Studies of collective or corporate burial in the British Neolithic have focused largely on ancestors, clans and lineages, or the production of a microcosm of reality. Social relations are often described as egalitarian, or egalitarianism is taken to be the ideological impetus for corporate burial, belying inequalities in life. Studies of individual burial focus more on concepts of individual power, autonomous agency, status and possession. In this contribution acts of depositing Neolithic bones are interpreted as citations of social relations. The possibilities for studying Neolithic social relations between different aspects of life (human, animal, object, place) are explored using theories developed to understand how persons - and their worlds - are produced through activity. Such activities are considered as struggles with different kinds of ideological regulatory fictions about personal identity and social relations. The study starts with a consideration of ethnographic approaches to personhood, reviews recent work on British Neolithic mortuary practices, and concludes with a case study from the Isle of Man.
Barraud, C., de Coppet, D., Iteanu, A. and Jamous, R. (1994[1984]) Of Relations and the Dead: Four Societies Viewed from the Angle of their Exchanges. Translated by S. Suffern. Oxford: Berg.
2.
Barrett, J. (1994) Fragments from Antiquity: An Archaeology of Social Life in Britain, 2900-1200 BC. Oxford: Blackwell.
3.
Barrett, J. and Fewster, K. (1998) ‘Stonehenge: is the Medium the Message?’, Antiquity72: 847-852.
4.
Battaglia, D. (1990) On the Bones of the Serpent: Person, Memory and Mortality in Sabarl Society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
5.
Battaglia, D. (1995) ‘Problematizing the Self: a Thematic Introduction. In D. Battaglia (ed.) Rhetorics of Self-Making, pp. 2-8. Berkeley: University of California Press.
6.
Binford, L. R. (1971) ‘Mortuary Practices: their Study and Potential’, in J.A. Brown (ed.) Approaches to the Social Dimensions of Mortuary Practices, pp. 6-29. Society for American Archaeology, Memoirs 25.
7.
Bird-David, N. (1993) Tribal Metaphorization of Human-Nature Relatedness - a Comparative Analysis’, in K. Milton (ed.) Environmentalism: the View from Anthropology, pp. 112-125. London: Routledge.
8.
Bird-David, N. (1999) ‘“Animism” Revisited: Personhood, Environment, and Relational Epistemology’, Current Anthropology40: 67-92.
9.
Bradley, R. (1998) The Significance of Monuments. London: Routledge.
10.
Brück, J. (2001) ‘Monuments, Power and Personhood in the British Neolithic’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute December.
11.
Busby, C. (1997) ‘Permeable and Partible Persons: a Comparative Analysis of Gender and the Body in South India and Melanesia’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute3(2): 261-278.
12.
Butler, J. (1993) Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’. New York: Routledge.
13.
Chesterman, J. (1977) ‘Burial Rights in a Cotswold-Severn Long Barrow’, Man12: 22-32.
14.
Cooney, G. (1992) ‘Body Politics and Grave Messages: Irish Neolithic Mortuary Practices’, in N. Sharples. and A. Sheridan (eds) Vessels for the Ancestors: Essays in Honour of Audrey Henshall, pp. 128-142. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
15.
Cregeen, S. (1978) ‘Ballaharra Excavations 1971: A Summary of Work and Results’, in P. Davey (ed.) Man and Environment in the Isle of Man, pp. 141-152. BARBritish Series 54(1).
16.
Cubbon, A. (1978) ‘Excavation at Killeaba, Ramsey, Isle of Man’, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society44: 69-95.
17.
Cubbon, W. (1934) ‘Bronze Age Cemetery Site at Knocksharry’. Proceedings of the Isle of Man Natural History and Antiquarians Society4: 446-453.
18.
Dobres, M.-A. and Robb, J. eds (2000) Agency in Archaeology. London: Routledge.
19.
Edmonds, M. (1993) ‘Interpreting Causewayed Enclosures in the Past and Present’, in C. Tilley (ed.) Interpretative Archaeology, pp. 99-142. Oxford: Berg.
20.
Edmonds, M. (1999) Ancestral Geographies of the Neolithic; Landscapes, Monuments and Memory. London: Routledge.
21.
Fowler, C. (2000) ‘The Individual, the Subject and Archaeological Interpretation’, in C. Holtorf and H. Karlsson (eds) Philosophy and Archaeological Practice. Perspectives for the 21st Century, pp. 107-134. Gothenburg: Bricoleur Press.
22.
Fowler, C. (in press) ‘Body Parts: Personhood in the Manx Neolithic’, in Y. Hamilakis, M. Pluciennik, M. Shanks and S. Tarlow (eds) Thinking Through the Body. London/New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Press.
23.
Geertz, C. (1973) ‘Person, Time and Conduct in Bali’, in C. Geertz The Interpretation of Culture, pp. 365-403. New York: Basic Books, Harper Press.
24.
Gell, A. (1998) Art and Agency: an Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
25.
Haraway, D. (1991) Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association Press.
26.
Henshall, A. (n.d.) Unpublished notes based on P.M.C. Kermode’s field notes, 1893. Centre for Manx Studies, Douglas, Isle of Man.
27.
Hodder, I. (1982) ‘Theoretical Archaeology: a Reactionary View’, in I. Hodder (ed.) Symbolic and Structural Archaeology, pp. 1-16. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
28.
Hodder, I. (1986) Reading the Past: Current Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
29.
