Pub Date : 2019-02-12DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198768012.003.0009
Joanna Brück
It is evident from the discussion in previous chapters that the projection into the past of dualistic conceptual frameworks that sharply distinguish subject from object, for example, or culture from nature, is problematic. Instead, the evidence suggests that the Bronze Age self was not constructed in opposition to an external ‘other’. Things outside of the body, such as significant objects, formed inalienable components of the person, while parts of the human body circulated in the same exchange networks as objects. The self was constituted relationally, so that the social and political position of particular people depended on their connections with others. Special places, too, were sedimented into the self, forming an inextricable part of personal, family, and community histories. The Bronze Age person can therefore be viewed as a composite—an assemblage of substances and elements flowing in and out of the wider social landscape. Indeed, it is interesting to note how ideas of substance may have changed from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. Neolithic technologies—notably the grinding and polishing of stone axes—made evident the qualities of the material itself: polishing enhanced the colour, texture, and geological inclusions of such objects, rendering visible their very essence and origin (Whittle 1995; Cooney 2002). By contrast, bronze was made of a mixture of materials and its constituent elements were hidden. The production of composite objects also became more frequent during the Bronze Age (Jones 2002, 164–5), for example the miniature halberd pendant made of gold, amber, and copper alloy from an Early Bronze Age grave at Wilsford G8 in Wiltshire (Needham et al. 2015a, 230). Sometimes particular components of such items were concealed: the conical pendant or button from Upton Lovell G2e in Wiltshire comprised a shale core covered with sheet gold (Needham et al. 2015a, 222–5). This need not indicate an attempt to deceive others into believing this item was made of solid gold, however, for shale was itself used to make decorative items and was evidently a valued material during this period.
从前几章的讨论中可以明显看出,将二元概念框架投射到过去,例如,将主体与客体或文化与自然区分开来,是有问题的。相反,有证据表明,青铜时代的自我并不是与外部的“他者”相对立的。身体以外的事物,如有意义的物体,构成了人不可分割的组成部分,而人体的各个部分与物体一样在同一交换网络中流通。自我是由关系构成的,因此特定人群的社会和政治地位取决于他们与他人的联系。特殊的地方也沉淀在自我之中,形成了个人、家庭和社区历史中不可分割的一部分。因此,青铜器时代的人可以被视为一个综合体——一个物质和元素的集合,这些物质和元素流入和流出更广泛的社会景观。事实上,从新石器时代到青铜时代,物质观念的变化是很有趣的。新石器时代的技术——尤其是对石斧的研磨和抛光——使材料本身的品质变得明显:抛光增强了这些物体的颜色、质地和地质内含物,使它们的本质和起源变得清晰可见(Whittle 1995;库尼2002)。相比之下,青铜是由多种材料混合制成的,其组成元素是隐藏的。在青铜时代,复合物品的生产也变得更加频繁(Jones 2002, 165 - 5),例如,在Wiltshire Wilsford G8的早期青铜时代坟墓中发现的由金、琥珀和铜合金制成的微型戟吊坠(Needham et al. 2015, 230)。有时这些物品的特定成分被隐藏起来:威尔特郡Upton Lovell G2e的锥形吊坠或纽扣由覆盖着金片的页岩岩心组成(Needham et al. 2015a, 222-5)。然而,这并不意味着他试图欺骗别人,让他们相信这件物品是由纯金制成的,因为页岩本身就被用来制作装饰物品,在这个时期显然是一种有价值的材料。
{"title":"Conclusion: The flow of life in Bronze Age Britain and Ireland","authors":"Joanna Brück","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198768012.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198768012.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"It is evident from the discussion in previous chapters that the projection into the past of dualistic conceptual frameworks that sharply distinguish subject from object, for example, or culture from nature, is problematic. Instead, the evidence suggests that the Bronze Age self was not constructed in opposition to an external ‘other’. Things outside of the body, such as significant objects, formed inalienable components of the person, while parts of the human body circulated in the same exchange networks as objects. The self was constituted relationally, so that the social and political position of particular people depended