02 jones 2005 lives in fragments personhood & european neolithic

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Lives in fragments?Personhood and the European Neolithic

ANDY JONES

Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton, UK

ABSTRACTThe European Neolithic has often been figured in ideational terms.The transformations that gave rise to sedentism, agriculture and theconstruction of monuments have been explained either in terms ofabstract symbolic schemes or as a change in worldview and cosmol-ogy. As an alternative, this article suggests that a greater emphasisneeds to be placed on the constitution of the person during thisperiod of transformation. Instead of focusing on the playing out ofsymbolic structures, it is instead important to consider the role thatmateriality plays in forming social relations. By focusing on the treat-ment of material culture, human remains and the use of architecture,we begin to understand in concrete terms not only how the EuropeanNeolithic was built, but also how people were transformed throughthis process.

KEY WORDScitation ● dividual ● Neolithic ● personhood ● relationality

Journal of Social Archaeology A R T I C L E

Copyright © 2005 SAGE Publications (www.sagepublications.com)ISSN 1469-6053 Vol 5(2): 193–224 DOI: 10.1177/1469605305053367

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194 Journal of Social Archaeology 5(2)

■ INTRODUCTION

Recent debates over the character of the European Neolithic have stressedthe ideational nature of the shift from hunting and gathering to farming(see Cauvin, 2000, for similar arguments for the Near Eastern Neolithic;Hodder, 1990). This shift in emphasis is important, but accounts such asHodder’s have been criticized for being highly generalized in nature(Bradley, 1993; Halstead, 1996: 306) and for treating ‘the Neolithic’ as amonolithic and essentialized entity (Pluciennik, 1999; Thomas, 1993a). Asan alternative, a number of interpretations have been offered which fore-ground a close contextual reading of the set of interactions that constitutethe shift from hunter-gatherer to farmer. For instance, Bradley (1993, 1998)emphasizes the significance of new perspectives on place and time createdby the construction of monuments. Thomas (1988, 1991, 1996) and Whittle(1996) emphasize the importance of changing sets of social relations in the‘creation of new worlds’. Here, discussions of agency and the nature of indi-vidual experience are paramount; how are social relations transformed andexperienced by individuals?

It is against this background of enquiry that questions of personhoodhave been raised. Discussions of personhood seek to problematize theapplication of Western notions of the individual to the past (Brück, 2001;Fowler, 2000, 2004) and to investigate the set of relations out of whichpersons are composed.While these aims are admirable, I argue that an overreliance on specific ethnographic models of personhood may have theopposite effect of creating a generalized picture of the European Neolithic.In this article I ask why questions of personhood have become so relevantto our analysis of the European Neolithic, and suggest that personhood isnot simply an adjunct to our enquiries but is of central importance to ourunderstanding of the set of transformations occurring during the EuropeanNeolithic.

■ PERSONHOOD AND THE EUROPEAN NEOLITHIC

Questions of personhood have been addressed in recent analyses ofNeolithic societies from southeastern Europe to northwestern Europe. Themost thorough account of personhood deals with the Neolithic of south-eastern Europe (Chapman, 2000). Chapman’s innovative study focuses onthe twin practices of fragmentation and accumulation as processes whichlink people to objects through production, exchange and consumption. Headopts an anthropological model of personhood which proposes thatpeople are made up of the totality of their relationships; they are not somuch individuals as ‘dividuals’: who they are and what they do is generated

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195Jones Lives in fragments?

by their transactions with each other, with material culture and with thedead.This model of personhood seems to admirably fit the evidence of frag-mented objects, hoards and partial deposits of human bone from south-eastern Europe.

The mortuary monuments of the British Neolithic are unlike themortuary deposits of southeastern Europe. Deposits of human bone wereplaced in chambered tombs or earthen long barrows either fully articulatedor disarticulated. As bodies underwent processes of decay they were frag-mented, reworked and quite likely circulated amongst the living (Thomas,2002). Again a similar concept of personhood has been invoked to describethe mortuary deposits of the British Neolithic (Fowler, 2000, 2001, 2002;Thomas, 2001, 2002). ‘Dividual’ notions of personhood here offer a poten-tial framework for understanding how these deposits are generated andhow (living) persons are composed out of these transactions.

In both of these cases, the application of the notion of the ‘dividual’ hasaltered our perception of the character of the person during the Neolithic,and has transformed our understanding of the nature of deposition(Chapman, 2000; Fowler, 2003; Pollard, 2005). Yet the model we utilize tounderstand personhood remains strikingly similar over a large geographi-cal area. At this juncture I want to critically assess this concept and thinkmore deeply about its origins in the anthropological literature.

■ ANTHROPOLOGY, ARCHAEOLOGY AND PERSONHOOD

The concept of the fragmented and multi-faceted ‘dividual’ is derived forthe most part from ethnographic analyses of Melanesian societies. Thisenquiry was initiated by the work of Marilyn Strathern (1988) and RoyWagner (1991), although the concept of ‘dividuality’ has seen much debateand subsequent reworking by others (e.g. Battaglia, 1990; Lambek, 1998;Mimica, 1988; Strathern and Stewart, 1999; N. Thomas, 1991; A. Weiner,1992; J.F. Weiner, 1995).

That the European Neolithic has a Melanesian flavour should occasionlittle surprise since the literature on Melanesia stands as one of the fewthoroughgoing critiques of the bounded Western individual as the paradigmof personhood. In a useful explicatory essay on Marilyn Strathern’s work,Gell (1999: 34) points out that Strathern’s Melanesia is a fabrication. Thisis not to say that the geographical entity known as Melanesia does not exist,rather it means that Strathern’s Melanesia is an interpretative construct. Itis a ‘site’ for thinking through a particular form of idealist interpretation,although the semiotic signs of Strathern’s Melanesia are closely related tothe referents of ethnographic detail. This point is especially important if wewish to reconsider the status of the concept of the ‘dividual’ in our analyses

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of prehistoric society. In her analysis of the exchange relations of Melan-esian societies Marilyn Strathern is particularly interested in foregroundingthe difference between Melanesian and Western notions of the self. To doso she adopts a stance which overturns the realist expectations of the West.As Gell (1999: 35) notes, her modus operandi is to focus less on persons orobjects as constituents of the world, and more on the relations betweenthem. Objects and people are therefore indexes of relations – they are madeup of, or constituted by, their relations or connections. In a development ofthe concept of relationality James Weiner notes that: ‘subject and object aredefined only by the relationship itself; in fact, the object passing betweenpeople is the relationship’ (1995: xiv, original emphasis). ‘Dividuals’ aretherefore constructs, artefacts of a way of seeing the world which promotesan analysis of the connections or systems of relations between people andthings.

