Innovation and Imitation: Stone Skeuomorphs of Metal from 4th-2nd Millennia BC Northwest Europe 9781407309521, 9781407339337

Table of contents :
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Table of Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Plates
Acknowledgements
Abstract
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Skeuomorphism in the archaeological record
Chapter 3: A framework for analysis
Chapter 4: The temporal, material and social context of the early metal-using era in northwest Europe
Chapter 5: Ground Stone Knob-butted Axes
Chapter 6: Fishtail Flint Daggers
Chapter 7: Crescentic Jet Necklaces
Chapter 8: Innovation, imitation, metalworking and stone-working in the early metal-using era
Chapter 9: Conclusions
Appendix A: Catalogue of ground stone knob-butted axes
Appendix B: Catalogue of fishtail flint daggers
Appendix C: Catalogue of jet bead assemblages with spacer plates
Appendix D: Data collected
Appendix E: Statistical Analyses
Bibliography
Plates

Citation preview

BAR S2365 2012

Innovation and Imitation: Stone Skeuomorphs of Metal from 4th–2nd Millennia BC Northwest Europe

FRIEMAN INNOVATION AND IMITATION

B A R Frieman 2365 cover.indd 1

Catherine Frieman

BAR International Series 2365 2012

18/04/2012 15:01:19

Innovation and Imitation: Stone Skeuomorphs of Metal from 4th–2nd Millennia BC Northwest Europe

Catherine Frieman

BAR International Series 2365 2012

ISBN 9781407309521 paperback ISBN 9781407339337 e-format DOI https://doi.org/10.30861/9781407309521 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

BAR

PUBLISHING

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 1 1.1) Introduction and research questions........................................................................................................................1 1.2) Skeuomorphism in archaeology ..............................................................................................................................1 1.3) Stone skeuomorphs of metal ...................................................................................................................................2 1.3.1) Representativeness of the three case studies ........................................................................................................4 1.3.2) Sampling strategy.................................................................................................................................................6 1.4) Skeuomorhism, innovation and the adoption of metal ...........................................................................................8 1.5) Broader aims of the study .......................................................................................................................................8

Chapter 2: Skeuomorphism in the archaeological record............................................................................ 9 2.1) Introduction .............................................................................................................................................................9 2.2) The history of skeuomorph studies .........................................................................................................................9 2.2.1) Technological Evolution: Skeuomorphism and the next big thing ......................................................................9 2.2.2) Value Hierarchies: The economy of imitation ...................................................................................................10 2.2.3) Identity and innovation: Subversive activity at the Periphery ...........................................................................11 2.2.4) Linguistic Parallels: Skeuomorphs and Metaphors............................................................................................11 Mimesis and Sympathetic Magic .................................................................................................................13 2.2.5) Social science, contemporary technology and skeuomorphism ........................................................................13 Boundary Objects: Bridging conceptual and material differences .............................................................13 2.2.6) A singular set of phenomena ..............................................................................................................................14 2.3) Conclusions and a critique ....................................................................................................................................14

Chapter 3: A framework for analysis ........................................................................................................... 17 3.1) Introduction ...........................................................................................................................................................17 3.2) Materials with culture: An intellectual framework ...............................................................................................17 3.2.1) Innovation and material culture studies .............................................................................................................19 3.2.2) Cultural materials, innovation and skeuomorphism ..........................................................................................20 3.3) From methodological framework to methodological practice ..............................................................................20 3.3.1) Knob-butted axes ...............................................................................................................................................21 3.3.2) Fishtail flint daggers ..........................................................................................................................................22 3.3.3) Crescentic jet necklaces .....................................................................................................................................23 3.4) An integrated analysis ...........................................................................................................................................23

Chapter 4: Temporal, material and social context of the early metal-using era in northwest Europe .. 25 4.1) Introduction ...........................................................................................................................................................25 4.2) The early metal-using era: Chronology, Terminology and the spread of metal ....................................................25 4.2.1) Metal Objects .....................................................................................................................................................26 4.2.2) Metal Production Technology ............................................................................................................................27 4.3) Regional culture histories .....................................................................................................................................27 4.3.1) Comparative chronology ....................................................................................................................................27 4.3.2) The Funnel Beaker West Group: the Netherlands and northwest Germany 3400-2800 BC .............................28 Settlement, subsistence and material culture ..............................................................................................28 Metal and metallurgy ..................................................................................................................................30 Regional and temporal connections ............................................................................................................30 4.3.3) Late Neolithic II: Jutland 2000-1700 BC...........................................................................................................31 Settlement, subsistence and material culture ..............................................................................................31 Metal and metallurgy ..................................................................................................................................32 Regional connections ..................................................................................................................................32 4.3.4) Britain in the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age: 2250-1600 BC ....................................................................32 Settlement, subsistence and material culture ..............................................................................................32 Metal and metallurgy ..................................................................................................................................33 Regional interactions ..................................................................................................................................34 4.4) Conclusions ...........................................................................................................................................................34

Chapter 5: Ground Stone Knob-butted Axes .............................................................................................. 36 5.1) Introduction ...........................................................................................................................................................36 5.2) Characterising knob-butted axes ...........................................................................................................................36 5.2.1) Ground stone knob-butted shafthole axes ..........................................................................................................36 Dating and chronology ................................................................................................................................36 Raw material and production technology ...................................................................................................36 Use...............................................................................................................................................................40 Find contexts, associations and distribution ...............................................................................................42 5.2.2) Copper knob-butted shafthole axes ....................................................................................................................46 Dating and chronology ................................................................................................................................46 Raw material, production technology and use ............................................................................................48 Find contexts, associations and distribution ...............................................................................................50 5.3) The relationship between knob-butted axes of ground stone and copper .............................................................51 5.3.1) Did an imitative relationship exist between stone and copper knob-butted axes? ............................................51 Raw material, production technology and use ............................................................................................51 Find context and associations .....................................................................................................................51 Morphological comparison .........................................................................................................................52 5.3.2) The nature of ground stone knob-butted axes ....................................................................................................53 Origins.........................................................................................................................................................55 The significance of knob-butted axes ..........................................................................................................55 5.4) Conclusions ...........................................................................................................................................................57

Chapter 6: Fishtail Flint Daggers ................................................................................................................ 58 6.1) Introduction ...........................................................................................................................................................58 6.2) Characterising single material daggers .................................................................................................................58 6.2.1) Fishtail flint daggers ..........................................................................................................................................58 Dating and Chronology ...............................................................................................................................58 Raw material ...............................................................................................................................................59 Production technology ................................................................................................................................61 Use...............................................................................................................................................................65 Find contexts and associations ...................................................................................................................70 Local and regional distribution ...................................................................................................................73 6.2.2) Bronze metal-hilted daggers (Vollgriffdolche) ...................................................................................................75 Dating and Chronology ...............................................................................................................................75 Raw material, production technology and use ............................................................................................75 Find contexts, associations and distribution ...............................................................................................78 6.3) The relationship between daggers of flint and bronze ..........................................................................................79 6.3.1) Did an imitative relationship exist between daggers in bronze and flint? .........................................................79 Raw material ...............................................................................................................................................79 Production technology ................................................................................................................................80 Use and deposition ......................................................................................................................................81 Distribution and spread...............................................................................................................................81 6.3.2) The nature of flint daggers .................................................................................................................................82 Origins.........................................................................................................................................................82 Daggers and display ...................................................................................................................................85 6.4) Conclusions ...........................................................................................................................................................86

Chapter 7: Crescentic Jet Necklaces ............................................................................................................ 89 7.1) Introduction ...........................................................................................................................................................89 7.2) Characterising crescentic necklaces ......................................................................................................................89 7.2.1) Spacer-plate necklaces in jet and jet-like materials ...........................................................................................89 Dating and chronology ................................................................................................................................89 Raw materials..............................................................................................................................................89 Production technology ................................................................................................................................90 Use...............................................................................................................................................................92 Find contexts, associations and distribution ...............................................................................................96 7.2.2) Sheet-gold lunulae ...........................................................................................................................................103 Dating and chronology ..............................................................................................................................103 Raw material, production technology and use ..........................................................................................104

Find contexts, associations and distribution .............................................................................................106 7.2.3) Spacer plate necklaces in amber too? ..............................................................................................................106 7.3) The relationship between crescentic ornaments of jet and gold .........................................................................108 7.3.1) Did an imitative relationship exist between crescentic ornaments in gold and jet? ........................................108 7.3.2) The nature of spacer plate necklaces ...............................................................................................................110 Origins.......................................................................................................................................................110 Significance ...............................................................................................................................................112 7.4) Conclusions .........................................................................................................................................................114

Chapter 8: Innovation, imitation, metalworking and stone-working in the early metal-using era ..... 116 8.1) Introduction .........................................................................................................................................................116 8.2) Stone copies of metal and the transition to the metal ages .................................................................................116 8.2.1) Shared forms and social values ........................................................................................................................116 The faulty logic of stone skeuomorphs of metal ........................................................................................116 8.2.2) Does stone copy metal? ...................................................................................................................................117 Skilled production and replication of forms ..............................................................................................117 Widespread artefact forms.........................................................................................................................118 8.3) Metalworking and innovation in the early metal-using era ................................................................................119 8.3.1) Approaching innovation in the archaeological record .....................................................................................119 8.3.2) The significance of metal and metal technology in prehistoric northwest Europe ..........................................120 8.4) Conclusions .........................................................................................................................................................122

Chapter 9: Conclusions ............................................................................................................................... 124 9.1) Introduction .........................................................................................................................................................124 9.2) Results of the three case studies..........................................................................................................................124 9.2.1) Valued raw materials ........................................................................................................................................124 9.2.2) Relationship between skeuomorph and prototype ...........................................................................................125 9.3) Studying metal and stone from the early metal-using era...................................................................................126 9.4) A critique and some ways forward ......................................................................................................................127 9.4.1) Further work and future directions ..................................................................................................................127 9.5) Answering the research questions ......................................................................................................................129

Appendix A: Catalogue of ground stone knob-butted axes ..................................................................... 132 Appendix B: Catalogue of fishtail flint daggers ........................................................................................ 140 Appendix C: Catalogue of jet bead assemblages with spacer plates ....................................................... 183 Appendix D: Data collected......................................................................................................................... 198 D.1) Knob-butted axes ...............................................................................................................................................198 D.2) Fishtail daggers ..................................................................................................................................................199 D.3) Spacer plate necklaces .......................................................................................................................................201

Appendix E: Statistical Analyses ................................................................................................................ 203 E.1) Statistical tests ....................................................................................................................................................203 E.2) Fishtail daggers...................................................................................................................................................203 E.2.1) Refinement of type IV and V daggers .............................................................................................................203 E.2.2) Length of unresharpened and resharpened daggers.........................................................................................204 E.2.3) Point of balance and dagger type.....................................................................................................................204 E.2.4) Number of material categories of artefacts associated with types IV and V daggers .....................................205 E.3) Crescentic jet necklaces ......................................................................................................................................206 E.3.1) Decoration of complete and partial necklaces .................................................................................................206 E.3.2) Number of material categories of artefacts associated with complete and partial necklaces ..........................207 E.3.3) Wear of complete and partial necklaces ..........................................................................................................208 E.3.4) Visibility of complete and partial necklaces ....................................................................................................208 E.3.5) Wear of decorated, partially decorated and undecorated necklaces ................................................................209

Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................. 210

Figures Figure 1.1: The three stone objects being studied with their supposed metal prototypes ................................................... 3 Figure 1.2: The typology of late third and early second millennia BC Scandinavian flint daggers .................................... 4 Figure 1.3: Parts of the bead assemblage from Melfort House, Kilninver and Kilmelford, Argyll and Bute ..................... 5 Figure 1.4: The study area with study regions highlighted .................................................................................................. 5 Figure 1.5: Knob-butted axes not directly observed ............................................................................................................ 6 Figure 1.6: Numbers of recorded Jutlandish fishtail daggers .............................................................................................. 6 Figure 1.7: Fishtail daggers not included in this study ........................................................................................................ 7 Figure 1.8: Jet bead assemblages not directly observed ...................................................................................................... 7 Figure 3.1: Diagram showing the highly contextualised nature of human-made objects. ................................................. 21 Figure 3.2: Diagrammatic representation of tripartite approach to skeuomorphism ......................................................... 22 Figure 4.1: Chronology and periodisation of the early metal-using era in northwest Europe. .......................................... 29 Figure 5.1: The measurements of complete West Group knob-butted axes ..................................................................... 37 Figure 5.2: Proposed production phases for knob-butted axes .......................................................................................... 37 Figure 5.3: Proportion of known raw materials used to make knob-butted axes. ............................................................. 38 Figure 5.4: Surface treatment of complete and broken knob-butted axes ......................................................................... 38 Figure 5.5: Perforation morphology of knob-butted axes .................................................................................................. 39 Figure 5.6: Presence of a mushroom-shaped butt .............................................................................................................. 39 Figure 5.7: Quality of manufacture of observed axes. ....................................................................................................... 39 Figure 5.8: Presence of macroscopic wear on knob-butted axes ....................................................................................... 40 Figure 5.9: Type of macroscopic wear on butts of observed knob-butted axes. ................................................................ 40 Figure 5.10: Type of macroscopic wear on blades of observed knob-butted axes. ........................................................... 40 Figure 5.11: Resharpened knob-butted axe from Dijkermaten/Maneschijn, Dijkerhoek, Holten, Overijssel ................... 40 Figure 5.12: Type of macroscopic wear in and around perforations of observed knob-butted axes ................................. 41 Figure 5.13: Balance of complete knob-butted axes .......................................................................................................... 41 Figure 5.14: Production/use stage of knob-butted axes ..................................................................................................... 42 Figure 5.15: Location of breakage for all recorded broken knob-butted axes. .................................................................. 42 Figure 5.16: Find contexts of knob-butted axes................................................................................................................. 43 Figure 5.17: Environmental contexts of knob-butted axes. ............................................................................................... 43 Figure 5.18: Frequency of associations of specific material categories with knob-butted axes. ....................................... 44 Figure 5.19: Distribution of all knob-butted axes with known find locations ................................................................... 44 Figure 5.20: Distribution of all knob-butted axe preforms with known find locations. .................................................... 45 Figure 5.21: Distribution of complete knob-butted axes of different lengths.................................................................... 45 Figure 5.22: Distribution of complete knob-butted axes by the ratio between butt length and total axe length. .............. 46 Figure 5.23: Distribution of knob-butted axes found in or near burials. .......................................................................... 46 Figure 5.24: The copper axe from Schonen, Sweden ........................................................................................................ 47 Figure 5.25: The copper axes from Kersoufflet, Le Faouët, Morbihan and Bon Amour, Trévé, Côte-du-Nord, France . 48 Figure 5.26: The short-butted axe from Müsleringen, Nienburg/Weser, Lower Saxony, Germany ................................. 48 Figure 5.27: Distribution of copper knob-butted axes in northwest Europe .................................................................... 49 Figure 5.28: Distribution of copper knob-butted axes with long and short butts. ............................................................ 50 Figure 5.29: Length of complete knob-butted axes. ......................................................................................................... 53 Figure 5.30: Measurement of the length of complete knob-butted axes by the length between shafthole and butt. ..... 53 Figure 5.31: Proportion of the total axe length made up by the segment between shafthole and butt .............................. 54 Figure 5.32: A perforated antler axe with the pedicle intact .............................................................................................. 55 Figure 5.33: Side by side comparison of perforated antler axe and stone knob-butted axe. ........................................... 56 Figure 6.1: The sub-types of fishtail flint daggers ............................................................................................................. 58 Figure 6.2: Comparison of metal-hilted dagger and fishtail flint dagger ......................................................................... 59 Figure 6.3:Various divisions of the southern Scandinavian late Neolithic and the development of flint dagger types. ... 59 Figure 6.4: Distribution of primary flint resources in southern Scandinavia. ................................................................... 60 Figure 6.5: Banding and fossil patterns visible in two finished flint daggers.................................................................... 60 Figure 6.6: Proportion of Jutlandish daggers with cortex still present. ............................................................................ 61 Figure 6.7: Typical appearance of cortex on base of fishtail dagger ................................................................................. 61 Figure 6.8: Dagger from Fjerritslev, Kollerup, Thisted ..................................................................................................... 62 Figure 6.9: Comparison of appearance of knapping scars on all Jutlandish fishtail daggers ............................................ 62 Figure 6.10: Appearance of knapping scars on both faces of all recorded Jutlandish fishtail daggers. ............................ 63 Figure 6.11: Appearance of knapping scars on both faces of unresharpened Jutlandish fishtail daggers. ........................ 63 Figure 6.12: Appearance of knapping scars on both faces of all recorded Jutlandish fishtail daggers by type..................63

Figure 6.13: Proportion of Jutlandish fishtail daggers with visible manufacture polish. .................................................. 63 Figure 6.14: Length of complete/near complete fishtail daggers and proportion over 20cm ............................................ 64 Figure 6.15: Length of complete/near complete, unresharpened fishtail daggers and proportion over 20 cm ................. 64 Figure 6.16: Variability in workmanship of type IV and V daggers. ................................................................................. 65 Figure 6.17: Hierarchical model of flint dagger production and distribution .................................................................... 65 Figure 6.18: Non-hierarchical model of flint dagger production and distribution ............................................................ 65 Figure 6.19: Number of fishtail daggers in different modern countries/regions within southern Scandinavia ................. 66 Figure 6.20: Distribution of the length of complete/near complete, resharpened fishtail daggers .................................... 66 Figure 6.21: Comparison of length of resharpened and unresharpened daggers. .............................................................. 66 Figure 6.22: Proportion of Jutlandish dagger blades showing traces of resharpening. ..................................................... 67 Figure 6.23: Some heavily resharpened flint daggers ........................................................................................................ 67 Figure 6.24: Presence of tip on all recorded Jutlandish daggers........................................................................................ 67 Figure 6.25: Proportion of Jutlandish daggers with rounding/polishing wear on a discrete section of the handle edge... 68 Figure 6.26: Edge of dagger found at Wittensee, Kr. Eckernförde with visible differential edge wear ........................... 68 Figure 6.27: Proportion of Jutlandish daggers with rounding/polishing wear visible on a the handle fins....................... 69 Figure 6.28: Proportion of Jutlandish daggers with significant wear at the ends of the handle faces ............................... 69 Figure 6.29: Proportion of Jutlandish daggers with smoothed or polished flake scars junction of blade and handle. ...... 69 Figure 6.30: Balance of all recorded complete/near complete Jutlandish daggers by type. .............................................. 69 Figure 6.31: Find contexts for all recorded Jutlandish fishtail daggers. ............................................................................ 70 Figure 6.32: Fishtail daggers deposited near or in wet contexts. ....................................................................................... 71 Figure 6.33: Find contexts for fishtail daggers recorded by Kühn and Lomborg.............................................................. 71 Figure 6.34: Types and frequency of known burial contexts in which fishtail daggers were found. ................................ 72 Figure 6.35: Number of flint daggers associated with objects of other materials ............................................................. 72 Figure 6.36: Number of flint daggers associated with other flint objects. ......................................................................... 72 Figure 6.37: Number of materials associated with fishtail daggers by type ...................................................................... 73 Figure 6.38: Distribution of all Jutlandish fishtail flint daggers recorded in this study.................................................... 73 Figure 6.39: Distribution of recorded fishtail daggers distinguished by type................................................................... 73 Figure 6.40: Distribution of recorded subtype Vb daggers in Jutland. ............................................................................. 74 Figure 6.41: Distribution of recorded subtype IVe daggers in Jutland. ............................................................................ 74 Figure 6.42: Distribution of recorded fishtail daggers distinguished by presence or absence of resharpening. .............. 75 Figure 6.43: Proportion of recorded subtype Vb daggers with cortex present. ................................................................. 75 Figure 6.44: The broken, metal-hilted dagger found at Säter, Dalsland, Sweden ............................................................. 77 Figure 6.45: Find contexts of 238 metal-hilted daggers with known context .................................................................. 78 Figure 6.46: Distribution of the six known southern Scandinavian metal-hilted daggers. ............................................... 79 Figure 6.47: Handle cross-section of fishtail daggers by dagger type. .............................................................................. 85 Figure 6.48: Exaggerated image of prepared ridge for zig-zag punching ......................................................................... 86 Figure 7.1: Calibrated radiocarbon dates from contexts including a bead assemblage with jet spacer plate(s) ................ 90 Figure 7.2: The bead assemblage from Burgie Lodge, Rafford as strung by the excavator .............................................. 91 Figure 7.3: The bead assemblage from Burgie Lodge, Rafford as re-strung in recent years............................................. 91 Figure 7.4: Completeness of jet spacer plate ‘necklaces’. ................................................................................................. 92 Figure 7.5: Number of associated materials recorded by assemblage completeness. ....................................................... 93 Figure 7.6: Quantity of wear of jet spacer plate assemblages in different degrees of completeness. ................................ 93 Figure 7.7: Visibility of find contexts of assemblages with jet spacer plates. ................................................................... 93 Figure 7.8: Terminal plate from Boughton Monchelsea, Maidstone, Kent ....................................................................... 94 Figure 7.9: Distribution of decorated and undecorated jet spacer plates. .......................................................................... 95 Figure 7.10: Frequency of wear traces on observed jet spacer plate assemblages. ........................................................... 95 Figure 7.11: Observed jet spacer plate assemblages with specific types of wear visible. ................................................. 95 Figure 7.12: Find contexts of jet spacer plate assemblages. .............................................................................................. 96 Figure 7.13: Jet spacer assemblages accompanying cremations and inhumations ........................................................... 97 Figure 7.14: Jet spacer assemblages excavated from highly visible funerary contexts. .................................................... 97 Figure 7.15: Frequency of materials deposited alongside parts of jet spacer plate assemblages ...................................... 97 Figure 7.16: Frequency of ornaments of different materials associated with jet spacer plates. ........................................ 98 Figure 7.17: Distribution of jet spacer plate assemblages ............................................................................................... 100 Figure 7.18: Distribution of jet spacer plate assemblages with regard to rivers. ............................................................. 101 Figure 7.19: Distribution of British jet spacer plate assemblages compared to area of Beaker burials .......................... 101 Figure 7.20: Distribution of highly worn and barely worn jet bead assemblages with spacer plates. ............................. 102 Figure 7.21: Jet spacer plate assemblages that are clearly composite. ............................................................................ 102 Figure 7.22: Find locations of bead assemblages including spacer plates made of bone. ............................................... 103 Figure 7.23: Bone spacer plates from Feltwell Fen, Norfolk .......................................................................................... 103

Figure 7.24: Calibrated radiocarbon date for alder box containing gold lunula .............................................................. 104 Figure 7.25: Distribution of gold lunulae by type ........................................................................................................... 105 Figure 7.26: Calibrated radiocarbon dates for context including British amber spacer plates ........................................ 107 Figure 7.27: Distribution of British amber spacer plates and spacer plate assemblages ................................................. 107 Figure 7.28: Numbers of jet spacer plate assemblages with different quantities of beads. ............................................. 109 Figure 7.29: Reconstruction of gold and amber ornaments from Knowes of Trotty, Orkney ......................................... 110 Figure 7.30: Gold cape from Mold, Flintshire . ............................................................................................................... 111 Figure 7.31: Arco IV female anthropomorphic stele wearing crescentic garment from Riva del Garda, Trento ........... 112

Tables Table 2.1: Summary of the various ideas of what skeuomorphism represents. ................................................................. 15 Table 5.1: Knob-butted axe preforms with their integrity and production phase noted. ................................................... 38 Table 5.2: Nature and description of decoration on knob-butted axes. ............................................................................. 41 Table 5.3: Resharpened knob-butted axes. ........................................................................................................................ 42 Table 5.4: Knob-butted axes found in or near Funnel Beaker settlements. ....................................................................... 43 Table 5.5: Knob-butted axes found near burial contexts. ................................................................................................. 43 Table 5.6: Knob-butted axes found in burial contexts. ...................................................................................................... 44 Table 5.7: Copper knob-butted axes in northwest Europe with butt morphology noted. .................................................. 47 Table 5.8: Copper knob-butted axes with morphological features similar to stone knob-butted axes. ............................. 52 Table 5.9: The three longest knob-butted axes whose metrical proportions and morphology are nearly identical. .......... 54 Table 5.10: Knob-butted axe butt fragments which are morphologically similar to the standardised, complete axes...... 55 Table 5.11: Knob-butted axes with drooping blades and/or butts which appear to result from later reworking. ............. 56 Table 6.1: Heavily resharpened Jutlandish daggers with rounded blades. ........................................................................ 67 Table 6.2: Jutlandish daggers with polished facets at their tips. ........................................................................................ 68 Table 6.3: All recorded Jutlandish daggers found in hoard contexts. ................................................................................ 70 Table 6.4: Contents of all recorded Jutlandish hoards including fishtail daggers. ............................................................ 71 Table 6.5: All recorded Jutlandish daggers found in association with human skeletal remains. ....................................... 72 Table 6.6: Fishtail flint dagger burials including associated metal objects. ...................................................................... 73 Table 6.7: Metal-hilted daggers found in southern Scandinavia. ...................................................................................... 76 Table 7.1: Decorative techniques observed on jet spacer plates ........................................................................................ 94 Table 7.2: All burials with a jet spacer plates where the accompanying human remains have been identified with regard to sex, age and/or rite. ........................................................................................................................................... 98 Table 7.3: Jet spacer plate assemblages found associated with metal objects. .................................................................. 99 Table 7.4: Evidence for mini-necklaces or bracelets with jet spacer plates. ................................................................... 101

Plates Plate 1: Dagger from Østerhøj, Ramme, Ringkøbing illuminated, transluscent and glowing yellow ............................ 231 Plate 2: Gold lunula from Gwithian, Cornwall ................................................................................................................ 231

Acknowledgements

Many people contributed to this book in very significant ways. Particular thanks are due to Chris Gosden, Helle Vandkilde, Duncan Garrow, Ben Roberts, Peter Bray, Amy Bogaard, Linda Hulin, Berit Valentin Eriksen, Lutz Klassen, Daniella Hofmann, and Linda Fibiger. Other people whose insights contributed to this research include Jan Apel, Hans Joachim Kühn, Timothy Taylor, Richard Bradley, Hugo Anderson-Whymark, Florian Klimscha, Marc Vander Linden, Karsten Wentink (who shared his database of Dutch Neolithic axes), Winifred Coutts, Jan Bakker and many members of the department of archaeology at the University of Aarhus, particularly Mats K. Holst. My visits to museums around northwest Europe were both productive and enjoyable, largely thanks to the wonderful and dedicated curatorial and administrative staffers with whom I had the pleasure of working. In Britain, I owe thanks to Ben Roberts (British Museum), Alison Sheridan (National Museums of Scotland), Pat Storey (University of Edinburgh), Anne Taylor (Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology), Katherine Bearcock (Yorkshire museum), Gill Woolrich (Weston Park Museum), Paula Gentil (Hull and East Riding museum), Karen Snowden and David Buchanan (Rotunda Museum), Lindsay Allason-Jones and Chris Fowler (University of Newcastle), Sally-Anne Coupar and Jeff Liston (Hunterian museum), Rachel Benvie (Montrose and Brechin Museum), Gordon Milne (Elgin Museum). In Denmark, my thanks go particularly to Berit Valentin Eriksen (now at Schloss Gottorf, Schleswig, Germany) and Hanne Jeppesen (Moesgaard Museum), as well as to Poul Otto Nielsen and Kirsten Lindhard (National Museum), Torben Sarauw (Aalborg Historiske Museum), Ernst Stidsing and Reno A. Fiedel (Kulturhistoriske Museum Randers) and Per Lysdahl (Vendsyssel Historiske Museum). In Germany, my research was aided by Ingrid Ulbricht, Sönke Hartz and Susanne Fischbach (Schloss Gottorf, Schleswig) as well as Kristina Nowak and Mamoun Fansa (Museum für Natur und Mensch, Oldenberg). In the Netherlands, I owe thanks to many people, particularly Jan Beuker (Drents Museum, Assen), Judith Jensen (Overijssel depot, Deventer), Ernst Taayke (NAD, Nuis), Evert Kramer (Fries Museum, Leeuwarden) and Leo Verhart and Luc Amkreutz (RMO, Leiden). All of the museums I visited kindly allowed me to photograph the objects in their collections, and I am grateful to all curators who granted me permission to reproduce some of those photographs in the text. My research was generously funded by the Rhodes Trust; the Meyerstein research fund of the Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford; several graduate research expenses grants from Merton College, University of Oxford; the Lithics Studies Society John Wymer bursary; and the Danish Ph.D School for research in archaeology. Special thanks are also owed to Xenia Pauli Jensen for welcoming me into her home during one visit to Copenhagen and to Berit Valentin Eriksen for offering me part-time employment at a very opportune moment. I am extremely grateful for the support of many friends and colleagues including Prof. Julian Henderson, Alex Lang, Duncan Sayer, Meredith Carroll, Sophie Bergerbrant, Clare Jonas, Lynn Saltonstall, Topher Huffman, Nana Friedman and Bec Fraser. Without the support offered by Ash Lenton and by my parents Alyne Ricker and Maury Frieman, this project would never have been completed. Finally, I dedicate this book to my aunt Joanne Settel.

Abstract

This study focuses on how archaeological interpretations of stone objects and stone-working can help understand the adoption and continued presence of metal and metallurgy in prehistoric Europe. I compare traditionally identified stone skeuomorphs—that is, meaningful imitations—of metal with their putative prototypes. Three separate corpora of these stone skeuomorphs have been identified: polished stone shafthole axes from the Netherlands and surrounding areas, identified as copies of perforated, copper axes; flint daggers from Jutland, identified as copies of bronze, metal-hilted daggers; and jet spacer-plate ornaments from the British Isles, Ireland and Brittany, identified as copies of hammered gold lunulae. First, I examine the research history of skeuomorphism as well as its role in archaeological interpretation and propose a novel methodology for studying skeuomorphs. I argue that skeuomorphism has traditionally been used in ways that reinforce contemporary conceptions of material culture, innovation and value systems; but, with more attention paid to the social and technological contexts of their production and use, skeuomorphs have the potential to open new avenues into the ways in which different materials and objects were perceived and valued in prehistory. Consequently, I discuss the spread of metal objects and metallurgy in northwest Europe, and delineate the larger social and material context in which each of the specific skeuomorphs were made, used and deposited. In order to evaluate whether each type of object fits the definition of skeuomorphism developed earlier and what the implications of the relationship between the stone and metal objects are, I develop detailed analyses of each type of skeuomorph in terms of production technology, appearance, use, deposition and distribution and place it within the larger context of the production and use of artefacts of similar morphologies in prehistoric Europe. Finally, I use these interpretations to develop a more nuanced understanding of technological innovation in prehistory. I determine that the morphological relationship between specific metal and stone objects does not generally result from direct imitation, but rather reflects the shaping of the earliest metal objects into already widespread, socially meaningful forms. Thus, I propose that, in order to study prehistoric innovation, a range of technologies and practices need to be considered in order to place the innovation into the pre-existing social and technological systems in which it functioned and to assess the means by which it was accepted and valued.

Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1) INTRODUCTION AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS

metal technology in coastal northwest Europe as a longterm process not an immediate event or series of events – the eventual adoption of these innovations resulted from the accretion of small-scale decisions made over generations which allowed values and technological systems to shift. Moreover, by approaching the adoption of metal and metal technology through the lens of lithic technology, a new framework will be developed within which to understand and explain the process of prehistoric innovation and the spread of metal objects and metallurgy. Specifically, in the following chapters I will attempt to answer the following research questions:

Archaeology has always been concerned with material culture and, since the mid nineteenth century, particularly with changes in material culture over time and space. These changes have been used to identify peoples, civilizations, chronologies and cosmologies; and the means by which they are studied have evolved to answer the ever more complex questions we pose. It is an oft-repeated truism that there is no archaeological theory proper to archaeology, that all of our interpretive vocabulary has been artfully lifted and rephrased from a variety of other disciplines ranging from the social sciences and philosophy to statistics and the physical sciences (e.g. Johnson 1999: 11; Yoffee and Sherratt 1993: 3-4). However, due largely to their unique and longstanding interest in material culture, archaeologists have either created or taken complete possession of much of the vocabulary of form and materiality.

•What is the nature of skeuomorphism in archaeological assemblages? •Is ‘skeuomorphism’ a useful interpretative category; and, if so, how should one go about studying skeuomorphs?