on their connections with others. Special places, too, were sedimented into the self, forming an inextricable part of personal, family, and community histories. The Bronze Age person can therefore be viewed as a composite—an assemblage of substances and elements flowing in and out of the wider social landscape. Indeed, it is interesting to note how ideas of substance may have changed from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. Neolithic technologies—notably the grinding and polishing of stone axes—made evident the qualities of the material itself: polishing enhanced the colour, texture, and geological inclusions of such objects, rendering visible their very essence and origin (Whittle 1995; Cooney 2002). By contrast, bronze was made of a mixture of materials and its constituent elements were hidden. The production of composite objects also became more frequent during the Bronze Age (Jones 2002, 164–5), for example the miniature halberd pendant made of gold, amber, and copper alloy from an Early Bronze Age grave at Wilsford G8 in Wiltshire (Needham et al. 2015a, 230). Sometimes particular components of such items were concealed: the conical pendant or button from Upton Lovell G2e in Wiltshire comprised a shale core covered with sheet gold (Needham et al. 2015a, 222–5). This need not indicate an attempt to deceive others into believing this item was made of solid gold, however, for shale was itself used to make decorative items and was evidently a valued material during this period.","PeriodicalId":390502,"journal":{"name":"Personifying Prehistory","volume":"51 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127609635","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-02-12DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198768012.003.0004
Joanna Brück
In 2004, excavation in advance of the construction of a bypass around Mitchelstown in County Cork uncovered a number of pits on the banks of the Gradoge River (Kiely and Sutton 2007). On the bottom of one of these pits, three pottery vessels and a ceramic spoon had been laid on two flat stones. The pots had been deposited in a row: at the centre of the row was a small vessel that clearly models a human face with eyes, a protruding nose and ears, and, at the base of the pot, two feet (cover images). Oak charcoal from the pit returned a date of 1916–1696 cal BC. This find calls into question one of the basic conceptual building blocks that underpins our own contemporary understanding of the world—the distinction between people and objects—for it hints that some artefacts may have been imbued with human qualities and agentive capacities. This book is about the relationship between Bronze Age people and their material worlds. It explores the impact of the post-Enlightenment ‘othering’ of the non-human on our understanding of Bronze Age society. As we shall see, there is in fact considerable evidence to suggest that the categorical distinctions drawn in our own cultural context, for example between subject and object, self and other, and culture and nature, were not recognized or articulated in the same way during this period. So too contemporary forms of instrumental reason—encapsulated in a particular understanding of what constitutes logical, practical action and in the distinction we make between the ritual and the secular—have had a profound effect on how we view the Bronze Age world. Our understanding of the Bronze Age has undoubtedly changed dramatically since Christian Jürgensen Thomsen first popularized the term in his famous formulation of the three-age system in 1836 (Morris 1992). The very notion of a ‘Bronze Age’ foregrounds concepts of technical efficiency and advancement that doubtless chimed with the preoccupations and cultural values of Thomsen’s audience in the industrializing world in the nineteenth century.