The point to emphasize here is that we must be careful not to reify the‘dividual’; instead it is important to state that at an abstract level what weare dealing with are forms of relationality, or ways of relating. I believe thatas Strathern’s interpretative model focuses on the analysis of systems ofrelations and their role in the constitution of both person and culture, itremains a powerful interpretative tool if we wish to study systems ofrelations in prehistory. Nevertheless, these relations will have a quite differ-ent set of referents in European prehistory.

We must be careful to totalize neither the ‘dividual’ or the individual. AsEdward LiPuma (1998) points out, the person is composed dually of‘dividual’ and individual elements. Furthermore, if we consider the conceptof relationality more broadly we can discern a multiplicity of different waysof relating. For example Nadia Seremetakis (1994) recognizes the signifi-cance of relationality in the sharing of names, food and sensory experiencebetween grandmother and child in traditional Greek society. The child istherefore composed out of its relations with the previous generation.Cecilia Busby (1997) compares different ways of relating in south India andMelanesia. In south India relations between husband and wife areperceived as balanced and the child is constituted from a balance betweenmale and female (mother and father). By contrast, in Melanesia persons arecomposed out of a web of different relations and these relations differentlygender each part of the body.

Melanesia and India are drawn on as examples of forms of personhoodin the European archaeological literature (Fowler, 2004). Curiously, paralleldiscussions of personhood in the ethnohistorical and archaeological litera-ture for the Pre-Colombian Americas have been overlooked in much recentliterature on European prehistory.

A series of authors have discussed the constitution of the Classic Mayaself. The Maya person was made up of blood and bone. These substanceslinked people to their relatives since they were transmitted by mother or

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father (Gillespie, 2001). As Joyce (1998) notes, the embodied person wasconceived as a container for these powerful substances.

According to Houston and Stuart (1998), the identity or essence of theperson was linked to the term ‘Bah’, which signified a person’s head, a face,or their representation in mask or sculptured form. Importantly, the repre-sentation of the ‘Bah’ of the person in sculptural form on stealae or standingstones was perceived to be a literal embodiment of that person. In this sensethe person exceeded the boundaries of the human body. As Houston andStuart note (1998: 90), through representation Classic Maya rulers wereable to perform the extraordinary trick of being in two places at once,thereby transcending space and time.

The extra-bodily dimensions of the person were also represented in theconcept of the ‘way’, a kind of spirit-companion or co-essence (Monaghan,1998: 141–4); the ‘way’ is the dreaming state of the person. Importantly,‘way’ may not be necessarily linked to specific individuals; rather, peoplemay have multiple connections to multiple spirit-companions (Monaghan,1998). Names too were aspects of the person that were a component ofpersonhood but also transmissible. Like images of the face, names were adevice for linking people together, since they recurred over generations(Gillespie, 2001).

The senses and the bodily substances that issued from the body, such asbreath, scent or speech, were depicted pictorially as scrolls (Houston andTaube, 2000). The boundaries of the body were therefore treated as perme-able. These were literally parts of the body which also acted as a mediumfor inter-subjective exchange (Joyce, in Meskell and Joyce, 2003: 26).

The Classic Maya person was therefore composed of material and imma-terial components, and this person was produced in a number of ways. Joycelists a series of ways in which the Classic Maya person was materialized,including the shaping of skulls, filing and inlaying of teeth and piercing andenlargement of earlobes (Joyce, in Meskell and Joyce, 2003: 48–51; Joyce,2000). Further, a series of life-cycle rituals provided the context for theadoption of names. Importantly, she notes that houses concretized the formof spatial hierarchy that we also find in Maya art.The architecture of housesraised on platforms produced a set of asymmetric visual relations. Raisedbenches within the already raised houses provided further refinements ofspatial hierarchy. She argues, following Houston and Stuart (1998), that suchspatial and visual asymmetry is a key component of Classic Maya person-hood.

Catherine Allen (1998) writes of the beliefs of a contemporary Quechua-speaking community in southern Peru and relates aspects of their cosmol-ogy to the pre-Columbian Andes. She notes that all matter is considered tobe animate, and that all material beings (people, animals, things) share asubstantial matrix (Allen, 1998: 25). In making things people reorderanimate matter in order to serve human purposes. In doing so people are

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not so much acting on the world but interacting with it. The act of produc-tion forms a responsibility towards the object made by the person; if theycare for the object the thing will care for them.

All human actions are considered to involve reciprocal rights or respon-sibilities. This is true of people and interactions between people and thingsor animals. Because this is so the person is not unitary but is a duality whichexists in a complex of interactive relationships. People are thereforeconnected by their relationships, and they are also connected to the objectsthat they have manufactured. This connection continues even if the objectis exchanged.

I find these accounts of the Mesoamerican and Andean person instruc-tive. As in Melanesia, India and Greece, the person is considered relation-ally. However, in the Mayan and Andean examples there is less emphasisupon object exchange as a medium for the production of persons. Impor-tantly, both accounts emphasize the way in which people are constitutedthrough their relationships with things. In the case of the Classic Maya,persons were manufactured through bodily practices and through theirengagement with others and inhabitation of certain architectural spaces.Notably, while Melanesian and Indian case studies import a sense of theegalitarian nature of relationality, in the Classic Maya case relationalnotions of personhood were integral to a hierarchical society. In thePeruvian example, relationality was a component of asymmetric relations.

These accounts draw our attention to the significance of the productionof persons, through bodily practices, through ritual practice and in theinhabitation of architectural spaces. Most importantly, they also indicatethat particular orders of personhood are the result of a specific cosmologicalengagement between the person and their environment. In each case theperson is produced through the totality of their relationships, with people,with things and with the environment.

Rather than solely focusing on object exchange as a medium for under-standing the constitution of persons, we also need to attend to how socialrelations are played out architecturally and through other forms of socialpractices such as mortuary ritual. While exchange and mortuary ritual havebeen the focus of previous analysis (Fowler, 2004), there has been less focuson architecture in discussion of personhood. If we are to understand howpeople are produced, a closer investigation of prehistoric architecture isalso required. Architecture has traditionally been utilized as a means ofunderstanding the construction and playing out of social relations(Richards and Parker-Pearson, 1994). Spatial order is seen to have a criticaleffect upon the formation of subjects. This perspective was emphasized ina number of studies of megalithic architecture (Barrett, 1994; Thomas,1993b). The architectural configuration of spaces will determine spatialproximity and the formation of identities. Likewise, the sociologist ZygmuntBauman (1993) highlights the importance of spatial proximity for the

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creation and maintenance of social and ethical relations. It is precisely thesekinds of relations which form the ground for feelings of relatedness that lieat the heart of notions of personhood.

