Antaeus_19_20_Cult and arch_context.pdf

Published in In T. Insoll (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Figurines, pp. 823-50. Oxford: Oxford University Press., 2017

In this article, I review recent work on figurines from Neolithic southeastern Europe and suggest an alternative approach. I argue that we should abandon searches for explanation and for meanings of figurines as pieces of the past. The alternative is to work with figurine material in the present, disarticulated from prehistory, and to make new work that recognizes figurines’ position in the present.

Material Beginnings: a global prehistory of figurative representation, 2007

Unexpected looks. The Neolithic anthropomorphic stele of Algar do Bom Santo (Lisbon) in its funerary and ritual context Antonio Faustino Carvalho Southern Echoes? Stone Figurines in the Iberian Northwest Ramón Fábregas Valcarce Looking through Millennia. Oculados other anthropomorphic forms of the Late Prehistory of Northern Portugal

Antiquity, 2007

Few books have had such profound impact on the development of contemporary archaeology as Bruce Trigger's History of Archaeological Thought. When the first edition appeared in 1989, the impressive scope and coherence of this work served well to establish that archaeological thought actually has a history behind it, and that this history is worth paying heed to. This was something of an eye-opener to many readers: those who confidently separated the grain of positive knowledge from the chaff of deviating influences, and those who eagerly conflated thought with 'theory' and the latter with the strand of discursive abstraction currently en vogue. Such attitudes still endure, of course, but overall the notion that there are deep-seated 'fundamentals' of archaeological thought which we all need to take on board is by now well entrenched.

2017

Contrasted to the vast majority of Neolithic finds, thousands of Neolithic figurines along with anthropomorphic vessels, house models were vested with both a special typological and an artistic value. Thus, these cult objects were mostly divorced from their original contexts and left bereft of any clues that would reveal anything about their roles within the community. This handicap was further aggravated by interpretations that considered these South-East and Central European figurines as forerunners of the deities and goddesses of classical Antiquity. Owing to this unfortunate research history, the positivist legacy is little more than a series of figurines arranged into a relative chronological order and a few remarks on possible correlations and contacts within or between Eastern and Central European cultural groups. But what positive interpretation do these representations allow, given that some sites have occasionally yielded hundreds of these figurines? A closer examination of the stylistic features and the archaeological contexts of can reveal much about Neolithic history, Neolithic cognition, and about the role of ritual customs within changing Neolithic social structures. key words: 6th and 5th Millennium BC, figurines in households, naturalistic and symbolic representations, transitions between human and zoomorphic representations, intentional breaking of figurines, Starčevo culture, LBK figurines, Mesolithic impact

In Eneolithic Europe, the complexity of mortuary differentiation increased with the complexity of the society at large. Human remains from the Verteba Cave provide a unique opportunity to study the lives, deaths and cultural practices of the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture in Western Ukraine. The subterranean sanctuary of Verteba was without a doubt a rallying point of both religious and social significance. Therefore, this investigation focuses on the role and character of ritual activities, the diversity and variety of religious orientations in the Eneolithic period and the question of how and for what reason this particular cave was modified from a natural space to a sacred place. We also seek to clarify the research potential of the site in relation to highly developed and relatively widespread religion with direct implications for the Cucuteni-Trypillia social structure.

Key words: Neolithic/Copper Age enclosures, Hilltop sites, Natural shrines, Beaker cosmology In this paper I am going to discuss the phenomenon of Neolithic enclosures as symbols of shared identity and their replacement by natural shrines and perhaps by new ideology and cult. The tradition of collective values gradually faded from the mid Fifth Millennium BC However, this dramatic change started at the beginning of the Third Millennium BC. The changes that I am going to discuss in this paper were not induced by any change in subsistence strategy or climatic influences. The Third Millennium changes comprise the development of social relations and transition of cosmology amongst the European Copper Age farming communities. What kind of changes were they? Mainly it was a sudden discontinuity in the long tradition of the construction of ditched and hill top enclosures that dominated the Neolithic Period in central Europe. This phenomenon has its pedigree in the early Neolithic round ditched shrines,so called roundels. Such monuments are traditionally interpreted as features of mainly sacral meaning (Podborský 2001 etc) but some other social functions are also being considered (Květina et al 2009). It is possible that the changes that occurred during the third millennium BC in the society and cosmology of Copper Age farmers in Central Europe might have been a reflection of a much more general collapse of traditional Neolithic values that brought with it the new quality of Bronze Age society. The Copper Age innovations resulted in the deeper individualisation of some social principles and contributed towards greater social differentiation in the Early Bronze Age. Abandonment of the megalithic idea of collective burials and continuity in the use of funerary monuments together with a decline in ditched enclosures and the use of hilltop locations are not only evidence of changing social relations but also of far reaching changes in the cosmology of our ancestors. We can observe a reorientation from the Neolithic tradition of agricultural cults and a decline in the communal monuments (roundels, causewayed enclosures, hilltop enclosures) that were used to demonstrate and reinforce the collective identity and spiritual activities. The new cult was perhaps derived from the tradition of solar worship. Within the individualized funerary practices people emphasized their communication with the ancestors and the presentation of social status as well as the confirmation of social hierarchy and the reinforcement of a genealogical system of hereditary wealth of both individuals and families. It is also possible that the new Beaker ideology was rapidly spreading over Western and Central Europe to help enforce the new order of social relations. We can clearly see how some very distant regions of Europe with a variety of cultural traditions partook of this shared cultural uniformity, symbols, rituals and perhaps religion. In many other aspects, such as the tradition of the Central European Eneolithic-Bronze Age pottery complex (Neustupný 2008, 22) or the more intensive arable systém of agriculture (Neustupný 2008, 18) we can, however, see a distinctive continuity throughout the whole Copper Age. The collapse of traditional values in the third millennium BC might be seen mainly in relation to changes in social structure, the rise of a new ideology and the transformation of cosmology. During the final stages of the Copper Age the foundations were laid for the forthcoming systém of a greater stratified Bronze Age society and its new cosmological archetypes.