., Gouder, T., and Trump, D. 1995. Ritual of 4th millennium BC Malta: The Zebbug period chambered tomb from the Brochtorff Circle at Xaghra (Gozo). Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 61, 303–345.
Pluciennik, M.Z. 1994. Space, time and caves: art in the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic of southern Italy. The Accordia Research Papers 5, 39–71.
Quagliati, Q. 1936. La Puglia preistorica. Trani: Vecchi and C.
Radmilli, A.M. 1962. Documentazione sulla tradizione orale nella preistoria. La Veneranda Anticaglia 10, 1–11.
Radmilli, A.M. 1975. Culti di fertilità della terra testimoniati in alcuni giacimenti Neolitici Italiani. In E. Anati (ed.), Valcamonica Symposium ‘72. Actes du Symposium International sur les Religions de la Préhistoire, 175–184. Capo di Ponte: Centro Camuno di Studi Preistorici.
Radmilli, A.M., Mallegni, F., and Fornaciari, G. 1978. Recenti scavi nella Grotta dei Piccioni di Bolognano (Pescara) e riesame dei resti scheletrici umani provenienti dai circoli. Atti della Società Toscana di Scienze Naturali 85, 175–198.
Skeates, R. 1991a. Caves, cult, and children in Neolithic Abruzzo, central Italy. In P. Garwood, D. Jennings, R. Skeates, and J. Toms (eds), Sacred and profane: Proceedings of a conference on archaeology, ritual and religion, 122–134. Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology.
Skeates, R. 1991b. Triton’s trumpet: a Neolithic symbol in Italy. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 10, 17–31.
Skeates, R. 1994. Ritual, context, and gender in Neolithic south-eastern Italy. Journal of European Archaeology 2, 199–214.
Skeates, R. 1997. The human uses of caves in east-central Italy during the Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Copper Age. In C. Bonsall and C. Tolan-Smith (eds), The human use of caves, 79–86. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports.
Skeates, R. 2005. Visual culture and archaeology: art and social life in prehistoric Italy. London: Duckworth.
Skeates, R. 2007. Religious experience in the prehistoric Maltese underworld. In D.A. Barrowclough and C. Malone (eds), Cult in context: reconsidering ritual in archaeology, 90–96. Oxford: Oxbow.
Skeates, R. 2010. An archaeology of the senses: prehistoric Malta. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Skeates, R. 2012. Constructed caves: transformations of the underworld in prehistoric southeast Italy. In H. Moyes (ed.), Sacred darkness: a global perspective on the ritual use of caves, 27–44. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.
Tinè, S. and Isetti, E. 1975–80. Culto neolitico delle acque e recenti scavi nella Grotta Scaloria. Bullettino di Paletnologia Italiana 82, 31–70.
Whitehouse, R.D. 1972. Rock-cut tombs of the central Mediterranean. Antiquity 46, 275–281.
Whitehouse, R.D. 1992. Underground religion: cult and culture in prehistoric Italy. London: Accordia Research Centre.
Whitehouse, R.D. 2001. A tale of two caves: the archaeology of religious experience in Mediterranean Europe. In P.F. Biehl and F. Bertemes (eds), The archaeology of cult and religion, 161–167. Budapest: Archaeolingua.
Winn, S.M.M. and Shimabuku, D.M. 1980. The heritage of two subsistence strategies: preliminary report on excavations at Grotta Scaloria, southeastern Italy. Halifax, Nova Scotia: St. Mary’s University.
CHAPTER 48
A PLACE IN THE COSMOS
Celestial Bodies and the Passage Graves of Western Europe
MICHAEL HOSKIN
DID ASTRONOMY FEATURE IN THE COSMOVISIÓN OF THE NEOLITHIC?
THE Spanish word cosmovisión has no exact counterpart in English. It is more nuanced than ‘cosmology’, more comprehensive than ‘world picture’; it expresses the overall context—both celestial and terrestrial—in which humans see themselves as living out their lives. In this chapter our concern is whether the sky, and in particular the heavenly bodies, played a role in the cosmovisión of the various Neolithic peoples of western Europe—and if so, what form this role took.