In short, we need to locate the prehistoric person in the sum of theirrelationships, by investigating relations between people and things, betweenpeople and architectural spaces and with their landscape and environmentmore generally.

■ PERSONHOOD, PRACTICE AND MATERIAL CULTURE

It is obviously insufficient to simply ‘read’ different orders of personhoodfrom the fragmented remains of human bodies or artefacts. Our focus mustbe upon social practice, the way in which persons are produced andperformed. The key point is that relationally persons are created throughnetworks of relationships and these networks include things as well aspeople. Gosden (2004: 35–8) makes an important distinction between whathe calls ‘things of quality’ and ‘quantifiable objects’.These categories distin-guish the kinds of relationships set up between people and things insocieties which emphasize either relational or separable kinds of persons.‘Things of quality’ are embedded in local relations, and act as part of thatrelationship and thereby help to produce ‘dividuals’. ‘Quantifiable objects’are disembedded from local social relations and may be abstracted tooperate in a wider social universe and help to produce individuals.AlthoughGosden could be accused here of perpetuating a distinction between‘dividual’ and ‘individual’ notions of personhood, the important point is thatit is the quality of things and their treatment in practice which inform usabout how they are used to create differing kinds of persons. While boththings and objects can be exchanged, ‘things of quality’ are distinguishedby the fact that they are efficacious, and that their value and efficacy isbound up in their formal qualities and the effect these have on the sensesand how this is understood in its local context.

By contrast, ‘quantifiable objects’ may be dematerialized or abstracted,and might exist as tokens or abstracted entities of value. The physicalpresence of these objects is not significant to their valuation, not does itaffect how they produce persons.

In order to understand how material culture is linked in social networksI want to introduce the idea of citation. The concept of citation is adoptedfrom the work of Derrida (1982) and Butler (1993), and it has beendiscussed in detail elsewhere (Boric, 2003; Jones, 2001; Joyce, 2003). Cita-tions in texts perform two functions: they reference other texts and in doingso reiterate their importance. Butler (1993) uses the concept of citation ina similar sense as a means of analysing gender; gendered actions reference

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prior gendered performances and reiterate their social significance (Joyce,1998, 2000). Equally, the social practices related to making, using anddepositing material objects can be thought of as ‘material citations’ – eachmaterial act references and gains its meaning from that which has gonebefore. Nor should we view citation as an inherently conservative activity,as the citation of past events and actions in new social contexts, or in novelcombinations, offers the potential for fresh understanding.

Material objects (as citations) can also be thought of as existing innetworks of referentiality or ‘citational fields’ (Jones, 2001), just as they doin texts. I find this concept helpful since it allows us to think about howmaterial activities are related together. Importantly, citations have both atemporal and spatial dimension since they reference things that have gonebefore, and things that exist in other places. Finally, the notion of citationis a useful framework for thinking about the relational networks withinwhich people situate themselves, and allows us to think about how theserelationships are played out over time. I will employ this concept as a meansof understanding both how material practices are used to create therelationships from which persons are constructed, and how these materialpractices are altered and transformed over time.

■ DYNAMIC NOMINALISM: THE PERSON IN HISTORICALPERSPECTIVE

We need to be alert then to the multiple ways in which persons wereproduced in the past. If we are to understand the way in which people areproduced over the long term it is useful to adopt the perspective termed‘dynamic nominalism’. Developed from Locke’s theory of nominalism, a‘dynamic nominalist’ perspective proposes that categories of people comeinto existence at the same time as kinds of people emerge to fill thosecategories (Hacking, 1995). People, categories of people, and the socialrelations that frame both are therefore coeval with their changing histori-cal conditions. This approach collapses traditional distinctions betweenstructure and agency by arguing that social and historical change generatesnew kinds of people.

In fact the notion of ‘dynamic nominalism’ with its emphasis upon theproduction of persons through changing historical conditions harmonizeswell with Strathern’s (1998) point that persons are performed throughsocial action. Given this perspective we might expect that kinds of personschange as the set of material and social relations alter with the adoptionand assimilation of Neolithic life-ways from one region of Europe toanother.

This concept is not novel to archaeology, and has previously been

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discussed by Emma Blake (1999) and John Chapman (2001: 34–7, 2002).For example Chapman (2002) discusses the way in which the exchange andassimilation of coloured artefacts at the Eneolithic cemeteries of Duranku-lak and Varna, Bulgaria, promoted a greater degree of colour categoriz-ation, which allowed variable social identities, or personae, to be expressed.The point here is that this is not a sequential argument. The adoption ofcoloured objects does not give rise to new social identities, nor do burgeon-ing social identities require coloured objects. Rather the two entities comeinto existence simultaneously; they are mutually related.

If we are to deal with the issue of personhood in the European Neolithicit is critical that we introduce a historical perspective into our analyses. Weneed to be asking why issues of personhood are critical to our analyses ofthe European Neolithic, what kinds of persons might have emerged overthe course of this period, and how the make-up of persons alters in differ-ent cultural, material and environmental settings across Europe. In whatfollows I will investigate the media by which persons are produced at threegeographical and temporal junctures over the course of the EuropeanNeolithic.

■ THE PROBLEM OF THE ‘EUROPEAN NEOLITHIC’

The European Neolithic as an historical process has traditionally beenviewed according to a grand narrative approach in which agriculture orideas expanded from the Near East into Europe, a process of ‘neolithiza-tion’ which moved from the southeast towards the Atlantic fringes inWestern Europe (Pluciennik, 1999). This narrative follows similar pathswhether we adopt models of migration and population movement(Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza, 1984; Cavalli-Sforza, 1996), ideationalmodels (Hodder, 1990) or models of language dispersal (Renfrew, 1987).As noted in the opening paragraph, there is a tendency to conceive of ‘theNeolithic’ as an unchanging and generalized entity (Tringham, 2000: 22),often defined by a fixed set of traits such as the existence of monuments,agriculture, pottery or sedentary settlements. As Julian Thomas (1996: 311)has noted there is an assumption that ‘because the Neolithic was an inte-grated package, the appearance of any one element was a manifestation ofthe presence of the whole’.Thomas cogently argues that the series of differ-ent elements (domesticated plants, animals, earth or stone monuments)traditionally thought to be components of a holistic package may well haveproceeded at different rates (Zvelebil and Lillie, 2000).This proposition hasbeen recently reinforced by the analysis of a suite of radiocarbon determi-nations across Neolithic Europe (Gkiasta et al., 2003).

