Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-02T20:41:16.095Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Of death and debt. A history of the body in Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Yorkshire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Gavin M. Lucas
Gavin M. Lucas*
Affiliation:
Cambridge Archaeological Unit, Cambridge, Great Britain
Get access

Abstract

This paper addresses the way in which social identity is articulated through the body at death and linked up with cycles of gift-giving and the architecture of tombs during the Neolithic and earlier Bronze Age in eastern Yorkshire. The dynamics of funerary rites are explored and longer-term historical changes in the archaeological record are interpreted in terms of modifications to these ‘everyday’ dynamics. Grave goods, seen as part of a network of gift-giving, articulate this process by closing/initiating debts in the course of death which threatens to rupture this network. In a later transformation, however, different practices involving grave goods serve to marginalise death from strategies for the maintenance of social identity.

Cet article représente la façon dont l'identité sociale est d'une part, représentée à travers le corps après la mort, et d'autre part liée à des cycles de dons et à l'architecture des tombes, au Néolithique ainsi qu'au début de l'Age de Bronze dans le Yorkshire du Sud Est. La dynamique des rites funéraires est étudiée et les changements historiques à plus long terme dans le récit historique sont interprétés en termes de modifications de cette dynamique quotidienne. Les richesses funéraires, considérées comme un élément du cycle de dons, articulent ce processus soit en mettant un terme soit en initialisant une dette dans Ie processus de la mort qui menace de causer la rupture de ce cycle. Cependant, dans une transformation plus tardive, des pratiques différentes servent à marginaliser la mort des stratégies destinées à préserver l'identité sociale.

