The Role of Burial Monuments in Creation of New Worldviews during the Early Neolithic (original) (raw)
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Europe is dotted with tens of thousands of prehistoric barrows. In spite of their ubiquity, little is known on the role they had in pre- and protohistoric landscapes. In 2010, an international group of archaeologists came together at the conference of the European Association of Archaeologists in The Hague to discuss and review current research on this topic. This book presents the proceedings of that session. The focus is on the prehistory of Scandinavia and the Low Countries, but also includes an excursion to huge prehistoric mounds in the southeast of North America. One contribution presents new evidence on how the immediate environment of Neolithic Funnel Beaker (TRB) culture megaliths was ordered, another one discusses the role of remarkable single and double post alignments around Bronze and Iron Age burial mounds. Zooming out, several chapters deal with the place of barrows in the broader landscape. The significance of humanly-managed heath in relation to barrow groups is discussed, and one contribution emphasizes how barrow orderings not only reflect spatial organization, but are also important as conceptual anchors structuring prehistoric perception. Other authors, dealing with Early Neolithic persistent places and with Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age urnfields, argue that we should also look beyond monumentality in order to understand long-term use of “ritual landscapes”. The book contains an important contribution by the well-known Swedish archaeologist Tore Artelius on how Bronze Age barrows were structurally re-used by pre-Christian Vikings. This is his last article, written briefly before his death. This book is dedicated to his memory.
One of symbolic roles of Neolithic long houses in central Europe might have been burial of ancestors. There is no hard evidence for the funerary function of long houses, however, it is commonly assumed (BRADLEY 2000). Already during their dwelling function some houses were possibly used for primary deposition of remains of ancestors. The burials were later in the time of abandonment of the house removed elsewhere or remained resting inside the building. This is the process of transformation from the house of living to the house of dead. This paper is presenting an outline of the origin and development of burial mounds in Central Europe during the Neolithic and Eneolithic Periods. In the first part of the paper I am considering the possible interpretations for the origin of barrows in the context of dying Neolithic longhouses. The main purpose of the second part of the paper is to discuss the question on missing evidence of barrows of the late Eneolithic Corded Ware and Bell Beaker period in Central Europe. Variety of problems of demographic representation of cemeteries, burial customs and spatial structure of funerary areas are connected to the missing barrows. I emphasise the variability of late Eneolithic funerary monuments, including the discussion on burial chambers and circular ditches, yet another type of funerary construction without an earthed mound that may be described as houses of dead.
"Landscape, Histories and Societies in the Northern European Neolithic" presents papers from two sessions of the conference of the European Association of Archaeologists held in 2011 in Olso. The papers of this volume describe new research on the relationships between landscape, history and society in the northern European Neolithic. They focus on the Funnel Beaker complex and related Neolithic contexts, with case studies extending from Poland and the Czech Republic to Norway and Scotland. Several case studies examine the significance of enclosures – from early causewayed enclosures in the north associated with the very beginnings of the Neolithic to the significance of palisade enclosures constructed towards the end of the Neolithic in Scotland and Sweden. The volume also includes new studies on the origin, significance and interpretation of Neolithic burial and megalithic architecture found in a range of landscapes across northern Europe. Importantly, the volume also outlines the significance of other kinds of places that were not monumentalised in the same way, such as fens, the seashore and the wider environment, in the construction of Neolithic worldview. Finally, it concludes with a series of articles that consider the significance of particular forms of material culture – axes, grinding stones, pottery and food – in social reproduction in the Neolithic of northern Europe. Overall, the volume presents an important body of new data and international perspectives concerning Neolithic societies, histories and landscapes in northern Europe.