Archaeological support for this argument comes from areas such as

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southern Scandinavia and the western Mediterranean where elements ofthe ‘Neolithic package’ such as pottery and stone tools were primaryintroductions. Quite reasonably, Thomas proposes that Europe is bestseen as a mosaic of ecological, social and cultural traditions during theMesolithic/Neolithic (Gronenborn, 1999; Tringham, 2000: 53–5).

Nevertheless, the likelihood of a series of complex interactions betweenhunter-gatherer and farming groups does not preclude some level of migra-tion. The earliest Neolithic societies in the Balkans were likely to becomposed of populations practising hunting and gathering and farming, andwith a mosaic of differing settlement patterns from the Körös culture in theAlföld (Hungarian Plain), to the Starcevo, Cris and Iron Gates groupsfurther south (Tringham, 2000). However, by around 5600/5500–5000 BC ina region from the lower Danube and the Alföld, Hungary, to the LowCountries and northern France, we observe the rapid colonization of a largearea by the Linearbandkeramik (LBK) culture. The Linearbandkeramik isremarkable for its uniformity of architecture, pottery style and settlementlocation although regional variations do exist (Coudart, 1998; Jeunesse,1997; Modderman, 1988). A similarly rapid process of colonization is likelyto have occurred in the Mediterranean fringes of Europe with the expan-sion of Cardial ware settlement and interaction with indigenous hunter-gatherers (Barnett, 2000).

Perhaps the most striking processes of interaction occur around themargins of the distribution of the Linearbandkeramik in central and north-western Europe.A number of authors have argued for interactions betweenLBK groups and indigenous hunter-gatherers (Midgley, 1992; Sommer,2001; Thomas, 1996; Whittle, 1996). It is likely that interaction continuedinto the period after around 5000 BC and probably until 4800 BC, when weobserve the formation of regional groups of post-LBK settlement, such asthe Rössen, later Lengyel and Cerny.

There is strong evidence from a variety of regions for the adoption ofelements of the ‘Neolithic package’ including pottery and domesticates.The most well known of these are the Ertebølle groups of Denmark andsouthern Sweden. Not only do we observe indigenous pottery using a tech-nology likely to have been adopted from the LBK (Hulthén, 1977; Midgley,1992), but in some sites we see the use of Danubian shaft-hole adzes(Fischer, 1982) and pots containing cereal grain impressions (Nielsen,1986). All this suggests a complex series of interactions between Ertebølleand LBK groups (Jennbert, 1985).The Ertebølle is a very well documentedexample of interaction (Price, 2000), but this need not be an isolated caseof interaction and indigenous development. The Swifterbant groups of theDutch Polders also made pottery, and exploited both wild and domesti-cated animals and grew barley (De Roever, 1979; Louwe-Kooijmans, 1987:237; Zvelebil and Rowley-Conwy, 1986: 77). We observe a general patternof interaction across the boundary of the ‘agricultural frontier’ represented

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by the LBK, and this is most clearly observed with the distribution of bone-tempered La Hougette pottery associated with late Mesolithic lithicindustries. La Hougette pottery is distributed across the middle Rhonevalley, northern France, Switzerland and Germany and appears both inisolation and in LBK sites (Bogucki and Grygiel, 1993; Gronenborn, 1999;Lüning et al., 1989; Price, 2000: 15; Price et al., 2001). A similar case occursat a later stage with the Limburg pottery of the southern Netherlands,eastern France and Belgium (Bogucki, 2000: 207–9; Constantin, 1985;Gronenborn, 1999).

Thomas (1996) usefully describes this process of interaction betweenindigenous hunter-gatherers and Neolithic farmers as one of ‘culturalhybridity’ (Gronenborn, 1999). In sum, the European Neolithic cannot beseen as a single homogeneous entity, nor can the process of ‘neolithization’be seen as an inexorable process of replacement. While we do observemigration we also observe cultural interactions and diversity both in south-eastern and central and northwestern Europe.The above underlines the factthat the transition between the Mesolithic and Neolithic across Europe isa dynamic process that both across and within each region involves inter-action and change. The aim now is to examine the changing nature ofpersonhood in these different regions at different historical junctures.

■ SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE

I will commence by briefly considering Chapman’s account of the earlyNeolithic of southeastern Europe from 6000–5500 BC (Chapman, 2000).Chapman’s discussion focuses mainly on the treatment of artefacts and ofthe dead. We will begin with the dead. During the early Neolithic, deadbodies were either buried intact or as body parts on settlement sites. Atsites like Endröd 119, southeastern Hungary, we find complete burials andhuman bone deposits placed in a pit (Chapman, 2000; Makkay, 1992). In theearliest Starcevo levels at Vinca, Serbia, there was a deposit consisting of11 skulls in a pit (Chapman, 2000: 134), while at Mala Vrbica-Ajmana,Serbia, a mixture of complete skeletons and partial skeletal elements werefound (Chapman, 2000: 135). Similarly in the early Neolithic Starcevo levelsat Anza (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) we observe concentra-tions of human bone in various states of fragmentation and wholeness(Chapman, 2000: 132–4). This pattern contrasts with Kladovo-Velesnica,Serbia, where a communal grave contained seven contracted inhumations(Chapman, 2000: 136). Human bodies therefore underwent processes ofaccumulation (in communal deposits or hoards of skulls), or fragmentation.In both cases there seems to be a particular emphasis on removing orcollecting certain skeletal elements such as the skull.

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In tandem with the accumulation and fragmentation of human bodies,we observe artefacts being treated according to similar principles. A hoardof 101 knapped lithics were placed in a ceramic container near a hearth atEndröd 39, southeastern Hungary (Chapman, 2000: 240). An equally spec-tacular hoard consisting of a mixture of 10,000 shell, stone and bone beads,a Spondylus shell ring and a polished nephrite ring was placed in a similarposition in a house at Galabnik, western Bulgaria (Chapman, 2000: 240). Inthe Starcevo period at Lepenski Vir, Serbia, there were two hoards. ASpondylus necklace and beads of paligorskite were found deposited in avessel and four miniature axes placed in a vessel (Srejovic, 1972), and ahoard of axes was also found in the settlement of Vrisnik in the formerYugoslav republic of Macedonia (Chapman, 2000: 241). Other evidence forthe accumulation of artefacts includes the 30,000 sherds representing300–500 vessels from a pit in the Körös period settlement at Röszke-Ludvar, Hungary (Chapman, 2000; Kosse, 1979), and the accumulation ofhuman burials and human figurines attested from houses of the same periodin eastern Hungary.

