Making a Mark: Image and Process in Neolithic Britain and Ireland

By Andrew Meirion Jones and Marta Díaz-Guardamino

The visual imagery of Neolithic Britain and Ireland is spectacular. While the imagery of passage tombs, such as Knowth and Newgrange, are well known the rich imagery on decorated portable artefacts is less well understood. How does the visual imagery found on decorated portable artefacts compare with other Neolithic imagery, such as passage tomb art and rock art? How do decorated portable artefacts relate chronologically to other examples of Neolithic imagery?



Using cutting edge digital imaging techniques, the Making a Mark project examined Neolithic decorated portable artefacts of chalk, stone, bone, antler, and wood from three key regions: southern England and East Anglia; the Irish Sea region (Wales, the Isle of Man and eastern Ireland); and Northeast Scotland and Orkney. Digital analysis revealed, for the first time, the prevalence of practices of erasure and reworking amongst a host of decorated portable artefacts, changing our understanding of these enigmatic artefacts. Rather than mark making being a peripheral activity, we can now appreciate the central importance of mark making to the formation of Neolithic communities across Britain and Ireland.



The volume visually documents and discusses the contexts of the decorated portable artefacts from each region, discusses the significance and chronology of practices of erasure and reworking, and compares these practices with those found in other Neolithic contexts, such as passage tomb art, rock art and pottery decoration. A contribution from Antonia Thomas also discusses the settlement art and mortuary art of Orkney, while Ian Dawson and Louisa Minkin contribute with a discussion of the collaborative fine art practices established during the project.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Release date: Mar 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9781789251890

Andrew Meirion Jones

Andrew Meirion Jones is Professor of Archaeology, University of Southampton, UK. He has taught and written extensively on the archaeology of art, particularly rock art. His most recent book is The Archaeology of Art. Materials, Practices, Affects (2018) written with Andrew Cochrane.

Book preview

Preface

It seemed like a good idea at the time. I had completed a monograph on the rock art of Kilmartin a few years before and was curious to know how the motifs found on open-air rock art panels related to the decorated portable artefacts of Britain and Ireland. Thus, the Making a Mark project was born back in 2013. Funded by the Leverhulme Trust in 2014 (RPG-2014–193), little did I know that some five years later I would finally complete the project after having visited almost all the major museums in Britain and Ireland, along with a host of smaller institutions. It has been an amazing project, which has sparked fantastic collaborations, and allowed an excited group of researchers to record and examine some of the most intriguing artefacts in prehistoric Europe.

A variety of different researchers inspired this project. I was initially inspired by the chutzpah of Chris Gosden and Duncan Garrow’s Rethinking Celtic Art project (Garrow et al. 2008); simply re-analysing an understudied body of material from across the British Isles seemed to have borne so much fruit. Would it be possible to do the same kind of thing for the Neolithic? But how should it be analysed? Another important inspiration was Annelou van Gijn’s Flint in Focus (van Gijn 2010), which seemed to offer an exemplar of artefact analysis. Van Gijn’s work used microscopy to examine artefact biographies, I was inspired in a slightly different direction by attending a departmental seminar organised by a colleague, Graeme Earl. The seminar demonstrated the application of new digital imaging techniques, such as RTI. Could these imaging techniques be utilised to examine practices of making in Neolithic art?

One inspiration above all has dominated this project. That artefact studies are such an intellectually exciting area at present seems to me to be the result of the work on fragmentation in Balkan prehistory discussed by John Chapman and Bisserka Gaydarska (e.g. Chapman 2000; Chapman and Gaydarska 2007). Although this book does not focus on fragmentation it does look at other kinds of material practices, such as erasure and reworking. The very idea that artefacts are worthy of study owes much to Chapman and Gaydarska’s pioneering work. For that reason, this book is dedicated to them.

Andrew Meirion Jones

Introduction

CHAPTER 1

The arts of Neolithic Britain and Ireland?

Andrew Meirion Jones

What do we think about when we think about prehistoric art? Immediately the celebrated Palaeolithic Cave art of Lascaux and Altamira springs to mind. The intricately wrought La Tene metalwork of ‘Celtic’ Europe. The rock art of southern Scandinavia. The rock art of Alpine Italy. The rock art of Levantine Spain. Even the hunters rock art of northern Scandinavia and Russia. We tend not to think about the arts of Neolithic Britain and Ireland.

