Early Bronze Age Studies
The Early Bronze Age has undergone a multitude of transformations through archaeologist’s eyes over the past two centuries. Nevertheless the simple questions that were posed in 1801 by William Cunnington, its first serious excavator, have never really been answered. It almost seems that the more barrows excavated, the more confusing they have become. Over 900 barrows have been excavated in Wiltshire alone and we are no closer to understanding the reasons behind the radically different choices of barrow form, artefacts or interment types that were taken by Early Bronze Age communities when conducting burial practices.
Such a lack of success may be responsible for the virtual abandonnment of these questions by archaeologists in the past thirty years. Yet to ignore these distinctions in burial practice is to ignore what makes Early Bronze Age archaeology so unique. It must be admitted that after two hundred years of excavation the prospects of understanding this variation do look bleak. It is hard to attribute this failure to a lack of excavation or imaginative effort. However, is it possible that our lack of success may relate to problems with our approach (one that has changed little since the 19th Century) rather than the data.
One of the problems with Prehistoric Studies, often cited by archaeologists studying regions outside of the most popular ‘core areas’, is that we see cultures as unified entities. There have been many attempts to rid archaeology of the notion that cultures are unified, but it seems that the notion has continued to return despite glaring differences in the archaeological record. Early Bronze Age studies has often been guilty of such a notion despite the huge amount of variation in burial practice. However, the problem might have something to do with the method that archaeologists have commonly used to study artefacts and monuments. The typological method was formed from the assumption of cultural unity and is widely used to categorise and find patterns in the data. The typological method has permeated almost every aspect of the archaeological toolbox and the very classification of artefact types such as an ‘axe’ or ‘dagger’ is based upon it.
However, the typological method is based upon two very old assumptions that few archaeologists would agree with today. The primary assumption is that cultures are monolithic bounded entities which evolve in a unified way. Related to this is the assumption that artefacts and practices within a culture will have one proper function or meaning at one time (Jones 1997:132-4). These assumptions have led us to expect similarities in correlations between many sites within regions and to use particular techniques that correspond with these assumptions.
One of many archaeological techniques used to practice typology is the spreadsheet or statistical database derived from Natural Science. Since the above assumptions corresponded well with assumptions of the universal nature of natural elements in the sciences, the use of these databases was deemed acceptable. Artefacts or traits, like natural elements, were seen as having only one proper meaning or use and therefore could be designated as variables to be correlated with others in order to find universal patterns of correlation. This was the theory at least, but there are serious problems in both the assumptions and practice of typological classification.
Problems with Typology
It is fairly well known that the assumption of culture as unified has murky roots in the history of the discipline. The most thorough book on the topic ‘The Archaeology of Ethnicity’ (Jones 1997) illustrates the development of this assumption and its pervasiveness in archaeological theory and methodology. As far back as the mid nineteenth century the idea of cultures as unilinear monolithic entities was used in debates to justify colonialist expansion and slavery. The Nazis also used it to homogenise their nation and legitimise the annexation of other countries by claiming ancient affinity with foreign prehistoric assemblages. While both anthropology and archaeology have rejected the idea of culture as monolithic many times - on the basis of its ethical implications and the empirical problems with it - Jones argues that the assumption that cultures are bounded unified entities continues to persist (ibid).
The reason for this persistence may be that the practice of typology, based upon this assumption, actually perpetuates the myth of a unified culture. The very search for similarities to identify a common artefact or practice means that differences within those entities are usually ignored (Jones 1997:130). The separation of artefacts and traits from their context for analysis by specialists and the entry of them as formal variables into a spreadsheet or statistical database makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to reconnect contexts for comparison. This, more than anything else, prevents the observance of other artefact meanings or uses. The search for similarities in correlations over large areas only exacerbates this neglect. Once similarities are found, these are arbitrarily nominated as the most important factors and seen as evidence of a unified culture (prompting, in turn, the further use of typology) (ibid:131).
