Neolithic ritual centres?

An interesting dental analysis has recently discovered that the people living in the 'houses' at Çatalhöyük in Turkey were not  closley related - whatever the buildings there represent, they do not seem to comprise a settlement as we would (normally) understand it. We would have expected to find people living together in extended kinship groups, but it seems Çatalhöyük was a little different.

Marin Pilloud of the Central Identification Laboratory in Hickam, Hawaii and Clark Larsen of Ohio State University in Columbus did a detailed analysis of the teeth from the skeletons at Çatalhöyük and made the remarkable discovery. Follow the story here.

How can we explain this? Well, people were grinding grains, making bread and cooking on hearths in these structures, but the news that they were not living in family groups might suggest the site represents a religious site rather than a conventional settlement. If the site represents a religious complex we might anticipate the people there were responsible for organising the activities associated with the religion/cult, and they would need a support network to maintain them as they presided over their religious duties.

We see this kind of nucleated religious site almost everywhere - consider the Maltese Temple complexes, or the later Egyptian or Greek equivalents such as those at Luxor and Delphi. These places became the focus of pilgrimage for ordinary people. Perhaps this is what we are seeing at Çatalhöyük in Turkey? 

stone chisels and other miscellanea

Whilst archaeologists generally strive to be precise when it comes to describing artefacts there is a lack of clarity concerning those woodworking tools (or implements) which were probably not tree-felling axes. We have successfully dropped the antiquated term 'celt' in favour of more precise terminology, but why we persist in describing objects as axes which are clearly not equivalent (either morphologically or in terms of their utilitarian performance characteristics) is quite beyond me.

One could argue that the exisiting term 'axe' refers to all stone cutting implements, but realistically the  scope is so broad the term becomes meaningless, at least if we are to continue to debate the role(s) that these tools played in society. The difference between a utilitarian tool and a ceremonial object (one not designed to be used in the same way as a utilitarian counterpart) is sufficiently great that we really ought to be sure we are all on the same page whe it comes to nomenclature.

It is abundantly clear that the things we describe as Neolithic ground stone tools reflect a wide range of woodworking tools as well as tree-felling axes and other implements. As a typology can be used as a shorthand for researchers, we should strive to be more precise because otherwise we run the risk of conflating data sets into an arbitrary set of figures which are not very helpful to others.  Determining the design performance characteristics of the specimens we study is difficult enough without adding to the confusion (Chapple struggled with precisely this issue, 1987).

A chisel is morphologically entirely different to an axe. Both have blades, and both might be made of stone. But in use as tools the comparison ends. We might as well lump razor blades with a butchers cleaver - they are after all the same material and both are used for cutting.

There is some reluctance to pursue taxonomic issues within stone tools any further because of the extreme complexity we engage with (see Pitts 1996). However, complex artefact morphologies should not deter us from adopting an appropriate nomenclature when it can be demonstrated that we are indeed discussing different types of things. Chisels, are chisels. Axes, are axes. W.J. Knowles knew this in 1893. There is a beautiful specimen of a flint chisel at the Hunt Museum, Limerick, Ireland. The Hunt Museum, Limerick, Ireland (scroll down).

Conquering farmers or adaptive hunter-gatherers?

There have been a number of recent studies into the peopling of Europe. The debates which are revolving around the R-M269 genes first suggested that north-west temperate Europe was peopled by conquering farmers out of the east who displaced the indigenous hunter-gatherers. 

Now a team of researchers from Oxford and Edinburgh who have used a much larger data-set have determined that this earlier conclusion was flawed - and that in fact the modern population of Britain (and northern Europe) is comprised largely (over 75%) of people descended from the post-Holocene hunter-gatherers - we were not displaced, conquered or otherwise ousted by farmers at all - we simply adapted to new ideas and technologies which spread more or less quickly depending upon existing subsistence regimes, geographies and social networks.

All of this is very important for prehistorians and the study of the Neolithic. We have seen the same argument wax-and-wane previously in Neolithic studies. At one time the distinctive Beaker pottery supposedly marked the presence of invading farmers who brought bronze technology with them. Now we understand that indigenous populations were adapting new ceramic styles in local materials and developing their own distinctive patterns. Metallurgy seems to have developed along its own insular styles once people became aware of the relevant technology. The genetic data seems to suggest that Mesolithic aboriginals were capable of adaptive strategies too. Bacon, sausage and egg butty on wholemeal bread anyone?