In accounts of evolutionary development, the art of the Neolithic tends to be overlooked. While the art of hunter-gatherers is well known, accounts that focus on the economic changes that herald the Neolithic tend to overlook artistic expression. This is a mistake, as we know that throughout Old World prehistory the Neolithic is a period of tremendous artistic expression (Robb 2015). From the decorated skulls of the Natufian at the very beginnings of the Neolithic, to the spectacular wall paintings of Çatalhöyük, the clay figurines of a host of southeastern European cultures, and the brightly coloured and superbly decorated pots of the Cucuteni-Trypillia cultures of Romania and Ukraine.

Why does art play such a major role in discussions of cognitive transformations during the Palaeolithic, while it plays a minor (or no) role in discussions of the social transformations heralded by agriculture during the Neolithic? Why should artistic expression occur with the development of agriculture? Are the two processes related? These are questions that are rarely ever posed (but see Bailey 2000; 2005; Cauvin 2000; Hodder 2010). One of the aims of this study is to pose these questions in relation to Neolithic Britain and Ireland.

Decorated skulls, wall paintings, figurines, superbly decorated pottery. These characterise Neolithic cultures in Israel, Turkey and Eastern Europe. But what of the arts of Neolithic cultures on the Atlantic fringe of Europe? If we do consider art for the Neolithic of Western Europe we tend to think about the decorated passage tombs of Iberia, France and Ireland. In Britain and Ireland, along with this passage tomb art, we also find a number of specialised decorated artefacts, carved with similar motifs, in materials such as stone, antler and chalk. This study will focus on these decorated artefacts, and compare them with passage tomb art and rock art.

The book will examine the carved stone balls of northeast Scotland; the variety of decorated artefacts associated with the settlements and passage graves of Neolithic Orkney; the variety of decorated artefacts associated with the passage tombs of Eastern Ireland; the decorated plaques of the Neolithic of the Isle of Man; the mace heads of the Thames valley; and the decorated and carved chalk artefacts of the chalklands of Wessex. It will also examine other important artefacts or groups of artefacts, such as the Graig Lwyd plaque, the Garboldisham mace head and the Folkton Drums. The aim of the book is to provide an historical context, and a re-analysis, of a poorly understood group of Neolithic material culture.

FIGURE 1.1 The Westray Wifie in shortbread form.

(IMAGE: JOSHUA SACKETT)

While these artefacts have seen less discussion in the archaeological literature, they are subjects of fascination to the public. For example, the carved stone balls of northeast Scotland are both a regional and national source of pride – replica carved stone balls are produced as public sculpture in Edinburgh and a number of northeastern towns – and a source of puzzlement and intrigue; a number of websites are dedicated to theories concerning their use and interpretation, and they have been discussed by groups as diverse as contemporary artists and mathematicians (Pattison 2012; Critchlow 2007; Lawlor 2002). In the same way, the carved chalk artefacts known as the Folkton Drums are the subject of on-line discussion, while the decorated figurine excavated from the Neolithic settlement at the Links of Noltland, Westray, Orkney – and popularly known as the ‘Westray Wifie’ – has been reproduced as a plastic key ring, a fridge magnet, and as a shortbread biscuit (Fig. 1.1), and has the pride of place in her own dedicated museum on the island of Westray. The decorated chalk plaques from ‘chalk plaque pit’, Amesbury, are meanwhile proudly displayed in the new Stonehenge visitor’s centre, as is a (replica) of the decorated Knowth mace head in the Newgrange visitor centre, while the original itself resides in the National Museum of Ireland.

Symbols of power

The decorated artefacts of Neolithic Britain and Ireland are a source of fascination to the public. How have archaeologists discussed them? After a major exhibition in the mid-1980s at the then National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland, Symbols of Power at the time of Stonehenge, dedicated to the artefacts of Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Britain and Ireland (Clarke et al. 1985), these decorated artefacts tend to be described as ‘symbols of power’. So powerful and evocative is this description that three decades later the Neolithic panel of the Scottish Archaeological Research Framework (see Sheridan and Brophy 2012) still use this term to characterise carved stone balls and mace heads.