Skeuomorphism is one of these interpretative tools created for, and used by, archaeologists seeking to explain the nature and processes of material change. The concept was coined to aid in the interpretation of archaeological artefacts whose form seemed to be that of objects more commonly made in a different material—for example stone versions of metal tools or pottery that looks like basketry. It is a word used to classify and describe, to interpret and explain, but only recently has the ubiquity of the phenomenon in the archaeological record which it categorises been questioned, critiqued and explored. Skeuomorphs are often identified in assemblages dating to periods of social and technological change, but their role in those assemblages—as agents of change, as symptoms of it or as a sort of material commentary on it—has not been firmly established.

•Do certain stone objects which have been identified as skeuomorphs of metal actually appear to have been made to be meaningful imitations of those metal things? •Do these stone objects give us further insight into the long-term processes by which metal and metal technology were adopted in coastal, northwest Europe during prehistory? 1.2) SKEUOMORPHISM IN ARCHAEOLOGY In Chapter 2 the explanatory frameworks used to define skeuomorphism are examined and compared, in order to develop a sense of what skeuomorphs are and how their presence has been interpreted by archaeologists and antiquarians over the last 150 years. Skeuomorphic objects have been described as resulting from a variety of different models of the past and of past social behaviour. Originally they were treated with little social nuance and used to discuss technological change, generally in a paradigm of cultural conservatism and linear progress over time (Childe 1956; Colley March 1889; Myres 1930). However, in recent years, skeuomorphism has been approached from a variety of different, more socially focused angles. It has been implicated in schemes of economic or social value, as a stylistic means of altering the implicit or attributed values of different materials (Gill 1986; Rawson 1986, 1989; Sherratt and Taylor 1997; Vickers 1989, 1999; Vickers and Gill 1994; Vickers et al. 1986; Watson 1986). Skeuomorphism has also been discussed as a factor in identity creation and maintenance, in particular in situations in which different social groups are opposed in economic, social or colonial situations (Harrison 2003; Knappett 2002; Nakou

In this study, I will bring a critical eye to the nature of skeuomorphism in archaeological assemblages, particularly with regard to its utility for interpreting the archaeological record and the material and social aspects of technological change. I will apply these ideas to three case studies of supposed stone skeuomorphs of metal, each of which comes from a different phase in the roughly 2000 year process of metal adoption in northwest Europe. Examining the case studies allows me to determine whether earlier archaeological identifications of skeuomorphs can be regarded as valid; and, if so, what the presence of stone skeuomorphs of metal can tell us about the process by which metal and metal technology were adopted in coastal, northwest Europe from the fourth millennium BC.1 I will be discussing the development of metal objects and 1. All dates referenced in the text are calibrated dates BC unless explicitly stated otherwise.

1

Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe perpendicular to the body of the axe. Their eponymous knob forms a large, semi-spherical or polygonal pommel opposite the blade. They are produced through a process of grinding and polishing and are assumed to be generally made from locally sourced materials. Some bear traces of decoration, others of superbly fine polishing; but their extremely wide distribution and chronology preclude any more generalities. The knob-butted axes made by people in northwest Germany and the northern Netherlands in the mid to late fourth millennium BC is one of the most distinct groupings. These axes are characterized by an almost square cross-section, collars around both sides of the shafthole, and a surface texture which shows traces of the pebbles from which they were ground (Fig. 1.1a) (Bakker 1979a: 97). The relationship between stone and metal shafthole implements, in terms of overall shape as well as decoration, has been remarked on a number of times (Brandt 1967; Driehaus 1952, 1958; Maier 1967; Mohen 1977; Schubert 1965; Zápotocký 1992); but the nature of that relationship has not previously been thoroughly investigated. Studies with an eastern or central European focus tend to name copper axes from south and southeast Europe as originators of the form (cf. Grisse 2006); whereas those with a more western focus identify stone axes as the prototypes for metal copies (Mohen 1977: 34). Little proof has been advanced to substantiate either theory other than their similar shapes. Morphological features which seem to be shared between metal and stone axes include: the bulbous knob which characterizes K-axes, a decorative line sometimes found on the topmost face of stone axes considered to be an imitated ‘casting seam’ (Brandt 1967: 44) and the ‘collars’ (tüllen) which ring the perforation of some axes. Notably, only a handful of copper knob-butted axes are known in Western Europe (Briard 1965; Grote 2004; Jacob-Friesen 1970; Kibbert 1980; Klassen 2000: 52; Mohen 1977), few of which have any contextual information associated with them.

1999; Sherratt 1997; T. Taylor 1999). Furthermore, parallels have been drawn between archaeologically recognised skeuomorphism and anthropological and sociological discussions of mimesis and sympathetic magic (Hurcombe 2006; Knappett 2002; Taussig 1993; Tilley 1996). Finally, I present a new definition of skeuomorphism, one which relies not just on stylistic or morphological similarity, but also on the processes of production, use and deposition. In Chapter 3, I address the fact that, while imitation has been theorised and described many times, no concrete methodology has ever been put forward for studying skeuomorphs. Consequently, I suggest a means of studying skeuomorphism, both on the large scale of whole object assemblages and long-term processes of technological change and on the small scale of individual skeuomorphic object types and their prototypes. I argue that technology and material culture are deeply embedded in human social interactions (Dobres 1999, 2000; Dobres and Hoffman 1994; Gell 1998; Munn 1986, 1990; Strathern 1988), and technological change and innovation are inextricably tied to larger social and material spheres (Barnett 1953; Lemonnier 1986, 1992, 1993; Rogers 2003). The methodological framework I propose integrates social theories about the role of material culture and technology in society with systematic, macroscopic analyses and broader syntheses of three specific examples of supposed stone skeuomorphs of metal. 1.3) STONE SKEUOMORPHS OF METAL In Chapters 5-7, I present three case-studies of supposed stone skeuomorphs of metal. Each of these object types has been well published and closely studied by archaeologists, and has consistently been identified as skeuomorphic of specific metal objects, even when those metal objects (in the case of the stone axes and flint daggers) are extraordinarily thin on the ground. The case-studies focus on: mid fourth millennium BC ground stone knob-butted axes from the Funnel Beaker West Group Area (northern Netherlands and northwest Germany) (Bakker 1979a); early second millennium BC fishtail flint daggers from Jutland (Apel 2001; Lomborg 1973); and late third/early second millennia BC jet spacer plate necklaces from the British Isles, Ireland and Brittany (Coutts 1969; Craw 1929) (Fig. 1.1).

For many decades, the Nordic Late Neolithic was referred to as “the Dagger Period” (Montelius 1986) as one of the most beautiful and most characteristic artefacts of the era was the knapped flint dagger. These daggers, generally made from high-quality Scandinavian flint, take a variety of forms and were in circulation over a wide area of northern Europe at the end of the third and beginning of the second millennium BC. There are at least 13,000 known daggers from southern Scandinavia alone; and they have been much studied (e.g. by Apel 2001; Lomborg 1973; Vandkilde 1996). The dagger corpus has been broken into six morphological types: types I and II are lanceolate with little distinction between the blade and handle, type III has a lanceolate blade and a square-profiled handle, types IV and V have leaf-shaped blades and ‘fishtail’ shaped handles and type VI daggers have leaf-shaped blades and tang-like handles (Apel 2001; Forssander 1936; Lomborg 1973; Müller 1902) (Fig. 1.2). The fishtail handled daggers have a number of unique and complicated to produce features including their flat, triangular blades, their inward-curving handles with rectangular or lozenge-shaped profiles and

Stone knob-butted axes (Knaufhammeräxte)2 were in use throughout the fourth millennium BC and had a large, if sporadic, distribution from southern and southeastern Europe north to Scandinavia (Zápotocký 1992: 48). Generally speaking, these axes are highly symmetrical with a centrally placed perforation and a crescent-shaped blade 2. In translating this term, I have followed Bakker (1979a) as his ‘knobbutted’ is more descriptive than Grisse’s (2006) ‘pommel axe’. I have not included the word ‘hammer’ (or ‘axe hammer’), nor have I used the term ‘battle axe’ as these have previously established meanings in English axe studies (Fenton 1984; Roe 1966, 1979) which I did not want to allow to bias the interpretation of the Funnel Beaker axes under discussion in this study.

2

Introduction

A

B

C

D

F

E

Figure 1.1: The three stone objects being studied (to the left) with their supposed metal prototypes (to the right). Top to bottom, left to right: knob-butted axes after Bakker 1979a & Klassen 2000; single material daggers after Jensen 2006 & Lomborg 1968; Cresentic necklaces after Craw 1929 & © Trustees of the British Museum. Not to scale the narrow strips of zig-zag knapping scars (often called ‘stitching’) which set them apart from the other dagger types (Apel 2001: 245). The morphology of these flint daggers, particularly the shape of the handle, blade and knapped ornamentation, is generally related directly to contemporary bronze daggers from northern and central Europe (Apel 2001; Callahan 2006; Lomborg 1973; Vandkilde 1996).

cylindrical, square-sectioned, fusiform (barrel-shaped) and disc-shaped beads; ‘pendants’ and toggles in a variety of geometric forms; trapezoidal ‘spacer plates’ with transverse perforation, etc. The latter are found in contexts dated to the later third or early second millennium BC and are nearly always accompanied by fusiform or cylindrical beads. These bead assemblages3 have been refitted to form multi-stranded, crescentic necklaces usually called ‘spacer plate necklaces’ (Fig 1.1e) or, if made to a smaller scale, ‘spacer plate bracelets’. The spacer plates

Black beads and buttons are a hallmark of burial assemblages from the late third and early second millennia BC in Britain (Sheridan 2003; Sheridan and Davis 2002). These ornaments take a number of forms: V-perforated buttons;

3.The term ‘assemblage’ is preferred to refer to these groups of beads as it is more objective and less interpretative than the commonly used ‘necklace’. In some cases, ‘assemblages’ recorded in this study comprise only a single bead or a very small number of beads.

3

Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe amination of the material culture, practices and cosmology of people living in each of the three study regions and periods, with special emphasis on the role of metal in each of these places and times. Each of the case studies is examined according to the methodology elaborated in Chapter 3 and consists of a careful delineation of the processes and significance of production sequences, use (and re-use) and deposition of the stone objects. These technological data, as well as information regarding their regional distribution, are compared to the production sequences, use, deposition and distribution of their proposed metal prototypes in order to establish the existence between the two of a skeuomorphic relationship, based on the definition of skeuomorphism provided in Chapter 2. The nature of the relationship that exists between the so-called skeuomorph and its prototype is then used to explore further the relationship between stone and metal use in each society, the link between specific technological processes/object types and both earlier and contemporary parallels, and the broader social and technological importance of the skeuomorphic object under discussion. 1.3.1) Representativeness of the three case studies In order to develop larger themes from the examples of supposed stone skeuomorphs of metal discussed in this study, their representativeness as skeuomorphs and as characteristic artefacts from the early metal-using era needs to be established. Thus, to investigate the changing relationship between stone and metal in the long term, I have drawn each of these case studies from a different phase in the adoption of metal and metallurgy: the knob-butted axes are contemporary with the earliest metal deposition in northwest Europe and the earliest metallurgy in Scandinavia (Klassen 2000, 2004; Ottaway 1973, 1982, 1989); the fishtail daggers date to a period when copper and bronze metallurgy were beginning to be practised with some regularity in the Nordic region, but had yet to become frequent or fully integrated into a range of social and technological activities (Vandkilde 1989a, 1989b, 1996, 2005); and the crescentic necklaces come from a society where many different objects in three types of metal (copper, bronze and gold)4 were being produced and used in a variety of different social spheres (Bray 2009; Needham 1996, 2000a; J. J. Taylor 1980, 1994), but had not quite replaced stone tools for most quotidian activities. Moreover, each case study allows a different pair of raw materials to be discussed: ground stone axes are compared with copper ones, flint daggers are compared with bronze ones and jet necklaces

Figure 1.2: The typology of late third and early second millennia BC Scandinavian flint daggers. The types IV and V ‘fishtail daggers’ are highlighted (after Apel 2001: Fig. 8.1). themselves are skillfully made with careful perforations that tend to increase the number of strands, and are often beautifully decorated. The beads in the bead assemblages are often heavily worn, curated and reworked, and some assemblages are clearly composed of beads of different ages, raw materials, styles and origins (Fig. 1.3) (Craw 1929; Sheridan and Davis 2002). Traditionally, they are thought to be directly related to crescentic gold lunulae made of hammered sheet gold, highly decorated and found in Ireland, Britain and on the near continent (Clarke 1932; Craw 1929; Sheridan 2003; Sheridan and Davis 2002; J. J. Taylor 1970, 1980). This relationship is based on their complementary (that is, more or less mutually exclusive) distribution (Clarke 1932), their shared crescentic shape when re-strung beads are concerned, the similarity in decorative motifs used to ornament spacer plates and gold lunulae (Craw 1929; Sheridan and Davis 2002; J. J. Taylor 1970, 1980) and of the placement of these motifs on the lunulae compared to the placement of decorated beads in re-strung jet necklaces (Craw 1929; Sheridan and Davis 2002).

4. A fourth, tin, could be added to this list, although there is little direct evidence of metallic tin being in circulation in northwest prior to the midsecond millennium BC. Scientific analyses suggest that much of the tin in circulation was circulating as cassiterite ore (Bray 2009, forthcoming; Meeks 1986). Evidence for metallic tin includes the now lost segmented tin bead from Sutton Veny, Wiltshire (Annable and Simpson 1964: 60; Hunter and Davis 1994: 829), the tin on the Rameldry farm jet button (Baker et al. 2003) and the beads included in the Exloo necklace found in a Dutch bog (Haveman et al. 2006). A fifth, lead, might also have been exploited, but the current evidence for its use is a single necklace from southeast Scotland (Hunter and Davis 1994); and, even when it can be shown to have been consciously extracted in a mining context, lead ore seems to have been discarded and left unused (Timberlake 2003).

In Chapter 4, I establish the technological, material and social contexts in which each of these object types were produced, used and deposited. This contextual background takes two forms: a diachronic examination of the spread of metal and metallurgy into northwest Europe, including a discussion and critique of the significance traditionally accorded to metal by archaeologists; and a synthetic ex4

Introduction

Figure 1.3: Five spacer plates, some fusiform beads and a triangular toggle found together, but believed to represent one half of two separate necklaces from Melfort House, Kilninver and Kilmelford, Argyll and Bute (N12) (© Trustees of the British Museum). scale metal circulation networks and adopt metallurgical practices. While the dearth of indigenous metalworking in this large region is clearly a partial result of geology—ore sources are few and far between; to some degree, it also appears to have been a matter of choice. Southern Scandinavian people in the fourth millennium BC clearly valued the metal objects they imported (cf. Klassen 2000), and there are hints they may have been sporadic metalworkers; whereas, people living slightly further west seem only intermittently to have imported and deposited metal during this period. In the British Isles where metal ores were far more abundant, people appear not to have been interested in developing metal technology or using metal objects until just after the mid third millennium BC. The second reason I have chosen to focus on this area is that, since it was so closely linked, in later periods, by the movement of metal (and other objects and people as well) (Butler 1963; Clark 2009; O’Connor 1980), the different strategies people took in adopting metals and metallurgy have the potential to illuminate the roots of this interaction sphere.

are compared with sheet gold ones. Finally, I chose supposed skeuomorphs from different (but adjacent) sub-regions within the larger North Sea littoral zone in order to be able to compare the uptake of metal over the long-term and its imitation in stone by different groups of people. The study regions comprise: the area of the Funnel Beaker West Group in the Netherlands and northwest Germany,5 the Jutland peninsula6 and the British Isles (with some comments on Irish and Breton finds in addition to the largely British catalogue) (Fig. 1.4). During the second millennium BC, the area bordering the North Sea seems to have been a highly connected web of interpersonal and intergroup exchange, trade and communication (Arnold and Clark 2004; Butler 1963; O’Connor 1978, 1980). In Scandinavia, the importance of water voyages is reflected in the rock art and burial customs of the period (Ballard et al. 2004). During earlier periods, the evidence for regular maritime travel is less clear; but, based on the evidence for the spread of agricultural technology and cultural practices, it incontrovertibly occurred at least sporadically for millennia before becoming directly archaeologically visible.

Furthermore, in order to gain as wide a perspective as possible on the adoption of metal in northwest Europe, I have drawn my examples from three different phases in early

Throughout the Neolithic and Bronze Age, northwest Europe was linked together into various maritime and fluvial focused regions (Clark 2009; cf. Frieman 2008). I have chosen to focus on the North Sea area for two significant reasons. First, the people living at the edges of the North Sea were among the last in Europe to engage in large-

Figure 1.4: The study area with the three specific, study regions highlighted: Knob-butted axes in white, fishtail daggers in dark grey & cresentic ornaments in black.

5. The area basically occupied by the Funnel Beaker West Group which I have designated my study area for this case study comprises the Netherlands and the northwestern Landkreise of the German Kreis Niedersachsen: Osterholz, Diepholz, Rotenburg (Wümme), Verden, Oldenburg, Stade, Osnabrück, Ammerland, Vechta, Aurich, Wesermarsch, Wittmund, Cloppenburg, Emsland, Cuxhaven, Friesland, Leer, Grafschaft Bentheim, Kreisfreie Stadt Delmenhorst, Kreisfreie Stadt Emden, Kreisfreie Stadt Oldenburg, Kreisfreie Stadt Osnabrück, Kreisfreie Stadt Wilhelmshaven. 6. Jutland comprises the Danish counties of Nordjylland, Århus, Viborg, Ringkøping, Vejle, Ribe, Sønderjylland (prior to 1970: Hjørring, Thisted, Ålborg, Ringkøbing, Viborg, Randers, Århus, Skanderborg, Vejle, Ribe, Haderslev, Tønder, Åbenrå, Sønderborg) and the six German regions of Schleswig-Holstein north of the Eider river and the Nord-Ostsee canal: Flesburg, Schleswig, Südontern, Husum, Eiderstedt, Eckernförde. I have not incorporated the 2007 changes to the Danish counties and parishes into the catalogue of this study.

5

Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe 1.3.2) Sampling strategy The 60 recorded stone axes comprise all known knob-butted axes from the study area defined in Chapter 3. Bakker’s (1979a) and Brandt’s (1967) catalogues were consulted to compile this list and to determine which museums to visit. All museums with three or more axes in their collection were contacted and visits arranged where possible. In several cases, I was allowed access to the museum stores and managed to record axes which were not in the original catalogues. Of the 60 axes recorded, 32 have been handled and photographed in the course of this research; and direct observations made during this process are recorded in the catalogue (Appendix A). Of the 28 axes that were not handled, 16 are in disparate museum collections that were not visited, seven are in private collections, four were in the collections of museums that were visited, but were unable to be handled due to being on loan, in locked cases or lost, and one has no recorded current location (Fig. 1.5). In these cases, published descriptions of the axes and their archaeological contexts were consulted and photographs were solicited from museums. In several cases, measurements have been made from published drawings or photographs with the use of a scale ruler. As stated in Chapter 5, preforms are likely to be underrepresented in this catalogue because they have not been actively recognised, collected and curated in the Netherlands and northwest Germany until recently.

Figure 1.5: Number of knob-butted axes recorded by Bakker (1979a) and Brandt (1967) which I have not directly observed due to the axe having been lost, to a lack of access to the museum collections or to my not having visited the museum. metal use: the very occasional presence of metal objects without metallurgical technology, the wide use of metal objects and incipient copper/bronze metallurgy, and an ‘Early Bronze Age’ society in which multiple metal types and alloys were being used and produced. I have designated this period lasting from the mid-fourth millennium BC to the early second as the “early metal-using era” in northwest Europe and will address it at greater length in Chapter 4. I do not suggest that the roughly 2000 years in question form a cohesive period; I have rather broadly bracketed these centuries as a means of drawing parallels between different groups of people and their specific paths towards the full adoption of metals and metal technology which took place over many generations in many different small communities.

The 333 flint daggers included in this study were chosen based on their inclusion in Kühn’s (1979) and Lomborg’s (1973) find catalogues which were both intended to include all flint dagger finds in the regions in question (Fig. 1.6). With regard to finds of daggers made subsequent to the publication of the two catalogues above, almost no daggers have been published in recent years; and, at least in Schleswig-Holstein, only one is known to have been uncovered (H. J. Kühn, pers. comm.). All daggers discussed have a recorded find location in Jutland. In order to assure that a representative sample of the available flint daggers were examined, museums with greater than 15 recorded type IV or V daggers in their collections were visited and all accessible daggers listed in these two catalogues were studied and recorded in the catalogue (Appendix B).

This variety in geography, culture history and chronology allows me to discuss the whole of the early metal-using era from the mid-fourth millennium BC through to the early second millennium BC, though, admittedly, with fewer nuances than research concentrated on a small area or short period of time would provide. The three case studies I have chosen to investigate do not represent all of the materials or choices about materials being made in each sub-region over the 1800 years being discussed. Moreover, each is clearly a ‘special’ set of objects—in their rarity, quality, elaboration, etc.—which may not have played a role in the daily lives of all the people living in the areas and periods in question. However, as is made clear in Chapter 2, there do not seem to be any cases of apparent archaeological skeuomorphs which are not ‘special’ to one degree or another; that is why they are so heavily and carefully studied. Thus, in their variety, these three examples give us a window, not just into different prehistoric technologies, but also into the nature of archaeological interpretations of stone objects and stone-working (see Chapter 8).

Figure 1.6: Daggers from Jutlandish contexts recorded by Kühn (1979), Lomborg (1973) and in the present study. Some overlap exists between the former two.

6

Introduction

Figure 1.7: Number of daggers from Jutlandish contexts (organised by collection) recorded by Kühn (1979) and Lomborg (1973) which I have not included in this study due to the dagger having been lost, to a lack of access to the museum collections or to my not having visited the museum. When possible, the collections of these museums were further examined for daggers not listed in these catalogues or recovered in the 30 years since publication. This process revealed a number of previously unrecorded daggers from recently acquired private colletions at the Moesgaard Museum, Aarhus; although many of these did not have adequate recorded contextual information for inclusion in this study. In several cases, such as at the Kulturhistorisk Museum Randers, only a small number of the recorded fishtail daggers were accessible, so many daggers listed in Lomborg and Kühn’s catalogues have not been recorded in this study (Fig. 1.7).

als, such as amber and bone). The majority were originally recorded from their publication in catalogues of jet necklaces (Callander 1916; Craw 1929; Morrison 1979) and in Canmore, the heritage database of the RCAHMS (http:// canmore.rcahms.gov.uk). Of the 96, 59 have been directly observed meaning that, where possible, I have examined them macroscopically and with a 10x handlens. Direct observations made during this process are recorded in the catalogue (Appendix C). Of the 36 necklace assemblages not observed, nine were definitely lost, five are from unknown collections, three were unable to be located within visited museums, one was recorded in the Portable Antiquities Scheme, 15 were in museum collections which were not visited and the rest were inaccessible due to museum closures (Fig. 1.8). In these cases, published descriptions of the assemblages and their archaeological contexts were consulted for descriptions of decoration, completeness and

The 96 recorded bead assemblages with spacer plates comprise virtually all known assemblages including spacer plates of jet or jet-like substances (as well as some assemblages with spacer plates or beads in multiple materiFigure 1.8: Published jet bead assemblages (organised by collection) which I have not directly observed due to the bead assemblage having been lost, to a lack of access to the museum collections or to my not having visited the museum.

7

Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe 1.5) BROADER AIMS OF THE STUDY

wear; and photographs were solicited from museums. Information recorded by W. Coutts in her unpublished MA dissertation (1969) also proved to be of particular use. 1.4) SKEUOMORHISM,

The aim of this study is to develop a new methodology for studying skeuomorphism, a new framework for discussing technological change and a new understanding of the spread of metal objects and metal technology into coastal, northwest Europe and of the processes of their adoption. In the following chapters, I engage with the idea of skeuomorphism, particularly where it has been identified in archaeological assemblages dating to the period of transition from primarily stone tool using to primarily metal-using societies. I work from three different scales of analysis: the artefact, its broader social and material context and the diachronic process of metal adoption to argue that skeuomorphism is neither as simple as it has traditionally been portrayed, nor as useful. Identifying imitation in the archaeological record requires careful attention be paid to the technology of each suspected skeuomorph and its prototype as well as to their ultimate morphologies. Moreover, simply noting the similarity in form or production process between two types of object does not provide any insight into the choices that went into its manufacture. Instead, the directionality of that imitation, its extensiveness, its grounding in older technologies and in other contemporary technologies and materials and its importance to the use and deposition of each object type must also be considered. Taking this approach to stone and metal objects from the early metal-using era in northwest Europe allows me a privileged insight into the slow process by which metal was adopted and how its unique physical properties and technology influenced and affected other materials and technological processes. I am able to demonstrate that the earliest metal in northwest Europe was simply one of many materials which were in use in the fourth, third and early second millennia BC; and its adoption was conditioned by the larger social and technological spheres in which it played a role. Consequently, over the following chapters I will demonstrate that technological change is not inevitable, nor does it occur in a vacuum. Rather, novel materials and objects are adopted into pre-existing social and technological systems, and their meaning, function, and production are coloured by the larger material context into which they are incorporated. Skeuomorphs are not unique in including technological and morphological features of different types of object or material; but, in many cases, they are simply easier to identify.

INNOVATION AND THE ADOPTION OF

METAL

Finally, in Chapter 8, the results of the three case studies are compared to the broader process of metal adoption in northwest Europe in order to draw out a more nuanced narrative of imitation and innovation during the early metal-using era in coastal northwest Europe. Based on my work on each of the three object types identified as supposed skeuomorphs of metal, I am able to demonstrate that ideas of imitative production and morphological similarity cannot be approached without considerable attention being paid to their larger technological and social contexts. Each of the object types examined in the case studies is demonstrated to develop out of a highly interconnected technological milieu, including ceramics and other stone tools as well as metal and metal technology. Furthermore, each has morphological and technological parallels in contemporary societies elsewhere around Europe, suggesting that the choice to produce these object types was part of a broader, developing affinity for specific categories of objects. I argue that these categories are linked to expanding networks of exchange and communication which characterise the fourth, third and second millennia BC in Europe (Chapters 8 and 9). I also argue that the spread of metal objects and metal technology over this period was not a driving force for social change, but rather a reflection of these growing networks through which technological information could be communicated and material culture could be exchanged or gifted. The piecemeal and punctuated adoption of metal objects and metallurgy, as well as the production of distinct local forms from the early phases of metal use, suggest that their adoption was not inevitable and served to fill pre-existing social categories. Moreover, I posit that the increasing acceptance and use of metal in the third millennium BC developed in response to the growing value placed on the accrual of specialist knowledge and the production of more or less standardised object forms—again, likely to facilitate the development of intensive inter-group communication and exchange and to maintain those networks of interaction which had already been established.

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Chapter 2: Skeuomorphism in the archaeological record

2.1) INTRODUCTION

phism is characterised as analogous to vestigial organs in animals and plants such as the gills and tails human embryos develop (and generally lose) in the womb (cf. Steadman 1979). Thus, evolutionarily a skeuomorph is a feature which embodies a formerly useful technique or material, that remains present despite technological improvement but without function, purpose or meaning.

In this chapter, I explore the implications of skeuomorphism in past societies and in archaeological interpretations of these societies. I delineate the previous use of the concept and its manifestations in the archaeological record. In doing so, I present a new definition of what skeuomorphs are, how skeuomorphism is relevant to archaeologists and whether it is a valid artefact class. Skeuomorphs, as described in the literature, are highly variable in form, function and production; and their purpose and popularity vary from one group of people to the next. Their presence in the archaeological record is usually described as contingent on highly specific sets of social values, often restricted in region and time period; and they do not express or embody a single set of fixed meanings. Based on the evolution of the term, and of our understanding of prehistoric imitation, I will demonstrate that the word ‘skeuomorph’ embodies a set of related phenomena whose role, broadly speaking, is the material embodiment, communication and transmission of cultural and economic values.

Later discussions rely more heavily on the way that the form of the entire object, not just its decorations or ornamental aspects, embody the histories of technological traditions. For example, Myres (1930) writes that ‘when a potter, working in red clay… fashions clay vessels so that… they resemble metalwork or leather work or basketry… his style is skeuomorphic.’ Moreover, Shaw (1977: 15), in his work on the Nigerian Igbo-Ukwa culture, defines skeuomorphism in this way, writing that when something is originally made in one material and is then translated into another, but by its form and decoration reveals the original model which it imitates, this is called a “skeuomorph” and the object in the new material is said to be “skeuomorphic.”

2.2) THE HISTORY OF SKEUOMORPH STUDIES 2.2.1) Technological Evolution: Skeuomorphism and the next big thing

In a more extreme interpretation, Childe (1956: 13) called skeuomorphs ‘objects, aping in one medium shapes proper to another.’ Childe does not explore the implications of this definition; but, in his description of skeuomorphic materials, it seems clear from his choice of words (‘aping’ and ‘proper’) that he sees skeuomorphs as objects which are not technologically optimal. Richardson (1995) uses this understanding of skeuomorphism in her discussion of Irish medieval stone crosses with carpentry antecedents.7 She believes that the skeuomorphic features evident in these crosses lack relevance since they represent a loss of meaning between form and construction technique.

‘Skeuomorph’ was a neologism invented to help with the interpretation of the material record. It was coined by H. Colley March (1889: 166) in a contribution to the Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquaries Society to mean explicitly ‘those [decorations] derived from structure’; and he suggests that, ‘as soon as man began to make things – to fasten a handle to a stone implement, to construct a wattled roof, to weave a mat, skeuomorphs became an inseparable part of his existence… and ultimately occasioned a mental craving or expectancy.’ This expectancy, he explains, led people to use particular structures decoratively even if they were characteristic of a different material. For example, he cites the influence of basketry upon ancient ceramics and of wood construction upon monumental stone buildings. In Colley March’s view, skeuomorphic ornamentation reflected the transition to newer, more advanced technologies since imitative features were the visual traces of the more primitive materials people had previously used for similar functions. In other words, it is simply an expression of stylistic or technological conservatism.

Wengrow (2001) puts forward a less severe, though still evolutionary, explanation. He suggests that the similarity between the designs on Neolithic pottery and woven or stone vessel surfaces served a variety of functions within the production and consumption sequences for this pottery. Potters ‘reproduced, not only the operational procedures familiar to them from basketry, but also the outer appearance, texture and perhaps colour schemes of decorated woven vessels’ (ibid.: 81). Thus, their knowledge of technique was preserved and translated into pottery. Moreover, since pottery was a new technology, consumers would have reacted to it with a social aesthetic trained up on basketry. Hence, a pot that looked like a basket would

This earliest definition of skeuomorphism relies heavily on the concept of technological evolution which views a continuing, upwards progression of materials and techniques as people discover which materials are ‘more fit’ for various applications. In this viewpoint, skeuomor-

7. The imitative features of these crosses are clearly delineated by Kelly (1991) who details the structural details of several stone crosses which suggest gilded and jewel-studded, wooden prototypes. Her argument is furthered by Mac Lean (1995: 172) who suggests that a class of artisan such as a ‘master craftsman’ could have been responsible for both stone and wood cross construction, thus explaining their structural similarity.

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Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe have been easier for a Neolithic consumer to understand, use and desire. In this way, their stylistic cultural conservatism serves a functional role: to aid in the adoption of new (and presumably better) technologies.

der-like fashion, with the former being near the top and the latter nearer the bottom (Vickers 1999: 10). Over the years, Vickers has explored what he has identified as the metallic inspirations of ancient, Attic pottery both eloquently and convincingly, although not without controversy. The main thrust of his argument is that certain colours of pottery glaze stood for metallic sheens: purple for copper, black for silver, red for gold. Also, he suggests that certain decorative patterns and structural designs, such as strap handles, have their origin in the construction techniques used to make sheet metal vessels (Vickers 1999; Vickers and Gill 1994; Vickers 1989, 1986). In their book Artful Crafts, he and Gill (1994) argue that this skeuomorphic, decorated pottery is the less expensive alternative to metal vessels, and was churned out to provide cheap copies of high status (and, thus, high cost) artefacts for the less well off.

