Review: Review Article: Explanations, Interpretations, and Stories of the European Neolithic

Author(s): Sarunas Milisauskas

Source: American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 102, No. 2 (Apr., 1998), pp. 421-423
Published by: Archaeological Institute of America
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/506473
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 REVIEW ARTICLES
Explanations, Interpretations, and Stories of the European Neolithic
SARUNASMILISAUSKAS
AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE NEOLITHIC: EARLY PRE-
HISTORIC SOCIETIES IN SOUTHERN SCANDINAVIA,
by ChristopherTilley.(New Studies in Archaeol-
ogy.) Pp. 363, figs. 190, tables 34. Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, New York 1996. $79.95. ISBN 0-
521-56096-9.
EUROPE IN THE NEOLITHIC: THE CREATION OF NEW
WORLDS, by Alasdair Whittle.(Cambridge World
Archaeology.) Pp. 443, figs. 116. Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, New York 1996. $80. ISBN 0-521-
44476-4.
TIME, CULTURE AND IDENTITY:AN INTERPRETIVEAR-
by fulian Thomas. Pp. 267, figs. 49.
CHAEOLOGY,
Routledge, New York 1996. $59.95. ISBN 0-415-
11861-1.
THE ORIGINS OF AGRICULTURE IN EUROPE, by I..
Thorpe.Pp. 224, figs. 36. Routledge, New York
1996. $79.95. ISBN 0-415-08009-6.
The Neolithic spans 2,500 to 3,000 years of European
prehistory and marks the emergence and development of
farming communities throughout the continent. These com-
munities appear around 7000 B.C. in southeastern Europe,
5500 B.C. in central Europe, and 4000 B.C. in northern
Europe. For many years, archaeologists have asked numer-
ous and diverse questions about the Neolithic. How did
farming communities originate in different parts of Europe?
How were they organized economically, socially, and po-
litically? What beliefs did they hold? Eminent archaeol-
ogists such as V. Gordon Childe struggled with questions
of this sort, and wrote masterful syntheses: for example,
The Danube in Prehistory (Oxford 1929) and The Dawn of Eu-
ropean Civilisation (London 1925).
Because I have worked with central European Neolithic
cultures for many years, I am interested in how British ar-
chaeologists currently explain and interpret the material
remains of these societies. Thomas, Tilley, and Whittle each
challenge traditional explanations but, in my opinion, their
postprocessualist interpretations represent a retreat from
science. Empirical scientific archaeology is being replaced
by a mysticism over which the 12th- and 13th-century scho-
lasticism would be an advance. To these three authors, ar-
chaeology is a kind of literature. I commend the gradual
disappearance of the Germanic approach, with its deluge
of dates, sites, and artifact types, but I am disturbed by
the speculations and fantasies about the European Neo-
lithic that pass as explanations and interpretations in
421
American Journal of Archaeology 102 (1998)
today's Anglo-American intellectual environment. These
approaches are producing a plurality of idiosyncratic por-
trayals of this prehistoric period. At the end of his book,
Tilley clearly expresses this approach, stating that "work-
ing at archaeology is primarily working with metaphors.
Fresh metaphors will produce new and alternative pasts"
(341). But working in archaeology is working with data.
The link of data and metaphors is never precisely exam-
ined in this study.
In his book An Ethnography of the Neolithic: Early Prehis-
toric Societies in Southern Scandinavia, Tilley first synthesizes
from a postpositivist perspective the southern Scandina-
vian Late Mesolithic and Neolithic, and then discusses stone
monuments and society in the Scandinavian Middle Neo-
lithic. The synthesis is excellent, especially for Scania in
Sweden, though there is not much discussion of chrono-
logical or typological problems.
