2. the Entanglement of Earth in the Age of Clay
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2. The Entanglement of Earth in Thomsen to organize the various objects for an exhibition to educate Danes regarding their the Age of Clay early history.2 How could he best make sense of them? Susan D. Gillespie “there is no such thing as ‘stone’” - Chantal Conneller, An Archaeology of Materials1 Abstract This chapter showcases human engagements with the most primal material of all–earth itself– beginning in the Neolithic period, when people relied on domesticated plants and animals for their livelihood. The Neolithic has also been called the Age of Clay because clay and soils were critical materials for many aspects of daily life. A case study of an important Neolithic settlement, Çatalhöyük, demonstrates how people and clay became interdependent on each other, resulting in an “entanglement” that influenced human actions and values. The Neolithic entanglement with clay, Figure 2.1 Christian Jürgensen Thomsen showing visitors multiplied countless times all over the globe, led to around in the Danish National Museum in an 1848 drawing. significant historical changes in human society that still reverberate today. This case study also provides Thomsen decided to organize the artifacts by general insights for understanding the relationships their raw material, which provided clues to their between humans and materials. How people historical contexts. In making this decision he engage with the potential and actualized properties acknowledged the earlier ideas of the Roman of materials in production processes is key to philosopher Lucretius. Nearly 2000 years understanding the historical trajectories of the earlier, Lucretius had posited that the first impacts of materials on societies. humans used stone and wood for implements, and only later developed bronze and then iron 2.1 Introduction (see Chapter 5). 2.1.1 Thomsen’s Three-Age System Nevertheless, Thomsen was aware that ancient people still used stone tools after bronze metal- In 1816 Danish antiquarian Christian Jürgensen working appeared, and they continued to Thomsen (1788-1865) faced a major challenge. employ bronze artifacts after iron was The Danish Royal Commission for the introduced. Gold, silver, and glass objects also Preservation and Collection of Antiquities had had to be accounted for. Grouping them all been amassing collections of ancient artifacts solely by material was not meaningful to the from all over the country to house them in what history of Denmark because it ignored cultural would become the National Museum of information about how and when past peoples Denmark (Figure 2.1). The commission asked made and used these objects. 1 To understand better when they were used, 2.1.2 What’s Missing in the Three-Age System? Thomsen focused on artifacts from “closed finds” such as burials and hoards (buried caches Thomsen based his artifact groupings on hard, of objects), for which he could assume that all durable objects of some value, intentionally the items found together functioned at the buried in graves or hoards. His chronological same time (Figure 2.2). In this way he could scheme neglected the soft, perishable, non- determine which things were probably grave-worthy materials used by Denmark’s contemporaneous and utilized by the same early inhabitants. Our ancestors used many peoples. Thomsen ended up with distinct other “earthy” materials that are not groupings that, he suggested, formed a represented in the Three-Age System. sequence in time, a series of “ages” of early Danish history: an initial period with only stone This chapter showcases human engagements artifacts (Stone Age), a later period with both with perhaps the most primal material of all– bronze and stone tools (Bronze Age), and a final earth itself–in the Neolithic period. The Iron Age with objects of iron, bronze, and other Neolithic “soil revolution” (Section 2) provides materials. historical background for a case study of the entanglement with clay experienced by the inhabitants of Çatalhöyük, an ancient settlement in modern-day Turkey (Section 3). Entanglement refers to the interdependency between humans and things, based on the properties of the materials that things are made of.3 Entanglement becomes an entrapment that influences human actions and ideas. The Neolithic entanglement with clay, multiplied countless times all over the globe, led to significant historical changes in human society Figure 2.2 Early Bronze Age burial in Britain. Visible in the that still reverberate today. drawing, this “closed find” includes a ceramic beaker, bronze dagger, and a projectile point. This case study from the deep past also Published in 1836, Thomsen’s innovative provides a method for analyzing contemporary chronological scheme energized the developing and future relationships between humans and field of archaeology. His Three-Age System was the materials they depend on. Section 4 draws later applied to all of Europe, Africa, and Asia, out some “material lessons” we can use to although the “metal ages” do not pertain to