Prehistoric Materialities: Becoming Material in Prehistoric Britain and Ireland

251 Pages·2012·3.54 MB·English

by  Andrew Meirion Jones

PREHISTORIC MATERIALITIES
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Prehistoric
Materialities
Becoming Material in Prehistoric
Britain and Ireland
ANDREW MEIRION JONES
1
3
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Preface
This book focusses on the events that connect materials and past
peoples. One of the signal considerations of the book is the exces-
siveness of events: the fact that events can include both a series of
intercuttingrelationshipsandthattheserelationshipsmaybepartial
andongoing.Inthisspirit,itseemsappropriatetoconsidertheevents
thatledtothewritingofthebook.
Insomeways,Ihavealwayswantedtowritethisbookasitdealswith
issuesofarchaeologicalmethodandtheory—suchascategorization—
that I have been grappling with since my doctoral thesis. However,
thewritingprojectwaspropelledbythreemajorevents.
Firstevent:aninfluxofrequestsforreviewsandreferencesaround
Easter 2006. These requests were all concerned with my previous
work on colour and archaeology. I was surprised, as the book I had
edited on the subject had sold poorly, although it seemed to have
caught the imagination of archaeologists, as well as the wider com-
munity of scholars concerned with colour. I began to consider
whether I’d written everything I wanted to say on colour. It was
sometime after this that a book proposal was written for Oxford
UniversityPress. At this time, I was thinking about dealing with the
presentationalcharacterofartefactsandthebookwasostensiblytobe
aboutprehistoricaesthetics.
Secondevent:sometimelaterin2006IboughtDougBailey’sbook
PrehistoricFigurines(Routledge,2005).Iinitiallyboughtthebookasit
coveredatopicandperiodofprehistoryIteach.However,Ifoundthe
analysis of figurines as visual culture compelling. Not only this, the
many,andvarious,sourcesusedtodiscussfigurineswasinvigorating—
the book seemed to offer a new way of situating archaeological
discussions. I was intrigued as I still thought I was writing a book
aboutaestheticsandBailey’sbookseemedtoofferafreshnewtemplate.
The influence of this book may not be immediately apparent in the
presentvolume, although it influenced my interest in dimensionality
(Chapter3)andcanbeseeninmydiscussionofartefacts,suchasthe
FolktonDrums,inChapter8.
Third event: in May 2007 I was invited to a day conference on
‘time’ at the Department of Sociology, Lancaster University. I duly
vi Preface
went and presented a paper on materiality and memory in the rock
arttraditionsofwesternScotland.Iwasneversurehowthepaperwas
received but, for me—like many conferences—the most interesting
exchanges happened in the coffee break. I was chatting to two post-
graduatestudentsandIpolitelyaskedwhattheywerestudying.One
gave a conventional answer, the other was studying ‘waste manage-
ment’. I was surprised by this answer and asked how this related to
sociological questions. There was an embarrassed silence. One stu-
dent whispered to the other something like ‘don’t worry he’s an
archaeologist’ then the waste management student shuffled her feet
and, rather shamefacedly, admitted that she no longer believed in
sociology. This didn’t surprise me as I had recently been reading
Latour’s Reassembling the Social (Oxford University Press, 2005)
which seemed to make a similar point, and I assumed that—as
usual—Latourwascrystallizingdeepercurrentsofthought.However,
on my return journey I was thinking back on this moment and
recalledaparallelconversationwithaseniorcolleagueinarchaeology
who had recently discovered the work of Alfred Gell and Bruno
Latour. He expressed shock at these authors, as their work, in his
words,‘droveacoachandhorsesthroughclassicalsociology’.This,he
argued, could not be countenanced. Thinking about these two con-
versations,Ibegantowonderwhyitwasthatsomesociologistshave
beenhappytoquestiontheconceptofsociety—theverybasisoftheir
subject—while we in archaeology seemed to wish to cling to the
divine word of Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens, and others. Is it
because,asadiscipline,wearebackward,orbehind,inourthinking,
i.e.‘don’tworryhe’sanarchaeologist’,oristhereadeeperepistemo-
logicalreasonforustocravesolidity,security,andafirmbedrock?As
I began thinking about this, it became clear that this was something
Iwantedtowriteaboutandmyinterestinprehistoricaestheticsbegan
toshifttoaninterestinprehistoricmaterialsandmaterialities...
Inadditiontothesethreeevents,thewritingof thisbookhasalso
beeninfluencedbymycontinuedengagementwithJohnChapman’s
Fragmentation in Archaeology (Routledge, 2000), a profoundly im-
portantbookthatIamstillcomingtotermswith.
The bookincludes anumber oforiginal casestudiesand involved
the analysis of several museum collections. I would therefore like to
thank the staff and curators for all their help during my visits at the
followingmuseums:MarischalCollegeMuseum,Aberdeen;Salisbury
and South Wiltshire Museum, Wiltshire; and Wiltshire Heritage
Preface vii
Museum, Devizes, Wiltshire. I am also extremely grateful to collea-
gues in Ireland who have provided photographic material for repro-
duction without charge; these include Professor Muiris O’Sullivan,
Professor George Eogan, and Kerri Cleary. I am also grateful to
AndrewCochrane,JoshuaPollard,andStephMoser,allofwhom,in
variousways,haveinfluencedthecourseofthisbook,andespeciallyto
StephforintroducingmetothewonderfulworkofDavidBatchelor.
Every effort has been made to request permission to use the few
literaryreferencesinthisbook.
Writingthebookinvolvedtheusualtrials,tribulations,andhealth
scares.Iwouldthereforeliketodedicatethebooktothestaffworking
in that great British institution, the National Health Service (NHS),
withoutwhomthisbookwouldcertainlynothavebeenwritten.Long
maythisfinesocialistprojectprosper.
Ialsodedicatethebooktomypartner,HannahSackett,who,over
thecourseofwriting,hasactedasbothnurseandintellectualadvisor.
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Contents
ListofFigures x
ListofPlates xii
1. AnArchaeologicalOrder 1
2. ArchaeologyinFlux 16
3. MaterialsandScale 31
4. Materials,Colour,andLight 72
5. MaterialsandCategories 100
6. MaterialsandAssemblages 126
7. MaterialsandPerformances 144
8. PresentingThreeArtefacts 171
9. MutableArchaeologies 188
References 201
Index 221