This article challenges the traditional assumption that the European Early Bronze Age
saw the emergence of an ‘ideology of the individual’. It argues
that the Early Bronze Age self was constructed in terms of interpersonal connections
rather than the intrinsic attributes of a bounded individual. A discussion of
mortuary rites in Britain and Ireland suggests that the objects placed in the grave
allowed the mourners to comment metaphorically on the links between the dead and the
living, as well as on the changes experienced by a community torn asunder by death.
As such, we may argue that identity was a relational attribute; it was
people’s relationships with others that made them who they were.
Ashbee, P.
(1960) The Bronze Age Round Barrow in Britain.
London: Phoenix House
.
2.
Barclay, A.
(1999) ‘Final Neolithic/Early Bronze
Age’, in
A. Barclay
and
C. Halpin
(eds) Excavations at Barrow Hills, Radley, Oxfordshire. Vol. 1: The
Neolithic and Bronze Age Monument Complex, pp.
35-148.
Oxford: Oxbow Books
.
3.
Barclay A.
and
C. Halpin
(1999) Excavations at Barrow Hills, Radley, Oxfordshire. Vol.
1: The Neolithic and Bronze Age Monument Complex.
Oxford: Oxbow Books
.
4.
Barclay, A.
,
S. Needham
and
J. Wallis
(1999) ‘?Sheath’, in
A. Barclay
and
C. Halpin
(eds) Excavations at Barrow Hills, Radley, Oxfordshire. Vol. 1: The
Neolithic and Bronze Age Monument Complex, p. 145.
Oxford: Oxbow Books
.
5.
Barrett, J.C.
(1990)
‘The Monumentality of Death: The Character of Early Bronze Age
Mortuary Mounds in Southern Britain’
, World Archaeology22(2):
179-189
.
6.
Barrett, J.C.
(1991) ‘Mortuary
Archaeology’, in
J.C. Barrett
,
R. Bradley
and
M. Green
(eds) Landscape, Monuments and Society: The Prehistory of Cranborne
Chase, pp. 120-128.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
.
7.
Barrett, J.C.
(1994) Fragments from Antiquity: An Archaeology of Social
Life in Britain, 2900-1200 BC.
Oxford: Blackwell
.
8.
Battaglia, D.
(1990) On the Bones of the Serpent: Person, Memory and
Mortality in Sabarl Island Society.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press
.
9.
Bordo, S.
(1987) The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and
Culture.
Albany: State University of New York Press
.
10.
Bourdieu, P.
(1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
.
11.
Boyle, A.
and
M. Harman
(1999) ‘Human Remains’, in
A. Barclay
and
C. Halpin
(eds) Excavations at Barrow Hills, Radley, Oxfordshire. Vol. 1: The
Neolithic and Bronze Age Monument Complex, pp. 56,
122-124, 138.
Oxford: Oxbow Books
.
12.
Bradley, P.
(1999a) ‘Worked Flint’, in
A. Barclay
and
C. Halpin
(eds) Excavations at Barrow Hills, Radley, Oxfordshire. Vol. 1: The
Neolithic and Bronze Age Monument Complex, pp.
211-228.
Oxford: Oxbow Books
.
13.
Bradley, P.
(1999b) ‘Flint’, in
A. Barclay
and
C. Halpin
(eds) Excavations at Barrow Hills, Radley, Oxfordshire. Vol. 1: The
Neolithic and Bronze Age Monument Complex, pp.
139-140.
Oxford: Oxbow Books
.
14.
Bradley, R.
(1984) The Social Foundations of Prehistoric Britain.
London: Longman
.
15.
Bradley, R.
(2000) An Archaeology of Natural Places.
London: Routledge
.
16.
Brah, A.
(1996) Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting
Identities.
London: Routledge
.
17.
Braithwaite, M.
