Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 211-229). Also available on the Internet.

Before the sixth millennium BC, peoples across Europe subsisted as foragers: by hunting wild game, gathering wild foods, and fishing from rivers and oceans. These subsistence strategies changed with the advent of the Neolithic as food producing economies and societies were introduced or arrived in southeast Europe from the Near East. This shift appeared earliest in the regions adjacent to Turkey and the Mediterranean and slowly expanded northward and westward during the late 7th and early 6th millennium BC. As a result of this change, most zooarchaeological and palaeo-economic studies conducted in the Balkans for Neolithic remains focused on domestic livestock and consequences for subsistence and settlement, to the neglect of our understanding of the wild component of Neolithic economies and the information they can provide on subsistence and settlement. In this thesis, I examine the wild component of Neolithic subsistence in order to understand their contribution to diet and overall economic adaptations. In particular, I examine the remains of deer, which are the most common wild mammal exploited during the Neolithic of the region, in order to characterize deer exploitation strategies. The thesis research demonstrates that the hunting of red and roe deer was not necessarily a background activity, but an important part of the Neolithic exploitation strategy, for both food and other kinds of resources. By understanding these processes and their importance to Neolithic society, we are better equipped to understand the overall picture of subsistence strategies and the exploitation of other resources in the central Balkans during the Neolithic.

This thesis is concerned with two closely related themes: the inhabitation of the Peak District over the fifth and fourth millennia BC, and the procedures and principles by which we attempt to interpret the durable material traces thereof. A four stage interpretative framework is outlined. Social life is understood through its materiality. The engagement of the self with others is constrained and enabled by that materiality. Archaeologists can represent that process through a textual model. Analogical reasoning mediates each stage and must be made explicit. The Mesolithic and Neolithic, analytical objects constructed through conceptual metaphors, fail to express time and the materiality of practice as mutually constitutive. An integrated theory of landscape and technology is proposed whereby artefacts are understood in terms of relational metaphors, situating them in practice and capturing both their materiality and temporality. Prior research in the study area is critiqued on the basis that the historically specific material conditions therein cannot support models transposed from other regional contexts. A methodology for collection and analysis is developed which privileges those specific conditions in the interpretation of prehistoric technology. Artefact assemblages, it is argued, offer us no unmediated access to prehistoric settlement. No immediate functional equivalence between aggregations similar in composition should be expected. The analysis of stone tools and waste must be integrated with other categories of evidence and interpreted in terms of the potentials offered by their socio-physical context. Original data are analysed in terms of assemblage density, raw material and technological composition, chronological patterning and landscape situation. Integration into the regional corpus, through an explicitly multi-scalar approach, attends to the constitution of social life through practice and developing tradition. The role ascribed to early `monuments' by other archaeologists is particularly brought into question, with respect to the model of relational practice maintained throughout the dissertation.

The topic of investigation of this thesis concerns a co-extensive analysis of Crete and Anatolia from the beginning of the Early Holocene (ca. 10,000 BCE) to the start of the Bronze Age (ca. 3000 BCE), with a select analysis of other locales in the Aegean, Levant, and eastern Mediterranean for comparative purposes. It has been long supposed in scholarship that the Neolithic on Crete (and, by extension, the Aegean) is of Anatolian extraction, but the claim has hitherto remained un-investigated systematically. Recent DNA studies have bolstered these suppositions, thus providing an appropriate opportunity for more detailed investigation via the archaeological evidence. / The aim of the thesis is two-fold. First, I aim to provide a systematic account of the archaeological evidence from various locales which has the potential to elucidate, materially, any affinities the Aegean and Anatolian locales may have shared throughout the aforementioned period of time. However, more detail will be devoted to phases in which Crete is supposed to have been subject to influx of settlers (early 7th millennium BCE, and late 4th millennium BCE). I shall examine elements such as pottery, chipped stone, settlement patterns, and hypothetical population movements in order to construct a picture of the dynamics in the respective periods. / The archaeological evidence will thus form a platform upon which I shall engage in a discussion using theoretical perspectives drawn from anthropological and sociological theory to answer questions about human comportment, and intentionality with regards to settlement patterns, material culture variation, and movement. Thus, I shall use the archaeological evidence to put forward a series of meaningful assumptions about social structures, people’s outlooks on the environments which they inhabited and experienced, and the motivations and reasons for particular changes. As a result, parts of the thesis will have a heuristic character, but it is hoped that such an approach will foster the capacity for debate in order to enhance the understanding of the dynamics spanning the geographies of the Aegean and Anatolia.