What is implied by the term ‘symbols of power’? The curators of the exhibition (Clarke et al. 1985, 1–13) drew analogies between contemporary symbols of affiliation and status, such as the uniforms of police and army officers, judges, Lord provosts and mayors, objects used in official state roles – such as maces and rods – and the specialised artefacts of Neolithic Britain and Ireland. The unusual and highly decorated character of these artefacts are read as high-status symbols of an imagined elite. This view is most clearly expressed in Sheridan and Brophy’s discussion of certain specialised artefacts – mace heads and carved stone balls – from Neolithic Scotland. In the case of mace heads, they are assumed to be ‘weapons of social exclusion, owned only by the elite, to judge from the care and time expended in their manufacture’, while carved stone balls ‘make sense when seen as one of a suite of fancy weapons used as symbols of power, operating in a society where competitive elite display was an important aspect of the vocabulary of esteem’ (Sheridan and Brophy 2012).

These arguments have a sense of inevitability and circularity about them. Archaeologists are faced with finely worked or decorated artefacts whose use is difficult to interpret. They therefore posit that these artefacts are status symbols (they are finely worked, after all), and that they are deployed in elite displays. Elite displays must therefore occur in ranked societies. Ranked societies require elite displays and status symbols, therefore these finely worked and decorated objects must be symbols of power. This is an insufficient argument, as it is based purely on assumptions about the superficial physical appearance of these finely made and decorated artefacts.

We need to unpack the notion of ‘symbols of power’ to understand the origins of these arguments. To begin we return to the early days of Processual archaeology. During this period, there was a new interest in explaining evolutionary changes in prehistoric societies, particularly through the characterisation of types of society, assumed to evolve from smaller to larger as bands, tribes, chiefdoms and states. In a British context Colin Renfrew’s pioneering work examining the evolution of monumentality in Wessex and Orkney (Renfrew 1973; 1979) is characteristic of this type of approach.

A further aspect of this characterisation of types of prehistoric society is the analysis of trade and exchange (e.g. Earle and Ericson 1977; Flannery 1972; Renfrew 1977); specific modes of exchange or trade were argued to be associated with particular ‘types’ of society. It was hoped that the characterisation of distinctive patterns of exchange in the archaeological record would reveal important evidence about prehistoric social formations. Exchange was closely linked then to elite display and ranking (Renfrew and Shennan 1982), and the medium of interaction and development of relations between polities of equals, or peers (Renfrew and Cherry 1986).

Richard Bradley and Bob Chapman developed these ideas in the context of Britain, Ireland and Atlantic Europe for the Neolithic (Bradley 1982; 1984; Bradley and Chapman 1986). For the Later Neolithic, Bradley examined a series of ‘core’ regions in Britain and Ireland, including Wessex, the Upper Thames, the Fen Edge, the Peak District, Yorkshire Wolds, East Scotland, Orkney and the Boyne Valley. For each area, he tabulates the presence or absence of certain monuments, such as cursus monuments and passage graves, the appearance of complex single burials, and the presence of Grooved Ware pottery and the complex artefacts that are the subject of this study. The theoretical underpinning of Bradley’s analyses of regional developments is provided by the notion of prestige goods economies (Bradley 1984, 46–67). It is instructive to quote his description of these economies: ‘A prestige goods economy is not simply concerned with making and distributing status symbols. Although certain objects may bestow prestige through their rarity or their fine workmanship, they must not be freely accessible’ (Bradley 1984, 46). This is remarkably similar to notions of specialised artefacts acting as components – in the words of Sheridan and Brophy – of a ‘vocabulary of esteem’. Bradley’s development of prestige goods models is therefore one strand of the argument for finely worked and decorated artefacts in Neolithic Britain and Ireland acting as ‘symbols of power’.

Alongside the developing interest in the evolution of prehistoric societies and the mechanisms of trade and exchange we also saw another interest emerging: the archaeology of power. This was a response to the development of Structural-Marxism in anthropology (Sahlins 1976). Structural-Marxism arises from Marshall Sahlins’ reading of the early Marx. He argues for a reconciliation between Marxism and structuralism, and for the notion that concepts of exchange and property rights – components of the mode of production – are only possible within certain social formations (Sahlins 1976, 133). This approach offers a powerful method of linking economic analysis with the analysis of social systems. It was an approach that had an important impact in archaeology, as it became possible to reconstruct social systems from the tangible remains of prehistoric economies and trade.