(1984) ‘Ritual and Prestige in the Prehistory of
Wessex, c. 2200-1400 BC: A New Dimension to the Archaeological
Evidence’, in
D. Miller
and
C. Tilley
(eds) Ideology, Power and Prehistory, pp.
93-110.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
.
18.
Brittain, M.
(forthcoming) ‘Layers of Life and Death: Aspects of
Monumentality in the Early Bronze Age of Wales’, in
V. Cummings
and
C. Fowler
(eds) The Neolithic of the Irish Sea: Materiality and Traditions of
Practice.
Oxford: Oxbow Books
.
19.
Brück, J.
(2001)
‘Monuments, Power and Personhood in the British Neolithic’
, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute7(4):
649-667
.
20.
Brück, J.
(in press) ‘Early Bronze Age Burial Practices in Scotland
and Beyond: Differences and Similarities’, in
I. Shepherd
and
G. Barclay
(eds) Scotland in Ancient Europe.
Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland
.
21.
Bukach, D.
(2003)
‘Exploring Identity and Place: An Analysis of the Provenance of
Passage Grave Stones on Guernsey and Jersey in the Middle Neolithic’
, Oxford Journal of Archaeology22(1):
23-33
.
22.
Butler, J.
(1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of
Identity.
NewYork
: Routledge.
23.
Clark, D.
(1993) The Sociology of Death: Theory, Culture,
Practice.
Oxford: Blackwell
.
24.
Clarke, D.L.
(1970) Beaker Pottery of Great Britain and Ireland.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
.
25.
Clarke, D.V.
,
T.G. Cowie
and
A. Foxon
(1985) Symbols of Power at the Time of Stonehenge.
Edinburgh: National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland
.
26.
Collins, A.E.P.
and
E. Evans
(1968)
‘A Cist Burial at Carrickinab, County Down’
, Ulster Journal of Archaeology31:
16-24
.
27.
Cooney, G.
(2000) Landscapes of Neolithic Ireland.
London: Routledge
.
28.
Daniel, E.V.
(1984) Fluid Signs: Being a Person the Tamil Way.
Berkeley: University of California Press
.
29.
Descola, P.
and
G. Palsson
, eds (1996) Nature and Society: Anthropological
Perspectives.
London: Routledge
.
30.
Douglas, M.
(1966) Purity and Danger.
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul
.
31.
Earle, T.
(1990) ‘Style and Iconography as Legitimation in
Complex Chiefdoms’, in
M. Conkey
and
C. Hastorf
(eds) The Uses of Style in Archaeology, pp.
73-81.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
.
32.
Elgee, H.W.
and
F. Elgee
(1949)
‘An Early Bronze Age Burial in a Boat-Shaped Wooden Coffin from
North-East Yorkshire’
, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society15:
87-106
.
33.
Exon, S.
,
V. Gaffney
,
A. Woodward
and
R. Yorston
(2000) Stonehenge Landscapes: Journeys through
Real-and-Imagined Worlds.
Oxford: Archaeopress
.
34.
Fajans, J.
(1985) ‘The Person in Social Context: The Social
Character of Baining “Psychology” ’, in
H.M. White
and
J. Kirkpatrick
(eds) Person, Self and Experience: Exploring Pacific
Ethnopsychologies, pp. 367-397.
Berkeley: University of California Press
.
35.
Feld, S.
and
K. Basso
(eds) (1996) Senses of Place.
Santa Fe: School of American Research Press
.
36.
Ferguson, L.
(1991) ‘Struggling with Pots in Colonial South
Carolina’, in
R. McGuire
and
R. Paynter
(eds) The Archaeology of Inequality, pp.
28-39.
Oxford: Blackwell
.
37.
Foucault, M.
(1973) The Birth of the Clinic.
London: Tavistock
.
38.
Foucault, M.
(1977) Discipline and Punish.
New York: Vantage
.
39.
Fowler, C.
