Theme:
1. Artefacts, Buildings & Ecofacts
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
Depositional Practices in the Neolithic: Contacts, Interactions and Transformations
Content:
Neolithisation brings with it a changed character and focus on depositional practices. Neolithic depositions can take many forms and vary in complexity. Depositions are related to a wide range of features including pits, house structures, flint mines, stone axe quarries, enclosures, megalithic and non-megalithic monuments, middens or various parts of the landscape. Furthermore, their contents vary across regions and phases as they can hold pottery, figurines, flint and stone axes, sickles, weaponry, ornaments, food remains, animal bone and even (parts of) human individuals.
What can these depositions tell us about Neolithic societies and their contacts? Depositional practices contain relatively visible, ‘public’ elements and less observable characteristics, which would need more sustained, direct contact to pass between groups. Therefore, depositional practices were central for the creation of community identities, social cohesion and worldviews, potentially over large areas, but they also show numerous local and regional idiosyncrasies. These patterns of differences and similarities across and between regions can help us to tease out multiple possible links. In this, the details of depositional practices (e.g. fragmentation, arrangement, use of colour etc.) are as important as the items themselves and their location. By investigating sets of complex, but linked practices, we can begin to explore the character and intensity of interactions and communication between Neolithic societies and address the importance of a wide range of depositional practices for social reproduction and change.
With this session, we would like to focus on what depositions and their transformations can tell us about contacts and interaction between and within Neolithic communities. Hence, we welcome papers from all over the world focusing on a wide spectrum of Neolithic depositional practices and their material correlates.
Keywords:
Depositional practices, Neolithic, Interaction, Cultural change, Ritual, Cultural transmission
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Rune Iversen (Denmark) 1
Co-organisers:
Mathias Bjørnevad-Ahlqvist (Denmark) 1
Daniela Hofmann (Norway) 2
Affiliations:
1. University of Copenhagen
2. University of Bergen
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