In an archaeological context, Structural-Marxists were interested in analysing the ways in which economic conditions related to the formation of prehistoric societies, especially through the analysis of trade, exchange and power (Miller and Tilley 1984). Some of the most successful of these approaches provided nuanced accounts of the relationship between trade and kinship in the southern German Iron Age (Frankenstein and Rowlands 1978) and Bronze Age Europe as a whole (Rowlands 1980). These led to a wider debate (see Gosden 1985) about the character of prehistoric trade and exchange, which ultimately led to the development of Centre and Periphery Models and World Systems approaches (see Rowlands, Larsen and Kristiansen 1987; Kristiansen 1998; Kristiansen and Larsen 2005). It is these debates in Structural-Marxism, and particularly their emphasis on ‘power, prestige and status’ that influenced the Symbols of Power exhibition and its accompanying volume (Clarke et al. 1985, 3).

From ‘prestige goods’ to material culture studies

The Symbols of Power exhibition took place at a particularly exciting time in the history of archaeological thought: a period of change. It was a period when one paradigm – the New or Processual Archaeology of the 1960s and 1970s – was engaging with fresh debates in anthropology and other humanities disciplines and becoming transformed as a result; the debates linking economic conditions to social systems or social structures ultimately led to the emergence of a Post-Processual paradigm during the 1980s and 1990s. One of the key outcomes of these debates was an emerging interest in material culture. Shifting away from merely examining the trade and exchange of goods as clues to particular social formations, to examining how material culture was socially deployed, is one of the decisive shifts in Post-Processual archaeology (Hodder 1982a; Hodder 1982b). Since the mid-1990s the field of material culture studies has blossomed (e.g. Hicks and Beaudry 2010; Miller and Tilley 1996; Miller 2005; Ingold 2007; 2013; Olsen 2010; Tilley et al. 2006).

This shift in thinking is particularly important. How have approaches to artefacts and material culture changed? Economic approaches in anthropology and archaeology drew distinctions between ‘gifts’ and ‘commodities’. Gift economies are those in which objects are circulated in order to form lasting relationships between exchange partners. By contrast commodities are those goods or objects whose circulation creates no obligation or relationship between exchange partners (Gregory 1980; Weiner 1992; Bradley and Edmonds 1993, 12–13). One of the problems with these approaches is that gifts and commodities are effectively treated as social ciphers; objects exchanged merely ‘stand in’ for types of social relationship, or social formations. However, since the emergence of material culture studies more subtle approaches to artefacts have developed.

There have been discussions of the technical production of things (Pfaffenburger 1988; Dobres 2000; Conneller 2011), their assemblage (Chapman 2000; Pauketat 2013; Zedeño 2008) and their fragmentation (Chapman 2000), subtle accounts of the way in which things and people interact (Latour 1987; Miller 2005; Olsen 2003; 2010), examinations of the role artefacts play in remembrance (Bradley 2002; Jones 2007; Mills and Walker 2008; Van Dyke and Alcock 2003) and discussion of the material qualities of artefacts, from their colour (Jones and MacGregor 2002), their durability and ephemerality (Schiffer 1976; Olivier 2001; Jones 2007), their dimensionality (Bailey 2005; Knappett et al. 2010), and their sensual and aesthetic dimensions (Gosden 2001; Hamilakis 2013; Skeates 2010). Indeed, the early characterisation of material culture as symbols (see Hodder 1982a; Robb 1999) has begun to be questioned or re-examined (Olsen 2003; Ingold 2007; Conneller 2011; Alberti et al. 2013). Archaeologists are increasingly shifting away from describing artefacts as symbols, or as ciphers that stand in for social relationships, and are beginning to appreciate the subtle ways in which vibrant and generative materials are entangled with human lives (Conneller 2011; Hodder 2012; Jones 2012; Alberti et al. 2013). This is an approach that will be developed throughout this study.