The deliberate fragmentation, distribution and exchange of artefacts arealso evident. We return to Endröd 119 (Makkay, 1992) for an example, thistime of 14 figurines, all but one of which were fragmented. At the same sitewe also have evidence for the deliberate breakage of pottery and its depo-sition in four distinct contexts. As Whittle (forthcoming) indicates, a varietyof lithic materials were brought into the Great Hungarian Plain – whichlacks lithic raw materials – from external sources: obsidian from Hungarianand Slovak sources 150–160 km to the north-east, limnoquartzite from thehills edging the Great Hungarian Plain, brown flint from the Banat regionto the south and radiolarite from the Szentgál source north of Lake Balaton.The source of rock for stone axes came from the eastern end of the Alpsand western Romania.The movement of this material into the region impliesexchange with non-sedentary foragers around the edges of the Körös world.Indeed some of these exchange networks have a history beginning in thePalaeolithic.The significance of these connections is underlined by the cacheof Banat flint placed in a pot from Endrod 39 (Kaczanowska et al., 1981).In the south Balkans too we observe extensive networks of exchange withthe exchange of Melian obsidian as far north as Thessaly (Perlés, 2000).

In this region of Europe, settlements consisted of rectangular wattle-and-daub or stone and mud-brick houses (Fig. 1). House sites either shifted,probably over the course of a generation, or settlements became more estab-lished. The character of settlement differs from south to north. Establishedlong-term settlements at the base of long-lived tell settlements occur morepredominantly in the south. In the north too we observe more establishedsettlements in Starcevo regions, while far more ephemeral short-term settle-ments occur for the Körös culture (Gronenborn, 1999: 145; Tringham, 2000:24–5). In northern Greece and southern Bulgaria established settlement sites

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Figure 1 Comparison of house forms and settlement in the North andSouth Balkans: (a) the settlement at Nea Nikomedeia, Greece; (b) thesettlement at Divostin, Serbia (after Whittle, 1996; Bailey, 2000)

A

B

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of rectangular structures with substantial stone-built foundations eventuallygave rise to settlement mounds or tells, a process that over time generateda tangible reminder of the past (Bailey, 1990; Chapman, 1997). In the northand west, in Serbia and the eastern Hungarian Plain, buildings were eitherrectangular wattle-and-daub structures, or semi-subterranean pit huts.

Overall, there seem to be two modes of settlement habitation and thesediffer over time and geography (Fig. 1). In the south of the Balkans fromthe middle of the seventh millennium BC and by the mid-fifth millenniumBC in regions to the north – such as northern Bulgaria and southernRomania – we observe settlement fusion in which villages are established.Over time, houses were built over the site of previous settlements andthrough this practice began to reference the physical presence of one’sancestors (Bailey, 1990). In the north from the middle of the seventh millen-nium to the mid-fifth millennium BC, we observe less settlement agglom-eration and settlements appear more dispersed.There are exceptions to thisas the Danube Gorges sites testify.

Interestingly, more or less coeval with these modes of habitation, weobserve differentiation in settlement architecture. A greater degree ofinternal division occurs in houses in regions with continuous settlementpractices. In addition these houses often have internal furniture. IndeedBailey (2000: 159) notes the significance of internal spatial division as exem-plified by the miniature decorated wall divisions from sites such asOvcharovo. By contrast, in those areas with more ephemeral habitationpractices houses are internally divided to a lesser extent.

Chapman (2000) suggests that both artefacts and human skeletalmaterials were used to enchain social relations. I believe we could developthis point further by noting that similar processes occur in the establish-ment and habitation of settlements. The fusion and dispersal of settlementis related to the density of social networks and the regularity of social inter-action. These different modes of habitation are likely to inculcate differentways of relating and different kinds of persons. In regions to the north andsouth exchange between settlements was equally important. As Chapman(2000) and Bailey (2000: 284–5) have noted, settlement fusion is likely torelate to lineage-based or corporate identity. Here the density of settlementwill tend towards the formation of kin-based group identities. The verystructure and organization of settlement creates a way of relating – a togeth-erness – which is likely to promote dense local networks of enchained socialrelationships.

In the Körös culture, with a more dispersed settlement system, identitiesneed be no less kin based; however the regularity of interaction betweensettlements will be less. Here we might expect spatially extensive networksof enchainment. The two modes of settlement offer the potential for twodifferent kinds of person to be formed. In village (and later tell) basedsettlements a person is likely to be characterized by their relationship to

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local kin, creating a sense of corporate identity. With a more dispersedsettlement system personhood is likely to be more fluid, and the exchangeof objects will have cemented kin ties as well as creating fresh relationshipswith forager groups to the north and east.

■ CENTRAL EUROPE

By way of contrast, I will now consider the Linear Pottery culture (Linear-bandkeramik or LBK) of central and western Europe from around5600–5000 BC. Gronenborn (1999: 146–9) notes that the earliest LBKemerges out of the social transformation from the Starcevo-Körös-Criscomplex to early Vinca, a period in which a degree of hybridity occurred asboth the Serbian Vinca culture and the AVK (Alfold Linear PotteryCulture) of the Great Hungarian plain exhibit elements of LBK culture inpottery form and decoration, and in a later AVK context longhouseconstruction.

The primary phases of the LBK are traditionally seen to constitute aprime example of colonization or migration, although the rapidity of thisprocess is debatable. Sites in northern Hungary, the Czech Republic,Slovakia, eastern and northern Austria and parts of Germany initiate theprimary phase of migration (Gronenborn, 1999).

The architectural form that exemplifies the LBK is the post-built long-house (Fig. 2). Longhouses are enormous structures of five rows of posts,with the three internal rows as roof supports and the external posts as wallsupports. Walls were of wattle-and-daub construction. Houses varied inlength from around 10 m up to 30 m. Settlements typically consist of housesspaced 10 m or more apart, with contemporary houses often oriented in the

Figure 2 Groundplan of a typical Linearbandkeramik longhouse (Elsloo 32,Netherlands; after Modderman, 1970)

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same direction (Fig. 3). It has recently been suggested that the uniformityof house orientation in each settlement references an area of origin thathad been settled in the past (Bradley, 2001, 2002: 19–34). If this is true thevery structure of the settlement is a citation of themes of migration andmovement.