The Late Mesolithic is mainly devoted to the Ertebolle
culture, famous for its shell mounds. The Ertebolle people
subsisted by gathering, fishing, fowling, and the hunting
of land and sea mammals. Their numerous burials yield
red ocher, animal bones, axes, chipped stone and bone
artifacts, and ornaments. Tilley idealizes the Late Meso-
lithic societies as "a kind of Garden of Eden ... [in which]
... men did not dominate and exploit women" (68), just
as Marija Gimbutas idealized the "Old Europe" of the Early
and Middle Neolithic. Such contestable statements reflect
the author's beliefs, and they are notjustified by any archae-
ological data. Tilley can tell stories about the past, such
as gender equity in the Ertebolle society, but these stories
should be corroborated with archaeological data. Our in-
dustrial society, by contrast, is unappealing to Tilley: "By
comparison with hunter-gatherers who work less and have
a bountiful supply of all they need, it is we in industrial
societies who are poor and badly off" (57). He might have
added that Late Mesolithic life expectancies ran to less
than 30 years: if Tilley and I were living in an Ertebolle
society, we would be dead by now.
Tilley argues, reasonably in my opinion, that wheat and
barley were not part of Early Neolithic Scandinavian sub-
sistence strategies. Local foragers probably adopted farm-
ing very gradually; the small samples of cereals so far re-
covered are assumed to have had a symbolic, not a caloric,
significance. Tilley presents an excellent description of the
dolmens and earthen barrows constructed by Early Neo-
lithic peoples. According to Tilley, these structures were
"gigantic symbolic axes placed in clearings in the forest
that had been cleared by the axe" (114). I concur with his
observation that these megalithic monuments "acted, and
still act, as signs of history and as signs in history.... They
served to immortalize the group constructing them" (157).
He suggests that there was competition among the Neo-
lithic groups in the construction of these monuments. So-
422 SARUNAS MILISAUSKAS
cial inequality developed during the Neolithic-- inequality
between groups, according to Tilley, and not between in-
dividuals. His statements in this connection reveal insights
not usually found in archaeological publications, such as
the following: "Fields of wheat, cattle, pigs, sheep and goats
could be controlled, produced and exchanged between in-
dividuals in a manner not possible with wild plants and
animals scattered around a territory and available to all"
(115).
There are numerous discussions of specific ethnographic
societies in Tilley's book. For example, in discussing the
mortuary practices of Neolithic societies, he summarizes
the burial customs of the Trobriand Islanders and the
Merina of central Madagascar. When discussing the sym-
bolic role of cattle, he selects two ethnographic examples:
the Nuer and the Dinka of the Sudan. The relationship
he draws between ethnographic societies in Africa and the
southern Scandinavian Neolithic societies is problematic,
to say the least. Since there are thousands of societies in
the ethnographic record, we can make many choices to
illustrate our arguments. How do you evaluate which choices
are the best? Tilley's book contains intelligent and insight-
ful discussions concerning the southern Scandinavian Late
Mesolithic and Early and Middle Neolithic. But where his
observations have little archaeological data in their sup-
port, they can be irritating.
In Europe in the Neolithic: The Creation of New Worlds,Al-
asdair Whittle provides an impressive survey of the Eu-
ropean Neolithic. His adept synthesis of a large, diverse,
and complex archaeological record is admirable. Whittle
is one of the few British archaeologists who is thoroughly
familiar with continental Neolithic material. His book is
narration, however, and not scientific analysis, a curious
mix of shrewd criticisms of his predecessors and sometimes
alternatives of his own. His key phrases include "another
alternative" (66) or "different approach" (190). In some cases,
like those of the Lepenski Vir trapezoids or the Varna ceme-
tery, these alternative interpretations are supported by some
data; in other cases, such as the Balkan Early Neolithic
figurines, we receive ex cathedra pronouncements unsup-
ported by any data.
According to Whittle, "the Neolithic way of life in Europe
was based above all on a set of beliefs, values and ideals
about the place of people in the scheme of things, about
descent, origins and time, and about relations between
people. It involved the conceptualization of a universe
peopled by spirits and ancestors as well as by the living.
From spirits, ancestors and other beings came a sense of
the sacred, and this, rather than anything more secular,
guided people's values and ideals" (355). This is an exam-
ple of a claim virtually impossible to justify archaeolog-
ically. Furthermore, such a generalization is so broad that
it applies to any culture, including our own.
