How does ‘material memory’ work? Should monumental sites be considered
as places of social memory par excellence or perhaps citational practices? With
these questions in mind the concepts of citation, trace and repetition are singled out as
elements of ‘material memory’. This article addresses evidence from the
prehistoric site of Lepenski Vir in south-east Europe, and suggests that the concept of
‘deep time’ constituted the main structuring trope of the sequence. Over
the long term, people adhered to physical traces of ‘deep time’, through
re-figuring, dis placement and circulation of material fragments, which maintained
a collective (material) memory. The significance of apotropaism is suggested as a
constitutive part of cultural practices and understood as a ‘technology of
protection’ with ontological and epistemological relevance, such that it empowers
individual agents to cope with various vicissitudes of life by an effective mobilization of
‘deep time’ residues. Examples of narrative sequences at Lepenski Vir
are explored, which relate to specific individuals and life cycles of houses.
Arendt, H.
(1973 [1992]) ‘Introduction to Walter Benjamin:
1892-1940’, in W. Benjamin, Illuminations, pp.
7-58. London: Fontana
Press.
2.
Astuti, R.
(1998) ‘“It’s a
Boy,”“It’s a Girl!” Reflections on Sex and Gender
in Madagascar and Beyond’, in
M. Lambek
and
A. Strathern
(eds) Bodies and Persons. Comparative Perspectives from Africa and
Melanesia, pp. 29-52. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
3.
Bachelard, G.
(1964) The Poetics of Space.
Boston: Beacon
Press.
4.
Bailey, D.
(1997) ‘Impermanence and Flux in the Landscape of Early
Agricultural South Eastern Europe’, in
J. Chapman
and
P. Dolukhanov
(eds) Landscape in Flux: Central and Eastern Europe in Antiquity, pp.
41-58. Oxford: Oxbow
Books.
5.
Bailey, D.
(2000) Balkan Prehistory. Exclusion, Incorporation and
Identity. London and New York:
Routledge.
6.
Barrett, J.C.
(1994) Fragments from Antiquity. An Archaeology of Social Life in
Britain, 2900-1200 BC. Oxford:
Blackwell.
7.
Bell, C.
(1992a) Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice.
Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
8.
Bender, B.
(1995)
‘Timely interventions’
, Antiquity69:
179-182.
9.
Bender, B.
(1998) Stonehenge: Making Space.
Oxford: Berg.
10.
Benjamin, W.
(1973/1992) ‘The Image of Proust’, in
W. Benjamin, Illuminations, pp. 197-210.
London: Fontana
Press.
11.
Bloch, M.E.F.
(1998) How We Think They Think. Anthropological Approaches to
Cognition, Memory, and Literacy. Oxford:
Westview Press.
12.
Bonsall, C., R.Lennon, K.McSweeney, C.
,
et al.
(1997)
‘Mesolithic and Early Neolithic in the Iron Gates: A Palaeodietary
Perspective’
, Journal of European Archaeology5(1):
50-92.
13.
Bonsall, C.
,
G. Cook
,
R. Lennon
,
et al.
(2000)
‘Stable Isotopes, Radiocarbon and the Mesolithic-Neolithic Transition in
the Iron Gates’
, Documenta Praehistorica27:
119-132.
14.
BoriĆ, D.
(1999)
‘Places that Created Time in the Danube Gorges and Beyond, c. 9000-5500
BC’
, Documenta Praehistorica26:
41-70.
15.
BoriĆ, D.
(2002a) ‘Apotropaism and the Temporality of Colours:
Colourful Mesolithic-Neolithic Seasons in the Danube Gorges’, in
A. Jones
and
G. MacGregor
(eds), Colouring the Past: The significance of colour for archaeological
research, pp. 23-43. Oxford:
Berg.
16.
BoriĆ, D.
(2002b)
‘The Lepenski Vir conundrum: A Reinterpretation of the Mesolithic and
Neolithic Sequences in the Danube Gorges’
, Antiquity, 76:
1026-1039.
17.
