Material Mnemonics: Everyday Memory in Prehistoric Europe

209 Pages·2010·14.13 MB·English

by  Katina T. Lillios

Material Mnemonics

Material Mnemonics
Everyday Memory in Prehistoric Europe
edited by
Katina T. Lillios and Vasileios Tsamis
OXBOW BOOKS
Oxford and Oakville
Published by
Oxbow Books, Oxford, UK
© Oxbow Books and the individual authors, 2010
ISBN 978-1-84217-966-6
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Front cover: View of La Peña de los Enamorados from the rear of the Menga dolmen (Antequera,
Malaga, Spain) on the summer solstice of 2007 at 0712 hours. Photograph by Javier Pérez González.
Courtesy of the Ministry of Culture, Andalusian Government
Back cover: Reconstruction of storage room 9 from Assiros building phase 9 (circa 1360BC).
Image created by Richard Potter
A CIP record of this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Material mnemonics : everyday memory in prehistoric Europe / edited by Katina T. Lillios and Vasileios
Tsamis.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-84217-966-6 (pbk.)
1. Prehistoric peoples--Europe. 2. Social archaeology--Europe. 3. Anthropology, Prehistoric--Europe.
4. Memory--Social aspects--Europe. 5. Mnemonics--Social aspects--Europe. 6. Antiquities, Prehistoric--
Europe. I. Lillios, Katina T., 1960- II. Tsamis, Vasileios.
GN803.M38 2010
153.1’40936--dc22
2010029645
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Hobbs the Printers Ltd, Totton, Hampshire
Table of Contents
List of contributors vii
1. Introduction 1
Katina T. Lillios and Vasileios Tsamis
2. Natural substances, landscape forms, symbols and funerary
monuments: Elements of cultural memory among the
Neolithic and Copper Age societies of southern Spain 10
Leonardo García Sanjuán and David W. Wheatley
3. Mnemonic practices of the Iberian Neolithic: Th e production
and use of the engraved slate plaque-relics 40
Katina T. Lillios
4. Th e art of memory: Personal ornaments in Copper Age
South-East Italy 73
Robin Skeates
5. Burning matters: Memory, violence and monumentality in
the British Neolithic 85
Andrew Jones
6. Layers of memory: An embodied approach to the Late Bronze
Age of Central Macedonia, Greece 103
Vasileios Tsamis
7. Memory, landscape, and body in Bronze Age Denmark 123
Janet E. Levy
8. Memory maps: Th e mnemonics of central European Iron Age
burial mounds 147
Bettina Arnold
9. Memories of features, memories in fi nds. Th e remembrance
of the past in Iron Age Scandinavia 174
Lars Larsson
10. Re-collecting the fragments: Archaeology as mnemonic practice 188
Yannis Hamilakis

List of contributors
Bettina Arnold Janet E. Levy
Department of Anthropology Department of Anthropology
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee University of North Carolina-Charlotte
290 Sabin Hall Charlotte, North Carolina 28223 USA
P.O. Box 413
3413 N. Downer Ave Katina T. Lillios
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53201 USA Department of Anthropology
114 Macbride Hall
Leonardo García Sanjuán University of Iowa
Departamento de Prehistoria y Arqueologia Iowa City, Iowa 52242 USA
Universidad de Sevilla
Sevilla, Spain Robin Skeates
Department of Archaeology
Yannis Hamilakis Durham University
Department of Archaeology South Road
University of Southampton Durham, DH1 3LE, UK
Avenue Campus
Highfi eld Vasileios Tsamis
Southampton, SO17 1BF, UK Wessex Archaeology Ltd
Portway House
Andrew Jones Old Sarum Park
Department of Archaeology Salisbury, SP4 6EB, UK
University of Southampton
Avenue Campus David Wheatley
Highfi eld Department of Archaeology
Southampton, SO17 1BF, UK University of Southampton
Avenue Campus
Lars Larsson Highfi eld
Department of Archaeology and Ancient Southampton, SO17 1BF, UK
History
Lund University
Box 117
SE-221 00 Lund, Sweden

1
Introduction
Katina T. Lillios and Vasileios Tsamis
Beginning in the 1990s, archaeologists and other scholars of material culture
increasingly turned their attention to memory and devoted themselves to
identifying and analyzing memory practices, memory sites, and material
mnemonics (Alcock 2002; Bradley 2002; Buchli and Lucas 2001; Forty and
Küchler 1999; Hallam and Hockey 2001; Jones 2007; Mills and Walker 2008;
Radstone 2000; Saunders 2003; Van Dyke and Alcock 2003; Williams 2003).
Th is mnemophilia is likely related to and dependent on emerging intellectual
currents in the study of agency, biography, time, nationalism, and identity
politics. Whether memory studies remain a theoretical horizon – broadly
experienced but short-lived – or mature to become part of a more enduring phase
in the evolution of archaeological theory and practice is, however, unknown.
Writing about memory is to open a Pandora’s Box of further possibilities.
To avoid a lengthy and generalised discussion of the subject, we wish to briefl y
consider those writers and their works that have infl uenced today’s archaeologies
of memory, specifi cally in the ways they articulate everyday memory, the
collective, place, and the senses. Th ese writers include Halbwachs (1992[1925]),
Bachelard (1964), Casey (1987), Nora (1989), and Connerton (1989).
Th e works of Maurice Halbwachs focus on two main lines of research. Th e fi rst
is social classes, in particular, the working class (e.g. in terms of consumption,
housing, and life styles), and the second is the role of memory in a program of
collective psychology. Halbwachs criticizes scholars who consider memory as
solely developed from individual psychology. His analysis stresses the importance
of society in the creation of memory. In his work On Collective Memory
(1992[1925]) he demonstrates that the past is not kept in individual memory,
and it cannot be relived as such. In contrast, collective representations constitute
memory based on the necessities of the present. He applied this reasoning to
the history of Christian civilization in La topographie légendaire des évangiles
(Halbwachs 1941), showing how religious beliefs are based on a history whose