Dieser Beitrag befaßt sich mit der Art und Weise, auf die beim Tod mit Hille des Körpers soziale Identität ausgedruckt wird und in Kreisläufe des Geschenkegebens sowie in die Grabarchitektur während des Neolithikums und der frühen Bronzezeit im östlichen Yorkshire (England) eingebunden ist. Die Dynamik von Bestattungsriten werden untersucht und längerfristige historische Veränderungen im archäologischen Material werden als Modifikationen dieser ‘alltäglichen’ Dynamik interpretiert. Die Grabbeigaben, die hier als Bestandteil eines Netzwerkes des Geschenkegebens betrachtet werden, drücken diesen Prozeß dadurch aus, daß sie im Verlauf des Todes, der dieses Netzwerk aufzubrechen droht, Schulden abschreiben bzw. begründen. Später verändert sich dies allerdings, wenn verschiedene Praktiken, die auch die Grabbeigaben betreffen, zum Einsatz kommen, um den Tod in Hinsicht auf Strategien zur Erhaltung der sozialen Identität als unwichtig abzutun.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of European Archaeology , Volume 4 , 1996 , pp. 99 - 118
Copyright
Copyright © European Association of Archaeologists 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barrett, John, 1988. The Living, the dead and the ancestors: Neolithic and early Bronze Age mortuary practices. In Barrett, J. and Kinnes, I. (eds), The Archaeology of Context in the Neolithic and Bronze Age: Recent Trends, 30–41. Sheffield: University of Sheffield.Google Scholar
Barrett, John, 1994. Fragments from Antiquity. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bloch, Maurice, 1981. Tombs and states. In Humphreys, S. C. and King, H. (eds), Mortality and immortality: the anthropology and archaeology of death: 137–147. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Bloch, Maurice, 1988. Death and the concept of person. On the meaning of death. In Cederoth, S., Corlin, C. and Lindström, J. (eds), Essays on Mortuary Rituali and Eschataological Beliefs : 11–29. Stockholm: Acta Universtatis Upsaliensis.Google Scholar
Bloch, Maurice and Parry, J., 1982. Death and the Regeneration of Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Braithwaite, Mary, 1984. Ritual and prestige in the prehistory of Wessex c. 2200-1400 BC: a new dimension to the archaeological evidence. In Miller, D. and Tilley, C. (eds), Ideology, Power and Prehistory: 93–110. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brewster, T. C. M. and Finney, A. E., n.d. Kemp Howe: A long barrow/round barrow site, Cowlam, east Yorkshire. Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Brewster, T. C. M., 1980. The Excavation of Garton and Wetwang Slacks. ERARC (RCHME microfiche).Google Scholar
Brewster, T. C. M., 1984. The Excavation of Whitegrounds Barrow, Burythorpe. Malton: ERARC, John Gert Publications.Google Scholar
Coombs, David, 1976. Callis Wold round barrow, Humberside. Antiquity 50: 130–131.Google Scholar
Ellen, R. F., 1977. Anatomical classification and the semiotics of the body. In Blacking, J. (ed.), The Anthropology of the Body: 343–374. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Finney, A. E., n.d. Raisthorpe Long Barrow, Wharram Percy, N. Yorkshire. Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Gibbs, A. L., 1989. Sex, Gender and Material Culture Patterning in Later Neolithic and Earlier Bronze Age England. , Cambridge.Google Scholar
Greenwell, Rev. W., 1877. British Barrows. Oxford: Oxford Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Hertz, R., 1960. Death and the Right Hand. London: Cohen and West.Google Scholar
Kinnes, Ian, 1979. Round Barrows and Ring-ditches in the British Neolithic. London: British Museum (Occasional Paper 7).Google Scholar
Kinnes, Ian, 1992. Non-Megalithic Long Barrows and Allied Structures in the British Neolithic. London: British Museum (Occasional Paper 52).Google Scholar
Kinnes, Ian, Gibson, A., Ambers, J., Bowman, S., Leese, M. and Boast, Robin, 1991. Radiocarbon dating and British Beakers: The British Museum programme. Scottish Archaeological Review 8: 35–68.Google Scholar
Kinnes, Ian, Schadla-hall, T., Chadwick, P., and Dean, P., 1983. Duggleby Howe reconsidered. Archaelogical Journal 140: 83–108.Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 1969. The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Lucas, Gavin, 1994. Genealogies. Classification, Narrative and Time: an Archaeological Study of Eastern Yorkshire 3700–1300 BC. , Cambridge.Google Scholar
Manby, T., 1963. The excavation of the Willerby Wold Long Barrow, East Riding. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 29: 173–205.Google Scholar
Manby, T., 1970. Long barrows of northern england. Structural and dating evidence. Scottish Archaeological Forum 2: 1–27.Google Scholar
Manby, T., 1976. The excavation of the Kilham long barow, East Riding of Yorkshire. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 42: 111–159.Google Scholar
Manby, T., 1988. The Neolithic period in eastern Yorkshire. In Manby, T. (ed.), Archaeology in Eastern Yorkshire: 35–88. Sheffield: University of Sheffield.Google Scholar
Mizoguchi, Kogi, 1993. Time in the reproduction of mortuary practices. World Archaeology 25: 223–235.Google Scholar
Mortimer, J. R., 1905. Forty Years Researches in British and Saxon Burial Mounds of East Yorkshire. London: A. Brown and Sons.Google Scholar
Rowlands, Michael J., 1980. Kinship, alliance and exchange in the European Bronze Age. In Barrett, J. and Bradley, R., (eds), Settlement and Society in the British Later Bronze Age: 15–55. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports (British Series 83).Google Scholar
Scott, J. G., 1992. Mortuary structures and megaliths. In Sharpies, N. and Sheridan, A. (eds), Vessels for the Ancestors: 105–119. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Strathern, Andrew, 1981. Death as exchange: two Melanesian cases. In Humphreys, S. C. and King, H. (eds), Mortality and Immortality: 205–223. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Thass-Thienemann, T., 1973. The Interpretation of Language. New York: Jason Aronson Inc.Google Scholar
Thomas, Julian and Whittle, Alisdair, 1986. Anatomy of a tomb. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 5: 29–51.Google Scholar
Thomas, Julian, 1987. Relations of production and social change in the Neolithic of north west Europe. Man 22: 405–430.Google Scholar
Thomas, Julian, 1991. Reading the body: Beaker funerary practice in Britain. In Garwood, P., Jennings, D., Skeates, R. and Toms, J. (eds), Sacred and Profane: 33–42. Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology (Monograph 52).Google Scholar
Tuckwell, A., 1975. Patterns of burial orientation in the round barrows of east Yorkshire. Bulletin of the Institute of Archaeology 12: 95–123.Google Scholar
Vatcher, F. de M. and Vatcher, H. L., 1965. East Heslerton long barrow, Yorkshire: the eastern half. Antiquity 39: 49–52.Google Scholar
Vyner, B. E., 1986. Evidence for mortuary practices in the Neolithic burial mounds and cairns of northern Britain. Scottish Archaeological Review 4: 11–16.Google Scholar