BoriĆ, D.
and
C.A.I. French
(forthcoming)
‘Micromorphological Analyses of Lime Floor and Hearth Samples from Lepenski
Vir, Serbia’
, Antiquity:
1026-1039.
18.
BoriĆ, D.
and
S. Stefanović
(forthcoming)
‘Birth and Death: Infant Burials from Vlasac and Lepenski
Vir’
, Antiquity.
19.
Bourdieu, P.
(1970/1990) ‘The Kabyle House or the World
Reversed’, in P. Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, Appendix.
Cambridge: Polity
Press.
20.
Boyd, B.
(1995) ‘Houses and Hearths, Pits and Burials: Natufian
Mortuary Practices at Mallaha (Eynan), Upper Jordan Valley’, in
S. Campbell
and
A. Green
(eds) The Archaeology of Death in the Ancient Near East, pp.
17-23. Oxford: Oxbow
Books.
21.
Bradley, R.
(1998) The Significance of Monuments. On the Shaping of Human
Experience in Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe. London and New
York: Routledge.
22.
Buchli, V.
(1995) ‘Interpreting Material Culture: The Trouble with
Text’, in
I. Hodder
,
M. Shanks
,
A. Alexandri
,
V. Buchli
,
J. Carman
,
J. Last
and
G. Lucas
(eds) Interpreting Archaeology: Finding Meaning in the Past, pp.
181-193. London and New York:
Routledge.
23.
Buchli, V.
(1999) An Archaeology of Socialism. Oxford
and New York: Berg.
24.
Butler, J.
(1993) Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of
‘Sex’. London:
Routledge.
25.
Carsten, J.
and
S. Hugh-Jones
, eds (1995) About the House: Lévi-Strauss and
Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
26.
Chapman, J.C.
(1992) ‘Social Power in the Iron Gates
Mesolithic’, in
J. Chapman
and
P. Dolukhanov
(eds) Cultural Transformations and Interactions in Eastern Europe, pp.
71-121. Aldershot:
Avebury.
27.
Chapman, J.C.
(1997a) ‘The Origins of Tells in Eastern
Hungary’, in
P. Topping
(ed.) Neolithic Landscapes, pp. 139-164.
Oxford: Oxbow.
28.
Chapman, J.C.
(1997b) ‘Places as Timemarkers: The Social Construction
of Prehistoric Landscapes in Eastern Hungary’, in
J.C. Chapman
and
P. Dolukhanov
(eds) Landscape in Flux: Central and Eastern Europe in Antiquity, pp.
137-161. Oxford: Oxbow
Books.
29.
Chapman, J.C.
(2000) Fragmentation in Archaeology: People, Places and Broken
Objects in the Prehistory of South-Eastern Europe. London and
New York: Routledge.
30.
Connerton, P.
(1989) How Societies Remember.
Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
31.
Deleuze, G.
(1989) Cinema 1: The Time-Image (trans. H. Tomlinson and R.
Galeta). London:
Athlone.
32.
Derrida, J.
(1973) Speech and Phenomena, and Other Essays on Husserl’s
Theory of Signs. Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University Press.
33.
Derrida, J.
(1974) Of Grammatology. Baltimore, MD and
London: Johns Hopkins University
Press.
34.
DimitrijeviĆ, V.
(in press) ‘Lepenski Vir Animal Bones: What Was Left in the
Houses?’, in
C. Bonsall
,
V. Boroneanţ
and
I. RadovanoviĆ
(eds) The Iron Gates Prehistory: New Perspectives.
Oxford: BAR Int.
Ser.
35.
Donald, M.
(1991) Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of
Culture and Cognition. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
36.
Edmonds, M.
(1999) Ancestral Geographies of the Neolithic. Landscape, Monuments
and Memory. London and New York:
Routledge.
37.
Eliade, M.
(1957) The Sacred and the Profane. The Nature of Religion.
New York: Harvest
Books.
38.
Fentress, J.
and
C. Wickham
(1992) Social Memory. Oxford:
Blackwell.
39.
Foucault, M.
(1972) The Archaeology of Knowledge (trans. A.M. Sheridan
Smith). London: Tavistock
Publications.
40.
Foucault, M.