The topic of investigation of this thesis concerns a co-extensive analysis of Crete and Anatolia from the beginning of the Early Holocene (ca. 10,000 BCE) to the start of the Bronze Age (ca. 3000 BCE), with a select analysis of other locales in the Aegean, Levant, and eastern Mediterranean for comparative purposes. It has been long supposed in scholarship that the Neolithic on Crete (and, by extension, the Aegean) is of Anatolian extraction, but the claim has hitherto remained un-investigated systematically. Recent DNA studies have bolstered these suppositions, thus providing an appropriate opportunity for more detailed investigation via the archaeological evidence. / The aim of the thesis is two-fold. First, I aim to provide a systematic account of the archaeological evidence from various locales which has the potential to elucidate, materially, any affinities the Aegean and Anatolian locales may have shared throughout the aforementioned period of time. However, more detail will be devoted to phases in which Crete is supposed to have been subject to influx of settlers (early 7th millennium BCE, and late 4th millennium BCE). I shall examine elements such as pottery, chipped stone, settlement patterns, and hypothetical population movements in order to construct a picture of the dynamics in the respective periods. / The archaeological evidence will thus form a platform upon which I shall engage in a discussion using theoretical perspectives drawn from anthropological and sociological theory to answer questions about human comportment, and intentionality with regards to settlement patterns, material culture variation, and movement. Thus, I shall use the archaeological evidence to put forward a series of meaningful assumptions about social structures, people’s outlooks on the environments which they inhabited and experienced, and the motivations and reasons for particular changes. As a result, parts of the thesis will have a heuristic character, but it is hoped that such an approach will foster the capacity for debate in order to enhance the understanding of the dynamics spanning the geographies of the Aegean and Anatolia.

Mass., Harvard Univ., Diss.--Cambridge, 1994.

Thesis (doctoral)--Lund University, 1994. / Summary in English. Includes bibliographical references (p. 196-206).

Thesis (doctoral)--Lund University, 1994. / Summary in English. Includes bibliographical references (p. 196-206).

This thesis explores the development of material approaches in archaeology to discuss the relationship between material engagements in the world and cosmological schemes. In particular, the role of key materials in cosmologies is considered in light of ideas about elements and their fundamental role in the composition of the world. Three materials (wood, fire and water) are then considered in detail using anthropological illustrations to highlight the range of ways wood, fire and water are understood in traditional societies. Archaeological examples from the late Mesolithic and earliest Neolithic are examined in light of these ideas to suggest new possibilities for interpretations of the material remains discussed. These discussions of materials and cosmologies are set against a background of the debates surrounding the transition to the Neolithic. In particular, recent challenges to perceptions of the Mesolithic are considered to highlight the problematic discourses that have traditionally dominated studies of the period. It is amongst these critical reappraisals that this thesis contributes to emerging narratives of lives in the Mesolithic. The use of wood, fire and water is examined in contexts of the late Mesolithic and earliest Neolithic and is suggested to show much continuity in the practices that used wood, fire and water. Similar properties were actively called upon in these continued practices however, their deployment in new contexts and practices is suggested to indicate a shift in the importance of certain properties or characteristics. The implications of this in relation to cosmological schemes suggests aspects of continuity such as connections between materials and the landscape but accompanied by a stronger emphasis on certain relationships and processes within the world such as the transformation of bodies and articulation of community.

This thesis presents a contextual analysis of Neolithic art and architecture in Orkney. Focussing upon the Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site, it details the results of original fieldwork at three sites with in situ dressed and decorated stonework: Maeshowe, Skara Brae and the Ness of Brodgar. It combines the re-interpretation of known architecturally-situated carvings with primary data from new survey and excavation work, and reports the discovery of many previously unrecorded examples. This study reveals a diversity of stoneworking practices at these three sites which contradicts a broad catch-all term of 'art', demanding a more nuanced investigation. Previous studies have discussed the in situ decoration at Maeshowe and Skara Brae, but these have never been compared in detail, and the long histories of attention at these sites have led to questions over the authenticity of their carvings. The discovery of hundreds of comparable, in situ decorated stones from sealed Neolithic deposits during excavations at the Ness of Brodgar demolishes these doubts. The insight that this fieldwork has allowed is crucial. Excavation exposes aspects of the architecture which normally remain hidden, and allows the recording of decoration and stoneworking in situ, and as it is first revealed. This takes the discussion beyond the surface to allow an understanding of how stones were worked and decorated as part of the processes of construction and occupation. This challenges many narratives of Neolithic art and architecture, which have tended to focus upon superficial aspects of visual form, overlooking the ways in which buildings and stones came to be worked, carved, built and appreciated. It allows an exploration of how buildings and carvings emerge though process, and how the temporality of the working, decoration and appreciation of particular stones relates to the wider context of art and architecture in Neolithic Orkney.