(2001)
‘Personhood and Social Relations in the British Neolithic with a
Study from the Isle of Man’
, Journal of Material Culture6:
137-163
.
40.
Fowler, C.
(2002) ‘Body Parts: Personhood and Materiality
in the Manx Neolithic’, in
Y. Hamilakis
,
M. Pluciennik
and
S. Tarlow
(eds) Thinking Through the Body: Archaeologies of Corporeality,
pp. 47-69.
London: Kluwer/Academic
.
41.
Garwood, P.
(1991)
‘Ritual Tradition and the Reconstitution of Society’
, in
P. Garwood
,
D. Jennings
,
R. Skeates
and
J. Toms
(eds) Sacred and Profane: Proceedings of a Conference on Archaeology,
Ritual and Religion, Oxford, 1989, pp.
10-32
. Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology Monograph 32.
42.
Gero, J.
(2000) ‘Troubled Travels in Agency and
Feminism’, in
M.A. Dobres
and
J. Robb
(eds) Agency in Archaeology, pp. 34-39.
London: Routledge
.
43.
Gibbs, A.L. (1990) ‘Sex, Gender and Material Culture Patterning in
Later Neolithic and Earlier Bronze Age England’, PhD dissertation, Dept.
of Archaeology, University of Cambridge.
44.
Gibson, A.
(in press)
‘Burials and Beakers: Seeing beneath the Veneer in Late Neolithic Britain’
, in
J. Czebreszuk
(ed.) Similar but Different: Bell Beakers in Europe.
Poznan, Poland.
45.
Giddens, A.
(1984) The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of
Structuration.
Cambridge: Polity Press
.
46.
Gilligan, C.
(1982) In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and
Women’s Development.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
.
47.
Green, C.
and
Rollo-Smith, S.
(1984)
‘The Excavation of Eighteen Round Barrows near Shrewton, Wiltshire’
, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society50:
255-318
.
48.
Greenwell, W.
(1877) British Barrows: A Record of the Examination of
Sepulchral Mounds in Various Parts of England.
Oxford: Clarendon Press
.
49.
Gregory, C.
(1982) Gifts and Commodities.
London: Academic Press
.
50.
Hardaker, R.
(1974) A Corpus of Early Bronze Age Dagger Pommels from Great
Britain and Ireland.
Oxford: British Archaeological Reports
, British Series 3.
51.
Hodder, I.
(1982) Symbols in Action: Ethnoarchaeological Studies of
Material Culture.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
.
52.
Hoskins, J.
(1998) Biographical Objects: How Things Tell the Stories of
People’s Lives.
London: Routledge
.
53.
Humphreys, S.C.
and
H. King
(1981) Mortality and Immortality: The Anthropology and
Archaeology of Death.
London: Academic Press
.
54.
Ingold, T.
, ed. (1988) What is an Animal?London: Unwin Hyman
.
55.
Ingold, T.
(2000) The Perception of the Environment: Essays in
Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill.
London: Routledge
.
56.
Ito, K.L.
(1985) ‘Affective Bonds: Hawaiian
Interrelationships of Self’, in
H.M. White
and
J. Kirkpatrick
(eds) Person, Self and Experience: Exploring Pacific
Ethnopsychologies, pp. 301-327.
Berkeley: University of California Press
.
57.
Jones, A.
(1999)
‘Local Colour: Megalithic Architecture and Colour Symbolism in
Neolithic Arran’
, Oxford Journal of Archaeology18(4):
339-350
.
58.
Jones, A.
(2002) ‘A Biography of Colour: Colour, Material
Histories and Personhood in the Early Bronze Age of Britain and
Ireland’, in
A. Jones
and
G. MacGregor
(eds) Colouring the Past: The Significance of Colour in Archaeological
Research, pp. 159-174.
Oxford: Berg
.
59.
Jordanova, L.J.
(1980) ‘Natural Facts: A Historical Perspective
on Science and Sexuality’, in
C. MacCormack
and
M. Strathern
(eds) Nature, Culture and Gender, pp. 42-69.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
.