(1984) ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy,
History’, in
P. Rabinow
(ed.) The Foucault Reader, pp. 76-100.
London: Penguin
Books.
41.
Fowler, C.
(2001)
‘Personhood and Social Relations in the British Neolithic with a Study from
the Isle of Man’
, Journal of Material Culture6(2):
137-163.
42.
Gell, A.
(1992a) The Anthropology of Time. Cultural Constructions of Temporal
Maps and Images. Oxford:
Berg.
43.
Gell, A.
(1992b) ‘The Technology of Enchantment and the
Enchantment of Technology’, in
J. Coote
and
A. Shelton
(eds) Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics, pp. 40-67.
Oxford: Clarendon
Press.
44.
Gell, A.
(1998) Art and Agency. An Anthropological Theory.
Oxford: Clarendon
Press.
45.
Gosden, C.
and
G. Lock
(1998)
‘Prehistoric Histories’
, World Archaeology30(1):
2-12.
46.
Halbwachs, M.
(1992) On Collective Memory. Chicago and
London: The University of Chicago
Press.
47.
Harré, R.
(1991) Physical Being. A Theory of Corporeal Psychology.
Oxford:
Blackwell.
48.
Heidegger, M.
(1962) Being and Time (trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson).
New York: Harper and
Row.
Hobsbawm, E.
and
T. Ranger
, eds (1983) The Invention of Tradition.
Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
51.
Hodder, I.
(1990a) The Domestication of Europe. Structure and Contingency in
Neolithic Societies. Oxford:
Blackwell.
52.
Hodder, I.
(1990b) ‘Style as Historical
Quality’, in
M. Conkey
and
C. Hastorf
(eds) The Use of Style in Archaeology, pp. 44-51.
Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
53.
Hodder, I.
(1998) ‘The Domus: Some Problems
Reconsidered’, in
M. Edmonds
and
C. Richards
(eds) Understanding the Neolithic of North-western Europe, pp.
84-101. Glasgow: Cruithne
Press.
54.
Hugh-Jones, S.
(1995) ‘Inside-out and Back-to-front: The Androgynous
House in Northwest Amazonia’, in
J. Carsten
and
S. Hugh-Jones
(eds) About the House: Lévi-Strauss and Beyond, pp.
226-252. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
55.
Husserl, E.
(1964) The Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness (trans.
J.S. Churchill). Bloomington, IN and London:
Indiana University Press.
56.
Ingold, T.
(1993)
‘The Temporality of the Landscape’
, in R. Bradley (ed.) Conceptions of Time and Ancient Society/World
Archaeology25(2):
152-174.
57.
Ingold, T.
(2000) ‘Ancestry, Generation, Substance, Memory,
Land’, in
T. Ingold
(ed.) The Perception of the Environment. Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and
Skill, pp. 132-151. London and New
York: Routledge.
58.
Jones, A.
(2001)
‘Drawn from Memory: The Archaeology of Aesthetics and the Aesthetics of
Archaeology in Earlier Bronze Age Britain and the Present’
, in C. Goden (ed.) Archaeology and Aesthetics/World
Archaeology33(2):
334-356.
59.
Joyce, R.
(2000) ‘Girling the Girl and Boying the Boy: The
Production of Adulthood in Ancient Mesoamerica’, in
R. Gilchrist
(ed.) Human Lifecycles/World Archaeology 31(3), pp.
473-483. New York and London:
Routledge.
60.
Joyce, R.A.
and
S.D. Gillespie
, eds (2000) Beyond Kinship. Social and Material Reproduction in House
Societies. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press.
61.
Küchler, S.
(1999) ‘The Place of Memory’, in
A. Forty
and
S. Küchler
(eds) The Art of Forgetting, pp. 53-72.
Oxford and New York:
Berg.
62.
Kwint, M.C. Breward
and
J. Aynsley
, eds (1999) Material Memories. Design and Evocation.
Oxford/New York:
Berg.
63.
Latour, B.
(1993) We Have Never Been Modern. New
York: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
64.
Lévi-Strauss, C.
(1983) The Way of the Masks.
