Living in an age of stone: Neolithic peoples and their worlds
Submitted by Andy B on Tuesday, 20 March 2007 Page Views: 3964
Neolithic and Bronze AgeCountry: Scotland
Friday 27th April, Saturday 28th April, Sunday 29th April
FREE AND OPEN TO ALL, no ticket required
This series of Rhind lectures will examine how people lived with stone during the Neolithic in Ireland and Britain, how they engaged with this remarkable material in all its diversity, using it to make new worlds, to establish, maintain and change cultural relationships and connections across geographical space and through time.
Material and case studies from stone-using societies in different parts of the world will be drawn on to provide a wider context for the discussion. It will be suggested that looking at the processes of the working of stone, the creation of things, big and small, and their uses provides us with a way of linking objects and monuments which we often tend to see as unrelated phenomena with very different senses of scale and purpose. Focusing on the way in which people engaged and worked with stone provides a new perspective and insight into cultural knowledge during the Neolithic in Ireland and Britain.
Lecture 1. Moving from the quarry face: Putting things in place
One of the most widespread forms of evidence we have for life and habitual and ritual action during the Neolithic is the working of stone. Archaeological study of ‘lithics’ at a variety of scales and contexts is a mainstay of the narratives we construct about this period and the human impact of Neolithic communities on the landscape. Yet how often do we consider the wider significance of the reality that in their daily and ceremonial life people extracted, worked and lived with a wide variety of lithics, for different purposes and in many different ways?
These ranged from stone implements held in the hand or handle to larger-scale mundane and monumental stone structures that formed part of the cultural arenas and landscapes of many of these communities. It will be argued that an integrated, holistic approach to the social role and context of the quarrying and working of stone by Neolithic communities offers the opportunity to take new perspectives on how Neolithic lives and landscapes were created, maintained and changed.
Lecture 2. Stone in island societies: Where different worlds meet
Islands offer us an important opportunity to study what appear to be readily bounded worlds. The water around them intensifies the sense of separation and island identity. Not surprisingly then islands, particularly smaller islands, are often described as belonging within the category of special, liminal places that serve as portals to other worlds and they are also often perceived as being peripheral to larger events.
Complementing this sense of standing apart the movement of materials between islands, between islands and mainlands demonstrates the central importance and role of the sea and contact with other places in island life. Study of the use of stone by island communities provides us with the opportunity to explore both of these elements of island life.
The use of insular lithic raw materials is dominant in the making of structures while exchange of stone artifacts across islands provides material expression of the web of cultural contexts in which island lives were created and situated. This is particularly relevant to understanding island societies during the Neolithic in Ireland and Britain when the construction of stone monuments begins.
Lecture 3. Axes of meaning: Monuments to minimalism
Stone axes are taken as being emblematic of the Neolithic in Ireland and Britain. However in Ireland ground stone axes were in use from the early Mesolithic one. What marks off the use and role of stone axes in the Neolithic is a dramatic shift in the materials utilised to make them and the places and processes by which they were created. It will be argued that these changes are critical to a sense of what defines the Neolithic.
The question of when organised axe quarrying at primary sources began in Ireland and Britain will be explored. It is striking how widely occurring basic forms of stone axes are in stone-using societies across the world.
It has been frequently argued that the social role of stone axes focused on their functionality, their potential longevity and the ability to create many different social expressions of this minimal form through raw material, size, appearance and context. The significance of axes during the Neolithic will be explored using the rich data provided by stone axe studies in Ireland and Britain.
Lecture 4. Acts of creation, deposition and enclosure: Lines in and on the land
One of the least studied aspects of stone in the Neolithic is when it is used as a construction material in ‘domestic’ structures, in walls and when it occurs in deposits, as in pit fills. Where it has not been clearly worked it is regarded as non-artifactual and indeed may not retained as part of excavation archives.
This can be contrasted with the recognition of the significance of the debitage from the working of lithic raw materials to make tools. Developing this idea it will be argued that we need to be careful of making a false distinction between the widely recognised symbolic significance of stone in artifacts and ceremonial monuments and the categorisation of other uses of stone as casual and mundane. Discussion will take the construction and use of stone walls during the Neolithic in Ireland and Britain as a particular focus. It will be suggested that the act of the construction of walls, and their use, provides a way of linking different kinds of social activities.
Lecture 5. Megalithic monuments: Working through ancestral stones
Running through work on megalithic structures, certainly in Ireland, has been a focus on monumentality, on the construction of the structures and their covering mounds. The working and placement of the stone that makes up these monuments has often been viewed as a background.
It provides the necessary physical components for the architectural forms that are perceived as constituting the monument. In a related way when art occurs, as in the passage tomb complex, the stone is often viewed as a neutral, static background, even where orthostatic or roof-slab form may influence the placement and style of art. By contrast stone artifacts and even ‘unworked’ stone deposits found inside and outside tombs are often regarded as active, highly charged symbolically, the classic example being the use of quartz.
Here it is argued that we need to combine approaches from the study of monuments, objects and practices and change our focus. It will be suggested that it was the working and re-working of stone viewed as being imbued with symbolic power that made such places as megalithic monuments special.
Lecture 6. The real sense of things: Making the Neolithic
In this lecture the strands of argument already presented will be linked, or perhaps more appropriately carved out! The interplay between the use of stone and materials in other media will be discussed as part and parcel of understanding how people lived in an age of stone, when stone was viewed as a resource and seen as vital, living.
The human encounter with stone had transformative potential. Working with stone was used to make new worlds, it was integral to how people achieved intimacy with places over time and created relationships. Hence working stone, the objects and monuments that were made through this work all give important clues to help piece together a better sense of everyday and ceremonial life and times - how the Neolithic was made.
The RHIND LECTURES, a series of six lectures delivered annually on a subject pertaining to history or archaeology, by eminent authorities on the subject, have been given since 1876. They commemorate Alexander Henry Rhind of Sibster who bequeathed money to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland to endow the lectures which perpetuate his name.
Further details from:
The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland
Royal Museum, Chambers Street,
Edinburgh EH1 1JF
Tel 0131 247 4133
www.socantscot.org
[email protected]
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