Whittle emphasizes indigenous developments and con-
tinuity from the preceding Mesolithic period. He stresses
the mobility, rather than the sedentism, of Europe's farmers;
he deemphasizes social and political competition and the
appearance of ranked societies; he rejects the consensus
explanation (i.e., nonlocal population expansion) for the
spread of the earliest farmers in central Europe. Whittle
dislikes the notion of conflict between Neolithic groups.
[AJA 102
Thus, the Middle Neolithic ditched and palisaded enclo-
sures are not considered fortifications, but rather places
of social and symbolic preeminence. True, Whittle denies
envisaging "the Neolithic period as some far-off Arcadia"
(7). It appears to me, however, that he is quite successful
in assuming the role of an archaeological Rousseau. In
summary, the reader will find in Whittle an excellent syn-
thesis of the European Neolithic if one ignores most of
his alternative explanations.
In Time, Culture and Identity: An Interpretive Archaeology,
Julian Thomas first presents his views concerning "a phe-
nomenological archaeology," before turning to three case
studies. After glancing through Thomas's bibliography, I
immediately concluded that this publication is unusual.
There are 13 references to Martin Heidegger, excluding
those authors cited by Thomas who wrote about Heidegger.
Michel Foucault holds 11 positions in the bibliography.
In contrast, there are only five references for V. Gordon
Childe, one of the preeminent old masters. Surprisingly,
Colin Renfrew also has only five references. Lewis Binford
is the most-cited archaeologist, with 12 references, followed
by Ian Hodder, who receives nine. In fact, Thomas devotes
a good deal of space to discussing Heidegger's relevance
to archaeology. In doing so, he makes some naive state-
ments about Heidegger, e.g., that he "may or may not have
been a convinced Nazi" (3) or that the evil of Fascism was
not that evident in the early 1930s. There is clear docu-
mentation substantiating the fact that Heidegger acted as
a Nazi during the 1930s and until the end of World War
II. Of course, a person may be a great philosopher and
at the same time morally repellent. We should also remem-
ber that archaeologists did not distinguish themselves as
moral beacons in Nazi Germany. Numerous archaeologists,
including Werner Buttler, the excavator of the Early Neo-
lithic settlement of K6oln-Lindenthal, supported Hitler. The
actions of Hitler's followers suggested a morbid future for
Germany and Europe in the early 1930s, underscoring the
repugnant nature of Fascism. In defense of Heidegger's
behavior, Thomas argues that there is a benign and a ma-
lignant side to Marxism, which proclaims the liberation
of oppressed peoples, on the one hand, and sets up gulags,
on the other. The argument misses the point. Nazism and
Communism, as it was practiced in eastern Europe or as
it is still functioning in China and Vietnam, represent to-
talitarian systems. Academic Marxism, as discussed in the
cafes of Paris or London, failed to mirror reality.
Political ethics apart, Thomas strongly believes in Hei-
degger's relevance to archaeology. According to Thomas,
"the most salient quality of LBK longhouses is, of course,
that they are 'buildings' As such, they embody the distinc-
tive activity of building, which as Heidegger describes it
is a form of transformation, but also a means of dwelling,
of abiding with things, sparing them, and entering into
a relationship with them" (102). I do not think we need
to rely on Heidegger to make these observations. Thomas
conveys the impression that archaeology's future lies in
the study of scholars like Habermas and Heidegger. His
assumption that studying Habermas or Heidegger will mold
us into better archaeologists is highly contestable. These
scholars did not contribute to the advancement of archae-
ological research, and reading them is unlikely to help us
1998] EXPLANATIONS, INTERPRETATIONS, AND STORIES OF THE EUROPEAN NEOLITHIC
in interpreting the past. At least the previously mentioned
Nazi archaeologist, Werner Buttler, conducted significant
research on the Neolithic; we can, therefore, still evaluate
his work as an archaeologist.