2004年,在科克郡的米切尔镇周围修建一条旁路之前进行的挖掘工作,在格雷多吉河(Gradoge River)河岸上发现了一些坑(Kiely and Sutton 2007)。在其中一个坑的底部,有三个陶器容器和一个陶瓷勺子被放在两块平坦的石头上。这些陶罐被放置成一排:在这排的中央是一个小容器,上面很清楚地模仿了人脸,有眼睛,突出的鼻子和耳朵,在罐子的底部,有两只脚(封面图片)。从坑里找到的橡木木炭显示的年代是公元前1916-1696年。这一发现对支撑我们当代对世界理解的基本概念之一——人与物之间的区别——提出了质疑,因为它暗示了一些人工制品可能已经充满了人类的品质和代理能力。这本书是关于青铜时代的人们和他们的物质世界之间的关系。它探讨了启蒙运动后非人类的“他者”对我们理解青铜时代社会的影响。正如我们将看到的,事实上有相当多的证据表明,在我们自己的文化背景下,例如主体与客体、自我与他人、文化与自然之间的绝对区别,在这一时期并没有以同样的方式得到承认或表达。因此,当代形式的工具理性——包含在对构成逻辑、实际行动的特定理解中,以及我们对仪式和世俗的区分中——对我们如何看待青铜器时代的世界产生了深远的影响。自1836年Christian jgensen Thomsen在他著名的三年代制公式中首次推广了这个术语以来,我们对青铜时代的理解无疑发生了巨大的变化(Morris 1992)。“青铜器时代”的概念凸显了技术效率和进步的概念,毫无疑问,这与19世纪工业化世界中汤姆森读者的关注和文化价值观相吻合。
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Pub Date : 2019-02-12DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198768012.003.0005
Joanna Brück
In 2002, the extraordinarily wealthy inhumation burial of a single adult male was discovered less than 5 kilometres from Stonehenge in Wiltshire. The Amesbury Archer, as he soon came to be known, was buried sometime between 2380 and 2290 BC (Fitzpatrick 2011), and he was accompanied by an array of grave goods including three copper knives, a pair of gold ornaments, five Beaker pots, seventeen barbed and tanged arrowheads, two stone bracers, a shale belt ring, and a possible cushion stone for the working of metal objects. The appearance of single burials with grave goods at the beginning of the Chalcolithic has long been interpreted as indicating the emergence of an ideology of the individual (e.g. Renfrew 1974; Shennan 1982). The objects buried with the Archer have been viewed as a direct reflection of his wealth and status, and the discovery seems to support established views of Bronze Age society as increasingly hierarchical—dominated by individuals who drew political power from success in long-distance exchange, control over specialist technologies such as metalworking, and prowess in hunting and warfare (Needham 2000a; Needham et al. 2010; Sheridan 2012). It has frequently been recognized, however, that such evolutionist narratives in fact present a reductionist reading of the evidence (e.g. Petersen 1972; Petersen et al. 1975, 49; Brück 2004a; Gibson, A. 2004), and detailed evaluation of human remains from both mortuary contexts and elsewhere indicates considerable variability in the treatment and perception of the human body (Sofaer Derevenski 2002; Gibson, A. 2004; Brück 2006a; Fitzpatrick 2011, 201–2; Appleby 2013; Fowler 2013, ch. 4). We will return to consider the significance of grave goods in Chapter 3; here we will focus on the treatment of the body both in Bronze Age mortuary rites and in other forms of social and ritual practice. As we shall see, the bodies of the dead were manipulated in complex ways that indicate the existence of concepts of the self that differ profoundly from those familiar from our own cultural context.
2002年,在离威尔特郡巨石阵不到5公里的地方发现了一具极其富有的成年男性的人葬。埃姆斯伯里弓箭手,就像他很快被人所知的那样,被埋葬在公元前2380年到2290年之间的某个时候(Fitzpatrick 2011),他的陪葬品包括三把铜刀,一对金饰,五个烧杯,17个带刺的箭头,两个石手镯,一个页岩带环,以及一个可能用于金属制品加工的垫石。铜石器时代初期出现的带有墓穴物品的单一墓葬一直被解释为表明个人意识形态的出现(例如Renfrew 1974;深南1982)。与弓箭手一起埋葬的物品被认为是他的财富和地位的直接反映,这一发现似乎支持了关于青铜器时代社会的既定观点,即社会等级越来越高,由个人主导,他们从长距离交换的成功中获得政治权力,对金属加工等专业技术的控制,以及狩猎和战争的实力(Needham 2000a;Needham et al. 2010;谢里丹2012)。然而,人们经常认识到,这种进化论者的叙述实际上是对证据的一种简化主义解读(例如,Petersen 1972;Petersen et al. 1975,49;勃拉克2004;Gibson, A. 2004),对停尸房和其他地方的人类遗骸的详细评估表明,对人体的处理和感知存在相当大的差异(Sofaer Derevenski 2002;Gibson, A. 2004;勃拉克2006;Fitzpatrick 2011, 201-2;Appleby 2013;Fowler 2013,第4章)。我们将在第3章中回过头来考虑坟墓物品的意义;在这里,我们将重点讨论在青铜时代的殡葬仪式和其他形式的社会和仪式实践中对尸体的处理。正如我们将看到的,死者的尸体被以复杂的方式操纵,这表明了自我概念的存在,这些概念与我们自己的文化背景中所熟悉的概念有着深刻的不同。
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In 1960 a rock climber found a small Middle Bronze Age pot wedged in a cleft in the rock halfway down the eastern face of Crow’s Buttress, a granite outcrop on the southern edge of Dartmoor in Devon (Pettit 1974, 92). The Middle Bronze Age was a period during which extensive field systems were constructed on Dartmoor (Fleming 1988). As we shall see later in this chapter, these have often been thought to indicate the intensification of agriculture and an increasing concern to define land ownership in response to population pressure (e.g. Barrett 1980a; 1994, 148–9; Bradley 1984, 9; Yates 2007, 120–1; English 2013, 139–40). Such models imply the commodification of the natural world: the landscape is viewed primarily as a resource for economic exploitation. Yet this small pot calls such assumptions into question, for it can surely be best interpreted as an offering to spirit guardians or ancestors associated with a striking natural rock formation. This hints at a quite different way of engaging with and understanding the landscape. In this chapter we will explore the links between people and landscape, beginning with the monumental landscapes of the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age, moving then to consider what the appearance of field systems during the Middle and Late Bronze Age tells us about human–environment relationships during the later part of the period, and finally considering some of the ways in which animals were incorporated into the social worlds of Bronze Age communities. Funerary and ceremonial monuments of various sorts are the most eye-catching feature of the Early Bronze Age landscape and have dominated our interpretations of the period. By contrast, as we have seen in Chapter 4, settlement evidence of this date is relatively sparse. This, and recent isotope analyses of Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age inhumation burials (Jay et al. 2012; Parker Pearson et al. 2016), suggest a significant degree of residential mobility.