The biographies of LBK settlements also reference notions of ancestryand origin as houses either respect or are rebuilt over previous house struc-tures. The houses of the living and of the ancestors occupy the same settle-ment and the history of the settlement could be visibly read through itsarchitecture (Bradley, 1996). Furthermore, towards the west of their distri-bution LBK houses are constructed in three sections, with the middlesection forming the core. This componential structural form allowed forflexibility as houses increased in size over time, quite likely in relation tothe exigencies of household relations.The very construction of these LinearPottery houses therefore embodied partibility and fragmentation.

Figure 3 Linear pottery settlements on the Aldenhoven Plateau, Germany.Note the parallel orientation of longhouses within the region (after Championet al., 1984)

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Late in the sequence of the LBK, a series of settlements are encom-passed by ditched enclosures, as at Darion, Belgium (Cahen et al., 1990) orMenneville, France (Hachem et al., 1998), or enclosures are built in closeproximity to settlements as at Langweiler 8, Germany (Boelicke et al.,1988). Enclosures need not be contemporary with the life of the settlements,and at sites like Langweiler 9, the enclosure is constructed after the settle-ment has gone out of use (Lüning and Stehli, 1994).At one level, enclosuresseem to reference the settlement as a cohesive entity, at another theyare commemorating the location of the houses of the ancestors (Bradley,2002: 33–4).

Fragmentary remains of the dead are often found on settlement sites, asat Zauschwitz, Wetteraukrais and Ober-Horgern, Saxony (Veit, 1993;Whittle, 1996: 167). We also observe intra-mural burials, such as the childburials in borrow pits at Cuiry-les-Chaudardes, Aisne valley, or Menneville,France (Coudart, 1998; Hachem et al., 1998), and again at Zuaschwitz anumber of crouched burials were placed in pits, while a child burial wasplaced in a pit and covered by the burnt remains of a house. At Vaihingen,Neckar Valley, Baden-Württemberg (Bentley et al., 2003), 130 skeletonswere found in a ditch that encircled the site during its middle and laterphases or in pits and borrow trenches.

Formal, organized cemeteries are a major feature of the middle(Flomborn) period of the Linearbandkeramik, although due to the paucityof cemeteries in relation to settlements it seems they may serve as a focalplace for a number of communities. The dead are usually inhumed, andthere are generally equal numbers of men and women. However, due to therelatively small size of cemeteries it is likely that only some people wereformally buried in this way. Gender and age differences are expressedthrough the deposition of differing artefacts, with men often being buriedwith adzes and arrowheads, women with pottery. Recent strontium isotopestudies on populations at the early LBK cemeteries Flomborn, Dillingenand Schwetzingen, southern Germany, indicate that cemeteries arecomposed of a mixture of people of differing origins, both locals and non-locals (Bentley et al., 2002, 2003; Price et al., 2001).Those identified as localswere buried with a possible orientation towards the nearest adjacent regionof settlement. Price et al. (2001) suggest that those non-local bodies (oftenfemale) buried with a different orientation may have origins in hunter-gatherer populations. If so, the treatment of the dead is again a citation ofpast events and social relations, of themes of movement, origin and memory.

What is the nature of personhood in this region of Europe? We cancertainly observe evidence for extensive networks of exchange, in whichboth objects and people circulated. Spondylus shells, whose originsultimately lay in the Aegean or Adriatic (Shackleton and Renfrew, 1970),were exchanged over immense distances and deposited as tokens of thesedistant places in LBK grave contexts as far west as Belgium (Müller, 1997;Willms, 1985). Lithic materials too were exchanged on the western edge of

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the LBK distribution. Maas valley sources – both from sources such asRijckholt and Vetschau/Lousberg – were exploited and exchanged overconsiderable distances. Again this was an exchange network whose rootslay in the Late Palaeolithic, but it was during the earliest LBK that itsexchange was intensified (Gronenborn, 1999: 168). The early phases atBruchenbrücken obtained flint from the Maas valley, 200 km to the west(Gronenborn, 1990). Many of the sites on the Aldenhoven Plateau obtainedflint from the same source, some 30 km distant. Chert from Wittlingen onthe Swabian Alb – a source first utilized in the Late Mesolithic – wasexchanged into the Upper Neckar and into the Rhine, while on the easternedge of the LBK the Szentgál source of radiolarite continued in import-ance (Gronenborn, 1999: 168–9).

The relatively consistent use of amphibolite as a raw material for adzesis also suggestive of widespread exchange networks (Whittle, 1996: 173). Asnoted above, from around 5500 BC exchange is also likely to occur with LaHoguette populations who had begun to practise horticulture in south-western Germany and eastern France, and from around 5250 BC laterLimburg populations in Holland, Belgium and France (Gronenborn, 1999;Price, 2000;Thomas, 1996). Finally, the links between communities are under-lined by the relative degree of uniformity of LBK ceramics themselves.

At one level, LBK populations are characterized by their homogeneity,of artefacts and material culture; a homogeneity in which enchained socialrelations would be critical. At another level they are characterized byheterogeneity, as cemeteries were made up of both established and migrantmembers of the community, indigenes and non-indigenes alike. The signifi-cance of place and origins was emphasized through uniform materialculture, house architecture and orientation, the burial of the dead in settle-ments and the construction of enclosures around living and defunct settle-ments alike. This interest in origins was also cited by the orientation of thedead in formal cemeteries, as is the deposition of Spondylus shells. Both arecitations of previous places of significance. Simultaneously spatial relationswere in flux as populations migrated. This is emphasized in the fluidity ofsettlement structures and by differential mortuary practices for those ofdiffering age, gender and origin as exemplified by the cemetery at Aiter-hofen, Bavaria (Veit, 1993). To an extent, houses embody this tensionbetween homogeneity and heterogeneity. Compared with house architec-ture in southeastern Europe, linear pottery houses are immense structures,presumably meant to house large extended kin groups, promoting a senseof homogeneous identity. On the other hand, unlike settlements in south-eastern Europe, linear pottery houses are not built in absolutely closephysical proximity to each other, promoting a sense of heterogeneousidentity at the settlement level.

We might say that structures of relationality are critical to the person inthe LBK Lebenswelt or lifeworld (Sommer, 2001), since they help to resolvemany of the tensions noted above. Sommer has recently argued that

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architecture, ceramics and to some extent lithics are tightly controlledelements of the LBK, contributing to a strictly circumscribed notion ofLebenswelt, the elements of which began to break down as the initial earlyexpansion of the LBK lost momentum (Sommer, 2001: 260). Such anaccount is critical as it introduces agency into our discussions of the LBK,rather than treating it as a homogenized unity. However, further to this Ibelieve a consideration of social networks enables us to consider the struc-ture of social relations into which each LBK community was situated. Socialrelations are enchained, but not in the same way as in southeastern Europe.Relations of enchainment simultaneously enable a person to referencedistant and extensive spatial relations, while promoting a cohesiveness tocommunities forging new relations with novel environs and peoples – bothwithin and beyond the settlement.The social relations of the LBK lifeworldpromoted both change and persistence (Sommer, 2001). I would argue thatpersonhood in the LBK was grounded in distant and mythical places oforigin, while the person was also situated in fluid networks of alliance whichfocused them towards present and future exchange partners.