60.
Kavanagh, R.
(1976)
‘Collared and Cordoned Cinerary Urns in Ireland’
, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy76, section C:
293-403
.
61.
Last, J.
(1998)
‘Books of Life: Biography and Memory in a Bronze Age Barrow’
, Oxford Journal of Archaeology17(1):
43-53
.
62.
Layton, R.
(1995) ‘Relating to the Country in the Western
Desert’, in
E. Hirsch
and
M. O’Hanlon
(eds) The Anthropology of Landscape: Perspectives on Place and
Space, pp. 210-231.
Oxford: Clarendon Press
.
63.
Lévi-Strauss, C.
(1962) Totemism.
London: Merlin Press
.
64.
Levitan, B.
and
D. Serjeantson
(1999) ‘Animal Bone’, in
A. Barclay
and
C. Halpin
(eds) Excavations at Barrow Hills, Radley, Oxfordshire. Vol. 1: The
Neolithic and Bronze Age Monument Complex, p. 128.
Oxford: Oxbow Books
.
65.
Lienhardt, G.
(1961) Divinity and Experience.
Oxford: Clarendon Press
.
66.
LiPuma, E.
(1988) The Gift of Kinship: Structure and Practice in Maring
Social Organisation.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
.
67.
Lloyd, G.
(1984) The Man of Reason: ‘Male’ and
‘Female’ in Western Philosophy.
London: Methuen
.
68.
Lucas, G.
(1996)
‘Of Death and Debt: A History of the Body in Neolithic and Early
Bronze Age Yorkshire’
, Journal of European Archaeology4:
99-118
.
69.
Lynch, F.
(1971)
‘Report on the Re-Excavation of Two Bronze Age Cairns in
Anglesey: Bedd Branwen and Treiorwerth’
, Archaeologia Cambrensis120:
11-83
.
70.
MacCormack, C.
and
Strathern, M.
, eds (1980) Nature, Culture and Gender.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
.
71.
MacGregor, G.
(2002) ‘Making Monuments out of Mountains: The
Role of Colour and Texture in the Constitution of Meaning and Identity at
Recumbent Stone Circles’, in
A. Jones
and
G. MacGregor
(eds) Colouring the Past: The Significance of Colour in Archaeological
Research, pp. 141-158.
Oxford: Berg
.
72.
Marriott, McK.
(1976) ‘Hindu Transactions: Diversity without
Dualism’, in
B. Kapferer
(ed.) Transaction and Meaning, pp. 109-142.
Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues
.
73.
Mauss, M.
(1985) ‘A Category of the Human Mind: The Notion
of the Person, the Notion of the Self’, in
M. Carrithers
,
S. Collins
and
S. Lukes
(eds) The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy,
History, pp. 1-25.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
.
74.
Mauss, M.
(1990) The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic
Societies.
London: Routledge
.
75.
Merchant, C.
(1980) The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific
Revolution.
San Francisco: Harper & Row
.
76.
Metcalf, P.
and
Huntingdon, R.
(1993) Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary
Ritual.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
.
77.
Mizoguchi, K.
(1993)
‘Time in the Reproduction of Mortuary Practices’
, World Archaeology25(2):
223-235
.
78.
Morris, B.
(1991) Western Conceptions of the Individual.
Oxford: Berg
.
79.
Morris, B.
(1994) Anthropology of the Self: The Individual in Cultural
Perspective.
London: Pluto Press
.
80.
Mortimer, J.R.
(1905) Forty Years’ Researches in British and Saxon
Burial Mounds of East Yorkshire.
London: A. Brown and Sons
.
81.
Mount, C.
(1995) ‘New Research on Irish Early Bronze Age
Cemeteries’, in
J. Waddell
and
E. Shee-Twohig
(eds) Ireland in the Bronze Age, pp. 97-112.