A
generation ago it was argued that there was a science of astronomy in the British Isles during Neolithic times. Fred Hoyle (1971) and Gerald Hawkins (1964) claimed that Stonehenge was an astronomical computer. What they were really saying was that they, as twentieth-century astronomers and mathematicians, could have used the stone circles to calculate future eclipses and the like; but this was no proof that the builders of Stonehenge in fact used it for this purpose, and after a flurry of publicity their ideas were discarded.
A much more extended campaign aiming to show that a true science of astronomy existed in Neolithic Britain was advanced about the same time by Alexander Thom (1967, 1971; Thom and Thom 1978), a Scots professor of engineering at Oxford University. Thom was concerned above all with the motives that had led to the erection of the mysterious stone circles that are so numerous in his native Scotland. He carefully surveyed great numbers of these, so bequeathing valuable factual evidence to future investigators (Thom et al. 1980, 1990). He claimed there was a standard unit of length employed by the constructors all over the country, the megalithic yard (Thom 1955), although sceptics noted that this is remarkably close to the pace of the average adult male. More importantly, Thom (1971, 11) became convinced that the circles had been built so that ‘Megalithic man’ might predict future eclipses of the moon.
How could they have done this? As the sun shines on the earth it casts a shadow, and an eclipse of the moon occurs when the moon enters this shadow. Therefore, to predict a lunar eclipse, an earth-dweller must have an accurate knowledge of the cycles of both sun and moon, and the mathematical skill to see how these relate to each other (Ruggles 1999, 24–25, 36–37).
The cycle of the sun as we see it in the sky is simple enough, but it is difficult to pin down with accuracy. At midsummer the sun rises around north-east (the exact position depending on the observer’s latitude), and for a few days the position of sunrise alters little (hence our term ‘solstice’). Then we begin to notice the sun rising each morning a little further to the south, and as autumn approaches the rate of this daily change increases. At what today we term the equinox, the sun rises close to due east and the daily change in the position of sunrise is at a maximum. Then, as winter draws on, the change slows down, and eventually comes to a stop at the winter solstice. For the next six months, the cycle is reversed; and so on.
The problem for the observer of the solar cycle is that for a week or so either side of a solstice the sun rises in almost exactly the same place, the change from one day to the next being almost imperceptible. As a result, it is very difficult to determine the day of the solstice itself—and yet knowledge of the exact day is an essential element in any calculations involving the cycle of the sun. In the seventeenth century Galileo suggested that this problem might be solved by observing the sun each evening around solstice as it sets behind a distant mountain. If the mountain is, say, 10km away, then nature has helpfully provided us with an observing instrument 10km in size and so of great accuracy. Even if sunrise occurs in almost the same place on successive days, at a distance of 10km it should be possible to detect the tiny changes that are in fact taking place. Thom did not know of Galileo’s proposal, but he came to the conclusion that this was exactly what Neolithic man had done: the location of a stone circle (he believed) had been chosen so that, around a solstice, people in the circle would see the sun rising or setting behind some distant mountain, and by careful observations spread over several days they would be able to determine the exact day of the solstice.
Thom sought to buttress his argument by showing that many stone circles were indeed positioned in just the required relationship to a distant mountain, one that had a suitable notch or whatever to facilitate the observations. But others suspected that Thom would arrive at a stone circle determined, as he scanned the horizon, to find a mountain in one of the directions anticipated by his theory. And so, in 1980, the Cardiff archaeologist Richard Atkinson secured a grant for fieldwork to test this suspicion. If objective criteria were established for what constituted an horizon feature of the appropriate type, would Thom’s chosen mountain be exceptional in satisfying the criteria when viewed from the circle?—or would it be only one of many such mountains in the surrounding skyline, singled out by Thom because it suited his hypothesis? A young astrophysicist, Clive Ruggles, was recruited to carry out the fieldwork, and his conclusion was unequivocal (1999, 49–67): Thom had typically selected his chosen mountain from among innumerable candidates because it lay in one of the desired directions. Since that time, Thom’s theories have been in decline, and few today believe there was a science of astronomy in Neolithic Europe.
But did the heavenly bodies play a role in the cosmovisión of Neolithic peoples? And if so, what clues can we expect? Unfortunately, interest in some celestial phenomena would leave little or no trace in the archaeological record. For example, the agricultural calendar described by Hesiod around 700 BC depends upon ‘heliacal risings’ (and even today there are parts of Europe where farmers continue to sow and harvest by such a calendar). As the sun makes its annual circuit of the stars, there will be a few weeks during which the sun is so close to a particular star that the star is lost to human eyes in the glare of sunlight. Then the time comes when the sun has moved far enough from the star for the star to be seen again, albeit briefly, in the dawn sky. This is the star’s ‘heliacal rising’. According to Hesiod, farmers were using a succession of heliacal risings to mark the stages in the agricultural year, but how would we know this archaeologically?
