Polished Axes: Object Biographies and the Writing of World Prehistories
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON FACULTY OF HUMANITIES School of Archaeology Polished Axes: object biographies and the writing of world prehistories by Elizabeth Jane Norton Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy January 2016 2 UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON ABSTRACT FACULTY OF HUMANITIES Archaeology Doctor of Philosophy POLISHED AXES: OBJECT BIOGRAPHIES AND THE WRITING OF WORLD PREHISTORIES By Elizabeth Jane Norton Polished axes have become an iconic tool representing the Neolithic in the archaeological record. Polished axes are unusual as they are similar in form and design across space and time, found internationally in both archaeological and ethnographic contexts. This meant they have become an easily recognisable item for collectors and have been found in public and private collections from the 18th Century onwards. A common component in many diverse collections, tracing the history of polished axes allows the investigation of the networks of people and artefacts which built the collections of the British Museum. These networks were also crucial in the sharing of information, which especially in the mid – 19th Century may have had a significant impact in the way in which world prehistories were written. The research has focused on the British Museum’s collection of polished axes from Oceania, and Europe. Objects associated with the axes, including hafts, labels, diaries, letters and catalogues have been used to reconstruct the ‘biography’ of each collection of artefacts. This makes it possible to show how the British Museum’s collections of polished axes were built and how they have been used to write the prehistory of the world from a Western perspective. There are three main aims to my research. Firstly I aim to better understand how the British Museum acted as a site of knowledge making during the construction of prehistory as a concept and the construction of archaeology as a discipline. Secondly, I aim to show how ethnographic and archaeological artefacts have been used together, both inside and outside the British Museum, to write world prehistories. Finally, I will show how polished axes have been used to write world prehistories which have influenced archaeologists for 3 generations and to show object biographies may inform world prehistories in the future. 4 Contents List of Figures and Tables ....................................................................................... 9 Acknowledgements .............................................................................................. 13 Chapter 1: Introduction ....................................................................................... 15 1.1: Aims of the thesis ....................................................................................... 16 1.2: Research Questions ................................................................................... 17 1.3: Why polished axes? ................................................................................... 19 1.4: Why the British Museum? ......................................................................... 22 1.5: Methodology in collection of evidence at the British Museum ................ 24 1.6: The interaction of archaeology and ethnography in prehistory and the British Museum ................................................................................................. 26 1.7: In Summary ................................................................................................ 28 Chapter 2: Methodology and surveying the collections of polished axes at the British Museum .................................................................................................... 31 2.1: How was my primary and secondary data collected? ............................... 31 2.2: Identifying Collectors ................................................................................. 35 2.3: An Introduction to the collection curated by A.W.Franks ......................... 35 2.4: Approaching Remote Places and Remote Times ....................................... 41 2.5: In Summary ................................................................................................ 42 Chapter 3: Remote Places .................................................................................... 43 3.1: Ethnographic beginnings ........................................................................... 44 3.2: Moving on from Sloane: ethnographic collections and the polished axe at the British Museum before the establishment of prehistory ........................... 53 3.3: In Summary ................................................................................................ 61 Chapter 4: Remote Times .................................................................................... 63 4.1: 1851-1898: The reign of Franks ................................................................. 64 4.2: The impact of the mid-19th Century on the British Museum ..................... 68 4.3: 1865-1898: The Age of Augustus Wollaston Franks and the rise of anthropology ..................................................................................................... 77 4.4: In Summary ................................................................................................ 83 5 Chapter 5: A collection of collections .................................................................. 85 5.1: Christy Fund’s purchases of European archaeology and ethnographic artefacts ............................................................................................................ 86 5.2: The composition and connections of the Christy Fund ............................. 88 5.3: Consolidation of the collections and the Museum of Mankind ................ 92 5.4: A late 20th Century of polished axes: Paul Sillitoe.................................... 103 5.5: In Summary .............................................................................................. 108 Chapter 6: Turning axes into history .................................................................. 111 6.1: The mythic and historic origins of the use of polished axes in European prehistory ........................................................................................................ 112 6.2: The polished axe as a diagnostic type fossil and the collections of Evans and Lubbock .................................................................................................... 117 6.2.1 Sir John Lubbock .................................................................................... 121 6.2.2: Sir John Evans ........................................................................................ 127 6.3: Beyond the 19th Century: ......................................................................... 130 6.4: Vere Gordon Childe and the 20th Century ............................................... 133 6.5: Polished axe as a commodity ................................................................... 136 6.6: Neolithic society and the polished axe .................................................... 145 6.6.1: Polished axes as a prestige commodity ................................................ 145 6.6.2: Polished axe as a symbol of the Neolithic psyche ................................ 148 6.6.3: Depositional processes and the symbolic use of polished axes in the Neolithic. ......................................................................................................... 151 6.7: In Summary .............................................................................................. 155 Chapter 7: Interplay of archaeology and ethnography: the “Pacification” of the European Neolithic and the problems with the use of analogy ........................ 157 7.1: The “Pacification” of the European Neolithic and the polished axe ....... 158 7.2: The historical context for the use of ethnography in the interpretation of the archaeological record ............................................................................... 163 7.3: Ethnoarchaeology and the problematic use of analogy in the archaeological record...................................................................................... 169 6 7.4: The problem of the use of analogy in prehistoric archaeology ............... 173 7.5: In Summary .............................................................................................. 176 Chapter 8: Discussion and Conclusions.............................................................. 177 8.1: To understand better the role of the British Museum in acting as a site of knowledge making during the construction of prehistory ............................. 177 8.2: To appreciate more fully the interplay, in the history of archaeology, between information derived from ethnographic and archaeological sources ............................................................................................................ 187 8.3: Stories written in Stone: a final word ...................................................... 195 Appendix ............................................................................................................ 203 Bibliography ....................................................................................................... 209 7 8 List of Figures and Tables P31 - Table 1: initial Merlin search figures P32- Table 2: Amount of polished axes recorded on Merlin with expanded search terms. P33 - Graph 1: Total number of Neolithic and Bronze Age acquisitions into the British Museum from 1814 to