This paper aims to highlight the necessity of linking the use of ritual places to social strategies that sometimes lead to social and cultural transformations. More specifically, I will analyse the role of mortuary monuments and memory praxis in the transition from a society ranked by kin ‒ often labelled a Big Man Society, where the cult of ancestors was of great importance ‒ in the Early Bronze Age in Northern Europe (c. 2350-1600 BC), to the Middle Bronze Age Chiefdoms (1600-500 BC). In particular, my presentation will orbit around social strategies connected to the creation of new monuments (cairns and mounds) and the destruction and (re-) use of older monuments, including megaliths from the Middle Neolithic (3300-2800 BC) and gallery graves from the Early Bronze Age. In short, how can we trace social strategies that presumably were connected with the use of these ritual places? Keywords: chronotope, rock art, ritual places, Bronze Age, burial rituals, memory praxis, social transformation, megaliths, mounds, cairns, gallery graves
J. Müller, M. Hinz, M. Wunderlich (eds.), Megaliths - Societies - Landscapes. Early Monumentality and Social Differentiation in Neolithic Europe. Proceedings of the international conference "Megaliths - Societies - Landscapes. Early Monumentality and Social Differentiation in Neolithic Europe" Kiel, 2019
This article investigates ›monumental landscapes‹ by comparing two different expressions of ritual that can be observed in the same Neolithic landscapes and are seen as typical traits of the Funnel Beaker Culture (TRB): megalithic tombs and wetland depositions. The rich archaeological evidence from an area on the Danish islands, north-west Zealand with a special focus on the area around Lille Åmose will serve as background for discussing the complex ritual use of space in the earlier part of the Southern Scandinavian Neolithic (TRB). The different chronological development of ritualised practices is shown, with the wetland depositions starting already in EN I and the megalithic tombs later in EN II. Beside these chronological differences, the different material character of the two groups of finds, their distribution and their spatial relation to each other are discussed. For the case study area, it can be shown that the wetland deposits mark settlement areas that date back at least to the EN I – if not to the Late Mesolithic – located at lake sides. The megalithic tombs are placed differently, witnessing a broadened use of the inland from the late EN I and EN II onwards, indirectly indicating agrarian economy. They are often placed close to communication routes. These results are discussed regarding the neolithisation process. The question of whether wetland depositions and megalithic tombs witness a break in ritual expression or a change or inversion of ritual opens up new perspectives of understanding social, ritual and economic changes in the 4th millennium BC.
Key words: Neolithic/Copper Age enclosures, Hilltop sites, Natural shrines, Beaker cosmology In this paper I am going to discuss the phenomenon of Neolithic enclosures as symbols of shared identity and their replacement by natural shrines and perhaps by new ideology and cult. The tradition of collective values gradually faded from the mid Fifth Millennium BC However, this dramatic change started at the beginning of the Third Millennium BC. The changes that I am going to discuss in this paper were not induced by any change in subsistence strategy or climatic influences. The Third Millennium changes comprise the development of social relations and transition of cosmology amongst the European Copper Age farming communities. What kind of changes were they? Mainly it was a sudden discontinuity in the long tradition of the construction of ditched and hill top enclosures that dominated the Neolithic Period in central Europe. This phenomenon has its pedigree in the early Neolithic round ditched shrines,so called roundels. Such monuments are traditionally interpreted as features of mainly sacral meaning (Podborský 2001 etc) but some other social functions are also being considered (Květina et al 2009). It is possible that the changes that occurred during the third millennium BC in the society and cosmology of Copper Age farmers in Central Europe might have been a reflection of a much more general collapse of traditional Neolithic values that brought with it the new quality of Bronze Age society. The Copper Age innovations resulted in the deeper individualisation of some social principles and contributed towards greater social differentiation in the Early Bronze Age. Abandonment of the megalithic idea of collective burials and continuity in the use of funerary monuments together with a decline in ditched enclosures and the use of hilltop locations are not only evidence of changing social relations but also of far reaching changes in the cosmology of our ancestors. We can observe a reorientation from the Neolithic tradition of agricultural cults and a decline in the communal monuments (roundels, causewayed enclosures, hilltop enclosures) that were used to demonstrate and reinforce the collective identity and spiritual activities. The new cult was perhaps derived from the tradition of solar worship. Within the individualized funerary practices people emphasized their communication with the ancestors and the presentation of social status as well as the confirmation of social hierarchy and the reinforcement of a genealogical system of hereditary wealth of both individuals and families. It is also possible that the new Beaker ideology was rapidly spreading over Western and Central Europe to help enforce the new order of social relations. We can clearly see how some very distant regions of Europe with a variety of cultural traditions partook of this shared cultural uniformity, symbols, rituals and perhaps religion. In many other aspects, such as the tradition of the Central European Eneolithic-Bronze Age pottery complex (Neustupný 2008, 22) or the more intensive arable systém of agriculture (Neustupný 2008, 18) we can, however, see a distinctive continuity throughout the whole Copper Age. The collapse of traditional values in the third millennium BC might be seen mainly in relation to changes in social structure, the rise of a new ideology and the transformation of cosmology. During the final stages of the Copper Age the foundations were laid for the forthcoming systém of a greater stratified Bronze Age society and its new cosmological archetypes.