{"title":"Social landscapes","authors":"Joanna Brück","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvh1dpxr.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvh1dpxr.8","url":null,"abstract":"In 1960 a rock climber found a small Middle Bronze Age pot wedged in a cleft in the rock halfway down the eastern face of Crow’s Buttress, a granite outcrop on the southern edge of Dartmoor in Devon (Pettit 1974, 92). The Middle Bronze Age was a period during which extensive field systems were constructed on Dartmoor (Fleming 1988). As we shall see later in this chapter, these have often been thought to indicate the intensification of agriculture and an increasing concern to define land ownership in response to population pressure (e.g. Barrett 1980a; 1994, 148–9; Bradley 1984, 9; Yates 2007, 120–1; English 2013, 139–40). Such models imply the commodification of the natural world: the landscape is viewed primarily as a resource for economic exploitation. Yet this small pot calls such assumptions into question, for it can surely be best interpreted as an offering to spirit guardians or ancestors associated with a striking natural rock formation. This hints at a quite different way of engaging with and understanding the landscape. In this chapter we will explore the links between people and landscape, beginning with the monumental landscapes of the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age, moving then to consider what the appearance of field systems during the Middle and Late Bronze Age tells us about human–environment relationships during the later part of the period, and finally considering some of the ways in which animals were incorporated into the social worlds of Bronze Age communities. Funerary and ceremonial monuments of various sorts are the most eye-catching feature of the Early Bronze Age landscape and have dominated our interpretations of the period. By contrast, as we have seen in Chapter 4, settlement evidence of this date is relatively sparse. This, and recent isotope analyses of Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age inhumation burials (Jay et al. 2012; Parker Pearson et al. 2016), suggest a significant degree of residential mobility.","PeriodicalId":390502,"journal":{"name":"Personifying Prehistory","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130727013","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-02-12DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198768012.003.0006
Joanna Brück
In September 1886, John and Richard Mortimer excavated a large barrow at Garton Slack, East Yorkshire (Mortimer 1905, 229). At the centre of the barrow lay the inhumation burial of a young adult male. A flint knife, a clay button, and two lumps of yellow ochre had been arranged behind his head; at his left hand were two quartz pebbles and fragments of two boar’s tusks, while the scapula of a pig had been laid on top of his ribs. One detail of this burial seems particularly alien to contemporary eyes, however. When the body had begun to decompose, his mandible was removed and placed carefully on his chest, and a miniature Food Vessel inserted into his mouth. Here, a pot replaced an element of the human self and the physical boundary between person and object was elided: the open mouths of both pot and body worked as channels through which relationships flowed in processes of communication and commensality. This chapter will explore the relationship between people and objects in the Bronze Age. The Bronze Age saw the introduction of new technologies, notably metalworking, which had a significant impact on concepts of personhood and identity. A greater diversity of materials was employed than in previous centuries, including visually striking substances such as amber and faience, while more ‘mundane’ materials such as bone were used to make a new and wider variety of objects, particularly during the later part of the period. Such objects were incorporated into new contexts too, notably settlements and burials, and our interpretation of these finds—especially those from burials and hoards—has had a significant impact on our understanding of the period. We will start by examining objects from Early Bronze Age contexts, focusing in particular on burials, before moving on to consider what technologies such as metalworking and cloth production can tell us about the construction of concepts of the self in the Middle and Late Bronze Age. During the early part of the period, artefacts such as copper-alloy daggers, bone pins, pottery vessels, and stone tools were buried with the dead.