In recent years, Timothy Taylor (2007, 2006) has argued that when new technologies are adopted, their mechanical properties are not well understood and they must be made to approximate more common materials in order to be used. However, as people grow more familiar with these novel technologies they develop a new stylistic vocabulary appropriate to the newer material’s physical properties and uses. Thus, he suggests that ‘second- and third-generation’ skeuomorphs are less like their prototype than ‘first-generation’ copies which are simple, unthinking imitations (Taylor 2007). However, while this system works very well when applied, in Taylor’s example, to cork and plastic wine stoppers, it seems overly facile when compared with the extremely variegated and only partially preserved prehistoric archaeological record. The archaeological record is, by its nature, incomplete. For example, as Taylor (2006) himself has pointed out, as little as .01-.001% of prehistoric metal has survived to the present day. Thus, we must base our discussions of past material cultures on only a small fraction of the corpus of artefacts available to prehistoric people and we do not have the depth of materials required for such broad and nuanced comparisons as Taylor (2007) proposes. Moreover, the production of plastic wine corks is part of a large, corporately managed system of mechanised mass-production—a direct product of the political, economic and technological contexts of the contemporary world. Projecting the values inherent to this sort of system backwards onto the past is both a dangerous simplification of past people’s beliefs and societies and a false reification of our own social system. It is only by taking ancient material culture on its own terms that we can begin to understand why it was produced and how it functioned. Treating skeuomorphism as a product of technological evolution requires us as archaeologists to make two dangerous assumptions: first, that the values we attach to material culture—the things we see as more or less advanced—were shared by people in the ancient past; and, second, that they also shared our top-down view of technology in which new, higher functioning tools were on the horizon ready to be incorporated into society and used in preference to traditional toolkits.

Their scenario of skeuomorphism is supported by research from China (Rawson 1989, 1986; Watson 1986) as well as elsewhere in the classical world (de Freitas 1997; Gill 1986). Rawson (1989), in particular, stresses the importance of economic decisions in the creation of porcelain based on silver vessels. Her research suggests that in the Tang and Song periods, social class and wealth were explicitly expressed in funerary vessels and that only the richest people would have had access to metals while lower classes made do with elaborate porcelain ‘substitutes’ (ibid.: 275). However, despite this rigid language, she recognises an aspect of fluidity in the material record, noting that the skeuomorphic ceramics may have acquired a greater economic value due to the technical advances required to produce them. Thus, the act of emulating metal in ceramic may have served in fact to raise the status of certain, technologically complicated porcelain vessels (ibid.: 297). This approach to skeuomorphic artefacts seemingly contradicts totally the original usage of the concept. Instead of skeuomorphism being present in more technologically advanced artefacts as ‘vestigial’ and culturally conservative stylistic traces of traditional technologies, it is presented as the conscious incorporation of features from more advanced or valuable technologies into cheaper, more primitive materials in order to raise their value. As de Freitas (1997: 4) explains, ‘when potters later skeuomorphed the rare and valuable new material, metal, their products referenced up the relative value scale.’ In this perspective, skeuomorphic pottery is useful more as an indication of lost objects in ‘noble’ materials than as a method for tracing the (linear) development of technologies or as the product of an interesting social phenomenon in and of itself.

2.2.2) Value Hierarchies: The economy of imitation One of the most common explanations for skeuomorphism is that it gives less valuable materials a higher economic worth. This idea was first proposed by Michael Vickers, arguably the champion of skeuomorphism in today’s archaeological community. His use of the term relies heavily on the recorded classical ‘hierarchy of materials,’ a system of hierarchical, economic value in which various materials such as gold, silver, glass and pottery are ranked in a lad-

Sherratt and Taylor (1997) use this same understanding of skeuomorphism to discuss the presence of Mediterranean pottery elsewhere in southeast Europe during the Bronze Age. They argue that ceramic vessels with a high polish and thin walls, spouts, strap handles and omphalos bases are direct imitations of more valuable metal vessels 10

Skeuomorphism in the archaeological record (ibid.: 434-435). It is their suggestion that, faced with the economic wealth of the Mediterranean region, peripheral people would have sought to imitate—and perhaps also to import imitations of—the rare and valued metal vessels in order to increase their status both within their own society and with foreigners from the Mediterranean. Moreover, they suggest that these imitations were copies of locally present, metal artefacts and not of unattainable, unaffordable foreign luxuries (ibid.: 434-435). Metals, especially the rare metals like gold and silver, would have been melted down and recycled into other sorts of objects many times throughout antiquity and probably still remain in circulation today in a vastly different form from those in which they first circulated. Thus, by studying imitations we are provided with a means of filling the gaps in the archaeological record and studying at least some of those objects which have not survived (cf. Childe 1956: 13).

He ascribes a growing regional identity to the changing design schemes in this pottery. He believes that each of the layers of intent which underlay the design and production of this early pottery served to universalise its understanding and use, thus divorcing it from highly region- (and culture-?) specific design schemes and laying the groundwork for a regional identity to coalesce. The process Wengrow describes is akin to Timothy Taylor’s (1999) idea of ‘envaluation.’ Materials, he argues, become envalued in a gradual cultural process which allows them to be incorporated comprehensibly into the society and identity of the people who use them. It is this process of envaluation which he argues is at the root of many skeuomorphic designs as people seek to understand a new or different material by manipulating it within the stylistic and functional framework of better known materials. Thus, the presence of metallic skeuomorphs in the corpus of early Bronze Age pottery expresses the process by which metal was given a specific cultural value and not a materialisation of a known inherent value.

2.2.3) Identity and innovation: Subversive activity at the Periphery Skeuomorphism is often explained as an aspect of identity construction, in particular as part of the material cultures of neighbouring peoples. One excellent example is Sherratt’s (1997: 366) proposal that La Hoguette pottery, a style thought to be produced by hunter-gatherers living in proximity to LBK settlements, ‘represent[s] the ceramicisation of indigenous container forms as a result of [LBK] contact with the native groups.’ Furthermore, the use of skeuomorphs to assert a personal or culturally specific value system and identity has been explored by Harrison (2003) with regard to the knapped glass, backed tools found amongst the artefact assemblages of post-contact New South Wales aboriginal people. These tools are typologically identical to ancient, knapped stone tools which had not been manufactured by local people for centuries, but were probably visible in surface scatters. Their manufacture in a foreign substance is, following Harrison, a subversion of Western power through the physical transformation of new, foreign materials into ancient, Aboriginal forms (ibid.: 327). However, they are neither utilised in the way that their stone ‘prototypes’ had been, nor perceived as explicit imitations with practical functions such as hunting, ‘being made “just for practice” or trade’—specifically with white colonists (ibid.: 326). Harrison suggests that their function as a trade good with the colonists gives them another layer of meaning within the colonial system. He argues that these knapped glass tools are Aboriginal jokes: imitations of Aboriginal artefacts as viewed through Western eyes and thus ‘humorous gestures’ concerning the Aboriginal view of colonialism (ibid.: 312 and 327-328). He posits that the incorporation of a new material into old stylistic systems serves both to strengthen the indigenous identity in the face of a colonial influx and to serve as a medium for commenting on this influx. Skeuomorphism here is reflective of a reorientation of identity explicitly in response to a foreign incursion. From a different perspective, Wengrow’s (2001) work on Near Eastern Neolithic pottery highlighted a similar point.

Considering the question of value, Knappett (2002) suggests that the origin of skeuomorphism might lie in the artisan or consumers’ desire to subvert an established material—and perhaps also social—hierarchy. He posits that Minoan pottery skeuomorphs of metalwork were created in an effort to gain control over or influence the metal-consuming elite, thus allowing lower status people and materials a subversive power over the hierarchy of materials. Skeuomorphism, then, is an attempt—overt or clandestine—‘to bend reality’ in such a way as to gain power over a valued object (ibid.: 111). The power he sees in skeuomorphs to affect the material and social standings attributed to things lies in the ambiguity—the ‘tension’—between prototype and imitation. It is perhaps the materialisation of this tension that Rawson (1989) was observing when she noted the concurrence of metal prototypes and ceramic imitations in Chinese high-status burial assemblages. Following Nakou (1999: 337), skeuomorphism allows the cultural associations of one object to be appropriated symbolically by another, thus forcing a sort of material dynamism into accepted social and material structures. 2.2.4) Linguistic Parallels: Skeuomorphs and Metaphors Following on from these ideas, we can see that skeuomorphs can be considered material metaphors, physical things which refer to other things through a sort of citation in form or style. By viewing a skeuomorph as a material metaphor of another object and all of the information which it embodies, we give ourselves more flexibility to interpret these artefacts. A metaphoric object embodies its own information which itself has a reciprocal relationship with the information embodied in the skeuomorphic object. Similarities and differences in form suggest what aspects of the original are to be interpreted through the skeuomorph. Moreover, visible traces of production allow us to look at the processes by which these metaphors 11

Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe are created and the choices inherent in making a skeuomorphic object. However, we are limited by the nature of the archaeological record. While it is relatively simple to draw connections between linguistic and material metaphors, we lack any traces of language for most of prehistory. Moreover, much of the writing on material metaphors such as Tilley’s (1999) work and D’Alleva’s (2001) rely heavily on ethnography or historical documents. These sorts of rich, multi-layered, cultural resources are rarely readily accessible in a prehistoric context. Thus, if we are to discuss metaphor in the material record it is not so much a question of identifying the many levels and implications of a metaphor, but in establishing its very existence. Skeuomorphism is one of the few ways in which these metaphors seem to be instantiated; thus, in this case, we can move from the question of ‘are there metaphors in the archaeological record?’ to the question of ‘how did material metaphors work in prehistory?’

nections and understandings (D’Alleva 2001: 82). If we consider skeuomorphism as a particularly explicit sort of metaphor, the implications of these ideas are enormous. Skeuomorphism relies on similarities in visual form while also exploiting differences in texture, material and the gestures of production to maintain connections in meaning while also provoking new ones. Thus, the ways in which prototypes and skeuomorphs resemble one another (or do not) in form and production are potentially under-explored resources whereby prehistoric cultures and value systems can be delineated. For example, Lynch (2001) has pointed out that small, blunt stone flat axes from the later Neolithic or Early Bronze Age in Britain may in fact not be axes at all, but instead be polishing stones used to make metal flat axes.8 In echoing the shape of the metal axes they are used to produce, their form becomes a visual explanation of their use. Although Lynch (2001: 402) attributes this skeuomorphism to ‘a jeu d’esprit’ on the part of the tools’ users and makers, its incidence, if correctly identified, could provide a more profound insight into the minds of early metallurgists who possessed and valorised tools which proclaimed their abilities.

However, as Ortman (2000: 615) states, ‘it is one thing to claim that metaphor is central to the meaning of material culture, but it is quite another to claim that archaeologists can reconstruct ancient metaphors from the archaeological record alone.’ To solve this problem, he suggests that the conceptual metaphor, ‘an image-based, non-linguistic phenomenon that is expressed in material culture as well as language’ (ibid.: 613) could be the means by which we discuss archaeological metaphors. Using the idea of the conceptual metaphor, Ortman then delineates the stylistic and conceptual links between Pueblo textile, basketry and pottery design, following a four step methodology in which he looks for spatial and temporal patterns of similarities between a ‘domain source’ and a ‘target medium’ (ibid.: 613).

Tilley (1999) also uses metaphor to explore the relationship between people and material culture. He suggests that ‘material metaphors do not just reflect social realities, they play an essential role in the description, definition and redescription of those realities’ (271). In other words, metaphors expressed materially are part of a cultural dialectic which continually re-creates the established social values while maintaining the society’s coherence. However, his discussion of metaphor is weakened by his reliance on linguistic cues and anthropologically knowable (but archaeologically invisible) belief structures. Yet, even so, his suggestion that it is the metaphoric resonance of objects that gives them the agency and power which Gell (1998) and others have suggested they possess is an interesting proposal.

Many recent approaches to material metaphors have been grounded heavily in both linguistics and anthropology. D’Alleva’s (2001) work on Tahitian tamau relies heavily on the idea of metaphor and metonymy as materially tangible. She writes that they are ‘textual, visual, gestural, and more’ (82). These metaphors, physically present in material objects are both dynamic and fragile. They rely on a very specific set of known referents and with changing cultural values and material practices they can lose their meaning, their significance or both. She proposes that material metaphors are neither straightforward nor necessarily factually imitative; rather, they rely ‘on a play of similarity or distance, likeness and difference between index and prototype’ (87).

We must still ask what the concept “metaphor” can tell us about the archaeological record and, in particular, about archaeologically known skeuomorphs. For Tilley (1999: 44), skeuomorphs occur when ‘a material other than the original is used to convey an idea, [and] are translated by substituting one material for another to represent changes in place, time or status.’ Knappett (2002) takes Tilley’s ideas one step further using Pierce’s tripartite division of metaphor into the icon, the index and the symbol. Though he says that the third is extremely rare in material objects, the first two are more relevant. The icon relies on a perceived similarity (i.e., visual or auditory) between things whereas an index is caused by what it refers to and implies a spatial and temporal contiguity (ibid.: 102). In an archaeological context, understanding the metaphor requires an understanding of the production techniques as ‘with some skeuomorphs an indexical link is responsible for their creation, whilst with others… there is no such link’ (ibid.:

Thus, it is not necessarily the fact of one object resembling another which is important, but the ways in which it does or does not resemble its ‘prototype’ in physical form and production processes. Furthermore, deviating from the more traditional ideas of imitation expressed above, D’Alleva writes that, in her experiences studying Tahitian tamau, metaphors are not ornamental imitations, but rather instruments which augment culturally specific knowledge and act to stimulate the imagination into drawing new con-

8. For arguments in support of this theory see Armbruster (2010), Freudenberg (2010) and Drenth and Freudenberg (2009).

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Skeuomorphism in the archaeological record 110). To paraphrase, if the imitation of form is inherent in the production techniques then the metaphor is an index; if the techniques used are totally different then the skeuomorph is an icon.

conservatism. For example, Gessler (1998: 299) suggests that skeuomorphs in evolutionary computing help to ‘map the new onto an existing cognitive structure, and in so doing give us a starting point from which we may evolve additional alternative solutions.’ They act like Taylor’s (2007) first-generation plastic corks, to ease people gently into the idea of using a new, more advanced technological solution to an old problem.

This idea relies on the expectation that the artisan who crafts the skeuomorph is the same person who uses it. Clearly, skeuomorphism must be approached differently in societies where there is a clear distinction between producer and consumer from those where the artisan and user are one and the same. In the former situation, the person who desires the skeuomorphic object may not have access to the processes by which it is produced and thus the metaphor of skeuomorphism may carry more weight as he or she cannot clearly envisage the steps which differentiate the skeuomorph from its prototype. In contrast when the person making a skeuomorph also intends to use (in any way) that object, he or she is probably fully aware not only of what about the prototype is emulated, but simultaneously of the falseness of the copy. In this way a dynamic tension is introduced, and the metaphor may become strained or less binding.

Similarly, N. Katherine Hayles (1999: 17) suggests that skeuomorphs are ‘threshold devices’ using their references to past technology to soften the impact of innovation. As she puts it ‘skeuomorphs visibly testify for the social or psychological necessity for innovation to be tempered by replication… [and] like a Janus figure, the skeuomorph looks to past and future simultaneously reinforcing and undermining both’ (17). This viewpoint grows out of the dichotomy she identifies in the contemporary ‘post-human’ world in which people have divorced meaning or informational content from its material aspect. Thus, to Hayles, skeuomorphism expresses an explicit, if rarely documented, union of material and meaning proving that the separation of the two is an artificial and meaningless one.

Mimesis and Sympathetic Magic Knappett (2002: 110-112) uses the idea of material metaphors to suggest that skeuomorphs may have functioned in some way as mimetically powerful objects. Specifically, he cites Gell’s (1998: 99-103) discussion of sympathetic magic as proof that through manipulating material forms, the producers of skeuomorphs were seeking to harness the mimetic power of imitation over other objects. Taussig (1993: 2) calls mimesis ‘the magical power of replication, the image affecting what it is an image of, wherein the representation shares in or takes power from the represented.’ Yet, in his perspective, the visible appearance of the mimetic object alone is not necessarily that important. He asks ‘how much of a copy does the copy have to be to have an effect on what it is a copy of?’ (ibid.: 51); and, based on his ethnographic research, concludes that similarity of appearance is less important than might be assumed by people trained up on photocopies and mass-produced plastic. It is the tactility or sensuality of the experience which is important in establishing the power of the copy, and the tensions of similarity and difference mentioned above only serve to enhance the otherness of the mimetic experience. Thus, it may be worth asking how exactly skeuomorphs play with the distinctions between materials, as well as the similarities, in order to create what Taussig (1993: 42) refers to as ‘a terrifically ambiguous power.’

Boundary Objects: Bridging conceptual and material differences One role that these meaningful material objects could easily be understood to have played is that of the boundary object. Star (1989: 51) and Star and Griesemer (1989: 393) define boundary objects as things—material or conceptual—which can form part of several different symbolic worlds at once, yet maintain their own identity amongst all of them. They are presented as intellectual meeting points through which different groups of people with different agendas and beliefs can communicate and act in parallel, ways of easing social contact and smoothing interpersonal negotiation. The examples given by Star and Griesemer (1989)9 rely on their explication of the early development of scientific techniques for research teams at the Berkeley Vertebrate Zoology museum. In this case study they asked how it was possible for financial sponsors, zoologists and the amateur collectors who assembled much of the collection to work efficiently and harmoniously despite the fundamental differences in their motivations. Their solution was the identification of common boundary objects such as ‘the state of California’ which meant different things to geologists interested in the extent of geographical phenomena, politicians and donors interested in promoting their state within the nation, and zoologists attempting to chart ecological zones. Strathern (2004: 45-47) also discusses boundary objects in the academic sphere, suggesting that the maintenance of separate disciplines may act to create alternate routes to creation and insight. Her concept of a boundary object is of an eminently flexible entity which

2.2.5) Social science, contemporary technology and skeuomorphism Recently, the idea of skeuomorphism has been adapted by researchers in other disciplines, particularly the history of science, to discuss the ways in which people engage with technology and its implications. Most of these non-archaeological uses of skeuomorphism follow the idea of skeuomorphism as a materialisation of cultural and material

9. Admittedly, Susan Star (1989) coined the phrase boundary object and only reprised her definition with James Griesemer in this second paper; but, since the latter is far better known and infinitely less opaque than the former, I have chosen to use it as my source for most definitions and examples.

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Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe embodies and creates the borders of discourse (2004: 4547).

as having many sources from deliberate—perhaps nostalgic—allusions to the past or past technologies, to conceptions of the economic value of different materials and forms, to a reaction to the geographic distance associated with a particular object’s origin or associations. She suggests that in order to understand how a skeuomorph was conceived and perceived in past societies we first need to disentangle ‘what aspects of the putative prototype are being emphasised and how’ (337). Thus, she breaks down the monolithic definitions presented above in favour of a more inclusive and subtle set of potential reasons each of which would be more or less important in different periods and places.

While the above, rather abstract examples may seem worlds apart from the very material, archaeological record, boundary objects themselves strike me as supremely applicable to the above discussion of skeuomorphs. Boundary objects ‘may be abstract or concrete. They have different meanings in different social worlds but their structure is common enough to more than one world to make them recognizable, a means of translation’ (Star and Griesemer 1989: 393). Skeuomorphs, as they are described in the sections above, present the translations of various aspects of one material and artefact type in a different, and often unintuitive, material; thus, they could act as boundary objects in a variety of ways. For example in colonial Australia knapped bottle-glass tools were a means of economic communication between Aboriginal people and Europeans. They also allowed a material dialogue on colonialism to be developed within the Aboriginal community and gave a means of using that colonial experience to actualise and strengthen local concepts of identity. In Star and Griesemer’s words, they served as ‘standardized forms’ in the relationship between Aboriginal people and Whites, giving them a material method of common communication, and as ‘coincident boundaries’ among Aboriginal people, creating a shared concept of identity through ‘a common referent’ (ibid.: 410-411).

2.3) CONCLUSIONS AND A CRITIQUE Skeuomorphism as it has traditionally been used by archaeologists is a fluid idea and it is this fluidity which keeps it a relevant avenue for archaeological inquiry. These skeuomorphs highlight the ways in which different materials were exploited, valorised and invested with meaning. The production, use and deposition of skeuomorphs of friable or recyclable materials allow archaeologists to study classes of artefacts such as Attic silver vessels or Mesolithic basketry—and their associated value systems—which would otherwise be out of our reach.

Although she admits her work is just a preliminary exploration of the concept, inspired by ethnographic and experimental work, Hurcombe (2006) raises several insightful questions about the nature of skeuomorphism. She is informed by her own experimental efforts attempting to recreate the basketry ‘prototypes’ of late Neolithic skeuomorphic pottery (e.g. Hurcombe 2008). In a brief comparison of various archaeological and contemporary skeuomorphs, she identified four primary sorts: tokens or signifiers, visual reminiscences, intentional facsimiles and toys. These categories of skeuomorph, she suggests, developed in response to a variety of possible cultural stimuli such as social distinction and economic value, cultural conservatism, or technological changes due to material availability, longevity or durability. More creatively, she also suggests that a variety of social changes might be at the root of skeuomorphism. These include the need to address concepts of permanence and transience materially or the desire to ‘presence’ an object, such as with sympathetic magic. What I find most useful about Hurcombe’s approach to skeuomorphism is that she refuses to see it as a single phenomenon, choosing instead to approach it as a series of socially and temporally contingent phenomena with no single purpose.

Moreover, as Knappett (2002) has noted, skeuomorphs seem to embody at least some of the metaphors which past people used to make sense of their world. When a skeuomorph is produced in a new material but is made to look like a more familiar one, then the expectations which it fulfils are contradictory to its technology and production. Similarly, the consumer of a low-value material with a high-value form is forced to find a compromise between his/her desires and his/her economic possibilities. Skeuomorphs seem to embody in a material fashion these sorts of compromises. Furthermore, just as verbal metaphors aid communication by providing common symbols through which to convey complex ideas, material metaphors use forms or materials common to many people in order to present more complicated and perhaps more subtle messages to specific groups. The power of mimetic tension developed within the skeuomorph which constantly treads the fine line between true and false is that they can mean many different things to many different people because of their material, their techniques of production and their decoration. They have material access to at least two different worlds of meaning, their own and their prototype’s; and they often finish by embodying their own unique set of references and meanings. They, like boundary objects, could ‘act as anchors and bridges’ (Star and Griesemer 1989: 414), allowing people a wider scope to feed their desires and to access and influence the meaningful objects of quotidian existence.

Nakou (1999) also treats skeuomorphs as the result of a variety of different processes related to their production, consumption and changing social value. She sees them

However, despite the many differing and often competing ways (Table 2.1) in which skeuomorphism has been theorised, it often seems to conform to contemporary systems

2.2.6) A singular set of phenomena

14

Skeuomorphism in the archaeological record

Reasons for Skeuomorphism

Characteristics

Sources

Technological Evolution

Imitates primitive materials Made in more advanced material Skeuomorphic aspects are vestigial and functionless No meaningful content Product of unconscious, mechanical processes

Colley March 1889; Richardson 1995; Taylor 2006, 2007

Cultural Conservatism

Functionless Decorative effect Imitates traditional materials Often made in new material Imitation of production processes not relevant to new material

Child 1956; Shaw 1977; Wengrow 2001

Economic Value

Imitations are generally of high value objects/materials Occurs in low value materials Specialised production Producer and Consumer separated Consumer determines form Deposited by people seeking an association with a wealthier or higher status group Found at peripheries of wealthier social groups

Vickers 1986a, 1989, 1999; Rawson 1986, 1989; Watson 1986; Gill 1986; Vickers and Gill 1994; de Freitas 1997; Sherrat and Taylor 1997

Technological Innovation

Prototypes are traditional materials Often made in new/newly valued materials Can appear to subvert predominant social values Often related explicitely to personal or group identity Origin of materials/forms and geographical distance emphasised Form determined by producer Consumer potentially ignorant of production processes

Sherratt 1997; Taylor 1999; Wengrow 2001; Nakou 2001; Knappett 2002; Harrison 2003

Material Metaphors

Style links to larger conceptual world Imitation not just of form/style but of gestures of production Visible differences between skeuomorph and prototype Tension between imitation and falseness Mimetic power/ ability to "presence"

Tilly 1999; Ortman 2000; D'Alleva 2001; Knappett 2002; Hurcombe 2006

Toys or Jokes

Irony evident in materials, form or function of tools Miniature replica "jeux d'esprit"

Pryor 1991; Harrison 2003; Hurcombe 2006

Table 2.1: Summary of the various ideas of what skeuomorphism represents.

15

Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe of valuing materials and a conception of technological interaction as either unidirectional or limited to very few materials. Vickers and Gill (1994: 137) call skeuomorphism the result of ‘a constant dialectic’ between materials. De Freitas (1997: 18) calls it a ‘cross-fertilisation’ and the papers included in McGovern and Notis’ volume (1989) describe ‘cross-craft’ technologies. Yet, what each of them is saying is the same thing: that information travels from one material to another in ways which almost always mirror contemporary value systems. Archaeologists rarely use skeuomorphism to discuss more than one material; and generally that material is the one which is today considered to be the more technologically advanced. Thus, pottery skeuomorphs of basketry are used to discuss potters (i.e., Wengrow 2001; Sherratt 1997) and pottery skeuomorphs of metal are ideal means of elucidating the ancient metal trade and metal-based value-systems (i.e., Vickers and Gill 1994; Taylor 2006, 1999). In this perspective, skeuomorphism arguably has not moved on much from its nineteenth century origins. It is still generally considered to be a single phenomenon used to describe relationships between technologically ‘primitive’ and technologically ‘advanced’ artefacts, and in particular the growing social or economic worth of the latter. Only Hurcombe has really looked “the other way” in attempting to reconstruct prototypic basketry, the material thought to be less valuable (if more common).

gists. The concept has been used to develop new understandings of the materials and production processes in the past as well as of the value systems and beliefs attached to them. Taylor’s (1999) concept of envaluation, a direct descendent of Colley March’s original identification of a stylistic expectancy embodied by skeuomorphs, has altered the way archaeologists study the incorporation of new materials and objects into society. Similarly, Vickers’ (Vickers and Gill 1994; 1986) ideas about painted Attic pottery—controversial though they may be—serve to remind archaeologists not only of the incompleteness of the archaeological record, but also of the influence their own values, anachronistic with regard to the archaeological record, can have in the interpretive discourse. Skeuomorphism, a word coined as part of a technologically evolutionary agenda, has been retained by archaeologists because—like ritual (Brück 1999a) or landscape (Gosden and Head 1994)—it is something of a catch-all. It is a vague term with a plethora of meanings, none of which is universally applicable. One approach to the concept is to see it as a complex of ideas related to how past people expressed their ideas concerning value, technological knowledge and identity. However, the variety of definitions for skeuomorphism make building a coherent body of theory based on the term incredibly difficult. Consequently, for the purposes of this research, I take skeuomorphism to mean the intentional and meaningful imitation of features—both morphological and technological—in objects made in one material that are typical of objects made in another. While other, subtler forms of referencing can exist between and among materials, I view skeuomorphism to mean a direct, imitative relationship between two materials. Moreover, in light of the ethnographic evidence for imitation and material metaphors, I would argue that individual features of objects as well as complete objects need to be scrutinised not just on stylistic grounds, but in terms of their production and use to determine what was being imitated. Finally, by comparing not just the similarities but also the differences between skeuomorphs and their extant prototypes, we can develop insight into the minds of ancient artisans who fashioned these things in response to a dynamic set of social needs and beliefs.

However, her own observations being based heavily on a number of cheap plastic bowls in the form of woven baskets, she finishes by eludicating a very familiar, unidirectional value system. Furthermore, she still focuses her interest just on the technical aspect of basketry production, leaving aside many questions about the necessary techniques and reasons for imitating basketry in pottery. Today skeuomorphism is simple. The plasticity of most modern materials means that it is easy to forget just how vast a knowledge base would have been needed to craft a clear imitation by hand in pottery, basketry, metal or stone. The steps taken in producing these materials needed to be adapted to their final form—often one not terribly suited for the material. To my mind, there is abundant evidence of a multidirectional transfer of information between and among materials. Nakou (1999) highlights this fact by continually emphasising the overlapping decorative vocabulary and functional roles among Aegean early Bronze Age pottery, basketry and metals. She emphasises that gestures of consumption and associated cultural values—some of which may very well be economic in nature—have more to do with the choice of what aspects of certain artefact types are translated into other materials. Furthermore she attempts to break down the conception of skeuomorphs as attempts ‘to ape’ their prototypes, noting that in most cases, the traits identified as skeuomorphic are ‘used in an eclectic rather than an imitative fashion’ (ibid.: 317).

However, before imitation can be theorised it must be definitively demonstrated to exist. In order to do so, I have developed a methodological framework for studying potentially imitative features and objects within their larger social and material worlds so that the social and technological values and knowledge which led to their creation can be extracted.

Identifying skeuomorphism is clearly not just a classificatory or stylistic observation on the part of archaeolo16

Chapter 3: A framework for analysis 3.1) INTRODUCTION

they lead their lives and interact with other people. As Dobres (2000: 85) puts it ‘human technologies are inseparably caught up in webs of social values and social relations.’ Moreover, objects communicate not just with the people who made and used them, but with the other people with whom they come into contact and with us, the archaeological observers. If we accept that the material traces of day-to-day existence can give us insight into the world that existed several thousand years in the past, before written records existed to tell us what people then thought and how they organised their world, then we accept that objects can communicate at least some information. What exactly that information is, however, is highly debated. At their most basic level, the things people used can tell us what raw materials they had access to and what techniques they were able to perform on them. More subtly, objects—especially those things which have passed through many hands in the course of trade, gift giving or inheritance—speak of the relationships between people across space and over time. The distance they travel, the ways in which they have been curated or reused and whether or not their form or function have been imitated all express aspects of their interaction with people.

Despite myriad interpretations and descriptions of archaeological skeuomorphs, no clear methodology for studying imitative production and skeuomorphic objects has ever been fully or clearly articulated. In this chapter, I will expand on my own approach to studying skeuomorphism, particularly in the context of innovation. I suggest that these objects form key parts of social relationships and that a careful delineation of their creation, use and deposition as well as of their physical properties can shed light on the roles they played in human relationships and their wider social significance. Skeuomorphs demonstrate particularly clearly at least a few of the ways in which people interacted with the material world. Their explicit references to other materials, production processes and practices illustrate the relationship between morphological form and production process, the physical properties of objects which were observed and made use of by past people, the functions accorded to different object forms and materials and, particularly in the case of stone copies of early metal things, the ways in which a new material was adapted to or adopted into a previously existing social order. I propose an approach to studying skeuomorphs and the process of innovation based not only on close study of individual artefacts, but also on a broader survey of the contemporaneous use of different materials as well as diachronic patterns of material use. As Dobres and Robb (2000: 164) suggest, in order to begin to interpret the complexity of social meaning in archaeology, our methodologies should integrate both sound technical methods of observation and data collection and questions informed by appropriate socio-cultural theory. To that end, I have chosen to rely on a body of anthropological and archaeological theory which posits that the physical properties of objects—as well as the gestures, values and people that play a role in their manufacture and use—cause them to be active participants in human relationships. In the first section of this chapter, I will lay out this intellectual context with an emphasis on the process of extricating meaning from objects. I will also discuss how innovative technologies and practices, their adoption and promulgation, fit into this framework. Following that, I will briefly delineate the methods I have developed to address these socially complex objects. Finally, I will introduce the three corpora of skeuomorphs I propose to study, their unique features and social implications as well as how they fit as case studies into the wider aim of re-evaluating the adoption of metal technology in prehistoric northwest Europe.

