Making Senses of the Past: Toward a Sensory Archaeology

16. Scents and Sensibilities: The Phenomenology of Late Neolithic Iberian Slate Plaque Production

335 16. Scents and Sensibilities: The Phenomenology of Late Neolithic Iberian Slate Plaque Production Jonathan T. Thomas Abstract: The engraved slate plaques of Late Neolithic (3500–2500 b.c.e.) Iberia are some of the most enigmatic expressions of prehistoric European art, capturing the imagination of the public and archaeologists alike during the past century. Thousands of these hand-size, perforated plaques have been found in Neolithic collective burials, and they are thought to have served as mnemonic , prestigious, or ritual objects, perhaps for specific individuals. Large numbers of plaques were initially experimentally replicated to answer questions related to the chaîne opératoire of their production. These experiments, however, also yielded valuable phenomenological information about the sensory —the haptic, olfactory, auditory, visual, and even gustatory—experience of plaque making. Some of the results of this research allow us to actually identify individual plaque makers in the archaeological record in certain cases and to better understand the emergence of organized craft production in early complex societies. We and the people of the past share carnal bodies. —Christopher Tilley (2004:201) Following the immensely ambitious and productive period associated with the New Archaeology, a number of archaeologists began to voice epistemological concerns with the discipline’s embrace of empirical positivism, questioning not only the interpretation of archaeological evidence but also the types of archaeological knowledge considered valid within orthodox scientific frameworks. Making Senses of the Past: Toward a Sensory Archaeology, edited by Jo Day. Center for Archaeological Investigations, Occasional Paper No. 40. © 2013 by the Board of Trustees, Southern Illinois Univer­ sity. All rights reserved. ISBN 978-0-8093-3287-8. 336 J. T. Thomas One emblematic and now rather well-known response to what was seen as an increasingly mechanistic, impersonal view of people’s lives in the past was the question, “Why have archaeologists produced a prehistory of genderless, faceless blobs?” (Tringham 1991:97). This desire for a thick—or at least thicker—description of individuals in prehistory resonated with a great number of archaeologists. In a few instances, the discipline had actually done a fairly good job of fleshing out a limited number of (typically androcentric) “types.” However, although we found it fairly easy to envision the faces of the chiefs, the shamans, and the other prehistoric movers and shakers, the “blob problem” remained. Out of frustration with this perceived one-dimensional understanding of people in the past, an interest in phenomenology , or the nature of individual embodied experience in various environments (sensu Brück 2005), began to gain currency. While many archaeologists often associate phenomenology with the influence of postmodernism on British landscape archaeologists such as Christopher Tilley or Julian Thomas, the use of individual physical and perceptual experience as a heuristic tool or means of descriptive analogy has arguably been a core element of anthropology since its inception and is certainly one of the advantages of anthropology over closely related disciplines. Clearly archaeologists should not make the mistake of using modern embodied experiences as direct analogies to those of people in the past or in other cultures, but we certainly can—and should—use phenomenological information to generate both heuristic and testable ideas that aid in the interpretation of archaeological data. In keeping with this, this chapter presents information related to the southern Iberian Late Neolithic engraved slate burial plaques and to the sensory experiences of modern slate-plaque makers. This information, unobtainable through historical research, contributes to our understanding of the chaîne opératoire of archaeological plaque production and to our knowledge of the emergence and organization of prestigegoods production in early complex societies. The Late Neolithic of Southwestern Iberia The experimental replication of the southwestern Iberian Late Neolithic engraved slate plaques was initially designed to clarify aspects of archaeological plaque production related to engraver skill and engraving-tool technology . The resulting phenomenological information about the sensory experience of plaque making was initially an unintended by-product of these experiments. Before describing these replication experiments, however, a brief introduction to the Iberian Late Neolithic and to the engraved burial plaques is necessary. In southwestern Iberia, the Late Neolithic is generally considered a period of social and political transformation often associated with a new emphasis on agriculture (Gonçalves 1999), social differentiation, and the cyclical integration and fission of groups responsible for the construction of large, fortified settlements (e.g., Zambujal, Vila Nova de São Pedro, Leceia) and elaborate, labor-intensive collective tombs (Fohrenbaher 1999). This region has long been known as a core...