■ NORTHWESTERN EUROPE

I will now briefly examine the character of personhood on the northwest-ern fringes of Europe, from around 5000–3500 BC. Settlement here is farmore fugitive. However, in a distribution from southern Scandinavia toIberia we see the emergence of earthen and stone constructions built tohouse the remains of the dead (Fig. 4). A broad sequence occurs which commences with one or more burials beneath an extensive earthen

Figure 4 Groundplan of a typical chambered tomb (Pipton, Wales; afterWhittle and Wysocki, 2000)

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longmound. In some cases – as in Brittany, France and Alentejo, Portugal –these burials may be commemorated by the erection of a large decoratedstele or menhir (Calado, 2002). These monuments overlap chronologicallywith another form of structure – the passage grave. Unlike longmounds,passage graves contain accumulations of human skeletal remains, whichappear to have undergone fragmentation and reordering, often to createcomposite persons, at a later stage in the mortuary process.

Enclosures are also constructed but their use and significance is varied.Circuits may be ditched, banked or palisaded. In some regions, such asDenmark, enclosures such as Sarup, Fyn (Andersen, 1988) see interruptedphases of causewayed ditches and palisades or fences. Enclosures of asimilar form are found in Britain. Enclosures may be segmented, orpalisaded like sections of Hambledon Hill, Dorset, or more unusually havestone banking like the later phase of Crickley Hill, Gloucestershire (Dixon,1988; Whittle, 1996: 268–9). Unlike the earliest Linearbandkeramik en-closures, these do not reference settlements, and this is partly reflected bytheir change in form with a greater emphasis upon interrupted ditches(Bradley, 2002). Rather, like the sites of Etton and Windmill Hill, insouthern England they seem to serve as focal points for the circulation, frag-mentation and deposition of human bodies and artefacts (Fowler, 2003;Pryor et al., 1985; Whittle et al., 1999).

Although the monuments of Atlantic Europe are diverse, there are anumber of themes worth drawing out. In the relative absence of settlements,monuments provide a focus for communities, and it is likely that earth andstone mounds were perceived as houses of the dead, quite possibly as theconceptual transformation of post-LBK settlements translated into stoneand earth (Hodder, 1984). The construction of monuments may involve thephysical incorporation of fragments of earlier structures (Fig. 5). This is animportant feature of passage grave construction in Brittany at sites such asMané Rutual, Mané-er-Hroëk, Mané Lud and Le Petit Mont. This is seenin its most spectacular form with sites like La Table des Marchands, Er Grahand Gavrinis located some 3–4 km apart incorporating parts of the samedecorated menhir (Le Roux, 1984; Whittle, 2000). Other examples of incor-poration come from sites such as Vale de Rodrigo, Alentejo, Portugal(Bueno Ramirez and de Balbín Behrmann, 2000; Calado, 2002) and frompassage graves such as Knowth, Boyne Valley, Ireland (Eogan, 1986, 1997).In many cases monuments were constructed over places that held signifi-cance for earlier hunter-gatherer populations. In some areas – such as thecave burials of the Meuse valley, Belgium (Cauwe, 2000) on the very edgeof the LBK distribution – the principles of fragmentation appear to havean antiquity dating back to the early Mesolithic.

The construction of monuments, both through the incorporation of frag-ments of earlier monuments and the use of raw materials from significantplaces – both local and distant – establishes relations between monuments

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and places (Bradley, 2000; Cooney, 2000; Jones, 1999). It may be a mistaketo see these monuments as repositories for the dead, rather they are focifor transformation in which human bone is employed as a resource to estab-lish relations between members of the living and between the living and thedead. Artefacts play this role too; this is especially obvious at enclosureswhere fragments of artefacts are brought into relation with the bones of thedead (Fowler, 2003; Pollard, 2005). Equally in many regions, such assouthern Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Britain, artefacts are deliber-ately fragmented in mortuary contexts and incorporated with the bones ofthe dead (Bakker, 1992; Hulthén, 1977; Midgley, 1992; Tilley, 1996). Giventhis, artefacts – such as stone axes – might have been considered as equiv-alents of the bones of the dead (Larsson, 2000; Thomas, 2002).

In this region of Europe persons are likely to be constructed from

Figure 5 The re-use of menhirs in the passage grave of Le Petit Mont,Morbihan, France (after Scarre, 2002)

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enchained social relations. The bones of the dead, and fragments ofartefacts, are circulated and brought into relation at enclosures andmortuary monuments. Bodies are not only fragmented, but these fragmentsare simultaneously accumulated in these deposits. Not only are people andartefacts circulated, but places too, as fragments of significant places areincorporated into monuments. The very construction of monuments – bothenclosures and mortuary monuments – are citations of earlier constructions,associated with ancestral populations. Similarly, the fragmentation of thedead may in some regions, such as Belgium, cite earlier Mesolithic prac-tices. As such, monuments and the practices that occur within them arenovel or hybrid inventions based upon the citation of a set of previous prac-tices and events.

■ PERSONHOOD IN THE EUROPEAN NEOLITHIC

This study has operated at the macroscale level of analysis and has identi-fied broad patterns in different regions and periods of the EuropeanNeolithic.This macroscale analysis has drawn out different ways of relating,and we should expect that at finer scales of analysis in each region therewill be multiple ways of becoming a person. In each instance I have arguedthat a case can be made for relational notions of personhood. However, thisbelies the complex differences in the archaeology we observe in eachregion. If these differences are to be drawn out a comparative perspectiveis required (Meskell and Joyce, 2003; Strathern, 1988).

For southeastern Europe from 6000–5500 BC relations are establishedthrough repetitive habitation over the houses of the dead. In some regionsthis leads to the creation of village settlements (and after this period to thegeneration of immense settlement mounds that themselves serve as visiblereminders of the past and the ancestors). Human remains and artefacts aredeposited at house sites to provide a continuing relationship between thelifing and the dead, and to create and maintain the significance of place.Relations are established between the living through the circulation of arte-facts and human remains, but critically their depositional locale suggeststhat settlements are significant foci. Settlements therefore provide theprimary focus for the construction of personhood. The person is fabricatedthrough their close relation to those who dwelt on the settlement previ-ously, and by the close proximity of the living community they presentlydwell amongst. Things circulate to reiterate these connections.