{"title":"Object biographies","authors":"Joanna Brück","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198768012.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198768012.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"In September 1886, John and Richard Mortimer excavated a large barrow at Garton Slack, East Yorkshire (Mortimer 1905, 229). At the centre of the barrow lay the inhumation burial of a young adult male. A flint knife, a clay button, and two lumps of yellow ochre had been arranged behind his head; at his left hand were two quartz pebbles and fragments of two boar’s tusks, while the scapula of a pig had been laid on top of his ribs. One detail of this burial seems particularly alien to contemporary eyes, however. When the body had begun to decompose, his mandible was removed and placed carefully on his chest, and a miniature Food Vessel inserted into his mouth. Here, a pot replaced an element of the human self and the physical boundary between person and object was elided: the open mouths of both pot and body worked as channels through which relationships flowed in processes of communication and commensality. This chapter will explore the relationship between people and objects in the Bronze Age. The Bronze Age saw the introduction of new technologies, notably metalworking, which had a significant impact on concepts of personhood and identity. A greater diversity of materials was employed than in previous centuries, including visually striking substances such as amber and faience, while more ‘mundane’ materials such as bone were used to make a new and wider variety of objects, particularly during the later part of the period. Such objects were incorporated into new contexts too, notably settlements and burials, and our interpretation of these finds—especially those from burials and hoards—has had a significant impact on our understanding of the period. We will start by examining objects from Early Bronze Age contexts, focusing in particular on burials, before moving on to consider what technologies such as metalworking and cloth production can tell us about the construction of concepts of the self in the Middle and Late Bronze Age. During the early part of the period, artefacts such as copper-alloy daggers, bone pins, pottery vessels, and stone tools were buried with the dead.","PeriodicalId":390502,"journal":{"name":"Personifying Prehistory","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123474519","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-02-12DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198768012.003.0007
Joanna Brück
In the winter of 1995–6, a Late Bronze Age house was excavated at Callestick in Cornwall (Jones 1998). This showed an interesting sequence of activities on its abandonment. First, the timber posts that had supported its roof were removed and the sockets of those at the centre of the building were filled with materials that included charcoal, pottery, quartz, and fragments of rubbing stones. The low stone wall that originally surrounded the structure was pushed into the interior of the building, and a series of quartz blocks were placed across the doorway, as if to prevent access. The roundhouse was then filled with a deposit of clay containing stone, charcoal, quartz, pottery, flint, and an inverted saddle quern. Parts of a large decorated jar were placed just left of the doorway. Finally, a ring of quartz stones was arranged around the edge of the building, inviting visual comparison with the funerary cairns of earlier centuries. This sequence of activities in many ways seems quite alien to us, for we have quite different experiences and understandings of house and home. The past two centuries have seen mass movements of people on an extraordinary scale as a result of war, urbanization, global differences in the distribution of wealth and opportunity, and a range of other factors. At the same time, dramatic social and political change has resulted in the perceived fragmentation of communities. All this has had a significant impact both on our relationship with the houses we live in, and on the concept of home itself (Allan and Crow 1989; Spain 1992; Birdwell-Pheasant and Lawrence-Zuniga 1999). Home may now be a transitory place, a state of mind evoked by the judicious arrangement of a few meaningful objects, but at the same time the idea of home remains highly emotive. High house prices in contemporary Britain and Ireland reflect the significance of the home in the cultivation of self-worth, emotional security, and social position. The materiality of the home evokes an aura of permanence in a world of change, acting as a lieu de mémoire in which ideas of personal and family history can be created.