3.2) MATERIALS

WITH CULTURE: TUAL FRAMEWORK

AN

It is clear from anthropological writing that objects take on a number of different, significant roles depending on many things including the materials they are made from, they way they are passed from person to person, and the people who made or used them. In particular, special objects, sometimes named, often carefully curated and passed from hand to hand along with the knowledge about the people with whom they have come in contact take on a sort of individuality. Strathern’s (1988) study of Melanesian gift exchange suggests that objects—whether they are being made, used or exchanged—are the concretized form taken by relationships between people, which, in taking a material form, obtain the ability to act on and structure those relationships. Thus, she suggests objects in circulation can be perceived both to represent parts of specific personages and to relate metaphorically to a person’s reputation or prestige in the eyes of other people (ibid.). Similarly, in our own world, a wedding ring is not just a token of love given by one partner to another: it embodies the legal marriage contract and the ritual or religious vows taken, as well as communicating to people outside the marriage the presence of a spouse (cf. Knappett 2002: 103). Munn’s (1986) work on the creation of value in the well-known and closely studied Trobriand Kula ring is one of the clearer ethnographic examples of the way objects mediate and communicate social networking. In Kula, armbands and necklaces of shells (as well as foodstuff and other objects), are traded continually between trading partners on different islands (Malinowski 1922). Over time, these shell ornaments acquire rich histories, visible in their golden patina, incorporating the names of the men who have owned them and evoking these men’s authority and wisdom at great tem-

INTELLEC-

The objects people use are bound up intimately in the way 17

Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe Working from the premise that certain types or groups of objects can communicate a variety of socio-technical information between people and groups, and that these same objects can, on occasion, be imbued with a degree of personhood, I find it acceptable to suggest that they are not simply passive participants in human relationships. As Gell (1998: 18-21) suggests, not only do people anthropomorphise many of the objects with which they interact on a daily basis; but the things people make and use can be visualised as extensions—and intrinsic parts—of human will and agency. Thus, it is clear that objects can act on relationships and affect the very people who make and use them. Although this observation appears to be equally true for the quotidian objects of day to day life (cf. Latour 1992), archaeologically, the active participation of objects in human choices and relationships is generally easier to grasp when studying the production of carefully elaborated forms such as skeuomorphs or in the context of socially significant activities, such as burial ceremonies. For example, I have previously mentioned Rawson’s (1989) interpretation of ancient Tang and Song porcelain imitations of silver vessels. Although she suggests that these copies were initially created as cheaper substitutes for metal funerary vessels, she also recognises that, over time, they seemed to accrue their own value, perhaps due to the difficult production process required to create them. Thus, the individual porcelain vessels embodied a series of constantly changing meanings and relationships which gave them worth. In other words, each porcelain vessel produced trains the people who come in contact with it slightly more about how to appreciate porcelain. Thus, it is no wonder that over time the value of porcelain rose in Tang and Song China: the objects themselves were teaching people to appreciate them.

poral and spatial distance (ibid.; Gell 1998; Munn 1986, 1990). Munn’s (1990: 5) reinterpretation of this practice is that the path taken by the shell objects as they are traded embodies or objectifies the agency of the various recipients. This ability to stand for or speak of a human person at great distance has led Gell (1998: 68) to suggest that anthropogenic artefacts are ‘a congealed residue of performance and agency in object-form, through which access to other persons can be attained, and via which their agency can be communicated.’10 Thus, anthropologically it has been possible to demonstrate that the object embodies to a certain degree the personality and experiences of the people who are linked to it as well as the gestures of production and use with which it is associated and thus has in some respects a sort of secondary personhood of its own (ibid.). A number of analytical techniques have been advanced to study the technology of archaeological artefacts within a socially informed context. For example, the last few decades have seen a significant interest placed in the life history of objects (sometimes called “object biographies”). This approach, based on Kopytoff’s (1986) seminal paper, attempts to explore objects through the changing meanings or roles which are attributed to them over the course of their use-life. In this perspective, an archaeological artefact must be understood as ‘a culturally constructed entity, endowed with culturally specific meanings and classified and reclassified into culturally constituted categories’ (ibid.: 68). Kopytoff’s ideas were developed in an explicitly economic framework; but similar ideas were put forward in France by Leroi Gourhan (1964, 1965), who suggests that the techniques used by prehistoric craftspeople in the process of making a thing parallel words in a sentence. In other words, they follow a flexible, but concrete internal logic linked inexorably to the social context of production. Thus, the entire life of an object is inextricably tied up in the social concerns of the people who make and use it. Yet, following Gosden and Marshall’s (1999: 169) critique, many applications of these “use-life” approaches simply catalogue technical changes in an object’s form in relation to its use and remodelling, reducing the object to a passive thing acted upon by active people. In my opinion, since it assumes a variety of techniques and activities based in culturally or individually significant choices, Leroi Gourhan’s chaîne opératoire approach is still one of the more flexible archaeological tools for extricating embodied meaning from a series of seemingly technical processes. However, it tends to disregard the way material things affect the decisions made by people in manipulating them. Thus, in following the sequences of artefact production and use, I believe that care must be taken to note where the physical or cultural properties of things affect human choices in production and use.

Having established that objects can participate actively in social relationships, the question arises concerning how we can identify these sorts of active objects in the archaeological record and delineate the roles they could have played in the past. The discipline of archaeology is heavily underpinned by generations of detailed studies of material culture; however, archaeological material culture studies have treated artefacts as essentially ‘lifeless objects’ (Lemonnier 1986: 147). The majority of these studies are exclusively descriptive accounts of visually or materially striking artefacts and typologies (e.g. Manby 1995 in which imitative pottery is set alongside potential prototypes in perishable materials with little in the way of comment or critique). These descriptive publications form the basis of archaeologically identified cultures and chronological sequences, and continue to comprise a consequential portion of the published literature on material culture.11 In recent decades, a more technologically focused literature, concerned with the techniques of production and use has been developed to study material culture. These technological studies are often supported through experimental work with archaeologically known materials which are then compared to microscopic or chemical examinations of traces and use patterns. They generally focus

10. Gell is speaking primarily about works of art; although, in building his argument he utilizes a number of aesthetically complex, ethnographic examples, such as nail fetishes (59) and lime containers (74) which bear traces of artistic design but are not the ‘art for art’s sake’ more common in modern Europe, and which are more easily able to be compared to functionally and aesthetically complicated archaeological materials.

18

A framework for analysis on those attributes, functional and stylistic, which are conceived to have been visible and consciously perceived by past people (Lemonnier 1986: 148). The style, aesthetics and symbolism of artefacts have been commented on by a number of researchers (e.g. Sackett 1982, 1985; Wiessner 1983, 1985; Binford 1989; Wobst 2000 and papers in World Archaeology 33(2); Hodder 1982, 1991). However, since these properties are often expected or believed to be external to the technological or functional roles of artefacts (cf. Sackett 1982), the two are often studied separately. Even Lemonnier (1986), who critiques other researchers’ separation of form and function (148), in studying Anga technology and society, divides their social technical traits into separate groups depending on whether their function is material or informational (scheme 1). Thus, although he suggests that all studies of technique are fundamentally studies of society (ibid.: 153), he pits material functionality against symbolic functionality denying that each influences the other and the performance of techniques in general.

novative technologies, practices and ideas (Barnett 1953; Rogers 2003). On the other hand, there is a growing interest in the evolutionary roots of cultural transmission and innovation (Eerkens and Lipo 2007; O’Brien and Shennan 2009). However, I find these sorts of approaches troubling, in their overly mechanistic treatment both of material culture and of human populations which are both relieved of agency and explicitly removed from the interlocking social and material networks described above. In these studies, innovation is seen as part of the linear evolution in superior culture and framed as the development of superior objects, materials and processes (Eerkens and Lipo 2007). Rather, according to Barnett (1953), innovative behaviour is essentially a mental exercise in which an individual or group of individuals choose to juxtapose two or more ideas, things or practices to make a new mental construct, set or practices or technology. In other words, innovation grows out of pre-existing cultural and technological forms and not in response to a need or desire on the part of individuals or groups for ‘something new’. In fact, the idea of ‘need’ as an impetus for innovation is highly flawed and based entirely on external observations of changes within societies rather than the choices and decisions of the individuals who make up those societies (ibid.: 98). Furthermore, innovations are most likely to be successfully adopted when an individual member of a society is closely involved in the development and acceptance of innovations within the larger group. These ‘early adopters’ use their connections within their immediate cohort and with others, as well as their knowledge of the specific innovation in question, to encourage and support other people to test and accept the innovation (Rogers 2003). Essentially, they create bridges in practice and knowledge between tradition and innovation, a process sometimes referred to as ‘envaluation’ (sensu Taylor 1999).

Yet, as I have demonstrated above, technological analysis cannot be separated from social analysis. Instead, I propose an integrated methodology which highlights both the technological and social aspects of material culture in light of the fact that the two are intimately related and influence each other considerably (Lemonnier 1986: 180; Dobres and Hoffman 1994; Dobres 1995, 2000). Further, the environment in which people live, the things they use and the habitual activities which make up their lives are contingent on a socially constructed worldview which in turn is constructed through the practice of these habitual activities and the construction and maintenance of their physical environment and material objects (Bourdieu 1977; Giddens 1984). Thus, in studying the way an object is produced and the material from which it is made, we can be said to be studying the physical embodiment of social norms. Moreover, the technologies enacted by people and objectified in the archaeological record form the crux of two dynamics: the dialectical relationship between socialised production processes and material products of these processes, as well as the intersection between cultural necessities and material realities (Dobres 1995). Additionally, the gender, age, status, or other social category of the people involved in its production or use—not to mention the landscape or social sphere in which the object was active—would have affected the ways in which people perceived it as being functional (Lemonnier 1993: 3).

Since every new practice, idea or combination of ideas is innovative, and these innovations are a constant feature of human activity (Barnett 1953), they are both frequent and often unrecognised. As archaeologists, we are prone to fixate on technology and technological explanations, but this conception of innovation makes clear that new conjunctions of known ideas and practices are equally innovative in their enactment and acceptance. In this way, innovation can be seen as an organic process developing out of a milieu of ideas and techniques, not necessarily a conscious strategy on the part of most members within a society. Nevertheless, based on observations of rural societies in the mid-twentieth century, Rogers (1962: 79-86) has developed a five stage framework for understanding how innovations are adopted. In this framework, people first become aware of a new practice, thing or idea; they seek information about it; they test it for advantages and disadvantages; they try it out; and, finally, they adopt it fully into their day to day lives. He stresses that the speed with which people move from one stage in the process of adoption to the next varies based on a variety of different factors including, their perceptions of the innovation, the

3.2.1) Innovation and material culture studies The anthropological and sociological literature concerning innovation develops many of these same themes, emphasising the intimate connection between human societies, communication and the adoption (and rejection) of in11. E.g. the enormous literature on stone shafthole objects that, until very recently, was entirely comprised of this sort of typochronological study (e.g. Brandt 1967; Grisse 2006; Roe 1966, 1979; Zápotocký 1992). However see Lekberg (2002) for a more socially nuanced and contextualized study.

19

Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe structure of their society, externally precipitated events or crises, etc.

structuring and embodying human relationships. Thus, any analysis of objects must integrate descriptive and technological questions into a larger, socially informed discussion. Moreover, the process of making, adopting or rejecting new objects (technologies, practices and ideas) is culturally contingent and engaged in by individual members of society at different rates and times with different end results and in a piecemeal fashion. In other words, while specific objects or technologies may be adopted entirely by a group of people, those objects and technologies develop a wholly different significance or communicate different sorts of technological and social messages, perhaps related to their origin, physical properties, use, as they become more socially comprehensible during the adoption process (for example, the increasing economic value of porcelain in Song and Tang China).

Moreover, the act of finally accepting an innovation is not a passive one; and the innovation itself is altered by its slow incorporation into a new social structure (Barnett 1953). Barnett (ibid.: 331) illustrates this point with the example of the early twentieth century Palauan adoption of Singer sewing machines which, when they were in working order were used by both men and women unlike in the contemporary western societies in which they were women’s tools. When not in use, they were placed with pride in the centre of the front window. Although Palauans adopted many aspects of western culture, including dress and mannerisms, the gendered practices associated with sewing machines shifted in not terribly subtle ways with their incorporation into Palauan society; and the functionality of the machines changed as well from a simple tool, to an object worthy of public display.

The choice made by people to imitate forms foreign to the material in which they were ultimately produced is based in this same cultural matrix of shifting values, dynamic material implications and developing technological knowhow. The skeuomorphic object, an innovation in itself, can be seen as a reservoir holding/communicating a vast body of parallel, redundant and relevant socio-technical knowledge; and, because of the morphological and technological tension it embodies, makes an ideal focus of archaeological inquiry—not the least because much of the information it could have communicated is so near the surface. The overlap between materials, forms and practices which seems to be apparent in the phenomenon of skeuomorphism makes these imitative objects ideal vehicles for communicating a larger range of socially important information concerning not only techniques or technology but also value systems, quotidian practices or ritual acts, and the existence of interpersonal and inter-societal relationships (cf. Nakou 1999: Chapter VI). Furthermore, their frequent implication in phases of technological and social change suggests that they represent a window into the means by which novel objects, technologies and materials were adopted into a given society.

Furthermore, innovations are regularly rejected, not just on functional grounds but for arbitrary reasons that are difficult to assess, being grounded firmly in cultural attitudes towards the newly altered practices, technologies or ideas. Although contemporary, western society demonstrates a clear proclivity for innovation and preference for innovative activity (Rogers 2003), this orientation is far from universal. Even in innovation-positive cultures, rejecting innovative practices is far from rare and seems to relate to questions in the potential adopter’s mind about how compatible the innovation is with pre-existing practices, the difficulty of enacting it and communicating it to others, and the ease of testing it on a small scale prior to adoption (ibid.). Objects without pre-existing cultural referents cannot, by definition, be adopted (Barnett 1953: 334-338), but new ideas can be developed to explain—and, consequently, socialise—the never previously encountered innovation. Schieffelin and Crittenden (1991: 101-102) point out that, in their first encounters with steel objects, indigenous Papuan people were alternately mystified and horrified by the unrecognisable material which was rejected out of hand. Yet within decades, steel axes were highly sought after by most, and explained by those who rejected their use as ‘strange objects [from the Origin time]… that should not be touched or used by mortal men’ (ibid.: 68). However, as noted above, not all of the ideas which contribute to a novel practice or technology are forcibly adopted together. For example, among the Yurok, a Native American group based on the California coast, obsidian blades were traditionally displayed as objects of wealth and for prestige even after the adoption of gold coinage from local EuroAmericans. The idea that coins represented wealth in the same way as obsidian blades was not adopted; and the two were not considered to be in the same conceptual category (Barnett 1953: 338).

3.3) FROM

METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK TO METHODOLOGICAL PRACTICE

I have chosen three discrete examples, separated by time and geography, of artefact types called metal skeuomorphs by archaeologists. In examining these three sets of materials in light of the theoretical context presented in the previous section, I will focus on the social context of these objects (and of the technologies through which they were made and used). Analyses will be carried out to determine what, if any, relationships each of these objects had to their putative prototypes – namely, whether an imitative relationship existed between them and, if so, in what way (for example, in their form, function and/or distribution). Furthermore, since material culture can be treated as an active part of social and technological relationships, the nature of the imitation between stone and metal will be evaluated

3.2.2) Cultural materials, innovation and skeuomorphism It is clear that material culture plays an active role in 20

A framework for analysis production or consumption decision. To do so, I have designed a tripartite research methodology which addresses each category of skeuomorphs not only as distinct artefacts, but also as things whose meaning derives from the social and technological context in which they are embedded. This methodology comprises: (1) an assessment of the technological and social context of the objects in each case study; (2) macroscopic analyses of individual objects; and (3) a discussion of the social and technological context of contemporary metal objects/metallurgy, specifically of the putative prototypes (Fig. 3.2). In terms of object analysis, I recorded patterns in each object’s physical properties such as its colour, texture, size and balance, all of which were observed with the naked eye or with a 10x handlens, as well as the technical choices (such as raw material chosen, manufacture technique, traces of use or damage, decoration or elaboration, etc.) made by the people producing and using them. The contextual study concerns the specific technological context (the organisation of production, landscapes of production and deposition, etc.) in addition to a study of the broader social context (including the role of stone-working in each specific society and patterns in manufacture, use and deposition of other stone objects) of production and use. To determine the relationship, if any, between each set of so-called skeuomorph and its proposed metal counterpart, I compare the observations and analyses outlined above to similar information about the cultural associations and suite of technological practices characteristic of contemporary metallurgy and each specific metal counterpart. Simple statistical analyses facilitate these comparisons. Being able to tack back and forth between these two scales of analysis will allow me to compare not only the changing production of an individual corpus of skeuomorphic stone objects, but also the ways in which the broader technological contexts affected specific stoneworking technologies through the course of the early metal-using era in the region.

SPECIFIC TECHNOLOGICAL CONTEXT SPECIFIC SOCIAL CONTEXT

ANTHOPOGENIC THINGS

BROAD MATERIAL RELATIONSHIPS

Figure 3.1: Diagram showing the highly contextualised nature of human-made objects. and linked to the process of metal adoption in each region and period. Clearly, skeuomorphs, like other forms of material culture, are different things to different people at different times in different places; and their significance rests in the culturally specific, economic and technological environments in which they were produced. However, they also seem to form part of broader shifts in attitudes towards materials, production and inter-societal interaction (e.g. Sherratt 1997; Nakou 1999; Taylor 1999). Moreover, following Gamble’s (1999: figure 3.2) interpretative method for Palaeolithic materials, in studying skeuomorph creation and use, I have found it necessary to ‘tack’ between scales of analysis so that the process of making one object can be intimately related to the larger cultural and technological spheres in which it functioned. These scales of analysis clearly include not only the larger cultural or material trends in which the artefacts were involved but also their specific physical and technological properties. Consequently, I will explore the value placed on the raw material from which each object type is made and the technological sphere in which each was produced by discussing the technical process of creating the skeuomorph and putative prototype as well as contemporary uses of the same raw materials.

However, while I will be evaluating each of the three sorts of artefact in this broad framework, I have necessarily had to tailor my exact analyses to each case and the concomitant social and technological world in which it was in circulation. Thus, I am able to draw comparisons between jet and gold necklaces deposited in Britian and Ireland as both were relatively common; yet I must include objects from outside the study area in the case of stone axes and flint daggers since only a small handful of corresponding metal artefacts remain extant in each region under study. What follows is a concise delineation of the ways in which I have chosen to study these objects in their own right before evaluating them in light of similar metal examples.

I would argue that the most suitable method for studying any anthropogenic thing—skeuomorphs included—is to take them on their own terms, examining them in light of their immediate social and technological landscapes while simultaneously treating them as part of a broader set of material relationships which developed slowly over time and across space (cf. Lemonnier 1986; Nakou 1999) (Fig. 3.1). In essence, skeuomorphs are most useful to archaeologists when they are treated as the result of several socio-technical processes and not just as products of a single

3.3.1) Knob-butted axes In examining the knob-butted axes of the Funnel Beaker West Group, I pay particular attention to the physical properties which would have been perceivable to the people who used and made them, in order to illuminate 21

Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe

Specific Technological Context

1

Contextual Analyses

Broad Social Context

3

3

Sociotechnical context of metallurgy

Specific Metal Prototype

Physical Properties

Macroscopic Observations

Technical choices

2 what (if any) relationship they had with metal objects. To gain insight into the choices made in manufacturing these objects, I discuss qualitative observations concerning the type (when possible) and colour of stone chosen, the quality of manufacture and the level and type of surface treatment. Also, I make quantitative assessments regarding the location, size and form of the blade, shafthole and knob in order to characterise the uniformity of the corpus of knobbutted axes and develop a baseline morphology to compare with the few extant metal examples. Furthermore, characterising stages and gestures of production allows me to compare the time and effort which went into manufacturing these axes and their metal counterparts, and may suggest the value placed on them and the perceived skill of the person who made them. I also record the presence or absence of specific features, such as collars and ‘casting seams’, which have been described as imitative of metallic forms (e.g. by Brandt 1967). The more uniform the fabrication and morphology of these sorts of features, the more likely that they originate in a shared prototype.

Figure 3.2: Diagrammatic representation of tripartite approach to the examination and analysis of skeuomorphs: (1) technological and social context of the individual objects; (2) macroscopic analysis of individual objects; (3) social and technological context of contemporary metal objects/metallurgy, specifically of putative prototypes..

the stone knob-butted axes in the Netherlands and northwest Germany coincides with the very earliest circulation of metal in this region, an understanding of the relationship which appears to exist between them and their metal counterparts is crucial for delineating the mechanisms by which people adopted metal into their societies and value systems. 3.3.2) Fishtail flint daggers In studying handled daggers in flint and bronze, I focus on a combination of production features, macroscopically visible use-wear and retouch, as well as material properties such as colour, size and, in the case of whole flint daggers, balance. My first area of interest is the nature of the whole, finished dagger, namely how it would have looked and felt to the person/people who held and used it in prehistory. The colour and quality of the flint used as well as the refinement of technique are all important, as is the general size and morphology and any traces of cortex or patina which might indicate its post-depositional history. I also focus on the gestures and processes involved in the fabrication and use of the dagger by looking not only for the visible traces of manufacturing techniques on the blade and handle, but also for traces of use-wear and resharpening. The categories and terminology used to discuss usewear are drawn from Andrefsky’s (2005), Odell’s (2004) and Ballin’s (2000) overviews of lithic analysis and from Conolley’s (1999) method of recording wear and modification in the Çatal Höyük lithic assemblage.

Moreover, I take note of macroscopically visible wear traces, resharpening and reshaping in order to discuss the possible ways these axes were displayed and used. Categories of wear are based on Adams’ (2002) and Timberlake and Prag’s (2005) schemes for recognising and recording wear on ground-stone tools. Additionally, by recording any signs of hafting on the outside of the axe and within the shafthole and combining those data with the balance and size of the axes, I am able to suggest some of the gestures which would have been used to lift and wield them. Finally, I delineate the correlations between the depositional choices made in relation to stone knob-butted axes and metal ones. However, only a handful of copper knobbutted axes are known in Western Europe (Klassen 2000: 52; Grote 2004; Briard 1965; Mohen 1977; Kibbert 1980; Jacob-Friesen 1970), few of which have any contextual information associated with them. Since the production of

Focusing on how and where metal daggers contemporary to the flint ones under study were produced allows comparisons to be made between the acts of knapping a flint dagger and of casting a copper or bronze example. However, only a handful of metal-hilted daggers is known to date from this period in Scandinavia, so my ability to draw any large-scale direct comparison relies on the analysis of 22

A framework for analysis metal-hilted daggers produced and deposited across Europe (Schwenzer 2004). Technological and morphological data about the few Scandinavian metal-hilted daggers can be set against the more copious flint examples to show any trends in production, use, morphology and typology which may be shared between them. When possible, I record the find context and associations of the flint and metal-hilted daggers in order to document any patterns which may exist that could point to a shared use or perception of flint and metal daggers. Finally, in discussing the relationship between the two, I synthesise the data concerning other varieties of prehistoric, European flint daggers in order to develop a larger body of comparative material which might give insight into the use and spread of daggers—in a variety of materials—in the fourth to the second millennium BC.

3.4) AN INTEGRATED ANALYSIS In this chapter, I have proposed a methodology for studying skeuomorphs, particularly in the context of the adoption of novel objects, technologies and practices, in which the physical properties of artefacts as well as the techniques used to create them are analysed in their cultural and technological context. This methodology rests on the assumption, supported by ethnographic and technological studies, that the things which people use affect them, their relationships and the other objects they make and use. This application of social agency is only possible because objects are able to communicate a variety of information both technical, such as the materials from which and the processes by which they were made, and social, for example, the name of their most prestigious owner or the ability of their producer to access exotic materials. Thus, understanding the cultural context in which objects were made and used is crucial to understanding what the object could and does communicate. This social context is particularly significant in assessing the means by which new objects, ideas or practices were incorporated into existing cultural structures. Additionally, an awareness of the technological context of production and use of skeuomorphic objects allows us to investigate the decisions made by people as they manufactured them out of various materials and lets us compare that manufacture process between artefact types.

3.3.3) Crescentic jet necklaces In assessing the relationship between crescentic ornaments made from black beads and sheet gold, I have chosen to focus not just on their production and use, but also on their curation, their integrity and their distribution. A study of the quantities of beads, the types included in each assemblage and any applied decoration is conducted to determine the amount of variability present within the larger corpus of spacer plate necklace bead assemblages, as well as between these and gold lunulae. Also, by noting the location and type of different sorts of use-wear traces I can determine whether there are patterns between bead types, assemblage composition and distribution regions. The categories of use-wear observed are taken from Winifred Coutts’ unpublished MA thesis (Coutts 1969). I also look for similar patterns in the integrity of these bead assemblages and the nature of their fragmentation, that is, not only how complete the assemblages are, but the character of that completeness. There is a strong tradition of stylistic, typological and material research where the lunulae are concerned (e.g. Taylor 1980; Eogan 1994), so comparisons between the two ornament types can be made in a reasonably straightforward manner.

Archaeological interpretations of material culture are necessarily limited by the lack of information to which we have access regarding the daily life and culture of the people we study; but detailed technological studies combined with a broader consideration of the concurrent materials in use and techniques in practice can give some insight into this prehistoric world. Moreover, combining this technical information with an analysis of the cultural world in which a given artefact circulated allows the social aspect of technology, such as the adoption of new materials and techniques, to be more clearly illustrated. Thus, in examining three corpora of putatively imitative objects, I am looking not only at the morphological qualities which link them to their supposed prototype, but also at their unique physical properties and the traces of manufacture and use which indicate how they were made and circulated. Embedding this information into a wider examination of the material, technical and social contexts of the early metal-using era of northwest Europe allows me to question the process by which metal objects and metallurgy were socialised and accepted during the third and second millennia BC.

The associations and depositional contexts of the two ornament varieties are contrasted to determine the relationship between (at least one of) their uses. The sorts of objects with which they were found allow me to discuss in more detail the social contexts in which they were displayed, worn or otherwise used. Additionally, I compare the distribution of the different ornament types and their morphological features. Much has been said about the ‘complementary’ distribution of gold and jet necklaces (i.e. Clarke 1932; Eogan 1994); and I revisit that discussion to suggest the significance both of locally significant burial practices to the restricted spacer plate necklace distribution and as of the sources of raw materials for the production and use of each ornament type. Finally, a less detailed comparison will be made with a number of other varieties of crescentic ornament, such as amber spacer plate necklaces, in circulation in the third and second millennia BC.

Since all technology and technological innovations are fundamentally cultural processes, by incorporating social questions into a technological analysis archaeologists can not only give themselves more scope to examine past societies, but can also render their studies of ancient technology more comprehensive, and hopefully more accurate. In other words, in creating a research methodology based in 23

Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe comparing the archaeological context and technological sequences within which the objects under discussion fit, I am able to draw parallels between and among not only the ultimate forms of objects, but the processes followed to produce them, the choices made by the people who used them and the unique role they played in prehistoric society. By setting all of this information against the background of early metalworking and the spread of metal objects in northwest Europe, I can do more than simply describe why one object type is (or is not) a copy of another; I can draw

a much broader set of conclusions about the changing role of metal and stone at the advent of the metal ages. Integrating social and technological questions and looking at a broad sweep of time and geography gives me the wide scope necessary to question the processes of metal adoption and technological innovation in prehistoric northwest Europe; and careful study of specific objects gives me the detail necessary to discuss the local implications and material repercussions of this process.

24

Chapter 4: The temporal, material and social context of the early metal-using era in northwest Europe 4.1) INTRODUCTION

gies remain to a large extent the backbone of European prehistoric studies. However, in recent years a number of critiques have been made regarding an over-reliance on typo-chronologies and the limitations of working within traditional, archaeological periods (e.g. Ashmore 2003; Sherratt 1995b). Over the last 50 years, dendrochronology and radiocarbon dating have added a great deal of complexity to the typo-chronologies and, consequently, to our understanding of how and when people adopted new technology and materials.

As I have made clear, in order to study skeuomorphs, it is necessary to develop an understanding of the broad material and social worlds in which they existed and developed. In this chapter, I outline the temporal, technological, social and material-cultural contexts which frame the case studies. In the first section I quickly delineate the chronology of the early metal-using era and of the spread of metal and metal technology. I have defined the early metal-using era with respect not to traditional archaeological “periods” but to recent, generally well dated evidence for the spread of metal objects and metalworking throughout the northwest European region. I suggest that a distinct transition from a primarily stone-using to primarily metal-using society is an artefact of our own assumptions about material culture, and that this technological transition is best seen as a slow, sporadic and socially constructed incorporation of metal and metallurgy into society. In, the second section I flesh out the social, material and economic contexts of the subregions of my three case studies which are ordered by their archaeological period—the early and middle Neolithic, Funnel Beaker West Group (northwest Germany and the Netherlands, 3400-2850 BC), Late Neolithic II Jutland (1900-1700 BC) and Early Bronze Age Britain (22501600 BC). I particularly highlight the role of metal and metallurgy in each of these regions in order to outline how people in each area/period incorporated them into their existing social structure and material culture.

Even so, the nature of archaeological practice over the last 200 years has led to a picture of the past fragmented along contemporary political boundaries. Twenty years ago, Shennan (1987: 366) observed that most European prehistorians’ knowledge was limited to their own national heritage. In the last two decades, while some recent regional approaches have been put forward (e.g. Bradley 2007; Kristiansen and Larsson 2005), fundamentally, little has changed. Most prehistorians still remain experts on the prehistory of their country of residence and use methodological and interpretative frameworks specific to that country. Even when regional studies are carried out, they are generally tightly focused on specific culture groups and relatively chronologically bounded (e.g. Vander Linden 2006; Midgley 1992). In light of these overly technological origins for archaeological periods and of their reification in the archaeological literature, what I am terming the ‘early metal-using era’ clearly merits further attention. In blocking off roughly 2000 years of prehistory and labelling it the early metalusing era, I am not attempting to set up a new technological ‘age’ such as the Neolithic or Bronze Age. Rather, I am using dated archaeological evidence to identify a broad, relatively coherent ‘temporal region.’ In doing so, I am seeking to transcend traditionally demarcated archaeological periods and sidestep the technologically determinative baggage with which these periods are weighed down.

4.2) THE EARLY METAL-USING ERA: CHRONOLOGY, TERMINOLOGY AND THE SPREAD OF METAL The Three Age System developed in the early nineteenth century by Christian Thomsen (Thomsen 1837; Rowley-Conwy 2007; Gräslund 1987) continues to act as a structuring device for archaeological narratives and explanations (cf. Trigger 2006). In this technologically progressive system, stone tools were considered to be almost immediately replaced by first bronze then iron as soon as the technological knowledge became available. Lubbock (1865: 4-5) further refined this system by incorporating lithic technological change, defining chipped tools as earlier than polished tools. In the early 20th century, based on Kossinna’s (1911) settlement archaeology which was focused on the technological identification of cultures or individual groups through typological analyses, intricate typologies linked minute social developments to chronological periods. This focus on technological progression via typologically determined chronologies led to Childe’s (1944) declaration that archaeologically defined ages were equivalent to technological stages. Despite the growing focus on social explanations and variation in archaeology, these explicitly technologically determined chronolo-

The emergence of metal technology in northwest Europe was neither rapid nor straightforward. Metal, especially in its first appearance in northwest Europe, was scarce and seems to have gone in and out of fashion in different places at different times. Nor does the earliest presence of metal objects in northwest Europe during the fourth millennium BC herald the beginning of any material or technological transformation (Roberts and Frieman forthcoming-b). In northwest Europe, metal ores are relatively scarce, with copper ore sources known in northwest France, western Britain, Ireland, and the Alpine region. Gold is similarly limited to Ireland and western and northern Britain. While lead ore is relatively widespread, its exploitation has not drawn much archaeological interest, as there is little evi25

Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe dence for its use outside southeast France and possibly Wales (Timberlake 2003) from the late fifth to the third millennia BC. Tin ore (cassiterite) is scarcer than many metal ores, being found in northwest Europe in isolated locations in southwest Britain, France and the Alps. Consequently, almost all known metal in these regions must have been carried in and worked at some distance to its point of origin, owing to the variety of local forms.

of (primarily copper) ‘trinkets’ (small ornaments generally made of sheet metal) includes crescent-, disc- and trapeze-shaped pendants, rings, and a number of spirals or wound strips of sheet metal; but, in much of the area, traces of metal use prior to the mid-third millennium BC are sparse and occasionally quite controversial (see also Klassen 2000; Krause 2003). All known metal finds are sheet-copper trinkets from funerary contexts. The finds from the Emmeln-2 megalithic tomb (Haren, Niedersachsen) are among the best known. They include four heavily weathered flat discs (4-6cm in diameter) found together in a decorated bowl, a spiral (1 cm in diameter) made from a wound strip of sheet copper, a rolled up sheet of copper, and a small copper tube found with some amber beads (Schlicht 1968). Fourth millennium BC copper is significantly more prevalent and better-documented in southern Scandinavia. Klassen (2000, 2004) recorded over 100 copper objects—primarily trinkets, but also flat axes and other object types—dated by context and style to the fourth millennium BC. The most famous is arguably the Bygholm hoard found near Horsens (Jutland, Denmark) and comprising three copper arm spirals, four copper flat axes, and a copper dagger blade all placed with a decorated Funnel Beaker pot into the Bygholm river (Klassen 2000: Catalogue No. 94).

From the fourth millennium BC, people went to great lengths to move metal extremely long distances from where it was mined; the development of local secondary production clearly shows that at least some metallurgical knowledge went with it (Roberts 2008b). Although distribution maps reflect only those objects which, through taphonomy and happenstance, could be recovered in archaeologically meaningful ways, recent continental syntheses have pointed towards the importance of river systems in facilitating long-distance movement (Klassen 2004: Fig. 145; Sherratt 1996). Moreover, wheeled transport and animal traction probably developed throughout much of northwest Europe in the late fourth and early third millennia BC. Wooden carts—presumably ox-drawn—were certainly in use from the early third millennium, as a solid wooden wheel found in Kideris Mose, Denmark and dated 2880-2700 BC implies (Nielsen 1993). Similar wooden wheels, cart fragments, and iconographic representations of animal traction in Italy and central Europe slightly pre-date this example, placing the advent of animal traction squarely in the late fourth millennium BC (Sherratt 1996).

