Revealing a prehistoric past: Evidence for the deliberate construction of a historic narrative in the British Neolithic

Abstract

Over the past decade, event-based narratives have become a norm in discussions of the British Neolithic. Statistical analyses of radiocarbon dates, combined with a detailed approach to individual contexts, have produced chronological resolutions that have enabled a greater understanding of the construction and use of some monuments. While these have been informative, they sometimes manifest exclusionary nomenclature, with terms such as ‘outliers' and ‘residuality' applied to data that does not agree with other data. In addition, theoretical approaches have seen a similar turn to examine individual contexts and artefacts with which to describe Neolithic life. This paper argues that the current dominance of event-based narratives, extrapolated from small-scale action, is inadvertently ignoring evidence of wider cultural understandings. In particular, evidence of the deliberate inclusion of already old bone in Neolithic deposits has been identified. It is argued that this bone represents a particular past focus on already old material that may have had social currency in British Neolithic symbolic practices.

La cronología radiocarbónica de las sepulturas tipo tholos en la península ibérica: explorando diversas trayectorias sociales

“…The radiocarbon dates could have been affected by the reservoir effect, although this seems very unlikely given the distant location of La Sima II from any significant aquatic resources. An alternative explanation is that the construction of the tholos could be more recent if the dated human bones belong to secondary depositions of skeletal remains brought from other places, a ritual practice suggested for other Iberian and European funerary contexts (Teather 2018;Valera 2019Valera , 2020Aranda Jiménez et al 2020b;Booth and Brück 2020). In any case, if the radiocarbon dates are terminus ante quem for the construction of the tomb, La Sima II would belong to a pre-tholos phase with no connection to the classical development of this phenomenon.…”

Stored and Storied Time in Archaeology

“…Between the third and first millenniums bce, the connection between the curation, deposition in graves and/or powerful display of material culture initially had the purpose of legitimizing the power of individuals in their leading societal role, both locally and regionally. In the British Neolithic (4000-2000 bce), it is possible that old bones were already incorporated into pits or burial chambers, which may have been for the purpose of integrating past material with those of that present (Teather 2018), and, later in prehistory, human bodies appear to have been deliberately mummified, curated and buried at a later date (Booth, Chamberlain and Parker Pearson 2015). For archaeologists, time and temporality are different faces of the same coin: time is simply a clock; temporality encompasses the human experience of time and is not easily measured.…”

“…Yet, the motive of the original research question or puzzle that stimulated that work is not actually mentioned in that paper. 12 As a specialist in artefacts made from chalk in the Neolithic, I have proposed that most chalk artefacts mimic artefacts made from different substances, such as stone or wood (Teather 2017;Teather, Chamberlain and Parker Pearson 2019). I was puzzled 13 by chalk 'charms' 14 found in a small number of burials of predominantly women and children, and their visual resemblance to iron pyrite strike-stones that were in a few adult male burials (Figure 6.1).…”

“…The amount and nature of this evidence vary wildlysometimes preservation is excellent and at other times very poorbut in general terms there is more evidence from time periods closer to the present day than from the more distant past. Already old materials incorporated into later deposits have been noted by archaeologists at prehistoric sites (Teather 2018;Knight, Boughton and Wilkinson 2019), and recent applications of absolute dating methods in prehistory have led to more instances of out-oftime artefacts being uncovered. I will argue in this chapter that this greater focus on attempting to ascribe more precision to an archaeological event has forced archaeologists to confront their own assumptions of what kinds of time they are trying to measure, and use, to frame accounts of past lives.…”

Bettina Schulz Paulsson. Time and Stone: The Emergence and Development of Megaliths and Megalithic Societies in Europe (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2017, xiv and 376pp., 209 colour and b/w figs., 10 tables, hbk, ISBN 9781784916855)

“…some dates from bone samples are dismissed for being too old, that is, 'outliers'; dated bone samples may not correspond to the earliest uses of megalithic tombs). Indeed, some megalithic monuments were recurrently used throughout some centuries, and old bone deposits were regularly cleared (Aranda et al, 2020), while in other cases, very old human remains were inserted in more recent monuments (Teather, 2018). And this is where the most serious methodological limitation of the research emerges: forty-four per cent of the samples used are human bones, and these inform us about the use (i.e.…”