UDK 903.2(410)"631\634">291.37 Documenta Praehistorica XXXII (2005) Ambiguous symbols> why there were no figurines in Neolithic Britain Julian Thomas School of Arts, Histories and Cultures, University of Manchester, UK [email protected] ABSTRACT – In this paper I discuss the scarcity of representational art, and particularly of represen- tations of the human body, in Neolithic Britain, in contrast with the Neolithic of south-east Europe. My suggestion is that this contrast can be linked with differing notions of personal identity and bodi- ly integrity. In later Neolithic Britain, a complex mode of non-representational decoration developed, which elaborated the practice of making reference to absent persons and things by using deliberately ambiguous motifs, which connected past and present as well as remote locations. IZVLE∞EK – V tem ≠lanku razpravljam o redkosti reprezentativne umetnosti, predvsem o redkosti upodobitev ≠love∏kega telesa v neolitiku Britanje, kar je v nasprotju z neolitikom Jugovzhodne Evro- pe. Menim, da lahko to nasprotje lahhko pove∫emo z razli≠nimi predstavami o osebni identiteti in telesni integriteti. V poznnoneolitski Britaniji, se je razvila kompleksna oblika nereprezentativnih de- koracij. Na ta na≠in so z uporabo namensko dvoumnih motivov, ki so povezovali preteklost in seda- njost kot tudi oddaljena mesta, izpopolnili obi≠aje povezovanja z odsotnimi osebami in predmeti. KEY WORDS – Neolithic; figurines; symbols; ritual practice INTRODUCTION: MISSING BODIES At a very high level of generality, there are interest- There are also somewhat unconvincing human tor- ing contrasts between the more overtly symbolic sos sculpted from chalk, and recovered from the forms of material culture found in the Neolithic of causewayed enclosures of Windmill Hill and Mai- Atlantic north-west Europe and those of the Balkan den Castle (Piggott 1954.88). And finally, there is peninsula. Potentially, these can provide the starting- the bulbous female figurine that A. L. Armstrong points for an investigation of how material symbols retrieved from Pit 15 at the later Neolithic flint mine were deployed and manipulated in these two re- of Grimes Graves in Norfolk. Debate still continues gions. In south-east Europe one of the most distinc- over whether or not this find was genuine, or a hoax tive elements of the Neolithic archaeological record perpetrated by the workmen on the site, or perhaps is the presence of numerous human figurines, prin- even by Armstrong himself (Russell 2000.42). The cipally made of fired clay. In the British Isles, how- chalk figure has no parallel, and would have been ever, representations of the human body are extre- easy to fake, yet the platform of packed flint and mely rare. There is, for example, the so-called ‘God- group of antler picks with which it was associated dolly’, made of ash wood and recovered from the do suggest a genuinely special context. Perhaps sig- wooden ‘Bell A’ track-way at Westhay in the Somer- nificantly, Neolithic Britain has produced more car- set levels (Coles 1968.276). This hermaphroditic fi- vings of body parts than of whole bodies. Chalk phal- gure with a head, protruding breasts and a phallus luses are known from Windmill Hill and Grimes Gra- had been incorporated into the fabric of the track- ves, as well as the long barrow at Thickthorn Down, way itself, and dates to 3913–3370 BC at the 2 sigma the flint mines of Blackpatch in Sussex, and the later level of confidence (GaK–1600). Neolithic henge enclosures of Mount Pleasant and 167 Julian Thomas Maumbury Rings (Piggott 1954.88; Wainwright and Carpathians, and it is tempting to relate this con- 1979.167; Bradley 1976.25). trast to the very particular inter-generational com- mitment to specific residential locations that charac- In the Balkan context, Douglass Bailey has recently terised the Balkan Neolithic. The longevity of Band- suggested that the emergence of clay figurines can keramik settlements in central Europe, by compar- be connected with the development of the ‘built ison, took a rather different form. Here, clusters of environment’ of the tell settlements, from around houses slowly crept across the loess plateaus, each 6500 BC onwards (Bailey 2005.4). Bailey’s argument building being replaced adjacent to the original, ra- is that in this region the adoption of domesticated ther than on precisely the same spot (e.g. Lüning plants and animals was of less significance than the 1982.19). development of a constructed life-space, within which people lived in dense aggregations. Under these cir- However, it is in the Atlantic zone, and in the British cumstances, the negotiation of personal identity and Isles in particular, that the scarcity of representa- household composition would have become major tions of the integral human body coincided with a preoccupations, as indeed would the resolution of quite different conception of the person, manifested disputes between persons or groups. In the earliest in mortuary practice. While there is great variability Balkan