London: Jonathan
Cape.
65.
Lévi-Strauss, C.
(1987) Anthropology and Myth: Lectures 1951-1982.
Oxford:
Blackwell.
66.
Mauss, M.
(1972) A General Theory of Magic. London
and Boston: Routledge & Kegan
Paul.
67.
Mauss, M.
(1979) ‘Body Techniques’, in
M. Mauss
(ed.) Sociology and Psychology: Essays (trans. Ben Brewster), pp.
95-123. London: Routledge
& Kegan Paul.
68.
Meskell, L.
(1996)
‘The Somatization of Archaeology: Institutions, Discourses,
Corporeality’
, Norwegian Archaeological Review29(1):
1-16.
69.
Meskell, L.
(1998) ‘The Irresistible Body and the Seduction of
Archaeology’, in
D. Montserrat
(ed.) Changing Bodies, Changing Meanings. Studies on the Human Body in
Antiquity, pp. 139-161. London and New
York: Routledge.
70.
Moore, H.
(1990) ‘Paul Ricoeur: Action, Meaning and
Text’, in
C. Tilley
(ed.) Reading Material Culture: Structuralism, Hermeneutics and
Post-Structuralism, pp. 85-120.
Oxford:
Blackwell.
71.
Nietzsche, F.
(1980 [1874]) On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for
Life. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett
Publishing Company, Inc.
72.
Pearson, M.R.
and
C. Richards
, eds (1994) Architecture and Order: Approaches to Social Space.
London:
Routledge.
73.
RadovanoviĆ, I.
(1996) The Iron Gates Mesolithic. Ann
Arbor: International Monographs in Prehistory,
Archaeological Series 11.
74.
RadovanoviĆ, I.
(1997) ‘The Lepenski Vir Culture: A Contribution to
Interpretation of its Ideological Aspects’, in Antidoron
Dragoslavo SrejoviĆ completis LXV Annis ab Amicis, Collegis, Discipulis
Oblatum, pp. 85-93. Beograd:
Centar za arheološka istraživanja, Filozofski
fakultet.
75.
RadovanoviĆ, I.
(2000)
‘Houses and Burials at Lepenski Vir’
, European Journal of Archaeology3(3):
330-349.
76.
Renfrew, C.
(1998) ‘Mind and Matter: Cognitive Archaeology and
External Symbolic Storage’, in
C. Renfrew
and
C. Scarre
(eds) Cognition and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Symbolic Storage,
pp. 1-6. Cambridge: McDonald
Institute for Archaeological Research.
77.
Renfrew, C.
(2001) ‘Symbol before Concept: Material Engagement and
the Early Development of Society’, in
I. Hodder
(ed.) Archaeological Theory Today, pp. 122-140.
Cambridge: Polity
Press.
78.
Ricoeur, P.
(1981) Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences (trans. J.
Thompson). Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
79.
Ricoeur, P.
(1984) Time and Narrative, Volume I (trans. K. Blamey and D.
Pellauer). Chicago and London: The University of
Chicago Press.
80.
Ricoeur, P.
(1988) Time and Narrative, Volume 3 (trans. K. Blamey and D.
Pellauer). Chicago and London: The University of
Chicago Press.
81.
Rosaldo, R.
(1989 [1993]) Culture and Truth. The Remaking of Social
Analysis. Boston: Beacon
Press.
82.
Rowlands, M.
(1993)
‘The Role of Memory in the Transmission of Culture’
, in R. Bradley (ed.) Conceptions of Time and Ancient Society/World
Archaeology25(2):
141-151.
83.
Shanks, M.
(1992) Experiencing the Past. On the Character of Archaeology.
London and New York:
Routledge.
84.
Shanks, M.
and
C. Tilley
(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.
85.
SrejoviĆ, D.
(1967) Lepenski Vir. Beograd:
Narodni Muzej.
86.
SrejoviĆ, D.
(1969) Lepenski Vir - Nova Praistorijska Kultura u Podunavlju.
Beograd: Srpska Književna
Zadruga.
87.
SrejoviĆ, D.