In northern Europe and the Alpine area, a substantial break in the supply of copper objects around 3200-3000 BC apparently severely reduced the quantity of copper in circulation. This hiatus may reflect a disruption in access to a primary ore source (Ottaway 1989). The reduced quantity of archaeologically visible metal objects may have been partly due to changing depositional practice in light of the increasing rarity of imported metal (Klassen 2000: 273). This hiatus in the use—or deposition—of metal objects is noticeable throughout northwest Europe, where metal (or, at least, its archaeologically visible deposition) goes entirely out of fashion during the first half of the third millennium BC.

However, the initial influx of metal into northwest Europe was not immediately followed by a growing metal industry, a marked increase in metal production and deposition, or even a developing appreciation for metal as a material with unique and novel properties. Rather, after several centuries of extremely sporadic deposition (and probably varying local secondary production), metal fell out of fashion and presumably circulation in northern Europe from 3200-3000 BC and northwest continental Europe from 3000-2500 BC (cf. Krause 2002: 34). During the late third millennium BC, the renewed exploitation of gold, copper, and, later, bronze became inextricably tied to the transmission and adoption of practices, objects, and presumably ideologies related to the so-called “Beaker package” across western Europe and in the British Isles and Ireland (Vander Linden 2006, 2007a).

The situation in the British Isles and Ireland was very different, as metal was not circulated until the mid-third millennium BC (Needham 1996; Fitzpatrick 2002). Copper extraction was taking place at Ross Island in southern Ireland from at least the 24th century BC (O’Brien 1995, 2004). Among the earliest traces of metal use in this area are the axe marks found on the Corlea 6 wooden trackway in the Irish Midlands and dendro-dated to 2259±9 BC (O’Sullivan 1996). Additionally, once metal objects were produced and used here, substantial amounts of gold began to circulate alongside copper (Eogan 1994). By comparison, the earliest gold objects beyond the Mediterranean are thought to date to the late third millennium BC (Eluère 1982; Hartmann 1970, 1979, 1982). Although there is no evidence of copper mining in Great Britain until the very end of the third or beginnign of the second millennia BC, Needham (1996, 2005) puts the start of metal use in Great Britain in the 24th century, with the full Early Bronze Age commencing after 2300 BC.

4.2.1) Metal Objects There are very few well-dated fourth millennium metal objects in northwest Europe and no clear pattern for the distribution of the earliest examples. Copper beads thought to comprise a necklace and dated to 3517-3357 BC were excavated in a funerary context at Vignely, Seine-et-Marne in north-central France (Mille and Bouquet 2004; Mille and Carozza 2009). North of the Alps, a number of metal objects are known from contexts typologically dated to the fourth millennium BC. Ottaway’s (1973) catalogue 26

Context of the early metal-using era in northwest Europe in eastern Britain and northwest Europe suggests that the main copper in circulation, originally termed ‘Bell Beaker metal’, was formed by mixing metals from two different geological sources, one perhaps from as far away as northern Spain (Needham 2002).

4.2.2) Metal Production Technology From the mid-third millennium, metal production becomes archaeologically visible throughout western Europe, as copper, copper-alloy, and gold objects were produced and deposited in much greater numbers. However, early copper smelting left only ephemeral traces, and we may well be unable to identify the earliest generations of smelting or experimentation archaeologically (Timberlake and Prag 2005). The evidence for metal production is restricted to FRSSHU PLQLQJ RUH UH¿QLQJ DQG VPHOWLQJ DQG LV RQO\ found at a handful of sites, many of which are in Ireland and Wales. This evidence consists primarily of copper ore mining activity, with several sites in use during the mid and late third millennium BC. Of particular interest is the copper sulphide ore extraction and possibly smelting in southwest Ireland at Ross Island c. 2400 BC onwards (O’Brien 2004) and mining traces at Copa Hill, Cwmystwyth, Wales c. 21/2000 BC (Timberlake 2003, 2002). The only other broadly contemporary evidence for metal production is a splash of arsenical copper in a midden at Northton (Isle of Harris) in Scotland, dated to the late third millennium BC (Simpson et al. 2006).

The number of copper objects produced in northwest Europe over the centuries prior to 2350 BC was not large, and is more indicative of an occasional rather than continuous production process. It was not until the mid second millennium BC that metal objects began systematically to replace stone tools and metal production became archaeologically visible (Eriksen 2010; Vandkilde 1996; Bray 2009, forthcoming). Existing evidence suggests that, prior to this period, metalworking was engaged in by parttime practitioners and not dedicated ‘professional’ smiths (Roberts 2007; Roberts et al. 2009). This part-time and possibly non-specialist production underlines the status of metalwork as a normal, not exceptional, part of the larger material assemblage (cf. Bartelheim 2007). Moreover, early metal tools did not provide an advantage over existing materials in performing everyday tasks. It should not be DVVXPHGWKDWWKHÀDWD[HVZHUHVLPSO\UHJDUGHGDVWRROV rather than valued for their appearance as metal trinkets were. Not only were they less effective than their polished VWRQH DQG ÀLQW FRXQWHUSDUWV 0DWKLHX DQG 0H\HU   but many of the earliest were not even fully work-hardened and demonstrate few signs of intensive use.

The limited nature of the fourth and third millennia metal corpus must be taken into account when discussing the spread, type and variety of early metal production. For instance, there are c. 150 fourth millennium BC copper objects from southern Scandinavia (Klassen 2000: Catalogue) and c. 700 mid-late third millennium BC copper and bronze objects in Ireland (O’Brien 2004). Metal may well have been extensively recycled, though this is dif¿FXOW WR GHWHFW %UD\  7KH PHWDO REMHFWV ZH VWXG\ represent only those items which were deposited and neither decayed, nor were looted or recycled over the last 4000-6000 years (cf. Taylor 1999). Thus, all conclusions drawn from this fragmented and non-representative corpus are biased by the choices made by people in prehistory (whether to recycle/curate metal objects and where/how to deposit them), as well as the decisions of farmers, antiTXDULDQVDQGDUFKDHRORJLVWV

4.3) REGIONAL CULTURE HISTORIES Having already delineated in broad strokes the development and spread of metallurgy in northwest Europe, I will now attempt to paint a fuller picture of the social and mateULDOZRUOGVRIHDFKRIWKHVSHFL¿FUHJLRQVDQGSHULRGVRI particular interest to this project: the Funnel Beaker West Group, LN II Jutland and Chalcolithic and EBA Britain. Although I have touched on this topic already (Section 4.2), I will dwell on the place of metal and metallurgy LQ HDFK UHJLRQ LWV LQWHUVHFWLRQ ZLWK WKH UHVW RI TXRWLGLDQ material culture, with social practices and with networks of exchange. In this way, I not only place metal and metDOZRUNLQJ ZLWKLQ WKHLU ODUJHU FXOWXUDO FRQWH[W EXW GH¿QH a broad social and material background against which I FDQ SRVLWLRQ HDFK RI WKH WKUHH VSHFL¿F H[DPSOHV RI VXSposed stone skeuomorphs of metal that form the heart of this study. Since the chronological and geographic scope RIWKLVUHVHDUFKSURMHFWLVTXLWHEURDGWKHUHJLRQDOFXOWXUH histories presented in the following section are, by necesVLW\UDWKHUVXSHU¿FLDO7KLVVHFWLRQLVLQWHQGHGDVWKHIRXQdation for the case studies which follow, and not as a comprehensive history of the many prehistoric peoples who lived in northwest Europe between 3500 and 1600 BC.

The chemical and isotopic compositions of these earliest metal objects often indicate patterns of circulation and points of origin for the objects and raw materials in circulation. The copper objects of the north European Plain demonstrate a signature of high arsenic and low silver (Ottaway 1973, 1989). Scandinavian copper is compositionally comparable to the rich Alpine ores (Klassen 2004,  DQGOHDGLVRWRSHDQDO\VLVOLQNVRQHVSHFL¿FPHWDO type, Riesebuch copper, to Alpine sources (Klassen and Stürup 2001). Finally, the vast majority of the mid to late third millennium BC copper objects in Ireland and western Britain are high in arsenic and antimony which, together with the objects’ lead isotope signature, suggest raw materials from the Ross Island ore body (Case 1966; Coghlan and Case 1957; Rohl and Needham 1998; O’Brien 2004). In contrast, the recent re-analyses of compositional data

4.3.1) Comparative chronology Before discussing the material culture and practices of SHRSOHLQHDFKRIWKHWKUHHUHJLRQVLQTXHVWLRQ,ZDQWWR 27

Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe Settlement, subsistence and material culture House remains are rare and diverse in this period, so settlement locales are often extrapolated from scatters of pot sherds, lithics and other tools. Some appear to have been enclosed sites such as at Anlo (Waterbolk 1960) or WKHSDOLVDGHGSRVWKROHVWUXFWXUHVDW'PPHUQRUWK9RVV 1982). Preserved structures are variable in morphology, though generally rectangular (Amkreutz 2010; Midgley =LPPHUPDQ'UHQWKDQG+RJHVWLMQ 2001). Midgley (1992: 335-337) lists a number of known TRB houses which range from the 13 metre-long, twoaisled longhouses from Flögeln (Niedersachsen) to the WZR URXJKO\  E\  PHWHU VXQNHQ VWUXFWXUHV DW 'RKQVHQ (Niedersachsen). Zimmerman (2008) suggests a similar construction excavated at Flögeln might have been a cult house while Midgely (1992: 337) believes they may have been roofed workshops. In the Netherlands, only one house structure has been excavated: a two-aisled longhouse dated to the end of the fourth millennium BC at Slootdorp-Bouwlust (West Frisia) which appears only to KDYH EHHQ VHDVRQDOO\ RFFXSLHG $PNUHXW]  'UHQWK and Hogestijn 2001). Settlements seem to have grown PRUH SHUPDQHQW RYHU WLPH ZLWK KXQWLQJ DQG ¿VKLQJ VWDtions falling mostly out of use by the early third millennium BC (Voss 1982; Midgley 1992: 311).

set out a brief comparative chronology in order to side step issues of differing national and regional periodisation as GLVFXVVHGDERYH7KHUHJLRQFRPSULVHVSDUWVRI'HQPDUN Schelswig-Holstein and Niedersachsen (Germany), the northern Netherlands and Great Britain (with occasional comments on Ireland and Brittany) (Fig. 1.5). In each of these areas, the decision to assign a particular swathe of time or social group to one archaeological Age or another RUWRDSKDVHZLWKLQHDFK$JH UHÀHFWVORFDODUFKDHRORJLcal traditions of typology and culture history. Following Gerloff’s (2007) recent attempt to rationalise German and British Bronze Age chronologies, and working from a variety of published regional and local chronologies for the Neolithic and earliest Bronze Age, I have developed a comparative chronology for northwest Europe which compares regional cultural periodisations with each RWKHUDQGZLWKWKHUDGLRFDUERQVHTXHQFHDVZHOODVZLWK the adoption of metal and metallurgy (Fig. 4.1). In bringing the cultural and radiocarbon chronologies into line I have relied on Vandkilde (1996; Vandkilde et al. 1996) for southern Scandinavia, dates published in Midgley (1992) and Lanting and van der Plicht (2000, 2002) for the northern Netherlands and northwest Germany and dates in Bradley (2007), Needham (1996) and Needham et al. (1997) for the British Isles. I have chosen to ignore the more precise phasing of each cultural group (i.e. Funnel Beaker West Group phases A-E versus Brindley’s phases 1-7) in favour of a broader regional synthesis. From looking at this schema it should be clear why I have rejected period labels in favour of the less melodious but more accurate absolute FKURQRORJLHVWKHHDUO\PHWDOXVLQJHUDDV,KDYHGH¿QHG it, begins in the early Neolithic and continues until the Early Bronze Age! Moreover, the divisions created by peULRGODEHOVKDYHWKHHIIHFWRIFUHDWLQJDUWL¿FLDOGLIIHUHQFHV between societies and regions which efface their material and social connections.

Settlements were generally situated on sandy soils in proximity to fertile brown soils and to boggy areas (Midgley 1992: 307), allowing for access both to arable, agricultural land and to abundant natural resources. Though these sandy soils were heavily forested during the fourth and early third millennia BC, pollen records suggest an increase in clearance around 3000 BC (Wentink 2006; Voss 1982). Wheat and barley pollen have been found at a number of TRB sites and grain impressions on TRB pottery suggests that barley was the more common grain (Midgley 1992: 366). Charred remains of legumes, such as broad beans and lentils are also known. Additionally, pot sherds in RQH'XWFKEXULDODSSHDUWRKDYHÀD[LPSUHVVLRQVRQWKHP suggesting people were cultivating it—presumably for its VHHGVDVZHOODVLWV¿EUHV²DVZHOOLELG 7KHUHLV nearly no evidence of ard cultivation in the western region of the Funnel Beaker area prior to the third millennium BC except ard marks dating to the late fourth millennium from Bornwird (Friesland) (Amkreutz 2010) and Oostersingel in Groningen (Bakels and Zeiler 2005: Fig.  &HUWDLQO\DUGPDUNVLQ'HQPDUNKDYHEHHQGDWHG to the mid-fourth millennium (Bakker 1979a: 91). Based on the evidence from contemporary Funnel Beaker settlePHQWVLQ'HQPDUNFDWWOHSLJVVKHHSDQGJRDWVZHUHDOO reared with cattle—raised for meat not milk—being by far the most widespread (ibid.). Hunting and gathering were both practised as the number of wild plant remains and IUHTXHQF\RIKXQWLQJSDUDSKHUQDOLDHJDUURZKHDGV RQ settlement sites demonstrates (Fokkens 1998b; Hogestijn 1990: 176).

4.3.2) The Funnel Beaker West Group: the Netherlands and northwest Germany 3400-2800 BC 'XULQJWKHODWHIRXUWKDQGHDUO\WKLUGPLOOHQQLD%&SHRSOH using Funnel Beaker (Trichterbecher, Funnel Beaker) pottery and building megalithic burial monuments were settling the dryer, higher land in what is now the northern Netherlands and northwest Germany. Although dates are sparse and ambiguous, the rest of the archaeological evidence is not; and it is clear that this coastal zone formed the western fringe of a larger material and social complex. In her extensive synthesis, Midgely (1992: xvi) has attempted to delineate in broad strokes the European Funnel Beaker culture which she characterises as a manifestly ‘widespread and internally differentiated phenomenon.’ The vast size of the region occupied by the Funnel Beaker Culture which stretches (patchily) across much of the North European plain guarantees differing practices and lifestyles in different regions; but variation is also visible within smaller regions, such as northwest Europe.

28

Context of the early metal-using era in northwest Europe 1500 BC

Period 1

Middle Bronze Age A Earlier Bronze Age 1700 BC

Wessex II LN II Wessex I

1900 BC

Early Bronze Age Late Neolithic

Earlier Bronze Age

2100 BC LN I

2300 BC

Late Neolithic B (Beaker)

2500 BC

Middle Neolithic B

(Single Grave Culture)

Late Neolithic A

2700 BC

(Single Grave Culture)

Later Neolithic

2900 BC

Middle Neolithic A 3100 BC

Early/Middle Neolithic

(Funnel Beaker North Group)

(Funnel Beaker West Group)

Earlier Neolithic

3300 BC

Mesolithic

3500 BC

(Swifterbant)

cal BC

Northern Netherlands & Northwest Germany

Southern Scandinavia

Great Britain

Figure 4.1: Chronology and periodisation of the early metal-using era in northwest Europe. Megalithic burial monuments, referred to in Dutch as hunebedden, and the artefacts retrieved from them make up a disproportionately large amount of the information available to archaeologists on the Funnel Beaker West Group (Bakker 1992, 1990). Inhumations and cremations are also known from isolated cists and flat cemeteries (Kossian 2005; Lanting and Brindley 2004). The variety of burial contexts and practices suggest that burial rites were neither standardised nor traditional, but chosen to fit the needs of the deceased or their kin, the circumstances of their death, or some other purpose predicated on their immediate social context (cf. Midgley 1992: 443). Grave goods were also markedly different between burials with some people being interred with few or none and others re-

ceiving large quantities of rare objects and pottery. Midgley (1992: 471) suggests that in this period there may have been a cognitive division between ‘tomb-filled’ zones and ‘tombless’ zones which contributed to the construction of a larger ritual landscape. Ritual activity in the shape of votive deposits and the use of ceremonial tools is also known from the mid-fourth and early third millennia BC. Flint axes and food-filled pottery vessels were sometimes deposited in bogs and other wet contexts (Bakker 1982: 87-88; Wentink 2006). Additionally, while the amber bead deposits which occur relatively frequently in Scandinavia do not appear to be present in the west, over 100 cattle horns, some of which have been radiocarbon dated to the late fourth millennium BC, appear to have been intention29

Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe ally deposited in wet locations around the northern Netherlands (Wentink 2006: 46).

cal and metallurgical analyses (e.g. Butler and van der Waals 1966) no clear picture of fourth millennium metal use in the West Group area is likely to emerge. There is no evidence of metallurgy being practised in the western Funnel Beaker region; although, presumably, cold hammering and cutting sheet copper could have been practised without leaving any archaeological traces.

The material culture of the period is well known, and characteristic objects include the eponymous Funnel Beaker pottery as well as flint and stone tools and a handful of organic remains. The pottery primarily comprises shouldered beakers and straight walled beakers many of which have lugs or small handles near the rim or at the shoulder and are often highly decorated with deeply incised and impressed patterns (Bakker 1979a) Ceramic baking plates and large, thick-walled storage vessels are also known as are a small number of ceramic spindle whorls (Bakker 1992: 91; Midgley 1992). There are no high-quality flint sources in the western part of the North European plain, so most tools were made from small morainic nodules or from discarded flint axes (Bakker 1979a: 76). Arrowheads are prominent finds on settlements (Hogestijn 1990) and in burials (e.g. Schlicht 1968). Flint axes are also prominent among the Funnel Beaker funerary and ritual assemblages (Wentink 2006). Polished and ground stone tools are also common finds and probably played a role in daily activities such as woodworking (Fokkens 1998a: 93; Louwe Kooijmans 2005: 255; Bakker 1992). More elaborate varieties of axe such as fan-butted axes, double axes and decorated axes may have been used for working leather or in more ceremonial activities (Bakker 1979a). There is no evidence for any of the perforated axes from this area to have been used in warfare despite their traditional name of ‘battle axes’. Organic remains are scarce, but include flax impressions from woven textiles and a handful of wooden objects. A wooden hammer of apple wood with a handle in ash excavated at Hüde I suggests the sophistication of Funnel Beaker woodworking: clearly the different woods were selected for specific tool parts based on their differing strength, flexibility and sturdiness (Louwe Kooijmans 2005: 268). Antler also seems to have been heavily exploited as ornaments and tools such as T-shaped and perforated axes (Werning 1983). Amber ornaments are known from burial contexts and include small axe-shaped beads thought to mimic the shape of perforated, ground stone shaft-hole axes (Midgley 1992: Fig 88)

Regional and temporal connections Although, in the late fourth and early third millennia BC, people appeared to have been living in small more or less autonomous communities, they were far from isolated (Fokkens 1998a: 487-488). Most Funnel Beaker settlements in Scandinavia and in the Netherlands and northwest Germany were located in proximity to coastlines or canoe-navigable waterways (Davidsen 1978: 150; Bakker 1982: 100). Further, two of the many wooden trackways— the 800 m long Buinerbrug (Bou XII) track and the 4 km Smeulbrandenweg (Bou XXIX)—excavated in the Dutch peat bogs have been radiocarbon dated to the late fourth millennium BC and may have been used as boat launches (Casparie 1987; Wentink 2006: 40-42). The presence of exotic artefacts in Funnel Beaker contexts mutely attests to the extent and intensity of extra-regional contact. As noted above high quality flint, copper, amber, and jet have all been found in megalithic tombs in this area (van Gijn 2008, 2010; van Gijn and Bakker 2005); and while the latter two could conceivably have washed up on the North Sea coast,12 the former two quite clearly originate elsewhere. Flint from the Spiennes, Mons mines and from southern Scandinavian outcrops imply close contacts with the Vlaardingen group to the south and Funnel Beaker using people to the northwest (Bakker 1982: 92-93; Wentink 2006). In fact, the relationship between the Netherlands and northwest Germany and southern Scandinavia seems especially close at this time. Material connections between the two regions include pottery styles, axe types and practices such as megalith construction and deposition in wet contexts (Bakker 1976: 63). It is likely that this contact was maintained primarily through down-the-line exchanges of objects, ideas and stories with occasional direct contact over long distances (van Gijn and Bakker 2005: 303; Wentink 2006).

Metal and metallurgy In the Netherlands and northwest Germany, traces of metal use prior to the mid-third millennium BC are sparse and occasionally quite controversial. All of the Funnel Beaker metal finds in the western region are small, sheet copper ornaments (e.g. Ottaway 1973); and all come from funerary contexts in approximately 10 different megalithic graves (e.g. Schlicht 1968; van Giffen 1943; Bakker 1992: 57). The tight correlation between burial contexts and early metal may reflect actual fourth millennium practice; but it could just as easily be related to the differential preservation of small metal objects and the overwhelming interest accorded by archaeologists to megaliths. Due to poorly recorded contextual data (Bakker 1992: 57), the destruction of archaeological sites through agriculture and urban expansion (ibid.: 7) and the ambiguity of typologi-

While there are distinct changes in practice—particularly burial practice—in the early third millennium, there is no great break or change that demarcates the end of the Funnel Beaker period and the beginning of the subsequent ‘Corded Ware’ or ‘Single Grave Culture’ (Einzelgrabkultur); and a short period at the beginning of the third millennium BC may have seen the mixture of Funnel Beaker and Corded Ware styles and practices (Bakker 1992: 41). As Midgley (1992: 489) rightly points out, none of the actual materials which are used to define the Corded Ware—beaker, 12. There is no known jet source on or near the Dutch or northwest German coastline (see Muller 1987).

30

Context of the early metal-using era in northwest Europe shafthole axe, corded decoration—are new; rather, it is the choice to combine them and associate them with a distinct burial practice which implies an influx of new ideas (cf. Vander Linden 2007b). Moreover, even these new burial practices were carried out in the traditional funerary landscapes of the fourth millennium BC (Bakker and van der Waals 1973: 20).

objects are frequent finds in wet locales or in proximity to burial areas, a pattern which adheres to flint deposition traditions of the earlier third millennium BC (Vandkilde 2005). Deposited objects are often uniform in type, and were, perhaps, also made by the same person (Sarauw 2006a). Vandkilde (1996) suggests that metal hoards were part of the communal sphere of ritual activities, with control over metal objects, metal technology and, presumably, the exchange of raw materials resting not with individuals but with larger communities.

4.3.3) Late Neolithic II: Jutland 2000-1700 BC In this section, I sketch out the archaeological traces of the first few centuries of the second millennium BC in southern Scandinavia with specific reference to the Jutland peninsula—the cross-roads between the western European Beaker traditions, central European bronze users and the rest of Scandinavia. Although broad similarities in settlement structure, material culture and ritual activity are apparent across southern Scandinavia at this time, it is likely that the vast degree of variation in practice—in particular with regard to ritualised activities such as artefact depositions in human burials—reflects a number of distinct local identities with correspondingly local values and beliefs. Communities made use of exotic things, such as metal objects, and ideas, such as the proper way to dispose of the dead, to assert local identities, particularly in the face of increasingly intense connections with the distinctly stratified societies of central Europe.

In contrast, burial practices were extremely varied in the early second millennium BC, with reused passage graves, open cists and closed stone coffins or burial mounds all common and in use contemporaneously (Vandkilde 2005: 13-14). The choice of funerary rite seems geographically determined to some degree (Hansen and Rostholm 1993; Ebbesen 2007, 2004); but many of these constructions occur together (both spatially and temporally) indicating a complex set of beliefs and practices. Vandkilde (2005: 14) suggests this variability reflects two different conceptions of death and the dead: one in which, at death, the individual receded into the general body of ancestors; and one in which the integrity of the individual, his or her identity and social position was maintained in contrast to the larger communal, ancestral identity. Burials appear to have been consciously underplayed in the early second millennium BC compared to both earlier and later periods. Typical grave goods included amber discs and beads, pottery, axes and chisels of stone or flint and flint daggers; however, empty graves and poorly furnished graves were extremely frequent as were reduced or invisible funerary structures (Hansen and Rostholm 1993: 120-121). Vandkilde (1999, 1998) links the decreasing visibility and investment in burials in the early second millennium BC compared to those dating to the late third millennium BC to the maintenance of communal identities through the effacement of individual distinction and the downplaying of personal merit.

Settlement, subsistence and material culture A number of settlements dating to the end of the third and beginning of the second millennia BC have been excavated in recent years (e.g. Nielsen and Nielsen 1985; Michaelsen 1987; Boas 1991; Nielsen 1999; Thorpe 2000; Sarauw 2006b) so a reasonably clear picture of how people structured their homes and daily lives can elaborated. The intensity of farming and animal husbandry are attested to by copious finds of cattle, sheep and horse bones and welldocumented ard marks (Boas 1991; Sarauw 2006a). Settlements were dispersed, continuously occupied— sometimes over many generations—and seem to consist generally of only a few structures in a reasonably large territory comprising single farmsteads (Vandkilde 2005) or individual houses in small hamlets (Sarauw 2007). There are two distinct forms of house: small huts, often with sunken floors, interpreted as workshops or temporary shelters (Thorpe 2000) and two-aisled longhouses five or six metres wide and 30 metres long. These longhouses are believed to have housed nuclear or small extended families (Sarauw 2006a). A small number of longhouses dated to the early second millennium BC were considerably longer than this norm (Boas 1991; Nielsen and Nielsen 1985), and are frequently interpreted as chiefs’ houses or elite structures (Nielsen 1999: 161; Vandkilde 2005: 12). Alternatively, they may have been built to house larger resident populations than those that occupied the shorter longhouses.

The material culture of the early second millennium in southern Scandinavia is extremely rich and varied. Beakers and Beaker style pots (cf. Sarauw 2007) more or less fall out of use by the second millennium BC in Jutland; however third millennium BC granite-tempered coarseware remained in use for storage and cooking through the mid-second millennium BC (Vandkilde 2005: 11). Flint is a common Danish resource, available in morainic and subsurface deposits (Högberg et al. 2001; Högberg and Olausson 2007), and makes up a large part of the known tool-kit from this period (cf. Petersen 1993). Sophisticated knapping techniques used to produce bifacially retouched arrowheads, daggers and sickles co-existed with a number of cruder techniques for making scrapers, knives and strike-a-lights. Knapped and polished flint axes and chisels common in earlier periods continued to be made as well (Sarauw 2006a: 233) as did ground-stone tools, such as querns, hammerstones and burnishers (i.e. Boas 1989: 103) as well as shafthole axes (Lekberg 2000). Woven ma-

Single, double or larger mixed hoards of metal and flint 31

Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe terials were used for clothing, but also as common tool such as fish nets or traps (Bender-Jørgensen 1992). Preserved wooden objects include dugout boats, brushwood tracks and carts (Nielsen 1993). Antler and bone objects were found in large numbers in the Skovbakken flint mines where, sometimes hafted in wood, they seem to have been the primary raw material used for mining tools (Högberg et al. 2001: 202). Finally, bone needles, presumably for sewing and ornamenting woven wool cloth, enter into use by the third millennium, while ornaments made of traditional materials such as amber and animal teeth remained in use until the mid-second millennium BC (Ebbesen 1995).

socially unified (Ebbesen 2004: 127); and, based on its material and funerary landscapes, northern Jutland seems to have been one of several regional centres at this time (Rasmussen 1990; Vandkilde 1990, 1996, 1999, 2005). Over time, as ties with central Europe intensified, the centres of power in southern Scandinavia appear to have moved eastwards, a shift reflected in the population increase in the Danish Isles and Scania after 2000 BC (Vandkilde 1990: 108; 2005: 12). This shift in population and in exchange networks seems likely to reflect the growing importance of central European copper and bronze objects to southern Scandinavians as the second millennium BC progressed.

Metal and metallurgy As discussed above, the first metal in Scandinavia is dated to the early to mid-fourth millennium BC; but it apparently fell out of use during the first half of the third millennium BC. Copper, bronze and gold – and probably incipient metal technology – were re-introduced into southern Scandinavian society alongside Beaker-style pottery and practices from about 2400 BC and became fully integrated into society during the early second millennium BC (Vandkilde 1996; 2001: 336). The number of copper alloy objects deposited in southern Scandinavia increased enormously in this period; and about 80%—most of which are flanged axes—seem to have been locally produced based on typological criteria (Vandkilde 1996, 1989a, 1989b). Most metal is known from object hoards or votive deposits, and metal traces from settlements are rare, perhaps due to issues of preservation and recycling (Vandkilde 1998: 247) It is not until the mid second millennium BC that metal begins to appear frequently in funerary contexts. Gold is restricted to delicate ornaments, but bronze flanged axes almost always have heavy and consistent traces of use-related wear, perhaps from wood-working (Vandkilde 2000: 25).

4.3.4) Britain in the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age: 2250-1600 BC Britain, in the late third and early second millennia BC, is characterised by a growing emphasis on local identities and practices. Although, in the middle of the third millennium BC, this area was characterised by a widespread adoption of Bell Beaker material culture and practices, within several centuries new practices and object types developed from the mixture of Beaker and indigenous materials characterising a ‘fission horizon’ c. 2250-2150 BC (Needham 2005: 208). The material culture and practices of the early second millennium continue this pattern of growing regional variability within the British Isles, with a well-known centre of innovative metalworking and metal deposition developing in the Wessex region of southwest England (Needham 2000a; Piggott 1938; Sherratt 1996). Settlement, subsistence and material culture It is impossible to summarise settlement activities in late third and early second millennia Britain succinctly as, in the Early Bronze Age, a variety of settlement patterns existed, including unenclosed hut circles with field systems, timber houses, terraced housing and small settlements in coastal areas, at least in better preserved upland and marginal areas (2003: 158-162; Darvill 1996; Thomas 1996; Brück 1999b; Brück and Goodman 1999; Parker Pearson 1999: 84-85; Fleming 1988; Champion 1999). By the second millennium BC, domesticated grains had been under cultivation in the British Isles and Ireland for at least 1800 years (cf, Innes et al. 2003). In Britain, agricultural remains include traces of barley and emmer wheat and the bones of domesticated cattle, pigs and sheep (Ashmore 2001; Cowie and Shepherd 2003). Techniques such as manuring, ard tilling and animal traction were all in practice (Cowie and Shepherd 2003). By contrast, in what is now the northwest of England throughout the second millennium, the archaeological record suggests a low population density and a society organized around a mobile life-style with only a loose social structure and few imported or exotic goods (Cowell 2000).

Regional connections People in Jutland in the early second millennium BC actively participated in three large regional networks of exchange and communication serving perhaps as a vector between the people living along the North Sea coasts/Atlantic facade, central European groups from the Alps northwards and groups of people in large parts of northern Scandinavia. These contacts are visible in changes to indigenous material culture and social/ritual practices as well as the adoption of novel technologies and exotic objects (Sarauw 2007; Vandkilde 2005, 2001; 1999: 250); and, thanks to the wet conditions in southern Scandinavia, trackways, parts of wagons or carts and dugouts are also known and dated to the third and second millennia (Nielsen 1993). These connections have been suggested to relate to elite interactions (Nielsen 1999: 163) and to the desire for copper and bronze (Vandkilde 1989b, 1990, 1996). Contacts between Jutland and northern Scandinavia are reflected primarily in the distribution of flint daggers in Norway and Sweden (Solberg 1994; Apel 2004).