G. B. J. Busby et al The peopling of Europe and the cautionary tale of Y chromosome lineage R-M269. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2011

carved stone balls

Whatever they were used for, carved stone balls represent some of the most fascinating objects you can see in a museum. They are predominantly a Scottish phenomenon, with a mere handful of specimens from northern Britain (Cumbria and Northumbria). There are distinct epi-centres in Orkney, Aberdeenshire and Scotland north of the Firth of Forth. The best place to see them is the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh which has a brilliant collection on display at Chambers Street.

However it  is not the distribution of these enigmatic objects which I spend a lot of my time thinking about, but the means of their manufacture and procurement (selection) of the raw materials from which they were made. Very clearly the raw materials were selected from a wide range of rock types which most closely approximates to that we might encounter on a pebble beach. That hypothesis ties-in very neatly with what we know about the production of the mace-heads with which they are contemporary.

The problem with any water-worn cobble is that they have been battered by the elements and may have internal flaws which are not visible to the naked eye but which never-the-less would signal catastrophic failure at some point if one attempted to convert them to a sphere. Using quarried material obviates this problem, but introduces another stage (quarrying) into their technical scheme. 

With a good rock specimen free from flaws and inclusions, the work to produce the sphere upon which the finished object is relatively straight-forward in terms of technique (pecking), but rather more complex in terms of finishing. I devised a method of making carved stone balls when I first began making them for my undergraduate dissertation, and that method is so successful I have not discovered a more economical alternative. But making a stone sphere without metal tools is not a simple process, requires a degree of skill and a modicum of intelligence. The decorations on the surface of the original specimens are an altogether different kettle-of-fish. Those sometimes extremely complicated designs far exceed the level of craft skill we generally observe across the range of Neolithic stone tools and can properly be described as elaborate.

The elaborate ground stone implements of Neolithic Britain and Ireland are amazing objects. It occurs to me today, as I sit with one such specimen on my desk, that only the most skillful artisans were capable of making the most elaborate specimens, and the important observation we might derive is that clearly - whatever the bulk of them were for, certain specimens were probably commissioned as particularly elaborate specimens for a reason, as opposed to being made on a whim.

Neolithic French didn't like cheese

An interesting study has established that the Neolithic French didn't like cheese! That's not a joke, but the findings of a scientific report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Lacan et al 2011 published their DNA analyses which shows the Neolithic French couldn't stomache cheese. Interestingly, many of the rest of us in northern temperate Europe could, and did. The DNA analysis is very detailed. Whilst the rest of us appreciated a good cheese, the French were turning their noses up at it.

I have long wondered why there were so many excellent varieties of English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh cheese whilst the French depend upon their (bland by comparison) bree, and a bleu cheese that doesn't come anywhere near a good Stilton, Irish Cashel or Danish Blue. Perhaps this explains it - we were making it longer (the climate helps, let's be fair!).

Nouveau Neolithic

Food is sublimely unifying. People sit with their family, friends and neighbours to eat, drink and chat, informally and formally depending upon the occasion. What interests me about food is how it might have looked and tasted in Later Prehistory. 

Having worked my way through many so-called 'prehistoric recipes' I decided that the people who constructed elaborate places such as Maes Howe or Newgrange would simply not put up with it. Bad, unimaginative food that is. Everything does not need to be a stew, hog-roast (feasting! arg!) or cooked in a hole in the ground (great in Rarotonga, not-so-great in Britain!). Once we accept that Neolithic life was far more sophisticated than depicted in the antiquated corners of the public conscious (as opposed to at the forefront of archaeological research), the obvious conclusion is that people will have cooked and eaten good food.

In Wales we have some very traditional breads and cakes which were originally cooked on heated stones. Some old Welsh houses still have their cooking stones and these dainty cakes might be a Neolithic invention: flour, salt, dried fruits, butter, butter-milk - yum! Welsh cakes rock!

Neolithic jade axes in Britain and Ireland

There are some remarkable jade (or jadeite/jadeitite/nephrite) axes in Britian and Ireland. They hail from the European Alps. Although not all of them are very much to look at, other specimens are generally considered to represent some of the most beautiful axes, partly because of their colour, and partly because of their gracile form. The axe here, from the Erris Peninsula in Ireland is a superb example.