Neolithic settlements, burials were deposited in the evidence available to us, and while that evi- beneath and between the houses, but from around dence presumably only relates to a minority of the 5500 BC onwards funerary practice was often re- Neolithic population, one of the principal themes in moved to extramural cemeteries. Consequentially, British early Neolithic funerary activity was the dis- we have the development of two parallel contexts in articulation and disaggregation of the body (Tho- which the human body was displayed and manipu- mas 2000). In both the timber mortuary structures lated. For while figurines became more complicated which preceded the construction of earthen long bar- in their manufacture and decoration, and possibly rows and in a variety of forms of megalithic tombs, became more numerous over time, their use conti- the initial deposition of complete bodies was fol- nued to be concentrated in the house and its sur- lowed by a lengthy process of re-arrangement follo- roundings. Only in the Hamangia area of the lower wing the rotting away of the flesh. In some cases, Danube were figurines routinely deployed as grave this involved the selection and re-grouping of body goods. By contrast, mortuary rites focused on the parts, so that skulls were sometimes lined up at the body increasingly made use of objects and substan- foot of an orthostat, while long-bones were often ces such as metalwork, which are rarely found on stacked or bundled (Saville 1990.80). In some cases, settlements. We might say that within these two con- individual bones may have been introduced to tombs texts the body was becoming elaborated, in rather or mortuary structures from elsewhere, whether different ways. from other structures or as the products of practi- ces of excarnation. In more cases, the indication is Bailey describes these developments in the Balkan that skeletal elements had been removed from mor- Neolithic and Copper Age as representing a new ‘po- tuary deposits, for use in other contexts. And indeed, litics of the human body’ (Bailey 2005.197). What is single bones or groups of bones are often encoun- interesting is that although as time proceeded there tered in the ditches of causewayed enclosures, in pit came to be a concern with the breaking and fragmen- deposits, in caves, in rivers, and in a variety of other tation of figurines (see Chapman 2000.68–79), the locations. Moreover, there are indications that body human body was both represented and deposited in parts may sometimes have been curated for exten- the grave as an integral whole, around which other sive periods before they were finally deposited. In objects could be arranged. It seems plausible that these circumstances, it may be appropriate to think this is indicative of a particular conception of person- of megalithic tombs and long barrows less as com- hood, in which people were at once the components munal cemeteries, and more as places of transforma- of household and community units, and the vehi- tion, through which human bodies passed in the pro- cles of alliances, prestige, and the distribution of cess of becoming something different (Lucas 1996. wealth. The representation of the body in miniature 102). enabled reference to be made to particular persons in multiple spheres of conduct, possibly enabling dif- In the context of the present discussion, the signifi- ferent aspects of their identity to be elicited as cir- cant point is that in Neolithic Britain human beings cumstances required. Figurines are a much less com- were understood as partible, at least in death (see mon component of the Neolithic north of the Alps Fowler 2004.25–31). That is to say, they were not 168 Ambiguous symbols> why there were no figurines in Neolithic Britain individual minds or spirits bounded within an undi- sitional practices in which these objects were de- vided body, but composed of body parts of substan- ployed. The later Neolithic saw elaborate artefacts ces that were capable of separation and circulation. being placed in formal pit deposits, in single grave In the early Neolithic landscape the dead were ubi- burials which gradually replaced the multiple buri- quitous, and the body parts of the dead generations als of the earlier Neolithic, in hoards and ‘closing de- passed from place to place, and perhaps from per- posits’ inserted into megalithic tombs, in rivers, bogs son to person. Under these circumstances human and caves, and in new monument types such as hen- identity may have been understood as fluid, pro- ges and palisaded enclosures (Thomas 1999.Chap- tean and transitory, and less anchored in place and ter 4). continuity than in south-east Europe. Descent and the continuous inhabitation of a fixed location may Significantly, a sub-set of these new artefacts were have been less significant than the maintenance of decorated with a set of symbols which ultimately ties of kinship and affinity between dispersed and (but not exclusively) owed their inspiration to the in some cases mobile communities.