the better understand the impacts of materials on Americas, Australia, or Oceania (Chapters 1, 5). human society. The “Stone Age” was subsequently divided into 2.2 The “Soil Revolution” and the “Age of sub-periods, the earliest two being the Clay” Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) and Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age). Both are characterized by 2.2.1 Neolithic Changes tools made from the forceful removal of chips (flakes) from stone. The subsequent Neolithic Although Thomsen’s Three-Age System has (New Stone Age) was distinguished by a new been criticized (Chapter 1), the division of the technology for grinding and polishing stones to Stone Age into earlier (Paleolithic and make implements. Mesolithic) and later (Neolithic) components is 2 still useful. These terms no longer refer to as the circular ditches (henges) in Great Britain changes in stone technology, however, nor to (Figure 2.4). exact periods of time. Instead, Neolithic now designates the shift from a nomadic food- collecting to a settled food-producing way of life dependent on domesticated plants and/or animals. This gradual transition occurred in different parts of the world at various times, beginning about 10,000 BC in Mesopotamia. Being tied to the land to raise crops or tend livestock required more durable houses and other structures. Most Neolithic peoples developed pottery vessels to store, serve, and Figure 2.4 The great henge (circular ditch and sometimes cook foods (Figure 2.3). These embankment) at Avebury, England, near Stonehenge. changes were so substantial, changing the Most of the stones from its stone circles have been removed. course of human history, that this transition was dubbed a Neolithic “Revolution.”4 Digging also exposed earthy materials lying below the surface, such as flint, limestone, and clay, which were utilized in the new technologies. In the late Neolithic people began to mine and process copper and gold. This early metal-working marks the Chalcolithic (copper- stone) period, precursor to the Bronze Age (see Chapter 5). Archaeologist Julian Thomas described these actions of digging into and mounding up dirt as a new “set of relations of reciprocity with the earth itself” with new methods for transforming earthy materials.5 Figure 2.3 Reconstructed Neolithic house interior in Put another way: Neolithic societies were “soil- Albersdorf, Germany. Note the use of clay or earth for parts of the wall, the hearth/oven, and pottery. based societies” because soil (broadly speaking) is a common denominator in all the major 2.2.2 New Engagements with Soil and Clay changes of this new way of life. Soil was necessary to grow the crops, pasture the Although the shift from mobile to settled village animals, erect more durable structures, and life varied tremendously where it occurred make pottery. across the world, there were certain commonalities to the experience. According to archaeologist Nicole Boivin, a veritable “Soil Revolution” occurred that has One of them was an increase in practices that gone unrecognized because we tend to think of opened up the earth’s surface. Excavations soil as the unchanging humble stuff beneath were necessary for new forms of architecture our feet. On the contrary, soils underwent and land modification. These included holes for dramatic modifications as they were drawn into house posts, pits for storage or garbage, graves Neolithic and later technologies (Figure 2.5).6 for the dead, ponds for livestock, and ditches for drainage, irrigation, or for ritual spaces, such 3 archaeologist Mirjana Stevanović to insert an “Age of Clay” between the Stone and Bronze Ages.7 2.2.3 Properties of Clay Why was clay so important? A major reason, besides its abundance and ease of acquisition, is that clay exhibits the property of plasticity or malleability (see Chapter 10 on the etymology of “plastic”). Clays are fine grained sediments Figure 2.5 Human activities and related actions of animals and plants began to greatly modify soils beginning in the that, mixed with the right amount of water, can 8 Neolithic period. be formed into a variety of shapes (see box ). Clay was critical to the development of many The dominant earthy material for Neolithic peoples was clay. It was used to make all or What is Clay? parts of houses, pottery, figurines, cooking balls, fishnet weights, jewelry, gaming pieces, Clay is technically defined as the finest and many other artifacts (Figure 2.6). In their sediments, with grain diameters of less than everyday lives people were enclosed in clay, 1/256th of a millimeter. The high surface area manipulated clay, ate from clay, wore clay, and of these plate-like grains makes true clay sticky experienced its different forms in close, and plastic. However, archaeologists use a less personal contexts. In addition, clay objects specific characterization that refers to clay’s lasted longer than those made of organic plasticity, treating clay as any fine-grained materials, and their longevity gave people a sediments capable of being molded to an new sense of their own enduring histories.