In regions to the north, like Serbia and Hungary, settlement took on adifferent character and there was more emphasis on the exchange andcirculation of objects between settlements to cement social ties. Burialsalso occur in settlements and artefacts are fragmented and deposited on

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settlement sites. Here the dead and artefacts serve a different role, astangible links to, or reminders of, past places occupied and of distant kinor exchange partners.

In many ways this way of relating has similarities with those in centralEurope from 5600/5500–5000 BC. Here settlements and cemeteries simul-taneously objectify the principle of accumulation and fragmentation. Theyconsist of groups of houses or graves, yet the houses are constructed in acomponential fashion and are inhabited by migrants, indigenes and thosewho have been in place for a generation. In a similar way, cemeteries areaccumulations. However their composition is fragmentary, as they arecomposed of a mixture of people, and given their sparse density are likelyto serve multiple settlements.

While settlements provide a reference point for the construction ofpersonhood, the living community is less closely proximal than settlementsin the south of the Balkans. Instead personhood is grounded in thecommunity of the present and in relations between communities, both agri-culturalists and hunter-gatherers. Relations between the living and theancestors are critical, but differ greatly to those of southeastern Europe.The ancestors are immediately presenced in the community in the form ofdecayed house plots and enclosures, but more distant ancestors are alsocited in the orientation of houses and the dead in cemeteries. The circu-lation of Spondylus shells and amphibolite adzes reiterates the connectionsbetween communities of the living and between the living and those ances-tors distanced in time and place. Personhood during this period is groundedless in place than in communities composed of a set of relations, both real– between members of the living community with differing origins, and ideal– between the living and their ancestors distanced in time and place. Thissense of community is particularly effective where communities are highlydispersed in a relatively dense wooded environment.

In northwestern Europe from 5000–3500 BC persons are constructeddifferently again. A series of relations with other times and places arereferenced by the construction of earth and stone monuments and circularenclosures and the practices of fragmentation that occur within them.Unlike in other parts of Europe, settlements are not so much the focus forgrounding personhood, but personhood is articulated by an attachment toa different sort of place, the burial monument – home of the ancestors. Simi-larly attachment is made to certain features in the landscape: hills, moun-tains, rivers and the like (Bradley, 2000; Tilley, 1994). In Edmonds’ (1999)elegant phrase these are ‘ancestral geographies’. Places are a mobilemedium for expressing personhood since places, in the form of rawmaterials as artefacts such as stone axes (Cooney, 1998, 2002) and thematerials from which monuments are constructed (Bradley, 2000; Jones,1999), are both circulated. Relatedness is therefore constructed from thenetworks established between people, place and the dead (Thomas, 1999).

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■ CONCLUSION – LIVES IN FRAGMENTS?

In conclusion, I want to re-emphasize the importance of considering theEuropean Neolithic as an historical process. I have argued above that thisprocess is interconnected through complex practices of citation and reiter-ation. It is precisely because of the emergent nature of these practices thatwe are able to compose narratives for the European Neolithic or, at agreater scale of abstraction, treat the period as a form of text. These modesof analysis are seductive, but it is important to recall that these intercon-nections are made through the repetition of earlier practices and thecreation of novel practices as people encountered new people throughmigration and created new worlds for themselves in the process.

As argued above, persons are in a constant state of becoming; as histori-cal conditions change different kinds of person will emerge. Given thelarge-scale change in the temporal and spatial conditions of life that emergewith the adoption of agriculture, sedentism and the construction of monu-ments, I argue that a consideration of the changing constitution of personsis not a peripheral concern. Instead, considerations of personhood arecentral to the way in which life during the Neolithic was constructed andexperienced (see Whittle, 2003, for an extended argument on this theme).As I have stressed, while notions of personhood derived from the anthro-pological literature are useful for unsettling Western assumptions about theperson, we need to be careful about figuring all non-Western personsaccording to a unitary anthropological model. Rather, I have argued thatrelationality is important, but we need to examine different ways of relatingin different historical contexts. Across Neolithic Europe persons are consti-tuted relationally, although the connections between people, place andthings are composed in quite different ways. Nevertheless there arecommonalities. If we treat the Neolithic as a process, each new way ofrelating cites what has gone before (since it is grounded upon what has gonebefore), but it also creates afresh new ways of relating. What are thecommonalities, the tools out of which people continued to create relation-ships during the Neolithic? We have already seen that the house and thesettlement (Hodder, 1990, 1998), and the relationship with the past and theancestors, are critical to each region. However, as we have seen, we need toconsider in more depth the composition of the household. Hodder tends toview the house as a distinct and bounded entity. If we pay more consider-ation to personhood and social relations more generally, we need to seehouseholds and settlements as relational entities linked through complexnetworks of contact and exchange.

To conclude, we need not seek to define the Neolithic in terms of abstractideational concepts, but by considering different ways of relating we beginto see how, through practice, new connections are continually established

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between people and people and their environment. It is by analysingthese connections that we begin to understand how novel relationsbetween people, place and settlements are articulated in the emergence ofthe Neolithic. Given this historical perspective we begin to realize that theNeolithic relates not so much to the ‘creation of new worlds’, but to thecreation of new kinds of people to live in those worlds.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Richard Bradley, Clive Gamble and Alasdair Whittle, each of whomcommented upon an earlier version of this article and helped to hammer it into itspresent shape. I would like to especially thank Alasdair for the use of unpublishedmaterial. I am also grateful to Dusan Boric, whose many chats on the topic of timeand memory and the European Neolithic over the last few years have benefited meenormously.

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ANDY JONES is a Lecturer in the Department of Archaeology,University of Southampton (UK), where he teaches European prehistoryand the British Neolithic and co-ordinates the MA in the Archaeology ofArt and Representation. He has previously held a fellowship at theMcDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge (UK) and alectureship at University College Dublin (Ireland). He has publishedArchaeological Theory and Scientific Practice (CUP, 2002) and edited (withG. Macgregor) Colouring the Past (Berg, 2002). He is currently working ona book for Cambridge University Press entitled Memory and MaterialCulture: An Archaeology of Tradition and Transformation and is editing thevolume on European Prehistory for the Blackwell Global ArchaeologiesSeries. He is presently undertaking a field project in Scotland in-vestigating the relationship between prehistoric rock art, memory andlandscape.[email: [email protected]]

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