Thomas's three case studies are "The Descent of the
British Neolithic"; "Later Neolithic Britain: Artifacts with
Personalities"; and "Time, Place, and Tradition at Mount
Pleasant' He derives the earliest Neolithic on the Atlantic
fringe of Europe from the hybridization of the central Eu-
ropean Linear Pottery culture and the local Mesolithic cul-
tures. He also extensively discusses Mount Pleasant, a large
embanked enclosure or a henge monument in the county
of Dorset. According to Thomas, "a monument like Mount
Pleasant is a paradigm example of the way in which a hu-
man engagement with material things can serve to main-
tain order in social life. Building, the setting up of a struc-
ture, presupposes that future activities will take place which
are to be given form by the space being configured" (185).
One is here reminded of Whittle's sweeping and unsub-
stantiated statements.
In comparison to the three books discussed so far, I.J.
Thorpe's The Origins of Agriculture in Europe is far more tra-
ditional. It is an expansion of his doctoral dissertation at
University College, London. While he clearly infuses his
own opinions, he fairly presents and evaluates the views
and data of a wide range of archaeologists.
He begins by discussing various theories that explain
the transition to farming in the Near East. Recently, there
has been a revival in relying on climatic models to explain
the origin of farming. Thorpe finds these unsatisfactory
because they present human societies as passive. Instead,
he argues that social competition served as the catalyst
for farming in the Near East. Thorpe's main concern is
the origin of farming in Europe. Two competing expla-
nations exist for the appearance of farming there: coloni-
zation by farmers from Anatolia; and the indigenous origin
of farming communities. The Early Neolithic population
of Anatolia was very small, and there was enough land lo-
cally available to accommodate demographic expansion.
Why would Anatolians have moved to Europe? We must
next look to social explanations for the appearance of farm-
ing. Farmers appeared in Crete around 7000 B.C.; this oc-
currence implies colonization, since Mesolithic populations
were nonexistent on the island. The evidence for an in-
digenous origin of Neolithic communities in southeastern
Europe is weak.
In his book, Thorpe also discusses the appearance of
423
the earliest farming populations in central Europe, the At-
lantic Fringe, Scandinavia, and Britain. He concludes his
book with a discussion of Early Neolithic societies in south-
ern Scandinavia, Britain, and Ireland. Like Tilley, Thorpe
presents a synthesis of the Ertebolle and Early Neolithic
societies of southern Scandinavia. Unlike Tilley, however,
Thorpe's discussion more closely reflects a consensus of
archaeologists' explanations. Also, he spares us any utopi-
an observations concerning Late Mesolithic society.
Thomas, Thorpe, and Whittle each synthesize the archae-
ological record of the Linear Pottery culture of central
Europe. I have worked with the material of this Early Neo-
lithic culture for many years, and, while I cannot agree
with all of these authors' conclusions, I do acknowledge
that their syntheses are valuable contributions to the study
of the Neolithic.
As a synthesis of the European Neolithic, I would rec-
ommend Europe in the Neolithic, since Whittle's book is the
best such work currently available in English. The Origins
of Agriculture in Europe, while good, is much more limited
in scope. Time, Culture and Identity:An InterpretiveArchaeol-
ogy is an enigma; I would be highly surprised if Heidegger
becomes a significant force in archaeology, and I think
that materialist philosophers are more relevant to archaeol-
ogy. An Ethnographyof the Neolithic presents a split person-
ality: there is an impressive part with interesting descrip-
tions and interpretations of the archaeological record, and
then there is a part that can only be considered fiction.
I do, however, recommend Tilley's book as an intellectu-
ally challenging study of the Mesolithic and Neolithic.
In addition to the four works reviewed here, there are
recent books in other languages that make important con-
tributions to our understanding of the European Neolithic.
For example, Markus Honeisen of the Schweizerisches
Landesmuseum in Zurich has edited the two-volume Die
erstenBauern (Zurich 1990) about the central European and
the Balkan Neolithic. Max WiThren'scontribution there on
early finds of bread and cereals is very appealing. The
articles in H6neisen's volumes are descriptive, and they
do not contain fictional stories about the lives and beliefs
of our Neolithic ancestors. There is much more about the
European Neolithic that serious archaeology can yet tell
us, without resorting to storytelling.
DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT BUFFALO
BUFFALO, NEW YORK
14261-ooo5