Hodder, I. (1992) ‘Symbolism, Meaning and Context’, in I. Hodder (ed.) Theory and Practice in Archaeology, pp. 11-23. London: Routledge.
30.
Hodder, I. (2000) ‘Agency and Individuals in Long-Term Processes’, in M.-A. Dobres and J. Robb (eds) Agency in Archaeology, pp. 21-33. London: Routledge.
31.
Ingold, T. (1993) ‘The Temporality of the Landscape’, World Archaeology25: 152-174.
32.
Ingold, T. (1994) From Trust to Domination: an Alternative History of Human-Animal Relations’, in A. Manning and J. Sperbell (eds) Animals and Human Society: Changing Perspectives, pp. 1-19. London: Routledge.
33.
Ingold, T. (1996) ‘Growing Plants and Raising Animals: an Anthropological Perspective’, in D. Harris (ed.) The Origins and Spread of Farming in Eurasia, pp. 12-24. London: UCL Press.
34.
Jones, A. (1998) ‘Where Eagles Dare: Landscape, Animals and the Neolithic of Orkney’, Journal of Material Culture3(3): 301-324.
35.
Jones, A. (1999) ‘Local Colour: Megalithic Architecture and Colour Symbolism in Neolithic Arran’, Oxford Journal of Archaeology18(4): 339-350.
36.
Keiller, A. and Piggott, S. (1938) ‘Excavation of an Untouched Chamber in the Lanhill Long Barrow’, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society5: 122-150.
37.
Kermode, P.M. C. and Herdman, W. A. (1914) Manx Antiquities. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.
38.
LiPuma, E. (1998) ‘Modernity and Forms of Personhood in Melanesia’, in M. Lambek and A. Strathern (eds) Bodies and Persons: Comparative Views from Africa and Melanesia, pp. 53-79. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
39.
Marriot, M. (1976) ‘Hindu Transactions: Diversity Without Dualism’, in B. Kapferer (ed.) Transaction and Meaning: Directions in the Anthropology of Exchange and Symbolic Behaviour, pp. 109-142. Philadelphia, PA: Institute for the Study of Human Issues.
40.
Mauss, M. (1968[1938]) trans. L. Krader ‘A Category of the Human Spirit’ (Une categorie de l’esprit humain: la notion de personne, celle de ‘moi’), Psychoanalytical Review55: 457-490.
41.
Perry, E. and Joyce, R. (in press) ‘Providing a Past for Bodies that Matter: Judith Butler’s Impact on the Archaeology of Gender’. International Journal of Gender and Sexuality Studies.
42.
Piggott, S. (1935) ‘The Mull Hill Circle, Isle of Man, and its Pottery’, Journal of Antiquarians12: 146-157.
43.
Piggott, S. (1962) The West Kennet Long Barrow Excavations 1955-6 Ministry of Public Works Archaeological Reports 4. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.
44.
Richards, C. (1988) ‘Altered Images: a Re-examination of Neolithic Mortuary Practices’, in J. Barrett and I. Kinnes (eds) The Archaeology of Context in the Neolithic and Bronze Age: Recent Trends, pp. 42-56. Sheffield: University of Sheffield.
45.
Saville, A. (1990) Hazleton North: the Excavation of a Neolithic Long Cairn of the Cotswold-Severn Group. London: English Heritage Archaeological Report 13.
46.
Saxe, A. (1970) ‘Social Dimensions of Mortuary Practices’, PhD thesis, University of Michigan.
47.
Shanks, M. and Tilley, C. (1982) ‘Ideology, Symbolic Power and Ritual Communication: a Reinterpretation of Neolithic Mortuary Practices’, in I. Hodder (ed.) Symbolic and Structural Archaeology, pp. 129-154. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
48.
Shanks, M. and Tilley, C. (1987) Social Theory and Archaeology. Cambridge: Polity Press.
49.
Shanks, M. and Tilley, C. (1992) Reconstructing Archaeology: Theory and Practice. Second edition. London: Routledge.
50.
Sharples, N. (1985) ‘Individual and Community: the Changing Role of Megaliths in the Orcadian Neolithic’, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society51: 59-74.
51.
Strathern, M. (1988) The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melansia. Berkeley: University of California Press.
52.
Strathern, M. (1992) After Nature: English Kinship in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
53.
Strathern, M. (1999) Property, Substance and Effect: Anthropological Essays on Persons and Things. London: Athlone Press.
54.
Tainter, J. (1978) ‘Mortuary Practices and the Study of Prehistoric Social Systems’, Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory1: 105-141.
55.
Thomas, J. (1998) ‘An Economy of Substances in Earlier Neolithic Britain’, in J. Robb (ed.) Material Symbols: Culture and Economy in Prehistory. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
56.
Thomas, J. (2000a) ‘Reconfiguring the Social, Reconfiguring the Material’, in M. Schiffer (ed.) Social Theory in Archaeology, pp. 143-155. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
57.
Thomas, J. (2000b) ‘Death, Identity and the Body in Neolithic Britain’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute6(4): 653-668.
58.
Tilley, C. (1994) A Phenomenology of Landscape: Paths, Places and Monuments. Oxford: Berg.
59.
Tilley, C. (1999) Metaphor and Material Culture. Oxford: Blackwell.
60.
Ucko, P. (1969) ‘Ethnography and Archaeological Interpretation of Funerary Remains’, World Archaeology1: 262-280.