Without this arbitrary selection a very different picture is visible - an immense mess of variation within and between communities and regional areas. Such is the case anyway for the Early Bronze Age where there are far too many differences to acheive a general overview.
Early Bronze Age Studies
The history of Early Bronze Age studies is essentially a history of arbitrary selection. Stuart Piggott first defined the ‘Wessex Culture’ by ignoring differences in structural or burial traits in favour of artefact ‘richness’ - the similarity that bound ‘Wessex’ barrows together for him (Piggott 1938). Although Gordon Childe advocated the study of all material, Childe also favoured a few select artefact types that allowed him to define bounded cultural entities in the Early Bronze Age (Childe 1956:121-3; Jones 1997:18).
The use of selected objects to catagorise bounded cultures or periods has been a common theme in Early Bronze Age archaeology. When Piggott’s ‘Wessex Culture’ became too unweildy, ApSimon (1954) divided the culture into two chronological phases based mostly on daggers. The other most common artefact used to distinguish cultures or time periods in the Early Bronze Age has been pottery (Longworth 1961; Clarke 1970), also used to the exclusion of other information (Pollard 2002:28). However, towards the end of the 1960s this use of typology began to be challenged. Differences in artefact styles were still seen as representing different cultural ideals (from Crawford 1921), but the attribution of cultural differences to alien cultures from France or Germany brought the search for cultural differences into disrepute.
After J.G. Clark’s (1966) attack on Culture History and the search for separate cultures, the divisions within and between the Beaker and Wessex ‘Cultures’ began to be eroded. Nonetheless, a form of the typological method was still being used. Instead of selecting a few artefacts and ignoring anomalies to define a cultural division, a number of anomalies were selected and the similarities ignored to deny divisions. For example, when ApSimon’s Wessex I and Wessex II division was questioned, it was through a study of the gold and bronze metalwork that removed the distinction (Coles and Taylor 1971). Then through the presence of a handful of ‘Beaker-like’ artefacts in ‘Wessex Culture’ graves (Stone Battleaxes, V-perforated buttons and barbed and tanged arrowheads) it was argued that the Wessex Culture had evolved from the Beaker Culture (Piggott 1973:374). Later, due to the discovery of a significant overlap between the ‘Cultures’, this small group of similar artefacts and traits resulted in the Wessex Culture being viewed as merely a higher class of Beaker graves (Burgess 1980:99).
Thus, while the concept of distinct monolithic cultures was vehemently dismissed, by using the typological method to achieve this, the concept was actually perpetuated. The effect was to create even larger monolithic cultures with fewer distinctions – cultures that extended across the whole of Britain. This prepared the way for prehistory to be explained ‘in terms of general theory rather than special circumstances’ (Bradley 1984:13). Despite archaeologists’ best intentions to avoid explanation in terms of general cultural distinctions, this new era of archaeology continued to emphasise the cohesiveness of large monolithic cultures. This time by emphasising a few similar traits over many differences in support of functionalist or structuralist theories – effectively a return to earlier pratices.
Typology and archaeological theory today
If this typological method has been so constrictive, why then has it not been replaced? Probably because it corresponds so well to current theories about prehistoric culture. While most archaeologists working on the Neolithic and Bronze Age would disagree that culture represented a single body of beliefs (Thomas 1991:36, 1995; Barrett 1994:50), there is a general consensus that codes and rules of behaviour were maintained over large areas through formalism and restriction of movement in monuments (Barratt 1994:15; Gosden 1994:24).
This notion stems from Bourdieu’s concept of the ‘habitus’, whereby codes and rules of behaviour are instilled from birth in individuals who further perpetuate them in structures and practices (Bourdieu 1977). These codes are seen as different from conscious meanings invested in artefacts and traits which are believed to be more variable (depending upon the individual’s sum of experiences) and result in ‘surface’ symbolism. Codes of behaviour are more unconscious and provide continuity between times and places since they are restricted by convention and monumentality. This means that some correlations can be expected between sites within regional bounded areas, but the great variation within them can be explained as so many fallible interpretations.