Given their fine workmanship, they are considered to be status symbols - tools never intended to be used. Yet some of them are clearly reworked specimens, and according to Petrequin they actually work extremely well as wood-cutting axes. The fact that ground stone axes were renovated and could be repolished means it is impossible to state categorially they were not used. A valuable tool might be kept in pristine condition by a proud owner, and if they represent the finest material available at the time (and therefore a very valuable commodity), is it not more likely that they might indeed be carefully tended?

I was gifted a large piece of jade from a supplier and hope to make a jade axe this next year. Despite my most vigorous attempts to quarter it, the jade blank remains entirely resilient and cutting/grinding is going to be the only way to shape it I suspect. None of the other materials, robust as some of them have been, has been quite so intractable!

Neolithic ground stone tools: Neolithic hands and eyes

As a mountaineer I have for a very long time been intimately concerned with the physical properties of the rocks upon which I climb. The grain-size, friability and susceptibility of catastrophic failure of rock is extremely important when climbing in remote mountainous regions where help in the event of tragedy is not likely to be quickly available.

The hands and eyes are the means by which mountaineers gauge the properties of the rock which they are traversing. I believe that Neolithic people who made ground stone tools had a similar first-person relationship with the rock they used.

Consider the properties of two common materials - Porcellanite from Ireland, and volcanic tuff from the Lake District. Both rocks are fine-grained, homogenous, robust yet workable. At the same time they are both very distinctive to the trained eye.

There were clearly other attributes which attracted people to particular pieces of stone. The axe-shaped ochre-grinder illustrated here is a spectacular example of a Neolithic stone tool. It was made from a water-worn cobble and bears some resemblance to a stone axe. It was however, a specific tool used for the grinding of ochre (hence the colour). The presence of quartz veins in the specimen hint at the makers understanding that this was never going to be an axe.

What does it all mean?

The 'rock-art' of the British Isles and Ireland during the Neolithic has historically been subject of many studies which are a little like gazeteers - lists of sites (with accompanying photographs and black-and-white illustrations). These represent lifetimes spent by individual researchers (such as Stan Beckensall) whose passion for the phenomenon has driven them to obtain as much information as possible as they attempt to understand 'what it all means'.

We describe these rock carvings as 'rock-art' but the reality is they are carvings - describing them as 'art' makes a number of presumptions based on a post-modern art-history perspective which may not be appropriate given their antiquity.

For Britain and Ireland, there is an important question concerning their form. Why no figurative art? The rock-carvings of Britian and Ireland are composed entirely of abstract motifs. There is a mere handful of questionable specimens (such as the deer from Glen Domhain) which are almost certainly recently created and therefore not part of the corpus.

The big question I am thinking about today is, how is it that motifs we have here in Britain and Ireland are found replicated almost exactly in the Iberian peninsula (for example). It seems entirely implausible that such a complex abstract motif could serendipitously self propagate at two distant locations in the Neolithic unless their meaning was widely understood. In other words, people in Portugal and Spain knew exactly what People in Britain and Ireland knew - the real meaning behind these fantastic carvings.

Göbekli Tepe excavations to continue

The stone temple site at Göbekli Tepe in Turkey is being excavated for another season by a German team of archaeologists led by Professor Schmidt of the German Archaeological Institute Abteilung Istanbul.

Göbekli Tepe is perhaps the World's oldest Neolithic megalithic structure and the excavations there will help us better understand how a pre-metal society constructed the amazing carved stones.

The early megalithic component appears to have been constructed in the pre-pottery Neolithic and is tentatvely dated to c. 12,000 - 9,000 BP (10,000-7000 BC). These dates are remarkable because this pre-dates any other monumental use of dressed and carved stone. There have been questions raised about the dating purely because the zoomorphic figures which are carved onto the standing stones are considered by some to be outside the technological horizon available at the time.

My research into Neolithic ground stone tools supports Professor Schmidt's hypothesis. I have demonstrated that very complex stone artefacts such as The Towie ball (Scotland), Knowth macehead (Ireland) or the Maesmore macehead (Wales), can indeed be produced without metal tools using the extant technology. The axe-carvings at Stonehenge can similarly be produced using just stone tools.
 