Burial rites in this period take a number of different archaeologically visible forms and presumably many invisible ones as well. Single inhumations and cremations make up the largest percentage of known burials, although

It is unlikely that southern Scandinavia was ethnically or 32

Context of the early metal-using era in northwest Europe multiple burials and partial deposits of burnt and unburnt cremated bone are also known (Brück 2006). Inhumations in reused Neolithic mounds as well as in cists and pits—sometimes covered by cairns or barrows, sometimes assembled in flat cemeteries, sometimes apparently isolated—became reasonably common during the third millennium BC and continued to be built into the second (Parker Pearson 1999: 86-90; Ashmore 2001). Artefacts buried or deposited with the deceased generally include pottery, in the late third millennium a Beaker or Food Vessel which may have been full of food or liquid (e.g. Henshall 1964) or cremated human remains while, in the second millennium BC, Collared Urns, Cordoned Urns and other cinerary urns were used as containers for human remains (Gibson 1986). Other characteristic (if not exactly common) grave goods from this period include dress items, such as V-perforated buttons (Shepherd 2009; Sheridan in Baker et al. 2003: 103), belt rings of jet, hammered sheet gold ornaments, large copper and bronze arm rings/bracelets, pins in copper and bronze as well as beads of jet, bone, amber, faience, and a number of other materials; metal tools, such as awls or daggers; stone and flint items such as battle axes, fire kits, flint knives or scrapers; and any number of objects in organic materials such as joints of meat, food and drink, skins and wooden coffins or objects (Parker Pearson 1999: 87-89; Clarke et al. 1985). Few burials had more than one of any of these objects included in them and many were entirely devoid of grave goods. However, a handful of burials dating to the first centuries of the second millennium BC in southwestern England were extremely richly endowed. These ‘Wessex barrows’ tend to have large quantities of exotic objects such as gold, amber and faience ornaments, exotic or unusual lithics and copper/copper alloy daggers (e.g. Needham and Woodward 2008; Woodward 2000). These burials have traditionally been interpreted as the remains of an elite social group (Gerloff 1975; Piggott 1938).

larly in association with burials (Ashmore 1996: 85; Sheridan 2004, 2007b). Ground-stone objects including battle axes and mace heads/axe-hammers became widespread and were sometimes associated with Early Bronze Age burials (Roe 1966; Clarke et al. 1985; Fenton 1984). Flint objects in circulation were often finely made and include bifacially-worked daggers, knives and arrowheads as well as a variety of different types of scraper, awls, knives, fabricators and a significant proportion of informal flake tools (Edmonds 1995; Butler 2005). Jet was also highly valued and extensively distributed, particularly to the north and in proximity to the jet sources on the Yorkshire coast (Sheridan and Davis 2002). Organic materials in use have been identified based on their parallels in other materials and were likely to have been in daily use in most quotidian activities (Hurcombe 2008; Manby 1995). Awls and planoconvex knives may reflect the prevalence of leatherworking (Simpson 1968); and the few scraps of woven material which remain as well as many pins, belt rings and V-perforated buttons indicate the presence of garments of leather, wool and vegetable fibres (e.g. flax) and, on at least an occasional basis, horse and cattle hair (Harding 2000: 254; Bender-Jørgensen 1992; Shepherd 2009: 346-347).

Not all monumental and megalithic architecture was explicitly funerary. For example, henges, stone and timber circles and other earthworks may have served as venues for reinforcing and constituting social structure and organisation through traditional, communal rituals and activities (Brück 2000: 285; Gibson 2005; Barrett 1994). Alongside visible monuments, archaeologically invisible activities, such as artefact deposition in wet locales, most commonly of copper and bronze axes, halberds, dagger blade and spearheads (Barrett in Clarke et al. 1985; Schuhmacher 2002), were also important parts of the ritual world (Bradley 1990; Needham 1988).

Copper and bronze objects in a variety of forms are known from many different archaeological contexts. Halberd blades are a primarily mid third millennium BC artefact form (Harbison 1969) along with flat axes (Coghlan and Case 1957) and dagger blades (Gerloff 1975), both of which remain in use into the second millennium BC. Flanged axes (Coghlan and Case 1957) and small ornaments of rolled sheet bronze, armlets and large cast bracelets (e.g. Stevenson 1956) developed in the Early Bronze Age. Copper and bronze awls are sometimes found in burials of this period as are daggers—sometimes with highly elaborate organic pommels—smaller, less elaborate knives and, occasionally, locally produced gold ornaments (Clarke et al. 1985; Taylor 1980, 1983). Needham (1988) has demonstrated that, while the daggers are generally funerary finds, bronze axes are generally hoard finds; and the two are rarely found together. Faience beads and local bronzeworking means that tin, almost assuredly from southwest Britain (Bray 2009), was being circulated from 2000 BC (Sheridan and Shortland 2004), and some experimentation with lead may have also occurred (Sheridan 1999; e.g.

Metal and metallurgy As discussed above, Britain and Ireland were metalworking centres of some importance in the late third and early second millennia BC. Copper mined in southern Ireland (O’Brien 1995, 2004, 1994) and, later, Wales (Lewis 1994; Timberlake 2003; Ixer and Budd 1998) and England (Gale 1993, 1989) was circulated around the British Isles and Ireland and onto the continent (Coghlan and Case 1957; Needham 1983). Bronze began to be produced in the later centuries of the third millennium BC, probably through the addition of tin mined in Cornwall (Penhallurick 1986; Bray 2009, forthcoming), and appears to have been adopted across Britain by 2200 BC (Needham et al. 1989).

Much of the late third and early second millennia’s material culture is primarily known from funerary contexts. The ceramic assemblage includes Beaker pottery, known from both settlements and burials (Clarke 1970; Shepherd 1986; Hunt 1987; Gibson 1982, 1986) and, slightly later, Food Vessels, decorated ceramic vessels which Bradley (2002: 58) links stylistically to (much) earlier, local Peterborough wares. Food Vessels are found in ritual contexts, particu33

Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe cluding intentional travel to unknown locales, kinship and spousal links and exchange or gift giving.

Hunter and Davis 1994). In northern Britain, metallurgy takes on several unique features, particularly in northeast Scotland from 22002000 BC (the ‘Migdale-Marnoch sunburst’, Needham 2004) where a distinct, indigenous metallurgy based on the smelting of silvery-grey13 high tin bronze and tin-surfaced objects developed (Needham 2004). Similarly, a handful of gold objects with unusually high tin contents have been identified in Scottish contexts and represent either an experimental alloying of Irish gold with tin or, more likely, exploitation of an unknown gold source in Scotland (Taylor 1980; cf. Chapman 2010; Sheridan et al. 2003).

4.4) CONCLUSIONS In this chapter, I have outlined the context—temporal, social and material—for the early metal-using era in northwest Europe. The 1900 year block of time I am describing as northwest Europe’s early metal-using era comprises numerous archaeological cultures and, depending on geography and national histories of archaeological research, stretches from the “Early Neolithic” to the “Early Bronze Age.” Traces of early metalworking are extremely hard to identify archaeologically, but it seems clear that metal objects were in circulation in northern Europe—and to a lesser extent in northwest Europe—by the end of the fourth millennium BC. Metal alone did not bring great changes to society; but the accumulated changes to routes of intergroup exchange and communication, technological practice and the value systems attached to raw materials were enough to make metallurgical knowledge (and the ability to put it in practice) something to be desired. In this way—slowly, sporadically and with little change to the larger social context until the mid second millennium BC (Roberts 2008b, 2008a; Roberts and Frieman forthcoming-a, forthcoming-b)—metal use and production became a quotidian fact for prehistoric people.

Regional interactions Although the presence of foreign objects does not necessarily imply direct contact between individuals or groups, the prevalence of exotic items in Britain in the third and second millennia indicates the extended regional network of contacts, relationships and exchange in which people from Britain were embedded. For example, amber and gold found with a cremation at Knowes of Trotty, Orkney take the form of ornaments typical of the Wessex burials in southwest England (Sheridan et al. 2003). Conical bronze sheet ornaments included in the Migdale hoard are unknown in Britain but common in central Europe (Clarke et al. 1985: 107; Butler 1963: 200). Harding (1999: 3839) points to archaeometallurgical analyses of some early second millennium BC British artefacts which indicate a central European origin for the raw materials in order to suggest that, in some cases, people seem to have sought out a more exotic object when local versions were available. Moreover, the presence of distinctive artefacts, such as lunulae and halberds, in a handful of British contexts suggests close relationships with Ireland at the end of the third millennium BC14 that were superseded in the early second millennium by a partial shift in links to the continent, apparently via the Wessex area in southern England (Needham 2000a).

In the second half of this chapter I elaborated the social and material aspects of daily life in three different times and places during the early metal-using era in order to provide a material-cultural background for the three case studies. Moreover, by looking at metal through this sort of wide perspective, a more integrated understanding of its place in society can be developed and can be used to further clarify the world view or social reality of each of the three groups in question. With respect to the oldest period, the Funnel Beaker West Group, metal played only a very small role. However, the presence of metal objects alongside a number of other exotic or rare materials in burial contexts reflects not only the networks of interregional connections maintained by these people, but also their willingness to experiment with different things, to add new ideas or objects into their already diverse material culture. In contrast, LN II Jutland is characterised by a long-held traditionalism in its material culture, practice and social structure, while foreign materials and new technologies were used to emphasise local identities and incorporated into centuries’ old practices. Finally, in Chalcolithic and EBA Britain people were actively engaged in the wider networks of exchange and made copious use of foreign and novel materials and practices, such as Bell Beaker burials or metal prospection and smelting. In this context, evidence for local metalworking suggests that people developed locally significant metal forms, such as gold lunulae, and experimenting with different metal alloys, such as high tin bronze, in order, perhaps, to broaden the material palette with which to establish their distinc-

The nature of these links seems to be a combination of direct, long-distance exchange and down-the-line movements of special or curated objects, particularly objects made of copper and bronze. While a wooden yoke for oxen found in Loch Nell, Argyll and radiocarbon dated to 1950-1525 cal BC and another from White Moss Shapinsay, Orkney dated to 1516-1253 cal BC demonstrate that animal traction was practised, there is no evidence for wheeled transport prior to 1200 BC (Cowie and Shepherd 2003: 164). Instead, most long distance travel was probably on foot or by boat along rivers and coastlines (Cowie and Shepherd 2003: 155; Sherratt 1996). Isotopic studies have shown that, during this period, at least some people were travelling great distances (e.g. Fitzpatrick 2002; Evans et al. 2006), presumably for a variety of reasons in13. A result of the high percentage of eutectoid (Bray 2009: Fig 4:23). 14. This relationship is borne out in the chemical analyses of copper and bronze objects which demonstrate the overwhelming importance of the Ross Island copper source until 1900 BC (O’Brien 1995, 2004).

34

Context of the early metal-using era in northwest Europe tion. Fundamentally, the nature of the underlying social and technological matrices significantly influenced the use of metal by different prehistoric peoples; and the produc-

tion of objects imitative of, or otherwise related to, metal develops out of these same matrices.

35

Chapter 5: Ground Stone Knob-butted Axes 5.1) INTRODUCTION In this chapter, I will address the claims for a skeuomorphic relationship between ground stone and cast copper knob-butted axes. Stone knob-butted axes are a widespread and long lived artefact type in use across northern, central and southeastern Europe in the fourth millennium BC. Northern and northwestern European finds are almost exclusively associated with sites and the material culture of the late fourth millennium BC Funnel Beaker culture (Brandt 1967; Grisse 2006; Zápotocký 1992). In their westernmost distribution, the northern Netherlands and northwest Lower Saxony, these axes are characterised by a vertically and horizontally symmetrical blocky shape, raised ‘collars’ around the perforation, a large flat or hemispherical butt end and a largely symmetrical cutting section. Although variable, complete axes are generally between 130 – 150 mm long and 50 – 60 mm wide at their widest point (Fig. 5.1) They are infrequent finds, only 60 are known from the West Group area, and few of them have any archaeologically relevant information recorded. Even more scarce are the metal axes suggested to be their prototypes or counterparts. Only 13 of these copper axes are known, and they each have a number of morphologically and contextually unique features. In order to relate the two axe varieties to each other, I will carefully detail the stages of production, traces of use and reworking, and context and distribution of each type. Since the majority of research conducted to date on both varieties of knob-butted axe has primarily been concerned with typology, this technological and contextual approach will allow novel data to be presented and analysed. I will use these data to compare the stone axes to the copper ones in order to determine whether they are in fact skeuomorphs, and in what ways their morphologies, technologies and function are and are not related. Finally, I will delve into the question of the significance of ground stone knob-butted axes, whose significance has traditionally been linked largely to a supposed relationship with similarly shaped metal axes (e.g. Zápotocký 1992) which are often called ‘battle axes’ and described as weapons (Brandt 1967). Rather, I suggest that they were part of a larger, ritualised sphere of forest clearance and crop growing and that their physical and social functions related to this agricultural sphere underpin their importance.

are found in archaeological contexts across Europe from Italy to Scandinavia, and their morphology is similar enough to those found in the northern Netherlands and northwest Germany to merit a chronological comparison. The presence of a hemispherical butt links these axes as does a striking vertical symmetry. Vertically symmetrical, knob-butted axes in central Europe have been found associated with materials and contexts of the Alpine Horgen and Pfyn groups which date to the early and mid fourth millennium BC (Grisse 2006). In Scandinavia, knob-butted axe finds have also been dated stylistically and contextually to the late fourth millennium BC (Madsen 1994; contra Zápotocký 1992). In the region of the Funnel Beaker West Group the lack of detailed contextual information makes directly dating local finds of knob-butted axes more difficult. Despite suggestions that these western knobbutted axes may date to the early third millennium and did not form part of the Funnel Beaker artefact assemblage (Brandt 1967), Bakker (1979a: 105) notes their occasional association with his E-phase Funnel Beaker pottery and their occasional presence in or near megalithic monuments to suggest a date in the late fourth millennium BC. Work by Brindley (1986) confirms, through wiggle-matching associated radiocarbon dates, that Bakker’s E-phase pottery (Brindley’s Horizon 4 and 5) dates to the final few centuries of the fourth millennium BC. I know of no absolute dates directly associated with knob-butted axes in the western region. The single date on charcoal from the Anloo enclosure, Drenthe – the find spot of a knob-butted axe fragment (A31) – dates the site to 3335-2906 BC (Waterbolk 1960; Lanting and van der Plicht 2000; Ramsey 2001; Reimer et al. 2004). Until more axes are uncovered in the course of scientifically organised excavations and in association with datable materials, this date defines the limits of the precision possible for determining their chronological placement. Raw material and production technology There has been no experimental work devoted specifically to reproducing knob-butted axes, so in order to reconstruct their production sequences I focus primarily on the unfinished knob-butted axe preforms found in the study area as well as on experimental work carried out to reproduce British shafthole axes (Fenton 1984). I have divided the production of shafthole axes with hemispherical butts into six phases: choosing the proper type and sized block of stone; flaking that stone roughly to shape; pecking the flaked block so that the blade and rounded butt are both roughed out; further pecking and grinding to achieve the final shape of the axe; boring the shafthole from both top and bottom sides; grinding and/or polishing the surface and shafthole to achieve the finished texture, the final shape of features such as collars and a smooth, uniform shafthole interior (Fig. 5.2). I have only been able to identify knob-

5.2) CHARACTERISING KNOB-BUTTED AXES 5.2.1) Ground stone knob-butted shafthole axes15 Dating and chronology Knob-butted axes made of ground and/or polished stone 15. All 60 ground stone knob-butted axes recorded in the course of this research are listed in Appendix A and referred to in the text by find location and bolded catalogue number.

36

Ground Stone Knob-butted Axes B

A

Figure 5.1: The measurements of complete West Group knob-butted axes. A: their length; B: their width at the widest point. butted axe preforms from the final four phases (Table 5.1), Figure 5.2: Proposed production phases for knob-butted in part because the type of preform is not distinctive until axes: 1) unworked erratic chosen, 2) block flaked to shape, the knob has been indicated in stage 3, but also because 3) knob and blade more carefully shaped through peckpreforms have not traditionally been collected in the Nething, 4) further pecking and grinding until finished shape erlands as part of a campaign of systematic axe studies achieved, 5) shafthole boring initiated from both sides, 6) such as have been carried out in other parts of Europe (cf. surface, collars and shafthole finished through grinding Louwe Kooijmans 2005: note 29). /or polishing. Knob-butted axes were made from a variety of different stones, most of which were probably locally available. Information on raw material type is available for 45 of the 60 known axes from the area of the Funnel Beaker West Group; and, as has been noted elsewhere (e.g. Beuker et al. 1992; Achterop and Brongers 1979; van Gijn and Bakker 2005) most are made of greenish diabases. A number were recorded as being of ‘crystalline rock’; it is likely that this description also refers to diabase (Fig. 5.3). The diabase used to make these axes was not mined or extracted from naturally occurring outcrops as the underlying geology of this region consists of mostly of sandy and chalky marine deposits. Several phases of glaciations during the Quaternary left morainic deposits across much of northwest Germany and the northern and eastern Netherlands (Laban and van der Meer 2004; Zagwijn 1986). Erratic pebbles of hard igneous stones, such as gabbro and diabase, are characteristic of these deposits. These sorts of hard, finegrained stones are excellent raw materials for the production of ground stone axes, and only a handful are made from what Achterop and Brongers (1979) call ‘unsuitable’ raw materials, such as sandstone (an axe with no known find location [A1], possibly) or porphyritic diabase (the axe from Stroe, Wieringen, Noord-Holland [A52]). The frequent use of fine-grained diabases reflects the availability of glacial erratics as far south and west as the Drenthe plateau (Harsema 1979) as well as the cultivated knowledge of what sort of stone was a good raw material for axe making. Ground stone axes were made across Europe from the sixth millennium BC, so the knowledge required to identify suitable raw materials—by fineness of grain, colour, size, etc.—was probably widely shared and deeply understood. Axes were made from complete pebbles of medium size and from flakes struck from larger pebbles (Harsema 1979: 185). Once the erratic pebble or rock fragment was chosen, a 37

Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe

Table 5.1: Knob-butted axe preforms with their integrity and production phase noted. narrower, more regularly shaped roughout was produced through hard-hammer flaking. These flaked roughouts are extremely rare as no real effort was put into collecting or recording them until recent years, though Harsema (1979) has described two known axe roughouts found in the Drenthe region in some detail. Both show distinct traces of hinge fractures and flake scars which demonstrate they were directly flaked, but neither has lost any significant length in the roughout process. Harsema (ibid.) and Bakker (1979a) both note that the finished stone axe was about equal in length to the block of stone from which it was produced, so not only were blocks or pebbles chosen for their length, but during the flaking phase care seems to have been taken to maintain the length of the roughout.

was probably left unfinished because of extensive chipping on its underside which could not be worked around (Niekus and Brinkhuizen 2003). Fenton (1984) suggests that, depending on the hardness of the stone raw material and the desired shape and size of the finished product, pecking an axe to shape could take anywhere from two and a half to over five hours to complete. He found grinding to be much more time consuming, but suggested that wetting the stones and using quartz sand as an abrasive as opposed to simply rubbing the preform on sandstone made the process quicker (ibid.: 225-227). Almost all of the axe preforms have at least partially ground surfaces, so it is likely that grinding and pecking were performed concurrently to shape the axe roughout without creating catastrophic fractures. Bakker (1979a: 107) believes that, in many cases, the flat cheeks on both sides of the shafthole and the top of the collars are the preserved external surface of the block of stone from which the knob-butted axe was made, but I cannot agree based on the axes I have handled. When not overly weathered, the entire surface of the axes—collars, cheeks, blade and butt—seems to have been uniformly ground and/or polished.

After flaking a roughout from the chosen pebble, the more arduous and time-consuming techniques of pecking and grinding were used to shape the axe into the desired form. Harsema (1979: 185) notes that while pecking was a far more time-consuming reduction process than flaking, it is also much easier to control. Control would have been necessary not only to maintain the symmetry of the axe while concurrently producing the hemispherical butt and the collars around the shafthole, but also to prevent catastrophic fractures (those which would preclude the production of a finished axe). The phase 4 preform from Drenthe (A34)

Boring a shafthole can be done in a number of ways including pecking from one side, pecking from both sides, drilling (with a bow drill or hand-turned drill, with a metal, wood or flint point, with different sorts of abrasive materials) from one side, or drilling from both sides. Most of the unfinished preforms of knob-butted axes were abandoned

Figure 5.3: Proportion of known raw materials used to make knob-butted axes. Σ = 45 Other stone, 12

Figure 5.4: Surface treatment of complete and broken knob-butted axes where possible to observe.

Crystalline rock, 5

14

13

Σ = 25

12 10 8 6

6 Amphibolite, 3

4

4 2

Diabase, 21

1

1

partially ground

partially polished

0

Gabbro, 4

38

polished and totally ground ground

totally polished

Ground Stone Knob-butted Axes Σ = 31

8%

20

19

18 16 14

35%

12

57%

10

10 8 6

Σ = 40

4

Present/Possible

2

1

1

hourglass

triangular triangular (apex at base) (apex at top)

experiments, pecking a small depression into which to sit the drill took under an hour, but the drilling process proceeded at the slow rate of 2.5 mm per hour. Since the average height of a knob-butted axe’s shafthole is 42.8 mm, based on Fenton’s work, drilling the shafthole probably took between 17 and 18 hours.

Figure 5.5: Perforation morphology of knob-butted axes where possible to observe. while the shafthole boring was underway or incompletely finished; and all of these show evidence of the boring having been done from both sides. It is likely that the perforations were begun by carefully pecking an indentation into both faces of the axe prior to the more intensive, deeper boring. Niekus and Brinkhuizen (2003) note that the top and bottom surfaces of the axe from Drenthe (A34) had small pecked indentations where the perforation would have been initiated. In Fenton’s (1984) experiments, a fully pecked perforation was most efficiently created in an indentation with a cusp diameter of 60 mm while the perforations made with drills were generally under 30 mm. The average cusp diameter of the knob-butted axes was 18.7 mm with no axe having a greater shafthole diameter than 21.5 mm. The narrowness of the shaftholes suggests that Bakker’s (1979a) assessment was correct and drills were used to bore the perforations. Fenton (1984: 228) reports that dry and wet sand are equally efficient abrasives and that hand and bow drills were equally effective, though the former took significantly greater effort. In his

The final stage in the production of knob-butted axes consisted of finishing off features such as the knob and collars, the surface treatment and smoothing and widening the shafthole. Of the complete and broken (presumably after having been finished) knob-butted axes which I was able to assess, only two appear to have only partially polished or ground surfaces; just over half are totally ground and another quarter are totally polished (Fig. 5.4). Similarly, polishing within the shafthole, to regularise its surface texture and diameter in order to provide better fitting for a haft, has left the majority of perforations very even and cylindrical in shape (Fig. 5.5). Only ten of the axes whose perforation I was able to observe retain hourglass shaped perforations despite the likelihood that most were bored from both sides. With regard to features such as the collars and the hemispherical, mushroom-shaped butt which are considered classic markers of the type, the axes in general have a very consistent morphology. In terms of butt morphology, 23 of the 60 axes recorded have definite or probable hemispherical butts (Fig. 5.6). Additionally, 39 have documented collars around the perforation on both top and bottom face while four have collars on only one face.16

Figure 5.7: Quality of manufacture of observed axes.

In general, knob-butted axes seem to have been made to quite a high standard by skilled artisans. Even amongst the heavily weathered axes I observed none could be called crude and over half of those I observed can be classified as refined (Fig. 5.7). Twenty-two were finely finished with careful polishing and grinding and a further handful had other ornamentation applied (Table 5.2). The most common form of decoration is a raised ridge or incised line running along the central axis of the top face or perpen-

47%

53%

Σ = 30

Refined

Indeterminate

Figure 5.6: Presence of a mushroom-shaped butt where possible to observe.

0 cylindrical

Absent

16. Although in the case of the axe from Onstwedde, Groningen (A49) a bottom collar may have originally been present, but the axe is heavily weathered and it is not at all clear how well the current morphology reflects its intended shape and features.

Medium

39

Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe 14

35

13

31

12

30 25

25

10

20

17

8

15

13

6

5

10

5

4

5

2

2

0 No blade/knob use or Total incidences of no information butt usewear

Total incidences of blade usewear

Total incidences of SH usewear

0

Figure 5.8: Presence of macroscopic wear on knob-butted axes where possible to observe. Note that blade usewear includes resharpening.

Bruising

dicular to the perforation on the side faces. This decorative technique has occasionally been referred to as a seam and approximated to the ‘casting seams’ left by bivalve moulds on cast copper axes. I will return to this interpretation below, but at this point I think it is worth underlining how variable in morphology and placement these so-called seams are. They do not appear to be produced by people with a shared understanding of their appropriate place, implying that they were not necessarily intended to signify the same thing in all cases.

I believe it is clear from the frequent traces of use and resharpening that these axes were hafted and used in some Figure 5.11: Heavily resharpened knob-butted axe from Dijkermaten/Maneschijn, Dijkerhoek, Holten, Overijssel (A54). Photo courtesy Provinciaal depot voor bodemvondsten Overijssel.

Figure 5.10: Type of macroscopic wear on blades of observed knob-butted axes. 8 7

6 5

5 4 3 2 1

2

Spalling

percussive uses; and the second most frequent is grinding which was probably utilised to flatten or minimise flake scars or resharpen the blade after heavy use (Fig. 5.10). Of the 49 axes identified as complete or broken finished pieces, 11 have obvious traces of resharpening (Table 5.3). On most of these the resharpening is only apparent by the slightly higher polish or more finely ground surface near the blade edge, but a number are heavily resharpened to the point that the blade is extremely reduced (Fig. 5.11) or rendered asymmetrical as is the case with the axe from Osterdamme, Damme, Kr. Vechta, Lower Saxony (A6). The wear on and in the shaftholes is almost entirely limited to striations which probably resulted from polishing and widening them after their initial drilling (Fig. 5.12). However, these use traces may also reflect modern re-use of the axes, as in the case of the axe from Steggerda, Weststellingwerf, Friesland (A35) which is known to have been used as a hammer and a weight in modern times. The traces of modern re-use or damage comprise very visible traces of copper alloy and iron and bruising and flaking that is clearly fresh, lacking a weathered surface.

Use Overall, between collecting the raw material, flaking and grinding the block of stone to shape, boring the shafthole and finishing the surface, at least three or four day’s worth of time was spent producing these axes, and consequently it is unsurprising that many seem to have been circulating and in use for quite a while. Around half of the axes examined bear macroscopically visible traces of wear on the butt, blade or around the shafthole (Fig. 5.8). At the butt end, the most frequently noted type of wear is bruising, perhaps from lightly percussive activities or, equally likely, from post-depositional damage (Fig. 5.9). The most frequent wear noted on the axe blades is flaking—presumably from

7

Crushing Grinding

Figure 5.9: Type of macroscopic wear on butts of observed knob-butted axes.

2

1

0 Bruising Crushing Flaking Grinding Damage

40

Ground Stone Knob-butted Axes

Table 5.2: Nature and description of decoration on knob-butted axes. way, but the nature of that use is unclear. I was able to assess the balance of 17 complete axes, the majority of which were significantly blade-weighted (Fig. 5.13), suggesting that the blade was intended for chopping activities requiring force without great precision. Any functions performed with the butt end of the axes would have probably been more precise and may have involved the axe itself being wielded in the hand without use of a handle, as the butt wear is not heavy enough to suggest that the centripetal force of a hafted tool was the cause. There is no clear

information on how these axes would have been hafted, though a fortuitous find from Emmer-compascuum, Emmeln, Drenthe of a perforated stone axe with a wooden handle is instructive (Glasbergen 1957). The axe itself appears to be more recent than the knob-butted axes; but it is roughly similar in size, measuring 110.5 mm long, 44 mm high and 60.5 mm wide with a shafthole diameter of 25 mm. The handle is made of rowan wood and measures 693 mm in length with a diameter of 16-18.5 mm at the Figure 5.13: Balance of complete knob-butted axes where possible to observe.

Figure 5.12: Type of macroscopic wear in and around perforations of observed knob-butted axes. Iron staining residue likely post-depositional.

12

10

10

9

9 8

10

8

7 6

6

5 4 3

3

2

0

2

1

1 Bruising

4

4

3

Residue

0

Striations

41

Blade

Shafthole

Butt

Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe

Table 5.3: Resharpened knob-butted axes. shafthole and 20 mm below. This sort of variable diameter would help secure the axe on the hafting and keep it from sliding downwards over time. Furthermore, a handle of this length would allow the person using this axe to bring significant force to bear, but would restrict the control with which he or she could wield the axe head. A grip closer to the axe head would allow for more control, but concomitantly reduce the force of the blows delivered. Forceful chopping actions would necessarily cause stone axes such as these to break – and, in particular, to break across their weakest point at the shafthole (cf. Lekberg 2000). Nearly as many knob-butted axes have been found in varying states of brokenness as have been found complete (Fig. 5.14),17 and the majority of these did indeed break at the shafthole (Fig. 5.15).

17%

36%

47%

Σ = 58

Preform

Finished

Find contexts, associations and distribution The contextual information available for knob-butted axes is limited to say the least. Over a quarter have no known context; and the rest are mostly stray finds with no associated materials (Fig. 5.16). This paucity of contexts results in large part from intense landscape alteration through peat cutting, canal building, land reclamation and agriculture throughout the post-medieval period. That being said, even with the increase in systematic archaeological survey and recording in recent decades, few knob-butted axes have been found with any sort of clear context or association. Thus, it is likely that this lack of clear archaeological contexts and associations reflects genuine, prehistoric depositional practice—at least to some degree. Wentink’s (2006) work on the deposition and use of long flint axes in Funnel Beaker contexts suggests that wet locales (rivers, bogs, etc.) may have been preferred for votive deposits. Only 14 of the knob-butted axes were found in wet contexts (including contexts at a wet/dry boundary) while 18 came from dry environments (Fig. 5.17), so a parallel with the flint axes is unlikely. Several axes published as single finds are actually found in, near or among Funnel Beaker

Broken

Figure 5.14: Production/use stage of knob-butted axes. Production/use stage of two axes is unknown.

Figure 5.15: Location of breakage for all recorded broken knob-butted axes. 12

Σ = 21

11

10 8 6 4

4 3

3

2 0 Between shafthole At the shafthole Between shafthole Other breakage and blade and pommel

17. It is likely that I have identified fewer broken knob-butted axes than actually exist because in all but a few cases blade fragments could not be definitively identified as having come from a knob-butted axe.

42

Ground Stone Knob-butted Axes

Table 5.4: Knob-butted axes found in or near Funnel Beaker settlements. settlements (Table 5.4). Interestingly, all three of these axes are broken. No complete knob-butted axe comes from a settlement context. Additionally, three broken and two complete axes were found in or near funerary contexts such as megalithic hunebedden (Table 5.5).

Table 5.5: Knob-butted axes found near burial contexts. 5% 5%

Three knob-butted axes were found in clear or presumed burial contexts (Table 5.6). Those contexts are not uniform, comprising deposition alongside a burial in a passage grave, a single burial in a flat cemetery and a presumed flat inhumation grave. Nor are these three axes uniform in workmanship, completeness or use. The axe found in the Ostenwalde-3 passage grave, Ostenwalde, Kr. Aschendorf-Hümmling, Lower Saxony (A13) is fragmentary, being broken across the shafthole. Of the two complete axes, the axe from Kerkenbosch, Ekelenberg, Zuidwolde, Drenthe (A24), which I am uncomfortable identifying uncritically as a knob-butted axe, is highly atypical with an asymmetrical blade and an unformed butt end18 while the axe from Estorf, Kr. Nienburg, Lower Saxony (A15) is a complete, highly resharpened specimen with a distinct mushroom-shaped butt. In other words, the abnormality of funerary deposition for knob-butted axes is further underscored by the lack of uniformity in the type, use and context of axes found associated with burials.

27%

63%

Σ = 60 Unknown Burial

Single find Settlement

Figure 5.16: Find contexts of knob-butted axes.

23%

Since most knob-butted axes are stray or single finds, it is unsurprising that few are found with associated artefacts. Only seven axes have recorded associations..Pottery, particularly Funnel Beaker pottery and pot fragments, is the material most commonly associated with knob-butted axes; but flint (arrowheads, tools and flakes) and stone tools (such as querns and a stone axe) are also documented (Fig. 5.18). Knob-butted axes were found associated with other objects in all three burial contexts recorded, all three settlement contexts recorded and alongside the single find from Mundersum, Kr. Lingen, Lower Saxony (A19) which was found near a barrow associated with axe fragments, battle-axe fragments and small flint implements. With regard to funerary associations, all three axes found in burial contexts were associated with pottery. The pottery found with the axe fragment from the Ostenwalde-3 passage grave, Ostenwalde, Kr. Aschendorf-Hümmling, Lower

47%

30%

Σ = 60 Wet Dry Unknown Figure 5.17: Environmental contexts of knob-butted axes.

Saxony (A13) and the complete axe found at Kerkenbosch, Ekelenberg, Zuidwolde, Drenthe (A24) has been identified as stylistically late Funnel Beaker pottery (Bakker 1979a). The only quern and arrowhead recorded in association with a knob-butted axe also come from the Kerkenbosch assemblage. In settlement contexts, knob-butted axes from Anloo, Anloo, Drenthe (A31) and Beekhuizerzand, Harderwijk, Gelderland (A45) were associated with Funnel Beaker pottery, while the butt fragment found in Uddelmeer, Apeldoorn, Gelderland (A42) was found alongside a grinding stone, flint waste and scrapers.