While some general correlations are found between sites and regions during the Neolithic, this concept of culture runs into problems when burial practices and structures become radically diverse in the Early Bronze Age. It would be logical if there were one line of similarity running between all barrows, but any line of similarity only runs through a half of the barrows at one time.
However, such variability is understandable if culture is considered less monolithic than in the above conception. Jones (1997) and Chamberlin (2006) argue that instead of a general ‘society’ or ‘habitus’, regions actually contain multiple groups with distinct identities that arise from political or other contextual situations (Jones 1997:91). These groups actively construct their own identity in opposition to others (Levine 1999:169) rather than unconsiously perpetuating cultural affinities.
Ethnographic examples of sub-cultural interaction
Chamberlin (2006) gives several ethnographic examples of co-existing groups in active opposition. Trobriand and Dobu tribes build their identites through the active devaluation of one another’s world views. The Dobu do this by ritually consuming fertility symbols important to the Trobrianders while proselytising their knowledge of paternity. Similarly, Trobrianders reject the Dobu’s ‘knowledge of paternity’ while decorating their war sheilds with their symbols of fertility (from Glass 1988:57 in Chamberlin 2006:43).
Even in areas where objective differences are absent, such as in the Middle Zambezi Valley, different versions of cultural origins are used to assert differences and commonality – in this case between Goba, Nyai, Chikunda and Tonga groups (Chamberlin 2006:42). This results in symbolic conflict where the groups “appropriate external traditions or fend off such attempts, continually transforming tradition and adjusting their position in a hierarchy of meaning” (ibid from Lancaster 1974:711-5).
More warlike symbolic conflict can also occur, such as between the Baktaman and neighbouring tribes where temples and sacra (required for rituals) are destroyed or taken. (Barth 1975:64 in Chamberlin 2006:43). Destruction of one group’s burial mounds and superimposition of another mound type on top of them is also apparent in the Lower Illinois Valley of the Hopewell Culture. This was a prodigious alluvial valley where one Hopewell group appears to have split off from the main northern group and moved further south in the valley, possibly due to a political or other contextual situation (Martin 2005:308). This difference in identity was expressed in a different mound type. However, whenever the second group attempted to form a cemetery with this new type, the first group appears to have destroyed the mounds soon afterwards by erecting versions of the northern type on top of them. In a similar way to the example from the Middle Zambezi Valley, interactions between the groups appear to have transformed both mound types over time, with later mounds at these cemeteries amalgamating elements from both types (ibid).
The idea of dissent within communities has actually been around for a long time in archaeology. The use of traditional objects by individuals to disrupt the consensus was a large part of Ian Hodder’s seminal work on active material culture (Hodder 1982:69). It is strange that this has not been sufficiently acknowledged in archaeology (Jones 1997:114), but ‘active’ material culture symbolism has largely been seen as symbolism expressed by individuals within a unified monolithic culture, not in opposition to it (Thomas 1999:163). The focus on more general codes and rules of behaviour, instead of symbolism (which was considered too variable), meant that material culture was seen to ‘act as props for the strategies of social life’, while monolithic society was quietly reproduced (Barrett 1994:169). However, ‘active’ in Hodder’s original meaning of the word was the use of cultural objects by Baringo tribes-men and women to subvert the consensus.
Any evidence that objects may be used differently by sub-cultural individuals or opposing communities ought to warrant a re-evaluation of typological methods. Such a re-evaluation should recognise the existence of opposing groups, but not privilege spatially bounded distributions, since dissent could arise from within (Jones 1997:129) or be stamped upon from without (Martin 2005).
Excerpt from Martin, A. 2008 ‘The Alien Within: the forgotten subcultures of Early Bronze Age Wessex’ to be published in Jones, A. and G. Kirkham (ed.s) Beyond the Core: reflections on regionality in prehistory, Oxford: Oxbow Books.