Chiefdoms and other archaeological delusions

The analysis of exchange and trade stemmed from a desire to categorise and understand prehistoric societies, based on preconceived schemes of evolutionary development. Tim Pauketat (2007) has provided a robust critique of these kinds of approaches to the archaeological record. He cautions against avoiding the ‘sophisticated delusions’ of sociocultural anthropologists. Anthropological abstractions – such as typologies of social evolutionary development – are objectified and projected onto the archaeological evidence. Throughout the late 20th and early 21st centuries archaeologists have continued to apply ‘top-down’ theories derived from anthropology. The trend began with the application of social evolutionary schemes in the 1960s and 1970s, followed by structural-Marxist approaches, but continued throughout the 1990s and 2000s, with structuralist accounts (Hodder 1990; Thomas 1990; Tilley 1991; Richards 1993; Parker-Pearson 2012) and more recently the vogue for identifying ‘house-societies’ in the prehistoric past (Joyce and Gillespie 2000; Boric 2008; Richards 2013; Richards and Jones 2016; Thomas 2013).

Pauketat (2007, 57–60) argues that when we closely examine the classic case studies on which models of chiefdoms are based we observe a variety of processes underway. They are ‘not evolutionary ones that occur in certain types of societies. They are historical. They are part and parcel of the human condition, and they are contingent on the agency inherent to the social fields of specific times and landscapes’ (Pauketat 2007, 60). In arguing against the top down imposition of an idea derived from social or cultural anthropology, Pauketat is arguing instead for an appreciation of the complexity and contingency of the archaeological record; this is an approach that is fully endorsed in this study (see also Jones 2012).

Rather than imposing concepts on the archaeological record from the ‘top down’, it is vital that we adopt an approach that confronts the complexities of the archaeological record, and builds an understanding from the ‘bottom up’. John Robb (2013) has taken precisely this kind of approach in his analysis of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Europe, examining the way in which materials interrelate with people, and how these processes of interaction emerge and are causally linked to the transition to the Neolithic. Albeit, Robb is adopting a new theoretical concept – Actor Network Theory – derived from outside archaeology, but this concept is not imposed ‘top down’ on the archaeological record. Instead Actor Network Theory – derived from the work of science studies scholars like Bruno Latour and Michel Callon – is explicitly intended to examine the complexity of societies from the ‘bottom up’ rather than impose rigid categories (e.g. Latour 1993). Robb’s approach successfully attends to the complexities of the archaeological record as it examines the way in which people and things are closely entangled in different contexts and situations (see also Hodder 2012).

The approaches taken by Robb (2013) and Hodder (2012) are useful as they pay detailed attention to the messiness, complexity and contingency of the archaeological record. They are particularly useful for the analysis of the entanglements and interactions between humans and things. While this book is not concerned with the interactions taking place at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition, the project does focus on the interaction between people and things throughout the British and Irish Neolithic. While not wholeheartedly endorsing an Actor Network Theory approach (see Jones et al. 2013, 23), a modified version will be developed in this study.

About the project

This introduction has examined the background to the description of the decorated artefacts of Neolithic Britain and Ireland as ‘symbols of power’. By now it should be obvious that the notion of ‘symbols of power’ is a ‘sophisticated delusion’ based on an abstract, and imposed model of ranked society and on the perceived high status of well-made artefacts. The continued use of the term is probably a reflection of the fact that few people have critically re-assessed this group of Neolithic artefacts since the Symbols of Power exhibition of 1985. This is something that this study aims to address.

Archaeologists are familiar with the term ‘ritual’ being deployed in an ad hoc fashion; often as a descriptive term for things that they do not fully understand. Likewise, when we reflect on the term ‘symbols of power’ it becomes obvious this is also a sophisticated way of shrugging the shoulders in exasperation. The term does not really explain the variety of different decorated artefacts, nor does it explain the motifs carved on them. It overlooks precisely how the artefacts were used as ‘symbols of power’, the extent to which they were circulated, and how they were treated at the end of their use-lives. Were decorated artefacts manufactured using different techniques and materials than other contemporary artefacts? Were they used or circulated for longer or shorter periods of time than other artefacts? Is there evidence for their use as exchange valuables, or ‘prestige goods’? What is the empirical evidence for ranked societies in Neolithic Britain and Ireland? How do the motifs carved on these artefacts relate to contemporary motifs on passage tombs and rock art? Each of these questions will be addressed in this study.