18. I have included it as it is listed in all accepted typological accounts of knob-butted axes; but, based on its unusual morphology, it perhaps represents a hybrid type between the flat hammer axe and the knob-butted axe. I base this suggestion on the presence of a distinct, cylindrical butt end (a feature of the knob-butted axe) in combination with a flat, rounded butt (as opposed to a more-or-less hemispherical knob). Bakker (1979a: 99) notes the presence of numerous production errors to explain the atypical morphology.

43

Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe 6 5

5

4 3

3

3

Flint

Stone

2 1 0

Pottery

Table 5.6: Knob-butted axes found in burial contexts.

Figure 5.18: Frequency of associations of specific material categories with knob-butted axes.

reality is unclear; but I suspect the latter, at least in the case of the knob-butted axes. First, it is notable that, of the eight preforms with known find locations, half are found clustered in this area (Fig. 5.20). When the length of complete axes is mapped a similar pattern emerges: it is the only region in the larger distribution area where knob-butted axes of all sizes are found (Fig. 5.21), perhaps suggesting a larger number of people making and resharpening axes. Moreover, spatial patterns suggest that a different perception of knob-butted axes may have existed in this area. Moreover, a certain standarisation is visible amongst

The distribution of knob-butted axes (Fig. 5.19) conforms mostly to the regional spread of the Funnel Beaker West Group. The densest cluster is east of the Ijsselmeer on the Drenthe plateau, a region known for its high number of hunebedden, flint axe hoards and other archaeological features of the late fourth millennium BC (Bakker 1982: 87-88). Whether this density is a result of archaeological preservation (as Bakker suggests) or reflects prehistoric

Figure 5.19: Distribution of all knob-butted axes with known find locations. They are labelled by their catalogue number in Appendix A.

44

Ground Stone Knob-butted Axes

Figure 5.20: Distribution of all knob-butted axe preforms with known find locations. the axes from the Drenthe plateau. First, five of the nine longest axes—and all axes 155 – 170 mm in length—are found there. Additionally, when the ratio of the length between the shafthole and butt to the complete axe length is calculated, a cluster of axes whose butt makes up between 24% and 36% of their total length appears in Drenthe (Fig. 5.22). Since longer butt length to total length could imply increased resharpening, it is notable that this ratio apparently increases the further one moves from the Drenthe area. Finally, an interesting pattern also exists with regard to deposition as the majority of stray finds near burial contexts and one of the three known funerary deposits of a knob-butted axe are found in this area as well (Fig. 5.23).

Five knob-butted axes are known from contexts south of the Rhine. This area is effectively outside the distribution area of the Funnel Beaker West Group. It is likely that these axes may represent exchange activities or gifts between kin or trading partners. On the other hand, the tight cluster of four knob-butted axes in Noord-Brabant and Limburg may reflect a seasonal or other settlement by knob-butted axe using people from further north. Either way, these four axes are all made from diabase which is not locally available, so they must have been carried in from the north where knob-butted axes were more widespread. The single axe from Sainte Cecile, Luxembourg, Belgium (A4) is an anomaly as no other knob-butted axe is known within hun-

Figure 5.21: Distribution of complete knob-butted axes of different lengths.

45

Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe

Figure 5.22: Distribution of complete knob-butted axes by the ratio between butt length and total axe length. dreds of kilometres. Bakker (1979a, 1979b) recorded it as an otherwise unknown and unpublished find he stumbled upon while engaging in research for his doctoral thesis; and it is possible that more knob-butted axes like it remain hidden in the collections of museums south of the Rhine. The proximity of all five axes south of the Rhine to the Meuse river suggests they were carried by people moving along the river on foot or, more likely, by boat.

fewer axes distributed between the Elbe and the Ems than between the Ems and the Rhine (cf. Bakker 1979a: Fig 54; Brandt 1967: Karte 8). In the most recent catalogue of knob-axes from northern and central Europe, this gap is also readily apparent as the knob-butted axes of the Funnel Beaker north group cluster on the Danish isles and in Scania with only a handful in Schleswig-Holstein, most of which are distributed along the eastern coast (Zápotocký 1992: Karte 2).

For the purposes of the present study, the northeastern boundary of knob-butted axe distribution is artificially set at the Elbe river, the traditional boundary between the West Group and North Group of the Funnel Beaker culture as defined, in large part, by pottery analysis (e.g. Bakker 1979a). In fact, knob-butted axes are known from both sides of this river, though I have recorded noticeably

5.2.2) Copper knob-butted shafthole axes Dating and chronology Like the stone knob-butted axes, the 13 known copper knob-butted axes from the West Group area lack much in the way of meaningful content or associations. They are

Figure 5.23: Distribution of knob-butted axes found in or near burials.

46

Ground Stone Knob-butted Axes

Table 5.7: Copper knob-butted axes in northwest Europe with butt morphology noted. almost universally single finds and have been dated variously based on their style, the trace elements in the copper they were made from and their similarity (or lack thereof) to stone shafthole axes. In northwest Europe, stylistic dating tends to place copper axes with knob-butts in the early third millennium BC or later. Jacob-Friesen (1970) relies on the SAM metal analyses to place most of the copper shafthole axes he classes as ‘type Eschollbrücken’ in the early third millennium contemporary with the Single Grave Culture or Corded Ware. Kibbert (1980: 24) concurs based on the similarity between their overall morphology and that of early third millennium BC axes found in Corded Ware culture contexts. However, this type is disparate in form and distribution, making its cohesiveness as a “type” questionable. The Eschollbrücken type axe from Dalum, Bersenbrück, Lower Saxony, found associated with a neck ring variously dated to the early second

millennium Únětice culture (Jacob-Friesen 1970) and the early third millennium Baden culture (Kibbert 1980), underscores this point. In the case of the recently uncovered knob-butted axe of arsenical copper from Riefenhausen, Göttingen, Lower Saxony, the concave shape of the axe has been approximated to late Copper Age axes of Romanian or Hungarian origin and, as a result, dated to the early third millennium BC (Grote 2004: 324-325). Three axes typically grouped with the Eschollbrücken type are notable for their unusual find locations and atypical morphology both of which may result from a chronological discontinuity from the German axes discussed above. The axe found in Schonen in southern Sweden is stylistically similar to fourth millennium BC stone axes and its trace element composition indicates is it Mondsee copper which was in circulation in central Europe in the fourth millennium BC (Klassen 2000: 145-147) (Fig. 5.24). Additionally, a highly symmetrical copper axe from Kersoufflet, Le Faouët, Morbihan, France and a concave example from Bon Amour, Trévé, Côte-du-Nord, France (Fig. 5.25) are dated, somewhat uncritically, to the earliest Bronze Age in the region—roughly 2500 BC—based on their stylistic similarity to some Scandinavian axes as well as to the axes of type Eschollbrücken (Briard 1965; Société préhistorique française. Commission du bronze. 1972), but I believe they are likely not related to the German Eschollbrücken axes and are possibly much older. Based on its morphology, the Kersoufflet axe in particular appears closely related to the sorts of knob-butted axes in stone which were circulating in central, northern and northwest

Figure 5.24: The axe from Schonen, Sweden (after Klassen 2000: Fig. 20).

47

Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe of trace elements like silver, nickel and arsenic within its chemical make up, but only two of the 13 known copper knob-butted axes have been analysed in detail. Klassen (2000: 145-147) suggests that the arsenical copper used to make the Schonen axe comes from central Europe based on a comparison between his cluster analyses and the SAM metallographic data. By contrast, the trace element composition and lead isotope analysis suggests that the Reiffenkausen axe and its handle were made from copper mined in southeastern Europe (Kronz et al. 2004). A

B

These axes appear to be the product of sophisticated metallurgical techniques. Although little attention has been paid to the technology of most of these axes, half a clay mould for the production of knob-butted axes has been preserved and was found in Salzburg-Rainberg, Salzburg, Austria (Jacob-Friesen 1970: Fig. 8). It was either half a bivalve mould for casting copper or half a mould for the production of wax models of knob-butted axes as part of a lost-wax casting process. The shape of the mould is consistent with many of the northwestern European copper knob-butted axes: a long, thin, vertically symmetrical axe body with a downwards drooping, square blade, a collar around the shafthole on the bottom surface and a small, flat knob. It is most similar in form to the axe from Bühren, Münden, Lower Saxony, Germany and to one of the two axes found in Eschollbrücken, Darmstadt, Hessen, Germany. Similarly, the Rieffenhausen axe has been determined through microscopic analysis to have been cast in a bivalve mould (Kronz et al. 2004; Grote 2004). Briard (1965: 52) observed that the handle of the Kersoufflet axe, like the axe from Reiffenhausen, was made of copper with a higher arsenic content than the rest of the composite tool. He suggests that the arsenic content reflects intentional alloying to toughen the axe’s handle. Following Kronz et al. (2004), the Reiffenhausen axe was also determined not to have been alloyed or cold-worked. This observation indicates both that a sophisticated casting technique had been used and that that the axe itself may not have been physically used or resharpened. This kind of technology was in practice in central and southern Europe in the fourth millennium, but there is no evidence that bivalve moulds and lost-wax casting were used in northwest Europe until

Figure 5.25: A: The axe from Kersoufflet , Le Faouët, Morbihan, France; B: The axe from Bon Amour, Trévé, Côte-du-Nord, France (after Jacob-Friesen 1970: Figs. 12 and 11). Not to scale. Europe in the late fourth millennium BC. For the purposes of this research project, I will be discussing all of the known copper knob-butted axes found in northwest European contexts, because the morphology of stone knob-butted axes is frequently described as inherently metallic, and they will serve as a good comparison. Wherever possible, I will highlight the Schonen axe and the two French axes in my comparisons as they appear more likely to be contemporaneous. Raw material, production technology and use The paucity and disparate nature of the known copper knob-butted axes makes describing them rather difficult. The first point to make is that there appear to be two distinctly different sorts of knob-butted copper axe in northwest Europe. Six of the 10 copper axes from German contexts as well as the two French axes and the Schonen axe have long, thin bodies with a reasonably central perforation, but three from Lower Saxony have a very short (basically non-existent) shaft between the perforation and the butt (Fig. 5.26 and Table 5.7). Jacob-Friesen (1970) groups all of these axes together as his type Eschollbrücken, but I think there is probably justification to treat them separately—especially in light of the tight geographical proximity of the three short-butted axes. Essentially, they represent a different understanding of what a copper knobbutted axe should look like, perhaps reflecting their place and/ or period of manufacture.

Figure 5.26: The short-butted axe from Müsleringen, Nienburg/Weser, Lower Saxony, Germany (after JacobFriesen 1970: Fig. 13).

The lack of copper resources in northwest Europe necessarily entails that the raw material needed to produce these axes was acquired elsewhere. By the fourth millennium BC copper mining and smelting is known to have taken place throughout the Alpine region. Outside of this area, copper tools and other objects appear to have been used as raw materials for local metal production. Copper metallurgy was known and potentially practised in southern Scandinavia during the fourth millennium (Klassen 2000, 2004); but, prior to the mid-third millennium BC, no trace exists of its practice further south along the North Sea coast. Copper can be sourced based on the proportion 48

Ground Stone Knob-butted Axes

Se

in

e

Figure 5.27: Distribution of copper knob-butted axes in northwest Europe . Note that the Schonen axe is included on the map with a southern Swedish find location, but no details of the actual find location are known so the point is arbitrarily placed in the Schonen region. many centuries later. Therefore, it is likely that any axes dating to the fourth millennium BC were produced elsewhere. This observation leads me to suggest that the shortbutted knob-butted axes, as distinct from the long-butted knob-butted axes, found in Lower Saxony were probably a mid-third millennium BC technology (cf. Grote 2004).

the blade. Additionally the ridges and troughs on the collar are more widely spaced and are perpendicular to the perforation and three concentric rings ornament the butt end. Illustrations of the Dalum axe also show a raised ridge on its upper surface (Jacob-Friesen 1970: Plates 2 and 3). The Kersoufflet axe also bears some decoration in the form of two perpendicular ridges, one which runs parallel to the perforation along the length of the shafthole and another which runs perpendicular to the perforation from butt to blade along the centre of the axe’s side faces. The top surface of this axe is on long, thin, flat facet. Of the shortbutted axes, only the axe from Eldagsen, Springe, Lower Saxony, Germany is in any way ornamented: based on the illustration provided by Jacob-Friesen (1970: Fig. 14) a series of furrows run perpendicular to the perforation around the butt.

Nearly all of the copper knob-butted axes are ornamented. The Weeze-Baal axe blade and butt shaft were incised with zigzag lines parallel to the perforation; and similar zigzag incisions were made on the collar and shafthole portions perpendicular to the perforation. A small herringbone zigzag design appears to have been incised over parts of the blade of the axe from Bebra, Rotenburg/Fulda, Hessen, Germany. One of the Eschollbrücken axes’ entire surface is covered with raised ridges with troughs between that run perpendicular to the perforation from the butt to the blade. A similar ridge and trough surface treatment runs parallel to the perforation on the collar, but does not continue onto the main body of the axe. The top surface of the other axe from Eschollbrücken has been made in two facets (running the length of the axe from butt to blade) with a thin ridge down the centre of the axe where they meet. The axe from the Mainz region is decorated in much the same fashion as the first Eschollbrücken axe with raised ridges separated by troughs running the length of the axe. In this case, the ridges are markedly more plastic and follow the curve of

The use of knob-butted axes of copper is hard to assess for a number of reasons including their scarcity and lack of associated archaeological context. Of the 13 axes under discussion here, few show obvious, macroscopic traces of wear—and all of those could have resulted from post-depositional processes. The blade of the Bebra axe is slightly bent and flattened, presumably from a direct and forceful blow (either prehistoric or modern); the blade of the axe from Trévé, Côtes-d’Armor, France is slightly chipped and bent as well; and the blade of the short-butted 49

Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe

Se

in e

Figure 5.28: Distribution of copper knob-butted axes with long and short butts. nostic pottery fragments and a sandstone grinding stone (Grote 2004: 329-330). Find contexts, when known, are variable. The axe from Bühren was found in a field, the Weeze-Baal axe came to light in a moor and the Reiffenhausen axe was found on a hilltop near several third millennium BC settlements on surrounding hills (Grote 2004; Jacob-Friesen 1970).

axe from Müsleringen, Nienburg/Weser, Lower Saxony, Germany is slightly bent and off centre along its vertical axis. No damage is apparent on the butt area of any of the axes. Four of the axes were found with their handles still attached or nearby, of which the Bebra axe and handle are actually a single metal object. The practicality of copper handles for physical functions is unclear, but was probably not high, suggesting a less physical and more visual use. Jacob-Friesen (1970: 57-58) believed that most perforated copper axes were weapons, simply based on the presence of a blade, but that the metal-hilted and very large axes were more likely to have been used primarily for display. A metallic handle and blade would be impressive even today. Certainly, in later periods metal hafting was applied to indicate the importance of an axe and underscore its ritual importance.19

The distribution of copper knob-butted axes is far more revealing than the few known contexts. Most of the axes under discussion cluster along the Rhine and Weser rivers (Fig. 5.27). The axes outside this riverine distribution are the single axe from southern Sweden and the two Breton axes which I have already noted were most likely contemporaries of the ground stone knob-butted axes. That most of the knob-butted axes cluster in two river valleys suggests to me that their function and meaning were contingent on locally shared understandings of what they were and how they were used. It is possible that there was a local production centre from which most or all of these axes originated, but no evidence of this sort of metalworking site is known. The two axes from Brittany might result from a similar small-scale centre of metal production or knob-butted axe use. On the other hand, little metal and no metalworking is known from northwest France prior to the mid third millennium BC, so these axes which I have suggested date to an earlier period might have been deposited here after being exchanged over several generations from a distant production centre. In terms of morphology,

Find contexts, associations and distribution As stated above, all the knob-butted axes made of copper are stray finds or single finds with few clear associations. One of the few exceptions, the Dalum axe, was reportedly found with a neck ring; although both are now lost (Jacob-Friesen 1970: 24). Careful survey in the vicinity of the Reiffenhausen axe’s find spot brought to light some animal bones, a few pieces of flint (an arrowhead from the third millennium BC and two blades), some non-diag19. E.g. in the Catharijneconvent Museum in Utrecht one can find the “Hammer of St. Maarten” which is a third millennium BC polished stone axe head set in a silver hafting during the early Christian period and associated with Marten of Tours, the patron saint of Utrecht.

50

Ground Stone Knob-butted Axes widely shared, leading to the lack of any truly poorly made axes, although variations in know-how and innate skill probably contributed to the apparent differences in quality noted above. Making metal axes, on the other hand, probably required access to reasonably restricted technological knowledge. Not only was copper not locally available, there is no evidence of successful bivalve casting having occurred in the Funnel Beaker West Group region prior to the mid-third millennium BC. If any of the knob-butted copper axes in the region date to the fourth millennium, as Klassen (2004, 2000) suggests for the Schonen axe, it is highly unlikely in my view that they were produced in this area. Aside from these axes, the only metal known from fourth millennium BC contexts in the West Group area consists of small trinkets and ornaments of sheet metal.

it is notable that the three short-butted axes are found quite close together along the course of the Weser (Fig. 5.28). Their geographical similarity underlines their morphological similarity, suggesting to me a local origin which supports my opinion that they probably date to the mid-third millennium BC. Outside western Europe, isolated copper knob-butted axes are known in Pomerania, Moravia and Austria (Jacob-Friesen 1970; Klassen 2000). In the Carpathian region similar axes are more common than in western and northern Europe. Driehaus’ (1952) Type Apátkeresztúr is very similar in form to the northwestern and central European knobbutted axes. Grote (2004: 324-325) also notes the similarity between the short-butted knob-butted axes and copper axes found in copper age sites in Hungary and Romania. No copper knob-butted axes of are known from southwestern Europe or from sites north of Schonen, Sweden. While a relationship has been speculated to have existed between copper knob-butted axes from southeastern Europe and those found in the northwest (Driehaus 1952, 1958; Zápotocký 1992), the nature, extent and chronology of this relationship are not clear. It is unlikely that every western European copper knob-butted axe was imported or inspired directly by a prototype from southeast Europe.

The physical properties of ground stone and metal axes also differ in consequential ways. In visual terms, achieving the high lustre of a copper axe in ground stone requires a lengthy and arduous polishing process. Only one stone axe, from Osterdamme, Damme, Kr. Vechta, Lower Saxony (A6), has been polished to this extent; and this axe may, in fact, be several centuries younger than most of the other knob-butted axes.20 Some of the axes I examined did have a greenish tinge in certain lights, but I doubt the comparison between green stone axes and copper verdigris, in large part because the copper axes are so vanishingly rare. Additionally the presence of a metal handle for hafting several of the copper axes would have been strikingly unusual and probably had no parallel in the hafting and use of stone axes. In terms of physical functionality, it is clear that many of the stone axes were used in ways that damaged the blade and butt end, requiring frequent resharpening and leaving traces like flaking and bruising visible on the artefact’s surface. No such traces of heavy use remain on the metal knob-butted axes. They do not appear to have been resharpened, bent or otherwise damaged to any great extent if at all. Moreover, the presence of parts of broken stone axes—particularly in settlement contexts—suggests that, even when broken beyond resharpening, they retained a value and a use. There are no known examples of broken, copper knob-butted axes. If and when these axes were broken, they appear to have been recycled into other (or similar) complete artefacts or disposed of in ways that are not archaeologically visible.

5.3) THE

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN KNOB-BUTTED AXES OF GROUND STONE AND COPPER

5.3.1) Did an imitative relationship exist between stone and copper knob-butted axes? There has long been a consensus that some sort of relationship exists between western European knob-butted axes in stone and copper (Zápotocký 1992; Brandt 1967; Klassen 2000; Mohen 1977; Driehaus 1952, 1958). However, the dearth of known artefacts, of reasonable, archaeological information about their find circumstances and of analyses that move beyond typology to questions of production and use has constrained inquiry into the nature of this relationship. Raw material, production technology and use The first step in addressing the potential relationship between ground stone and copper axes is a comparison between the two very different raw materials used to make each artefact type. Ground stone axes appear to have been made from erratic cobbles—mostly of diabase; and, as I have argued above, were probably locally produced, in large part, in the Drenthe region. The stone knob-butted axe production sequence required geological knowledge of which stones were appropriate for pecking, grinding and use. Moreover their production, while not technically complicated, took both time and skill – especially to create the characteristic, highly symmetrical axes with vertically and horizontally symmetrical hemispherical butts. Ground stone tools were not uncommon, and it is likely that the knowledge required to make these axes would have been

Find context and associations Neither artefact type is abundant, and both are frequently recorded with no known contextual information; but what information there is suggests that these artefacts may have functioned in different sorts of social spheres. First, while most of the stone knob-butted axes are stray finds, they are occasionally found associated with burials and settlement sites and they seem to be densely distributed throughout 20. Like the axe from Kerkenbosche, Ekelenberg, Zuidwolde, Drenthe (A24) (see above: note 18), this axe is included despite doubts about its contemporaneity with the majority of the axe corpus. Its overall morphology is consistent with the description of Funnel Beaker knob-butted axes, but the drooping blade and butt end appear to be later modifications to the axe’s morphology, and will be addressed below. The high polish may also reflect later remodelling.

51

Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe

Table 5.8: Copper knob-butted axes with morphological features similar to stone knob-butted axes. the Funnel Beaker West Group region. In northwest Europe, the late fourth millennium BC saw the emergence of agricultural and animal husbandry (Midgley 1992; Bakels and Zeiler 2005). It is possible that the stone axes played a role in these activities – the blades perhaps being used to fell trees or break up the soil for planting. If so, their distribution pattern and frequent lack of associated archaeological context or materials might reflect loss, breakage or intentional deposition in agricultural areas, moors or forests outside settlement contexts. By contrast, the copper axes are tightly distributed primarily along two river systems; and the apparent lack of use-wear could indicate use in activities involved with exchange and communication down the Weser and Rhine rivers, perhaps being used as part of personal or community display during trading or welcoming activities (a role suggested by Needham [2006] for handled cups found along the edges of the English Channel and North Sea in the late third millennium BC).

distinctly riverine distribution and probably reflect down the line exchange (van Gijn and Bakker 2005: 303). The presence of a single knob-butted axe in copper in Sweden might suggest a Scandinavian origin for the copper knob-butted axes; but that is far from clear, especially in light of the potential chronological differences between the Schonen axe and the northwest German knob-butted copper axes. Additionally, the two French copper axes are anomalous in that they have no local parallels at all. They must have reached Brittany through quite extended exchange networks – perhaps through the movement of people down the North Sea/English Channel coastline. It is doubtful that these axes—either in stone or metal—reflect direct contact between people living in northwest Europe and people living in southeast Europe. Rather, the stone axes were locally made variations on a common northern European tool type while the copper axes, most of which were probably of a later date than the stone axes, probably circulated through complex exchange networks between neighbouring groups, kin and other trading partners. The origins of artefacts moving in these sorts of interpersonal and intergroup exchange networks would probably have had their ‘true’ origins (in archaeological terms) effaced and replaced by a more locally significant narrative of creation and meaning (cf. Helms 1988).

Furthermore, the wider regional distribution of these objects suggests different routes by which people in the West Group area and beyond were interacting. Clearly the stone knob-butted axes are related to contemporary axes in use in southern Scandinavia and Poland—the Funnel Beaker North and East Groups. Contacts up the North Sea coast between people in the West Group area and people in the North Group are clearly evident in pottery styles and the presence of Scandinavian flint axes in the northern Netherlands. There is less evidence of east-west travel at this time, but navigable rivers seem to have played an important role in fourth millennium BC economy and society (e.g. Klassen 2004: Fig. 145). Indeed, the handful of knobbutted stone axes found south of the Rhine, and at a distance from their presumed region of manufacture have a

Morphological comparison Finally, I want to compare the morphology of stone and copper knob-butted axes. The design of ground stone knobbutted axes, particularly their symmetry, the collars around the shafthole and the presence of a mushroom-shaped butt end, is considered by many to be inherently metallic in origin (Driehaus 1958; Louwe Kooijmans 2005; Zápotocký 1992). However, of the metal axes we have, few match 52

Ground Stone Knob-butted Axes 10

this description (Table 5.8). No copper knob-butted axes have all three morphological features and only three, the very geographically separated axes from Weeze-Baal, Kersoufflet and Schonen, have two of them. Most of the metal knob-butted axes have a concave profile with blade and butt drooping downwards, while, in stone objects, this body shape is characteristic of the early third millennium BC stone axes. Moreover, vertical and horizontal symmetry is a common feature of fifth and fourth millennium BC perforated stone axes. Moreover, these stone axes broke frequently, usually at the shafthole. In leaving a band of stone raised on either side of the perforation it is possible people were trying to strengthen this weak point so that the axes would be less likely to break. As to the hemispherical butt which, though common, is not in any way a universal feature, the wear traces I have observed lead me to suggest that it was designed to perform a specific physical function or functions, such as light percussion or grinding. As regards their traditional identification as ‘battle axes’, no wear studies exist looking at the traces left on stone axes from impacting bone and flesh, and a comprehensive study of skull trauma in northwest European Neolithic populations has not yet been published (Fibiger 2010). Finally, the raised or incised line occasionally noted on the upper or side faces of stone axes and usually referred to as a fake ‘casting seam’ is a rare feature found on only six of the 60 recorded West Group knob-butted axes. Moreover, casting seams are not apparent on any of the metal axes discussed here, though several have linear decoration on their upper and side faces.

Σ = 36

9

9

8

8 7

6

6 5 4

5

5

4

3

2

2 1 0

Figure 5.29: Length of complete knob-butted axes. hundred years. This chronology would suggest that if any imitation was occurring, then metal axes might be seen to imitate stone ones, an idea promoted by Grote (2004: note 2). Yet, while the aesthetics of copper knob-butted axes might draw from the look and heft of a perforated stone axe—a blocky body shape, a preference for symmetry, linear decoration emphasising a faceted shape—there is little technological or archaeological evidence to link the two more closely than that. Although this result could perhaps be deemed disappointing, given that this study focuses on the nature of imitation across materials, I find it encouraging that the methodology I have developed can be applied, moving us beyond traditional, morphological comparisons of similarly-shaped objects. Instead we are left with an object type which was clearly significant, but whose origin and value can no longer be linked to metal.

Based on the technological, archaeological and morphological evidence presented here, it appears unlikely that stone knob-butted axes are copies of metal axes. The two axe types may not even be contemporary, although more and better analyses and excavations will be required to prove that point. If they are not contemporary, it is likely that the stone axes predate the metal ones by several

5.3.2) The nature of ground stone knob-butted axes The morphology of knob-butted axes has been the focus of studies concerning them for over a century; however, I believe there is more to be learned from careful morpho-

Figure 5.30: Measurement of the length of complete knob-butted axes by the length between shafthole and butt. Σ = 52

Length between shafthole and butt (mm)

80 70 60 50 40 30 20 100

110

120

130

140 150 160 Axe length (mm)

53

170

180

190

Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe 0.7

Σ = 30

0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0

Length categories of complete axe (mm)

Figure 5.31: Proportion of the total axe length made up by the segment between shafthole and butt for complete axes which were possible to measure. logical observations than just typological clarity. The first thing to note is that, while the corpus of knob-butted axes recorded in the study is quite variable, a certain number seem reasonably standardised. Thus, while most axes were between 130 and 150 mm in length, a handful of axes are extremely long, over 160 mm (Fig. 5.29). Some of this variety might be a result of resharpening, but when the length of the whole axe is compared to the length between the butt end and the shafthole, a distinct cluster of long axes with uniform measurements emerges (Fig. 5.30). As can be seen more clearly when the ratio of butt length to total axe length is calculated, the axes over 170 mm seem almost universally to have butts which make up 40% of their length (Fig. 5.31). Resharpening probably accounts for the shorter axes’ greater variability in the proportion of butt length to total length. The three longest knob-butted axes, not only share these metrics, but also have such strikingly similar overall morphology that I believe them to have been made from the same physical or mental template (Table 5.9). Six butt fragments have similar enough morphology that, when complete, they may also have been part of the same production group as these three complete axes (Table 5.10). I do not believe that a single person or group of people made all 60 of the known knob-butted axes; but, in light of their rarity and this group of three

identical axes, it is worth considering how constrained their production may have been. It is possible that in this axe corpus we are seeing a very temporally or socially constrained production technology—perhaps they were produced over the course of only one generation or by only a handful of people or groups. The larger distribution and chronology of knob-butted axes has been the focus of much of the archaeological attention paid to them (e.g. Driehaus 1958; Brandt 1967; Zápotocký 1992; Grisse 2006). There is no doubt that, on a wider, European scale, knob-butted axes were a popular and long-lived artefact type amongst the people who made and used Funnel Beaker pottery (cf. Midgley 1992: 286), but the local systems of production, use and distribution have been neglected in favour of developing better understandings of these regional trends. Moreover, the focus on relating knob-butted axes to metal prototypes has preempted any real discussion of their role within non-metal using, or scarcely metal-using societies. Yet, by removing metal prototypes from our discussion of their origins and function, I believe that I have opened the door to a whole new set of interpretations of their origin, value and use.

Table 5.9: The three longest knob-butted axes which also have nearly identical metrical proportions and morphology.

54

Ground Stone Knob-butted Axes Origins In addition to the popular perforated axes dating from the sixth to the third millennium BC, perforated bone and antler tools are known from European contexts dating back tens of thousands of years before the present. In fourth millennium BC contexts, perforated picks or axes made from antler tines are common finds. Werning (1983) records nearly 200 whole and fractured T-shaped axes of antler from the Hüde I settlement alone. The morphology of the T-shaped axes differed based on the part of the antler from which they were made, but many have been made from the bottom-most part of the beam and retain the pedicle as one end of the axe (Fig. 5.32). In some cases, the rougher edges of the pedicle have been ground off, further enhancing their resemblance to contemporary stone axes (Fig. 5.33). These objects have been interpreted as tools for working softer materials as the blades are rarely heavily damaged (Werning 1983: 48) and as symbols of power or authority (Grisse 2006: 235). They are not thought to be weapons. Other sorts of perforated tools include the bored antler and wood sheathes which held polished stone flat axes, not only so that they could be hafted on a transverse handle, but also to act as shock absorbers so the brittle stone axes would not break (Ramseyer 1987) and two copper axe-adzes found in southern Scandinavia whose form and metal type are related to nearly identical central and southeast European parallels (Klassen 2004: 69). I am not proposing that these specific tool types were direct inspirations or prototypes for knob-butted axes; but I do think it is worth recognising that not only were perforated tools commonly made in a variety of materials during the fourth and third millennia BC, many of them have a similar form to knob-butted axes with a wide, flattened or hemispherical knob opposite a blade.

Table 5.10: Knob-butted axe butt fragments which are morphologically similar to the standardised, complete axes. makes me think that, in the West Group area, they served a physical function as well. There are no contemporary depictions of knob-butted axes in northwest Europe. As I have already suggested above, I think it is likely that the stone knob-butted axes were a tool associated with land clearance and agriculture. I base this interpretation on the frequent appearance of heavy use-wear, and on the frequency of deposition away from settlement contexts, but in a heavily settled region. Others have noted that their morphology—in particular the heavy blade—makes them ideal woodworking tools (Winiger 1981, 1999; Zápotocký 1992). I would add that they may have been used as chisels for splitting or shaving wood as well as for chopping it; and so a large, flat or rounded butt would have been an ideal surface for applying downward pressure. Finally, it is also worth pointing to an idea put forward to explain the popularity of perforated stone axes in southeast Europe, namely that they were tools for working sheet metal (Doumas 1998). Since hammered copper items are known from the West Group area, this explanation cannot be dismissed; but, without clear traces of copper working areas or microscopic metal on axe blades and butts, it cannot be fully embraced either.21 Klassen (2000: 218) suggests that the inspiration for the Schonen axe—and by extension, for the stone knob-butted axes—lay in southeast European axes with an end flattened from having been used in mining and metalworking activities. Thus, in his view, knobbutted axes implied access to the rarified world of metalworking and metallurgical knowledge. However, it seems unlikely that prehistoric people in Scandinavia would have had much knowledge of the conditions and locale of origin of a very small number of objects brought into the region from hundreds of kilometres away and, perhaps, over several generations.22

Clearly, tools with this morphology served a function or functions other than simply being aesthetically pleasing to the people who made and used them. Grisse (2006: 236) suggests that the knob-butted axes in the Lake Constance area were primarily symbols of power or status, designed to be displayed on long poles. While an element of display may have been part of their function, the evidence of use and lack of special or distinguished depositional contexts Figure 5.32: A perforated antler axe with the pedicle intact. Photo courtesy archaeological depot Fries Museum, Leeuwarden.