Dublin: Government of Ireland
.
82.
Needham, S.
(1999) ‘Metalwork’, in
A. Barclay
and
C. Halpin
(eds) Excavations at Barrow Hills, Radley, Oxfordshire. Vol. 1: The
Neolithic and Bronze Age Monument Complex, pp. 56,
143-144.
Oxford: Oxbow Books
.
83.
Needham, S.
(2000) ‘The Gold and Copper
Metalwork’, in
G. Hughes
(ed.) The Lockington Hoard: An Early Bronze Age Barrow Cemetery at
Lockington, Leicestershire, pp. 23-47.
Oxford: Oxbow Books
.
84.
O’Riordain, B.
(1997)
‘A Bronze Age Cemetery Mound at Grange, Co. Roscommon’
, Journal of Irish Archaeology8:
43-72
.
85.
Owoc, M.A.
(2002) ‘Munselling the Mound: The Use of Soil
Colour as Metaphor in British Bronze Age Funerary Ritual’, in
A. Jones
and
G. MacGregor
(eds) Colouring the Past: The Significance of Colour in Archaeological
Research, pp. 127-140.
Oxford: Berg
.
86.
Palsson, G.
(1996) ‘Human-Environmental Relations:
Orientalism, Paternalism and Communalism’, in
P. Descola
and
G. Palsson
(eds) Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives, pp.
63-81.
London: Routledge
.
87.
Parker Pearson, M.
(1999) The Archaeology of Death and Burial.
Stroud: Sutton
.
88.
Petersen, F.
(1972)
‘Traditions of Multiple Burial in Later Neolithic and Early
Bronze Age Britain’
, Archaeological Journal129:
22-55
.
89.
Piggott, C.M.
(1938)
‘A Middle Bronze Age Barrow and Deverel-Rimbury Urnfield at Latch
Farm, Christchurch, Hampshire’
, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society4:
169-187
.
90.
Piggott, S.
(1938)
‘The Early Bronze Age of Wessex’
, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society4:
52-106
.
91.
Randsborg, K.
(1973) ‘Wealth and Social Structure as Reflected
in Bronze Age Burials - A Quantitative Approach’, in
A.C. Renfrew
(ed.) The Explanation of Culture Change: Models in Prehistory, pp.
565-570.
London: Duckworth
.
92.
Renfrew, A.C.
(1974) ‘Beyond a Subsistence Economy: The
Evolution of Prehistoric Europe’, in
C.B. Moore
(ed.) Reconstructing Complex Societies, pp.
69-95.
Cambridge, MA: Bulletin of the American Schools
of Oriental Research 20
.
93.
Richards, C.
(1993) ‘Monumental Choreography: Architecture
and Spatial Representation in Late Neolithic Orkney’, in
C. Tilley
(ed.) Interpretative Archaeology, pp.
143-178.
Oxford: Berg
.
94.
Roberts, J.
(1998)
‘The Cremated Bone’
, in
O. Lelong
and
A. Pollard
(eds) ‘Excavation of a Bronze Age Ring Cairn at Cloburn
Quarry, Cairngryffe Hill, Lanarkshire’, Proceedings of the Society of
Antiquaries of Scotland 128:
119-123
.
95.
Shennan, S.
(1982) ‘Ideology, Change and the European Early
Bronze Age’, in
I. Hodder
(ed.) Symbolic and Structural Archaeology, pp.
155-161.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
.
96.
Shennan, S.E.
(1975)
‘The Social Organisation at Bran<caron>c’
, Antiquity49:
279-288
.
97.
Shepherd, I.A.G.
(1982)
‘Comparative Background: The Assemblage’
, in
T. Watkins
(ed.)
‘The Excavation of an Early Bronze Age Cemetery at Barns Farm,
Dalgety, Fife’
, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland
112:
129-132
.
98.