Three major regions will be examined (Fig. 1.2):

•The south of England, from the south coast north to the Thames valley, from Cornwall in the west to East Anglia in the east. This is a region dominated by artefacts of chalk, but also includes decorated artefacts of antler, wood and stone.

•Wales, Isle of Man and Eastern Ireland. This is a region associated with passage tombs and passage tomb art, and the decorated artefacts associated with these sites. It also includes regions, such as the Isle of Man, associated with an unusual group of decorated stone plaques.

•Northeast Scotland and Orkney. In terms of the numbers of artefacts, this is probably the ‘richest’ region in the study. Northeast Scotland has a concentration of the enigmatic artefacts known as carved stone balls, while the settlements of Neolithic Orkney have a variety of decorated artefacts, including carved stone balls and other carved stone objects, mace heads, Skaill knives, and the unique stone figurine from the Links of Noltland, Westray.

•The study will also include an analysis of important artefacts not covered by the three regions, such as the Folkton Drums, Yorkshire.

FIGURE 1.2 Map of regions studied in this project (after Bradley 1997). Rock art regions are noted in text, major passage tomb regions are hatched and the three regions that form the focus of the project are shaded.

(IMAGE: HANNAH SACKETT)

With the possible exception of Derbyshire, these regions cover the ‘core’ regions previously discussed in Bradley’s (1984) prestige goods model. As in Bradley’s earlier analysis the study aims to assess the possible interconnections between each of these regions.

As well as being enigmatic and difficult to interpret many of the artefacts examined in this study are poorly contextualised. Therefore, a key aim of the project is to provide an historical context for these artefacts, by examining their interrelationships, their association with other better understood material culture such as Impressed/Peterborough Ware and Grooved Ware pottery and with well dated sites such as pits, flint mines, settlements and passage tombs.

The study will not provide an exhaustive catalogue of every decorated Neolithic artefact from Britain and Ireland. Rather the aim is to provide a new analysis and interpretation of these artefacts as a whole. Apart from the important collection of artefacts held by Martin Green at Down Farm, Dorset, this analysis wholly focuses on the analysis of artefacts from public collections in Britain and Ireland, and includes artefacts from most of the major museums, including the British Museum, and National Museums of Scotland, Ireland and Wales, as well as the Manx Museum. In addition, the collections from a host of smaller museum collections were analysed; a full list of these museums, and the catalogue of analysed objects in their collections, is in the Appendix to this volume.

The book does not cover artefacts from the Copper Age or Early Bronze Age. A series of recent projects have analysed this material in detail (Hunter and Woodward 2011; Hunter and Woodward 2015), while other projects have examined beaker’s and their associated materials (Jay et al. 2012). A decision was made at the outset that re-analysing this material was needless; it would be more fruitful to focus on the overlooked material from the Neolithic.

In keeping with the discussion above the study aims to provide a new ‘bottom up’ empirical analysis of these artefacts; this body of material will be re-assessed by recording it using digital microscopy and the digital imaging technique known as Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) and digital photogrammetry. The study is also collaborative and involves colleagues Ian Dawson, Winchester School of Art, and Louisa Minkin, University of the Arts London (Central St Martins), who have participated in experimental workshops examining the techniques and materials used in making these decorated artefacts and accompanied us for the majority of museum visits that took place during this project.

The study does not aim to impose preconceived theoretical constructs on the decorated artefacts of Neolithic Britain and Ireland. Instead – through detailed empirical analysis of these artefacts – the study aims to follow the paths that their materials lead us down, towards new theoretical descriptions of this remarkable body of artefacts.

Female Malanggan figure from Bismarck Peninsula, New Ireland.

Copyright: Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge

CHAPTER 2

Imagery and process

Andrew Meirion Jones and Marta Díaz-Guardamino

To study both people and things is to study the lines they are made of.

(Ingold 2007, 5)

In the introductory chapter the decorated artefacts that form the basis for this study were loosely described as Neolithic art. Art is a problematic concept, particularly in a prehistoric context, and we use the term as a label of convenience. We are not interested here in defining whether the portable objects that are the focus of this study were examples of ‘Neolithic art’; that kind of project would be ultimately fruitless and tell us very little about the Neolithic communities we seek to understand (see Jones and Cochrane 2018 for a development of this