The significance of knob-butted axes In assessing the significance of these axes, I believe that the importance of their physical function cannot be overstated. Evidence from waterlogged contexts has shown 21. I found no macroscopic traces of copper alloy on the butts of any knob-butted axe. 22. That being said, ethnographic work in New Guinea indicates that specific objects can circulate over great distance and time while retaining histories and biographies (Pétrequin et al. 2006); but, I still question whether great distances traversed by boat over open water can be directly compared to the riverine and overland networks of inland Europe.

55

Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe to this awareness. For example, Wentink (2006) describes a number of large, flint axes made from southern Scandinavian flint in southern Scandinavia and deposited unused in the northern Netherlands. Even though this flint might have been put to more prosaic uses—especially as flint resources are scarce in this area—these axes were carefully curated, wrapped and unwrapped repeatedly and deposited in special places and assemblages. A less elaborate example comes from the ceramic assemblage which Hogestijn (1990: 176) notes is made primarily from marine clays despite settlements being preferentially placed in areas with dry, sandy soil. Clearly, the properties of these clays were preferred for pot making, and people were willing to travel some distance to source them. That the erratic cobbles used as raw material for axe manufacture were a locally available resource may have played into their value. That one apparent centre of knob-butted axe production was the Drenthe plateau is striking as, during the same period in this same region, a large number of megalithic tombs were being constructed from large, erratic boulders of similar types of stone (Bakker 1990, 1992). It is not unlikely that a relationship was understood to exist between the stones used to make passage graves for housing the dead and those used to make axes for clearing the forests. Indeed, this material relationship may have been a conscious choice because of the social importance of agriculture referred to by Klassen and discussed above.

Figure 5.33: Side by side comparison of perforated antler axe (with ground down pedicle) and the knob-butted axe from Donkerbroek, Ooststellingwerf, Friesland (A36). Photo courtesy archaeological depot Fries Museum, Leeuwarden. that, despite the archaeological fascination with pottery and flint, wood was the most commonly used raw material in prehistory. As woodworking tools, stone axes of many different sorts would have been an extremely important part of people’s quotidian toolkit. The preservation and reuse of broken axe fragments might reflect the value placed on carefully made and curated tools. On the other hand, Klassen (2004: 376) suggests that grain growing and cattle farming were not just economically or nutritively important in Funnel Beaker society, but that a world of ritual significance surrounded the practice of agricultural activity. In other words, agricultural products and equipment are frequently found placed as apparent votive depositions or with burials (cf. Bradley 2005). In recent history in the Netherlands and northwest Germany farmers have collected stone axes from the fourth and third millennia and mounted them on barns for protection from lightening or put them in cattle troughs to ward off disease (J. Jensen pers. comm.; cf. Trigger 2006: Chapter 3). If knob-butted axes played a role in this agricultural sphere, it makes sense that they would be widely distributed across the Funnel Beaker area and highly valued. Moreover, being used in these sorts of activities may have frequently precluded their deposition in settlement contexts or have made extrasettlement deposition more socially or ritually appropriate, explaining why only three, highly fragmented knob-butted axes have been recovered from settlement contexts. In addition to their function, the specific raw materials used to make these axes may have had a special value of their own. People in the West Group area seem to have been intensely aware of the physical and social properties of the raw materials they chose to use and one can only assume that ground stone would not have been an exception

Finally, the significance of knob-butted axes for subsequent populations cannot be understated. Perforated stone axes became extremely socially important during the early parts of the third millennium BC, and were a part of the burial assemblage over much of the European continent during this time. In the West Group area, many third millennium BC stone axes share forms with earlier perforated axes, although they are more likely to have a concave rather than horizontally symmetrical profile. As noted above, at least one of the axes in my catalogue of knob-butted axes might actually date to this period or might have been reworked significantly to give it a more ‘third millennium’ appearance. Three other axes also have more concave profiles due to drooping butt ends and blades which appear to have been reworked to achieve this effect (Table 5.11). I find it likely that this reworking reflected the value third millennium people attributed to the fourth millenniTable 5.11: Knob-butted axes with drooping blades and/or butts which appear to result from later reworking.

56

Ground Stone Knob-butted Axes analyses provided by different researchers. However, if any of these axes do date to the fourth millennium BC, it is unlikely they were locally produced as there is no other evidence of casting with bivalve moulds in northwest Europe prior to the third millennium BC. Moreover, they show few traces of use-wear and none is broken, so their function seems to have been less physical in nature than that of the stone axes. Only four axes have had their find contexts recorded; three are single finds – perhaps single object hoards – and the fourth was found with a neck ring. Their distribution pattern is singularly revealing as all but three cluster along or between the Weser and Rhine rivers. Based on this distribution pattern I have suggested that their function may have been related to the mediation of interpersonal and intergroup contact in the context of riverine trade and exchange.

um axes they found scattered throughout their landscape. Clearly, though their use, meaning and depositional pattern changed, the social significance of stone axes from the fourth millennium BC informed and underlay their continued significance in later periods.

5.4) CONCLUSIONS The knob-butted axes from the West Group region of the Funnel Beaker culture are a rarely studied corpus of materials. By analogy to other types of stone axes found in central and northern Europe, they have frequently been referred to as imitations of metal prototypes and that imitation is usually implied to be the root of their value and function. Over the course of this chapter I have tried to assess these axes in a more contextual fashion in order to draw out details of their production and use. Their context is not well known because of their rarity and of the dearth of well recorded archaeological data concerning their find conditions. Over the course of this technological and functional analysis I have determined that the technology required to make these axes was not restricted – or even terribly complex – but the process itself was time consuming and required careful attention to detail. Moreover, as knob-butted axes were generally made to a high standard, it seems likely the skills needed to make finely crafted, ground stone axes were something that people cultivated. These axes were heavily curated and frequently resharpened. After breaking, they often appear to have been reworked and reused. They seem to have served a number of physical functions which frequently left them with chipped blades and bruised butt ends. Furthermore, in exploring their distribution as it relates to aspects of their morphology and production, it seems likely that they were most frequently produced in the region of the Drenthe plateau. This region has the highest density of Funnel Beaker sites and finds within the region and has an abundant supply of naturally occurring glacial erratics, so it is unsurprising that it was also an axe production centre. Furthermore, the glacial erratics from which most of the knob-butted axes were made are widely available in the Drenthe area. Interestingly, axes in the Drenthe region may have been preferentially deposited in the vicinity of megalithic funerary monuments, a pattern not seen elsewhere in their larger distribution area.

Based on these careful technological and contextual studies I doubt that, even if both axe varieties were clearly contemporary, one would be able to be interpreted as an imitation of the other. Rather, it seems more likely that the metal axes were crafted or valued by people very familiar with stone axes, and these latter influenced the metal object forms. Moreover, as I have taken pains to demonstrate antler tools in use at the time are also good parallels in terms of morphology and, perhaps, function. Not only were perforated stone tools a long-standing and widespread tool type, perforated antler axes and perforated antler sheaths for stone flat axes were also commonly in use at the time. I doubt whether any of these objects was specifically a prototype for or imitation of any of the others. Instead, I believe it is more illustrative to view each of these tools as having been developed for use within a similar social sphere, leading to morphological similarities, and then used for different purposes based on their specific physical properties and the cultural values attached to them based on raw material, locale of origin, etc. Finally, I have proposed that the significance of knobbutted axes might be more successfully sought in their social and physical functions than in their morphological relationship to other axes. I have proposed that aside from being ideally shaped for woodworking, in Funnel Beaker society they may have been part of the material culture of agriculture, perhaps being used to clear forests or break up land. Since the agricultural sphere seems to have been of great social as well as economic importance within the culture of fourth millennium people in northern and western Europe, the fineness of manufacture of these axes, their wide distribution and their continuing significance many centuries later might be related to their use in this context.

In developing a set of comparable data for the northwest European metal axes suggested to be their parallels, I found myself greatly limited by the fact that only 13 axes make up this corpus, and few have any data recorded at all regarding their context. The dating of these axes is unfortunately difficult to determine because of the lack of archaeological information and the contradictory interpretations of metal

57

Chapter 6: Fishtail Flint Daggers

6.1) INTRODUCTION

and faces of the handle thought to copy leather stitching on an organic handle (Fig. 6.2). In the following sections I will investigate this interpretation by focusing on the technological aspects of flint dagger production, namely raw material and production processes, and the evidence for their use and deposition in Jutland—the point of origin for many of the daggers found distributed around northern Europe. Comparing this subset of fishtail flint daggers, their production, use and deposition, with the known corpus of metal-hilted daggers will allow me to draw out strands of a more nuanced relationship between the two. Effectively, I will propose that, while neither directly copies the other in form or function, they are both part of a larger ‘dagger idea’ with roots in flint and copper technology of the midfourth millennium BC. Thus, a technological relationship will be shown to exist between the two dagger varieties, specifically with regard to the value of each raw material and the development of circumscribed or secret production processes. Finally, I will use this comparison to delve more deeply into the significance of flint fishtail daggers in order to address the question of why they were so frequently produced and so widely distributed if they were not physical copies of metal. I will suggest that their deep historical context and technological complexity are key to their value; and that their production is itself a performative process which informs their use and deposition both within southern Scandinavia and further afield.

Flint daggers made in Scandinavia in the early second millennium BC with flat, triangular blade and expanding, “fishtail-shaped” handle are almost universally described as explicit skeuomorphs of bronze metal-hilted daggers (e.g. Apel 2001; Callahan 2006; Vandkilde 1996; Lomborg 1973). Traditionally, the corpus of late third and early second millennia BC flint daggers has been divided into six types (numbered I – VI) each of which is broken into a number of sub-types. The ‘fishtail’ daggers comprise all of the type IV and V dagger (Fig 6.1). The imitative features are assumed to be the triangular or leaf-shaped blade, the fishtail-shaped handles, the fin-like pommel and, on some daggers, ridges of zig-zag flake scars on the edges Figure 6.1: The sub-types of fishtail flint daggers (after Apel 2001: Figs. 8:5 and 8:7).

IV a

b

6.2) CHARACTERISING SINGLE MATERIAL DAGGERS

c

6.2.1) Fishtail flint daggers23

e

d

Dating and Chronology Towards the end of the third millennium BC and the beginning of the second, a number of different types of bifacially worked, retouched flint object, such as sickles and barbed and tanged arrowheads, were regularly being produced and used in southern Scandinavia. However, the thousands of long, flat flint blades produced and deposited at this time are such ubiquitous finds that this period is often referred to in Scandinavian literature as the dolktid or Dagger period, conceptualised as a distinct phase between the Stone Age and Metal Ages. More recent chronologies have used the dagger corpus, along with other materials and stratigraphic analyses, to develop typological phases for the years between 2400 and 1600 BC. The most widely accepted is Lomborg’s (1973) which is based on a revision of the traditional flint dagger typology (Müller 1902) and on stratigraphic observations of their placement, primarily in funerary contexts. He breaks the period up into three phases: phase A includes lanceolate flint daggers (type I)

f

V

a

23. All 333 flint daggers recorded in the course of this research are listed in Appendix B and referred to in the text by find location and bolded catalogue number.

b 58

Fishtail flint daggers D

and is contemporary with the Beaker period in Britain and early Reinecke A1 in central Europe; phase B includes daggers with lanceolate blades and oval or square handles (types II and III) and is contemporary with the later Beaker phase in Britain and later Reinecke A1 in central Europe; phase C includes the daggers with a leaf-shaped or lanceolate blade and fishtail shaped handles (type IV and V) and is concurrent with the Wessex period in southern Britain and the beginning of Reinecke A2 in central Europe (ibid: Fig 87).

C

B

A

While these divisions are still widely used, radiocarbon dating programmes carried out over the last few decades have refined and altered our understanding of the chronology of the dagger period. Vandkilde (1996; Vandkilde et al. 1996) has combined a detailed analysis of metalwork from this period with just over 50 radiocarbon dates to argue for a two phase division of the later Neolithic with the first phase (LN I) lasting 2400/2280 – 2010/1910 BC and the second (LN II) 1990/1890 – 1790/1690 BC. Rasmussen (1990) argued for a similar bipartite division of the period based on her re-evaluation of the flint dagger typology. While she largely accepts the typological divisions Lomborg proposed, she suggests that the completely lanceolate types (I and II) belong to an earlier phase than daggers with oval or rhomboid handles (III, IV and V) (see Fig. 1.1). Vandkilde (1996) also downplays the importance of chronological change in the dagger typology, agreeing with Rasmussen’s suggestion that much of the variation is contemporary and related to differences in taste or ethnicity. Thus, in this system, all of the lanceolate daggers (types I, II and III) are dated to LN I while the fishtail daggers (types IV and V) are thought to have circulated from LN II, contemporary with the southern British Wessex material and the classical Únětice groups in central Europe (Fig. 6.3). Thus, the type IV and V daggers which are the focus of this chapter seem to have developed and been sought after for c. 300 years at the most before falling out of fashion or being replaced.

Figure 6.2: Comparison of features of metal-hilted dagger and fishtail flint dagger. A: Flat triangular blade; B: inward curving handle; C: stitched leather seam (L) and zig-zag ridge; D: fin-shaped pommel. knappers; an abundance of flint of very high quality made it possible to knap some of the most unusual, largest and most striking flint tools known from prehistoric European contexts. Flint is a highly variable silicate stone formed by the fossilisation of microscopic organisms such as diatoms or sponges (Odell 2004: 20). It can be nodular or tabular and its physical properties—colour, grain, inclusions, etc.—vary immensely depending on the environment in which it formed. Högberg and Olasson (2007), seeking to characterise the availability and types of flint found throughout southern Scandinavia, have recently completed an extensive survey of that region’s flint resources. Three types of flint are found in primary deposits in southern Scandinavia. They are known as Senonian (deposited in the Cretaceous), Danian (deposited in the Paleogene) and Kristianstad (deposited in the Cretaceous and found only

Raw material That most Scandinavian museums are full of eye-catching and technologically sophisticated flint artefacts is only in part due to the skill of prehistoric Scandinavian flint Tripartite periodisation

Lomborg

Bipartite periodisation

Rasmussen

Vandkilde 1700

V Late Neolithic C

IV

IV, V Late Neolithic II

III, IV, V

III

III

II

II

1950

Late Neolithic B

Late Neolithic I Late Neolithic A

Figure 6.3: Comparison of Lomborg’s (1973) , Rasmussen’s (1990) and Vandkilde’s (2005) divisions of the southern Scandinavian late Neolithic and the development of flint dagger types.

I, II

I

I 2350 Cal BC

59

Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe Key Kristianstad flint Danian flint Senonian flint

Figure 6.4: Distribution of primary flint resources in southern Scandinavia (after Högberg and Olausson 2007: Fig 22). in southeast Sweden) (Fig. 6.4). Some of the Danian and Senonian flint types are especially distinctive because of their physical properties and inclusions: Senonian flint from Rügen, Germany has a more intrusive cortex lead-

ing to chalk seams within nodules or tablets of flint (ibid.: 100); Danian flint from Funen, Denmark has a great number of visible Bryozoan fossils(ibid.: 116); and Senonian flint from Falster, Denmark has a banded structure which gives it a striped appearance (ibid.: 96). While these primary flint sources are widely available within the mapped regions, the actual quantity and accessibility of flint varies enormously from place to place. Additionally, secondary deposits of flint in the form of morain or beach pebble deposits occur widely across southern Scandinavia, so even in areas with no primary flint beds, adequate, high-quality flint was available. Despite differences in tenacity and fineness, daggers seem to have been produced from most of these different flint types; and, often, great effort was put into making use of the patterns of fossils or banding in the raw materials (Fig. 6.5).

Figure 6.5: Two examples of banding and fossil patterns preserved in the finished dagger: A) Hasselholt, Sal, Ringkøbing (D82). Photo courtesy Nationalmuseet, Copenhagen; B) Stangheck, Kr. Flensburg (D98). Photo courtesy Archäologisches Landesmuseum in der Stiftung SchleswigHolsteinische Landesmuseen Schloss Gottorf, Schleswig.

A

B

While many of the flint blocks from which daggers were made may have been collected from secondary deposits near flint outcrops or on river banks, gravel terraces or coasts (e.g. Rassmann 2000), undoubtedly mined flint was also utilised. Flint mining has been well-documented in fourth and third millennia BC contexts in southern Scandinavia—in particular in northern Jutland (Becker 1959). These mines generally consist of circular shafts, some with galleries branching off and extending along the length of flint seams so that nodules or tabular blocks of flint could be excavated. Recent excavations at settlements near flint mines suggest that flint extraction was probably not a centrally controlled industry, but rather was carried out by members of one or several local communities over many generations (Sarauw 2006a, 2006b, 2006c). At Bejsebakken, a late third millennium BC settlement near the 60

Fishtail flint daggers

77%

Σ = 333

but supplemented with punching and pressure trimming in the fourth and fifth in order to shape the dagger blank with more care. During the second and final preform knapping stages, the dagger blank is given the distinct profile of a fishtail dagger: thick handle, thin blade. At this point, the blade and handle begin to be treated differently with the blade being prepared so that it loses girth while remaining wide and the handle being made to remain quite thick but become less wide. Additionally, during the final preform stage, if a dagger with a ridge of zig-zag knapping on the face(s) of the handle is desired, an initial zig-zag ridge is punched onto the dagger blank. At this point, most dagger blanks appear to have had their blades and handle edges ground smooth, following which they were covered with flake scars, a proportion with long parallel retouch flake scars, and the final zig-zag was knapped onto the previously prepared ridge and edges.

23%

Cortex No cortex

Figure 6.6: Proportion of Jutlandish daggers with cortex still present. Skovbakken flint mines in the region of Aalborg, hoards of flint daggers seem to have been associated with mining areas and may reflect a complex cosmological or economic relationship between the local communities and this flint source (ibid. 2006a, 2006b). As Apel (2001: 267) notes, an association between dagger hoards and raw material sources is a recurring feature of the south Scandinavian archaeological record. Nearly a quarter of fishtail daggers retain traces of cortex from the nodule from which they were knapped, especially on their base or at the end of the handle (Fig. 6.6). This pattern is identical to the one Rudebeck (1998) noted on flint axes and linked explicitly to the knapper demonstrating his or her skill at utilising the entire length of a nodule or block of flint. Thus, leaving an area of cortex visible on these daggers (Fig. 6.7) might have indicated that no flint was wasted in their production, that the knapper was skilled enough to use the entire nodule, and/or that high quality flint was accessible enough that a piece of exactly the right shape could be found and knapped in its entirety into a dagger.

Unfinished, unbroken daggers are very rare, but one example of a late-stage preform which, apparently, was put into use without having gone through the final bifacial retouch comes from Fjerritslev, Kollerup, Thisted (D23) (Fig. 6.8). This piece has no parallel among the daggers I have catalogued, and differs not only in appearance but also in handling: it is notably weightier with a wider, thicker handle than most other daggers. Although a zig-zag knapped ridge was applied to both handle faces and the handle edges, the knapping scars were uncharacteristically sharp, suggesting that it had not been handled or used as extensively as most other fishtail daggers. This lack of handle wear most likely reflects a dagger which was unfinished when it was (hastily?) put into use, an idea substantiated by a number of contemporary flint knappers who have handled it (P. O. Nielsen pers. comm.). Nevertheless, the existence of this dagger supports the production trajectory hypothesised and subsequently reconstructed by Callahan (2006) and others.

Production technology Much of the evidence for the flint dagger reduction sequence also comes from the excavation of late third millennium BC settlements, and has been approached repeatedly through the lens of experimental knapping. Stafford (1998, 2003), Apel (2000, 2004, 2008), Callahan (2006) and Nunn (2006a, 2006b) have all documented attempts to knap various southern Scandinavian flint daggers with the intent of clarifying the reduction (and production) process, developing a corpus of debitage to serve as reference material for excavations, and enlarging our sense of the social and technical structures which lend themselves to flint dagger production. Following Callahan’s (2006; cf. Apel 2001: Fig 2:3) reduction sequence, there are eight stages of knapping required to produce a fishtail flint dagger. First, a blank is chosen that is of high enough quality and large enough size, then a roughout is knapped which is further shaped and thinned over three successive preform stages. The final preform is a regular, relatively flat piece with the overall shape of the dagger (inward curving handle with fins, lanceolate or leaf-shaped blade) clearly visible. Direct knapping is used through the first three stages,

Figure 6.7: Typical appearance of cortex on base of fishtail dagger. This example found at Øster Brønderslev, Hjørring (D233). Photo courtesy Nationalmuseet, Copenhagen.

61

Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe

Figure 6.8: Unique dagger without known context from Fjerritslev, Kollerup, Thisted (D23) which appears to be a ground pre-form that has been ‘finished’ with a zig-zag ridge on the handle and some sharpening flakes on the blade edges. Large polished areas on the blade attest to the stage of production as the dagger blade has been ground to shape, but no parallel retouch has been applied. Photo courtesy Nationalmuseet, Copenhagen. with the raw material, the desire to knap a zig-zag ridge on one handle face but not the other, or differences introduced in resharpening. However, between the daggers the variety in knapping style is large, with most having ‘variable’ covering flake scars – that is, flake scars which differ in extent, direction and morphology (Fig. 6.10). This variation in appearance becomes more clear when unresharpened daggers are looked at separately as, though variable covering flake scars are still the most frequent, the proportional difference between them and other types of knapping patterns is greatly reduced (Fig. 6.11). Interestingly, controlling for type does not seem to affect the pattern, except that the slightly greater proportion of type V daggers with scaled flaking and of type IV daggers with parallel or sub-parallel retouch becomes apparent (Fig. 6.12). There is great uniformity in the extent of the surface knapping. In all but a handful of cases knapping scars—from parallel retouch, scaled flake scars etc.—cover the blade and handle of the dagger. Although many of these daggers are thought to have been polished prior to final retouching, only a quarter have any visible traces of manufacture polish (Fig. 6.13).

Some of the technological processes which seem to have formed part of dagger production deserve a closer examination, particularly the techniques by which the handle was shaped and the daggers finished. First, as noted above, the handle of most fishtail daggers was treated as separate from the blade after the initial roughing out and preform stages of production. The process used is the same as that developed for the manufacture of thick- and, later, thinbutted axes as outlined by Hansen and Madsen (1983). The significance of this technical relationship is two-fold: primarily, it underscores the connection between flint dagger production and other, earlier, characteristic flint production sequences in southern Scandinavia. It also illuminates the origin of one of the more unusual attributes of the fishtail flint daggers, namely, the zig-zag ridge knapped on many of their edges and handles. This ridge seems likely to be an elaborated version of Hansen and Madsen’s (ibid: 46) ‘longitudinal seam’ produced on axes through indirect percussion with an antler tool for pressure flaking and on daggers, in many cases, with a fine, copper-tipped tool.24 Finally, the parallel retouch found on many of the dagger blades—and occasionally type V dagger handles—also needs to be discussed briefly. Not only is it a technically demanding, time consuming process, but Callahan (2006: 131) has suggested it was carried out in a uniform, consistent way over time and space.

Figure 6.9: Comparison of appearance of knapping scars on all Jutlandish fishtail daggers catalogued indicating the vast majority were made to have identical knapping on both faces.

I tend to disagree with Callahan’s interpretation that a somewhat standardised production technique requires a hierarchical production structure, as significant variety appears to exist in the surface treatment of daggers and the directionality of parallel retouch when it exists. It is evident that knappers intended both faces of individual daggers to look alike (Fig. 6.9); and I believe that, in most cases, irregularity between the faces can be related to problems

300

269

250 200 150 100

24. Stafford (1998) believes that traces of copper in the flake scars of the zig-zag ridge of several examined Danish daggers reflects the frequent use of this sort of copper tool, but no extant tool fitting this description has been preserved. Presumably it would be similar in form to the antlertipped tool carried by Ötzi on his belt and interpreted as a flint working tool (Spindler 1994).

64

50 0 Σ = 333

62

Same treatment Different treatment

Fishtail flint daggers 250

35

Σ = 333

219

218

Σ = 88

30

30

200

29

25 20

150

10

100

17

17

15 10

12

13 10

9

14

9

6

5 50

28 27 10 13

15 11

parallel

parallel oblique

0

37 36

24 28

parallel

parallel oblique

0 scaled

sub-parallel sub-parallel oblique

Dorsal

Ventral

variable

sub-parallel sub-parallel oblique

Dorsal

Ventral

variable

Figure 6.11: Appearance of knapping scars on both faces of unresharpened Jutlandish fishtail daggers.

Figure 6.10: Appearance of knapping scars on both faces of all recorded Jutlandish fishtail daggers.

fineness of knapping), less refined versions of the type V daggers are as frequently recovered as refined ones.

This sort of variety of form is important to note as the production sequences I have outlined above are based primarily on the appearance of and apparent stages used to knap ‘prestige’ fishtail daggers—that is, daggers over 20 cm in length and bearing evidence of highly skilled production. Although most fishtail daggers recorded in this study are well under 20 cm long (Fig. 6.14), when only daggers without evidence of resharpening are considered, slightly more than half are at least 20 cm in length (Fig. 6.15). I will address the question of ‘prestige daggers’ below, but it is clear that significant variation existed in the knapping skills required to make fishtail flint daggers (Olausson 2000: 128). Certainly, the daggers I have catalogued in Jutland appear to have been produced and resharpened by people with widely varying skills, and the differences between the two types of fishtail dagger are apparent (Fig. 6.16). This relationship is statistically significant: χ2(1, N=330)=39.28, p=30 cm

Σ = 309

Under 20 cm 20 cm or greater

Figure 6.14: A) Distribution of the length of complete/ near complete fishtail daggers from Jutland. Note the “bell curve” shape of the distribution and the fact that the majority of daggers are under 20 cm. B) Proportional comparison of complete/near complete fishtail daggers from Jutland under 20 cm and over 20 cm. Note that the long ‘prestige’ daggers make up only a quarter of all daggers catalogued. mechanisms which would have allowed specific individuals to develop the knowledge and know-how to produce fishtail daggers. Earle (2004) sees dagger production as part of the development of status differences and social hierarchies. Consequently, he suggests that master knappers made prestige daggers for certain members of the community while less fine daggers were made by lower status people for themselves (ibid.: 118). Apel (2000, 2001, 2004, 2008) takes this division of master knapper and less-skilled knapper further to suggest that a formal system of apprenticeship must have existed for the knowledge of how to make technically complex, large daggers to have been communicated. Moreover, he draws out specific stages of manufacture and identifies the skill-level needed to attain it. Thus, he suggests that apprentices/young people would have performed the least skilled stages of production: collection of the raw material, knapping the roughout and grinding the near finished blade. Journeymen or young adults would have made the first two stages of preform and master knappers would have made the final preform, executed the parallel retouch and knapped the zig-zag ridges onto handle edges and faces. Apel’s system takes into account the practical experience necessary to accomplish the later phases of dagger production, but differs from other interpretations in that he views the knowledge of dagger production as necessarily restricted and, in contrast to Earle and Olausson’s suggestions, not available to

the wider community. Understanding the social aspects of flint dagger production requires an understanding of the landscapes of production. Apel (2001, 2004, 2008) grounds this concept of knowledge restriction on the locations of dagger production debitage in the landscape; but I would argue that his model makes too many assumptions about the data available. Apel (2001: chapters 6 & 7) has catalogued a number of sites with flint debitage characteristic of dagger production. He concludes that the production of roughouts took place in the vicinity of flint extraction areas, while the more complicated and difficult process of knapping the preform and finishing the dagger took place in settlements alongside other flint technology. Recent evidence from Bejsebakken supports these observations. Flint dagger preforms and flint ‘proofing flakes’ were found in the vicinity and in-fill of flint mine shafts, while pressure flaking debris and dagger debitage from a small number of daggers was found in a specialised flint working area within the settlement (Sarauw 2006a). However, Apel (2008: Fig. 6) extrapolates outwards from this debitage evidence and suggests that the lower skilled (more easily learned) phases of production took place in isolated areas, away from settlements in order to restrict access to the knowledge of how to execute them. Conversely, the later stages of production which are assumed to be impossible to rep-

Figure 6.15: A) Distribution of the length of complete/ near complete unresharpened fishtail daggers from Jutland. B) Proportional comparison of complete/near complete unresharpened fishtail daggers from Jutland under 20 cm and over 20 cm. Note that the long ‘prestige’ daggers make up over half of the unresharpened daggers. 40

36

Σ = 88

36

35 30 55%

25

45%

20 15

12

10 5

1

3

A

< 10 cm

B

0

0 10-14 cm

15-19 cm

21 - 25 cm

25-30 cm

Σ = 88

>30 cm

64

Under 20 cm 20 cm or greater

Fishtail flint daggers 120

licate through observation alone would have been knapped in settlements, perhaps in the context of public knapping displays or performances by master knappers (Fig. 6.17).

110

100

97

94

Yet, while some evidence exists for separate production locales for different stages in dagger production, no evidence for the social restriction or isolation of this process is known. Instead, dagger debitage appears alongside debitage from less elaborate and less formal tool types. In other words, it was integrated into the larger sphere of flint knapping and may very well have been engaged in by many different members of the community. Flint mining itself would have required a large number of personhours to conduct and probably involved large portions of the community as opposed to one or two apprentices being overseen by a master knapper (cf. Earle 2004: 116). Moreover, the idea that a handful of master knappers controlled all stages of dagger production is belied by the copious evidence from northern Germany for the local production of daggers using flint mined elsewhere in southern Scandinavia (Arnold 1990; Kühn 1979: Karte 2). Vandkilde (1996: 265) has suggested that flint, knapped into roughouts or preforms in the vicinity of the extraction site, was exchanged over reasonably long distances and knapped into daggers at sites distant to primary flint sources; however, flint provenience studies have provided no evidence for this sort of behaviour (B.V. Eriksen, pers. comm.). The picture of dagger production which emerges from this evidence is of a decentralised manufacturing process in which communities proximate, and perhaps also some of those distant, to flint sources had access to high quality, mined flint which was used to make daggers as well as and alongside other, less complex tools. In other words, Apel’s hierarchical zones of production do not seem to exist; and

Figure 6.16: Variability in workmanship of type IV and V daggers.

Figure 6.17: Hierarchical model of flint dagger production and distribution based on Apel’s (2001, 2004, 2008) apprenticeship model: production activities are circumscribed with mining (1), rough out production (2), and preform and finished dagger production (3) being performed only by specialists and their assistants. From the specialist production centre daggers are distributed to other communities (4) and/or deposited in burials, hoards, etc. (5).

Figure 6.18: Non-hierarchical model of flint dagger production and distribution: mining (1) and rough out production (2) are engaged in by members of nearby communities while pre-form and finished dagger production (3) takes place in these settlements and others farther away as dagger blanks also circulate (4). Daggers are then distributed to other communities (5) and/or deposited in burials, hoards, etc. (6).

80

60

40 23 20 1

5

0 Medium

Refined

Σ = 330

IV

Crude V

even though different stages of dagger production seem often to take place in different locales, there do not appear to be clear conceptual boundaries around places where one does and does not make daggers (Fig. 6.18). Use While our understanding of dagger production is relatively well developed, we are still grasping for straws when we try to determine how they were used and why so many were produced. Most frequently, flint daggers are attributed a symbolic if not functional use – specifically as part of a material and social package upholding status distinctions between people. Earle (2004: 117) views them as personal

5

5

6

4 3

2

3

2

3 4

1

1 4 3

65

3

Innovation and imitation: stone skeuomorphs of metal from 4th-2nd millennia BC northwest Europe 900 800

hundred more, compared with the roughly 8000 lanceolate daggers he records, the disparity in numbers becomes clear (Fig. 6.19). Thus, it is likely that fewer people had access to or desire for flint daggers than in earlier periods, an explanation which would lend credence to the idea that daggers played a role in negotiations of status.

795

714

700 600 500

414

This interpretation is based in large part on the view that flint daggers—and especially very large flint daggers like the famous example found in Hindsgavl, Funen—are prestige objects with no ‘function’ aside from an impressive appearance. Yet, a handful of very large daggers from Jutland have evident traces of resharpening (Fig. 6.20), suggesting that they were not just produced to be seen. Additionally, comparing the frequency of very long resharpened and unresharpened daggers, a pattern becomes clear: while over 50% of unresharpened daggers are over 20 cm in length, only about 10% of resharpened daggers are (Fig. 6.21). This relationship is statistically significant: χ2(1, N=259)=53.11, p=30 cm

66

>20 cm

Unresharpened daggers