Hesiod was of course drawing on the experience accumulated by farmers over centuries, and—surprisingly—there is evidence that at around 3000 BC heliacal risings were the occasion for festivals in a temple in Crete (Hoskin 2001, ch. 3). The oldest of the three temples that make up the complex site of Mnajdra, Malta, has a pair of entrance pillars, and on these pillars are drilled rows of holes that are surely tallies. But of what? What number counts were so important as to warrant being recorded on a sacred site? Analysis of the numbers themselves suggests that they may well represent the days between one important heliacal rising and the next, beginning with that of the Pleiades; and if so, festivals were presumably held to mark these risings.
There are other celestial phenomena which, if they played a part in the cosmovisión of the builders, may well have left more obvious traces in the archaeological record. We have an encouraging example of this in Christian churches, which were traditionally oriented to face the rising sun (on a day of the year selected by the builders), as the symbol of Christ rising from the dead. Stonehenge is a monument whose alignment to the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset is well known (Ruggles 1999, 35–41). Newgrange in Ireland, where around midwinter the rising sun penetrates to the innermost recesses of the tomb, is equally famous (Ruggles 1999, 12–19). But we should allow for the possibility that these alignments in fact occurred by pure chance, and that the astronomical interpretation we give them is a modern fabrication. To be sure of any such interpretation, we need a statistical argument—a consistent pattern of orientation in a large number of such monuments. If Newgrange were one of many tombs in the region, all of which faced midwinter sunrise, we could argue with some confidence that this was the motive in the minds of the builders.
WHAT IS ARCHAEOASTRONOMY AND WHAT DO ARCHAEOASTRONOMERS DO?
The discipline that investigates such possibilities is known as ‘archaeoastronomy’, but this term is unfortunate for it gives the misleading impression that only explanations in terms of astronomy will be accepted. The archaeoastronomer visits Neolithic (and Bronze Age) monuments whose orientations are well defined, and measures these orientations (Fig. 48.1). Passage graves form the bulk of such monuments. Not all have a well-defined orientation: in Catalunya there are a handful of graves where access is from above; in the French causses there are coudé tombs where the passage is at an angle to the chamber; and in Brittany there are passage graves where the passage describes an arc and others where the passage is at a right
angle to the chamber. But these are exceptions: with the overwhelming majority of passage graves in western Europe, the orientation is unambiguous. In the simplest cases, the archaeoastronomer measures the mid-point of the backstone, and puts a pole there; he or she then measures the mid-point of the passage, puts a pole there too, and with suitable instrumentation measures the orientation of the line joining the two poles.
FIG. 48.1. Measuring the orientation of one of the tholos tombs at Los Millares, Almería, Spain.
If it is suspected that astronomy may be part of the explanation for the choice of orientation, the archaeoastronomer must also measure the apparent altitude of the skyline in the direction of the orientation. This is because (in the northern hemisphere) the sun and the other heavenly bodies move south as they are rising, and so if the sun, for example, has to climb behind a hill before it can be seen, when it does appear it will be further south than if the hill had not been present.
Very occasionally a passage grave is one of a kind. At the great site of Antequera in southern Spain there are three massive graves, each of a different construction (Hoskin 2001, 68–71), and one of these—Dolmen de Menga, built around 3000 BC—faces north-east, an orientation rarely seen in Iberia. The visitor soon becomes convinced of the motive, for a few kilometres to the north-east is the extraordinary mountain known as La Peña de los Enamorados, which has the uncanny and awesome appearance of a sleeping giant. But usually a passage grave is one of numerous examples in the countryside, and the archaeoastronomer must measure the orientations of as many of these as possible in the given region. The next question is, were the orientations chosen at random, or were the builders following a custom? In every instance known to me, with the minor exception of the sesi tombs of the island of Pantelleria in the Strait of Sicily, where multiple tunnels lead to an interior chamber (see Hoskin 2001, 200–202), we find that the builders were indeed following a custom.