(1972) Europe’s First Monumental Sculpture: New Discoveries
at Lepenski Vir. London: Thames and
Hudson.
88.
SrejoviĆ, D.
(1981) Lepenski Vir: Menschenbilder Einer Frühen
Europäischen Kultur. Mainz am Rhein:
Verlag Philipp von Zabern.
89.
SrejoviĆ, D.
and
Lj. BaboviĆ
(1983) Umetnost Lepenskog Vira.
Beograd:
Jugoslavija.
90.
SrejoviĆ, D.
and
Z. Letica
(1978) Vlasac. Mezolitsko naselje u Djerdapu (I arheologija).
Beograd: Srpska Akademija Nauka i
Umetnosti.
91.
StefanoviĆ, S.
and
D. BoriĆ
(in press) ‘The New Born Infant Burials from Lepenski Vir: In
Pursuit for Contextual Meanings’, in
C. Bonsall
,
V. Boroneanţ
and
I. RadovanoviĆ
(eds) The Iron Gates Prehistory: New Perspectives.
Oxford: BAR Int.
Ser.
92.
Strathern, M.
(1988) The Gender of the Gift. Los
Angeles: University of California
Press.
93.
Strathern, M.
(1991) Partial Connections. Savage,
MD: Rowman and Littlefield
Publishers.
94.
Strathern, M.
(1998) ‘Social Relation and the Idea of
Externality’, in
C. Renfrew
and
C. Scarre
(eds) Cognition and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Symbolic Storage,
pp. 135-147. Cambridge:
McDonald Institute for Archaeological
Research.
95.
Taussig, M.
(1993) Mimesis and Alterity. A Particular History of the
Senses. New York and London:
Routledge.
96.
Taussig, M.
(1999) Defacement. Public Secrecy and the Labor of the
Negative. Stanford: Stanford University
Press.
97.
Thomas, J.
(1996) Time, Culture and Identity. London
and New York: Routledge.
98.
Thomas, J.
(1998) ‘Some Problems with the Notion of External
Symbolic Storage, and the Case of Neolithic Material Culture in
Britain’, in
C. Renfrew
and
C. Scarre
(eds) Cognition and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Symbolic Storage,
pp. 149-156. Cambridge:
McDonald Institute for Archaeological
Research.
99.
Thomas, J.
(2001) ‘Archaeologies of Place and
Landscape’, in
I. Hodder
(ed.) Archaeological Theory Today, pp. 165-186.
Cambridge: Polity
Press.
100.
Tilley, C.
(1994) A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths and
Monuments. Oxford:
Berg.
101.
Tringham, R.
(1991) ‘Households with Faces: The Challenge of Gender
in Prehistoric Architectural Remains’, in
J. Gero
and
M. Conkey
(eds) Engendering Archaeology: Women and Prehistory, pp.
93-131. Oxford:
Blackwell.
102.
Tringham, R.
(2000a) ‘Southeastern Europe in the Transition to
Agriculture in Europe: Bridge, Buffer or Mosaic’, in
T.D. Price
(ed.) Europe’s First Farmers, pp. 19-56.
Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
103.
Tringham, R.
(2000b) ‘The Continuous House: A View from the Deep
Past’, in
R.A. Joyce
and
S.D. Gillespie
(eds) Beyond Kinship. Social and Material Reproduction in House Societies,
pp. 115-134. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press.
104.
Turner, B.S.
(2001)
‘On the Concept of Axial Space: Orientalism and the
Originary’
, Journal of Social Archaeology1(1):
62-74.
105.
van Gennep, A.
(1960) The Rites of Passage.
Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press.
106.
Wagner, R.
(1980) The Invention of Culture. Chicago
and London: The University of Chicago
Press.
107.
Whittle, A.
(1996) Europe in the Neolithic. The Creation of New Worlds.
Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
108.
Whittle, A.
,
L. Bartosiewicz
,
D. BoriĆ
,
P. Pettitt
and
M. Richards
(2001)
‘In the Beginning: New Radiocarbon Dates for the Early Neolithic in
Northern Serbia and South-east Hungary’
, Antaeus25:
1-51.
