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SIX. Memory and Identity in Neolithic Iberia
- University of Texas Press
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six During the Neolithic of the Iberian Peninsula, human groups engaged in mnemonic practices that centered on funerary rituals performed at collective burial monuments. At these stages for the performance of ritual (Barrett 1994) Neolithic peoples orchestrated their memories by manipulating objects, such as the engraved plaques, architecture, bodies, animals , and fire. The death of a person set in motion a series of decisions, negotiations , and rituals, which included the preparation of the body, the determination of the appropriate monument for burial, the selection of objects to be buried with the dead, and feasting. Some bodies went through further processing, such as de- fleshing, secondary burial, sorting of skeletal elements, and burning. Throughout these rites, specialists or kin engaged with the dead in lengthy and intimate ways, provoking new memories, new acts of forgetting, and ultimately new identities. The burial monuments themselves also had complex biographies. Burial structures were sometimes annexed, and elements of earlier monuments such as menhirs were sometimes incorporated. These mnemonic practices, in addition to having therapeutic properties, could also be used politically to create new pasts in accordance with changing visions of the present and future. The long histories of bodies, objects, and monuments of the Iberian Neolithic shaped the actions, beliefs, and identities of individuals and groups for hundreds of years (and continue to do so to this day). These mnemonic practices emerged at a time of profound change in the social and economic lives of Neolithic peoples. Broadly speaking, subsistence practices shifted from immediate-return to delayed-return economies. James Woodburn (1982) and Claude Meillassoux (1973) developed these concepts through their ethnographic fieldwork in Africa. As human groups increasingly rely on plant and animal domesticates and become less mobile, they are increasingly oriented to the future in order to manage these delayed-return economies. To ensure the successful continuation of this new mode of production, they become concerned with materializing and legitimating their ancestors, descent groups, and genealogies in enduring forms. This model has guided many studies of the European Neolithic and even later periods such as the Iron Age (Chapman 1981; Tilley 1996; Pearson and Ramilisonina 1998; Edmonds 1999; Arnold and Murray 2002; Bradley 2002). memory and identity in neolithic iberia Recently, however, James Whitley (2002) critiqued this “obsession with ancestors ” (see also responses in Pitts 2003 and Whitley 2003). Indeed the ancestor “problem” is part of a broader debate in anthropology on the universality (or not) of ancestor worship (Steadman et al. 1996). I take the view that all cultural groups have an interest in their origins, though not all individuals in these groups might share that interest. But the ways in which ancestry and origins are defined, constructed, and materialized vary greatly and change over time. Indeed, I have argued in previous work (Lillios 1999) that the archaeological and ethnographic evidence suggests that material mnemonics become particularly important symbolic capital to manage production and reproduction during periods of crisis or profound social change. The engraved plaques are a clear manifestation of such stabilized memories. This final chapter outlines the range of mnemonic practices evident in the archaeological record of the Iberian Neolithic. Reuse/Transformation of Burial Monuments Menhir fragments were incorporated into later megalithic tombs, and annexes were built onto megalithic tombs (see Chapter 1). In addition to these architectural transformations, we have a compelling case for the appropriation of “deep time” (Boric 2003) at the site complex of Escoural in Portugal (Araújo and Lejeune 1995; Silva and Araújo 1995). Although situated in a granitic landscape, Escoural is a limestone cave formed by unusual metamorphic and crystallization processes. Its long history is likely due at least in part to its role as an unusual feature in the landscape (Bradley 2000). Within the thirty chambers of the cave are remains of human use spanning nearly fifty thousand years, with the earliest levels dating to the Middle Paleolithic. During the Upper Paleolithic human groups painted and engraved the interior of the cave with bovids and horses. In the early Neolithic people buried some of their dead in the cave. In the later Neolithic the cave was sealed, a large tholos was constructed some 600 m outside the cave, and a fortified settlement was established on the hillock immediately over the cave. No later Neolithic materials have been found inside the cave. How might we interpret this sequence of behaviors at Escoural? Some scholars have argued that “foreign” colonizers established the later Neolithic settlement on the cave site in an...