It seems likely to me that the tools used to create the carvings at Göbekli Tepe have not been recognised because there is little or nothing published on the production techniques and tools. My PhD thesis examines the range of technologies available and in use during the Neolithic based on archaeological evidence and experimental archaeology. In light of my research it seems entirely plausible that the carvings at Göbekli Tepe could be created using this techology. The same technology was used at Stonehenge, the fortuitous circumstances of discovery and preservation at Göbekli Tepe has merely preserved the artwork there much better than the carvings at the former.

Pleistocene Rock Art discovered in Wales

Strictly speaking not really a Neolithic find, but the technology used to create the rock-art described here continued in use and was that used to make inscribed motifs such as those at Skara Brae in Orkney.

Dr George Nash of the University of Bristol has discovered a small engraved carving of a stylised reindeer on a vertical rock surface in a limestone cave on the Gower Peninsula, Wales. The decorated panel was partially-covered by deposits which have subsequently been dated using Uranium Series dating technology.

The cave has previously given-up Palaeolithic flint tools, and now some of the oldest rock art in Britain, discovered by the eagle-eyed archaeologist who was revisting the cave after an earlier explotation. This is only the second example of genuine Pleistocene rock art to be found in the British Isles (the depsosit which had formed over the reindeer has been dated to c 12,752 +/- 600 BP). Stylistically the carving might be as much as 30,000 years old.

This rock art is really, really important. Not because the image itself is well-drawn (it is a simple engraved, stylised form) but because it demonstrates that modern humans were in Wales some time during the last Ice Age. Somehow, they managed to eke-out a living in the frozen waste, equipped with little more than wood and flint tools, and somebody took the time to carve a little image. Any evidence for a human presence from this period is extremely rare. Dr Nash has made the kind of discovery that many archaeologists can only dream of.

Egalitarian Eutopias in the Neolithic: Not Likely

Archaeology has tended to promote the notion that Neolithic societies were generally egalitarian and the emergence of stratified society (Chiefdoms) is an Iron Age phenomenon. Humans in prehistory are often depicted as 'noble savages', who wore animal furs and were in a constant battle with the environment and wild animals, but who were otherwise living some hippy-eutopia where everybody makes everything they own.

Rick Schulting (Queens University Belfast) has been examining Neolithic human crania and has discovered some interesting facts which contradict the egalitarian eutopia model. Between 4000 and 3200 BC the crania Schulting studied from British long barrows suggest a relatively high rate of blunt trauma injury (c.1 in 14), whilst in Orkney the figure can be as high as c.1 in 5. Yes Schulting had a relatively small sample (350 skulls), and they possibly represent a specific group (where are the crania of everybody who didn't get buried in long barrows?), but we can only use the available material - we cannot examine what we do not have access to.

If we factor-in the very considerable archaeological evidence for conflict in the Neolithic (long bone trauma, projectile points embedded in human skeletons, presence of weapons, evidence for settlement destruction) it seems very likely that Schulting is on the right track.

Moving the Stonehenge Bluestones: St Fagans Festival of Archaeology

Last weekend The National History Museum of Wales at St. Fagans hosted the 2011 Festival of Archaeology weekend event :- Stone Moving Experiments organised by Dr Steve Burrows (National Museum of Wales).

As I've had my own say about how Neolithic people may have moved the heavy stones they used in their megalithic architecture (British Archaeology magazine march/April 2011) it was great to be invited to attend St Fagan's and participate in yet another stone-moving experiment.

Phil Morgan is a Welsh engineer who brought some of his engineering knowledge to bear on the age-old question archaeologists are frequently asked - "How did people move such heavy stones at the time of Stonehenge?"

I really liked Phil's use of A-frames to drag the wooden sled and stone - I think it's basically a good way of moving heavy weights. Definitely shows potential for manoeuvering the stones into place once at site. I'm not sure the method would have been used to move stones any great distance, but it was great to see the equipment Phil had designed and the hands-on experience again reminded me of the not inconsiderable obstacles Neolithic people encountered and overcame when building their megalithic tombs and stone circles.

New Zealand Maori stone adze is an amazing find

Archaeologist Pam Chester found an amazing Neolithic Maori stone adze during the excavation of the rugby club at Para-Plim in New Zealand.

Although it's not always possible to tell from a photograph, the ground blade of this adze exhibits the characteristic tell-tale longitudinal scars left behind by wood-working. Adze likes this were used for canoe-building, plank-making and general woodworking (structural timbers for Maori fortifications, houses and jettys etc).