Sheridan, A.
and
M. Davis
(1998) ‘The Welsh “Jet Set”
in Prehistory: A Case of Keeping Up with the Joneses?’, in
A. Gibson
and
D.D.A. Simpson
(eds) Prehistoric Ritual and Religion, pp.
148-163.
Stroud: Sutton
.
99.
Sheridan, A.
and
M. Davis
(2002)
‘Investigating Jet and Jet-like Artefacts from Prehistoric
Scotland: The National Museums of Scotland Project’
, Antiquity76:
812-825
.
100.
Strathern, M.
(1988) The Gender of the Gift.
Berkeley: University of California Press
.
101.
Strathern, M.
(1993) ‘Making Incomplete’,
in
V. Broch-Due
,
I. Rudie
and
T. Bleie
(eds) Carved Flesh, Cast Selves: Gendered Symbols and Social
Practices, pp. 41-51.
Oxford: Berg
.
102.
Tambiah, S.
(1969)
‘Animals are Good to Think and Good to Prohibit’
, Ethnology8(4):
424-459
.
103.
Tarlow, S.
(1992)
‘Each Slow Dusk a Drawing Down of Blinds’
, Archaeological Review from Cambridge11(1):
125-140
.
104.
Thomas, J.
(1991) ‘Reading the Body: Beaker Funerary
Practice in Britain’, in
P. Garwood
,
D. Jennings
,
R. Skeates
and
J. Toms
(eds) Sacred and Profane: Proceedings of a Conference on Archaeology,
Ritual and Religion, Oxford, 1989, pp. 33-42.
Oxford: Oxford University Committee for
Archaeology Monograph 32
.
105.
Thomas, J.
(1999) Understanding the Neolithic.
London: Routledge
.
106.
Thomas, J.
(2002) ‘Archaeology’s Humanism and the
Materiality of the Body’, in
Y. Hamilakis
,
M. Pluciennik
and
S. Tarlow
(eds) Thinking Through the Body: Archaeologies of Corporeality,
pp. 29-46.
New York: Kluwer/Plenum
.
107.
Thorpe, I.J.
and
C. Richards
(1984) ‘The Decline of Ritual Authority and the
Introduction of Beakers into Britain’, in
R. Bradley
and
J. Gardiner
(eds) Neolithic Studies: A Review of Some Recent Research, pp.
67-84.
Oxford: British Archaeological Reports
, British Series 133.
108.
Tilley, C.
(1999) Metaphor and Material Culture.
Oxford: Blackwell
.
109.
Treherne, P.
(1995)
‘The Warrior’s Beauty: The Masculine Body and
Self-Identity in Bronze Age Europe’
, Journal of European Archaeology3(1):
105-144
.
110.
Waddell, J.
(1969)
‘Two Bronze Age Burials from Reardnogy More, County Tipperary’
, North Munster Antiquarian Journal12:
3-5
.
111.
Waddell, J.
(1990) The Bronze Age Burials of Ireland.
Galway: Galway University Press
.
112.
Waddell, J.
(1998) The Prehistoric Archaeology of Ireland.
Galway: Galway University Press
.
113.
Wallis, J.
and
J. Hedges
(1999) ‘Textile’, in
A. Barclay
and
C. Halpin
(eds) Excavations at Barrow Hills, Radley, Oxfordshire. Vol. 1: The
Neolithic and Bronze Age Monument Complex, p. 145.
Oxford: Oxbow Books
.
114.
Weiner, A.
(1992) Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox of Keeping while
Giving.
Berkeley: University of California Press
.
115.
Weiner, A.B.
and
J. Schneider
(1989) Cloth and Human Experience.
Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press
.
116.
Woodward, A.
(2000) British Barrows: A Matter of Life and Death.
Stroud: Tempus
.
117.
Woodward, A.
(2002)
‘Beads and Beakers: Heirlooms and Relics in the British Early
Bronze Age’
, Antiquity76:
1040-1047
.