1995年至1995年的冬天,在康沃尔的Callestick出土了一座青铜时代晚期的房子(Jones 1998)。这显示了一个有趣的活动序列的放弃。首先,拆除了支撑屋顶的木柱,并用木炭、陶器、石英和摩擦石碎片等材料填满了建筑中心的插座。原本围绕建筑的低矮石墙被推入建筑内部,在门口放置了一系列石英块,似乎是为了防止进入。然后,圆屋被粘土沉积物填满,粘土中含有石头、木炭、石英、陶器、燧石和一个倒置的鞍冢。一个装饰过的大罐子的碎片就放在门口的左边。最后,在建筑边缘布置了一圈石英石,与几个世纪前的葬礼石冢进行了视觉对比。这一系列的活动在很多方面对我们来说都很陌生,因为我们对房子和家有着完全不同的经历和理解。在过去的两个世纪里,由于战争、城市化、全球财富和机会分配的差异以及一系列其他因素,出现了大规模的人口流动。与此同时,剧烈的社会和政治变化造成了人们认为的社区分裂。所有这些都对我们与我们居住的房子的关系以及对家本身的概念产生了重大影响(Allan and Crow 1989;西班牙1992;Birdwell-Pheasant and Lawrence-Zuniga 1999)。家现在可能是一个短暂的地方,一种被一些有意义的物品的明智安排所唤起的精神状态,但与此同时,家的想法仍然是高度情绪化的。当代英国和爱尔兰的高房价反映了家在培养自我价值、情感安全和社会地位方面的重要性。住宅的物质性在变化的世界中唤起了一种永恒的光环,充当了一个可以创造个人和家庭历史观念的场所。
{"title":"The living house","authors":"Joanna Brück","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198768012.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198768012.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"In the winter of 1995–6, a Late Bronze Age house was excavated at Callestick in Cornwall (Jones 1998). This showed an interesting sequence of activities on its abandonment. First, the timber posts that had supported its roof were removed and the sockets of those at the centre of the building were filled with materials that included charcoal, pottery, quartz, and fragments of rubbing stones. The low stone wall that originally surrounded the structure was pushed into the interior of the building, and a series of quartz blocks were placed across the doorway, as if to prevent access. The roundhouse was then filled with a deposit of clay containing stone, charcoal, quartz, pottery, flint, and an inverted saddle quern. Parts of a large decorated jar were placed just left of the doorway. Finally, a ring of quartz stones was arranged around the edge of the building, inviting visual comparison with the funerary cairns of earlier centuries. This sequence of activities in many ways seems quite alien to us, for we have quite different experiences and understandings of house and home. The past two centuries have seen mass movements of people on an extraordinary scale as a result of war, urbanization, global differences in the distribution of wealth and opportunity, and a range of other factors. At the same time, dramatic social and political change has resulted in the perceived fragmentation of communities. All this has had a significant impact both on our relationship with the houses we live in, and on the concept of home itself (Allan and Crow 1989; Spain 1992; Birdwell-Pheasant and Lawrence-Zuniga 1999). Home may now be a transitory place, a state of mind evoked by the judicious arrangement of a few meaningful objects, but at the same time the idea of home remains highly emotive. High house prices in contemporary Britain and Ireland reflect the significance of the home in the cultivation of self-worth, emotional security, and social position. The materiality of the home evokes an aura of permanence in a world of change, acting as a lieu de mémoire in which ideas of personal and family history can be created.","PeriodicalId":390502,"journal":{"name":"Personifying Prehistory","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132280434","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}