Neolithic Landscapes: Neolithic Studies Group Seminar Papers, vol 2.

Neolithic Landscapes: Neolithic Studies Group Seminar Papers, vol 2. PETER TOPPING (ed.). (Oxbow monograph 86.) x+187 pages, 38 figures, 7tables. 1997. Oxford: Oxbow; 1-900-188-41-4 paperback [pounds]20.It is a sign of the intellectual health of a specialist study groupthat its deliberations can generate collections of papers of generalinterest. That this is the third volume to emerge from the meetings ofthe Neolithic Studies Group is a good thing in itself. This time aroundit is the topical issue of landscape which is addressed, although withthe added complication of attempting to focus on the domestic as opposedto ceremonial aspects of Neolithic life. Whether the two can actually bedisentangled to this extent is an arguable point, but the editor'sexpressed desire to move beyond the narrow functionalism functionalism, in art and architecturefunctionalism,in art and architecture, an aesthetic doctrine developed in the early 20th cent. out of Louis Henry Sullivan's aphorism that form ever follows function. which hascharacterized much of the study of Neolithic settlement and subsistenceis an admirable one. The volume proceeds from a series of thematicchapters to a number of regional studies, ending with comparativeaccounts of continental evidence. Tim Darvill sets the scene with adiscussion of the various ways in which landscape has been approached byarchaeologists, concluding that a landscape is a context within whichhuman action is generated, rather than an object to be studied fromwithout. As much as a set of topographic features, a landscape involvesconceptual schemes through which people apprehend their immediate world.In a case-study of the later Neolithic of the Stonehenge area, Darvillsuggests that the imposition of a cosmological scheme onto the land wasresponsible for the recognizable patterning of the archaeologicalevidence. What might perhaps be added to Darvill's account is aconsideration of how such a scheme might have been lived through andenacted in everyday practice.The two following papers serve to demonstrate the malleability of theavailable evidence for Neolithic landscape-use. Both have something toadd to current debate, but they are able to accommodate diametrically di��a��met��ri��cal? also di��a��met��ricadj.1. Of, relating to, or along a diameter.2. Exactly opposite; contrary.di opposed viewpoints to similar material. Pointing to recent scepticismover the model of sedentary mixed farming in the temperate Neolithic,Alasdair Whittle Alasdair Whittle is Professor of Archaeology at Cardiff University, specialising in the Neolithic period.His publications include Europe in the Neolithic: the creation of new worlds and Sacred Mound, Holy Ring. argues against a simple division between sedentism andmobility. Noting that discussions of relative mobility have been moresophisticated in hunter-gatherer studies than in later prehistory prehistory,period of human evolution before writing was invented and records kept. The term was coined by Daniel Wilson in 1851. It is followed by protohistory, the period for which we have some records but must still rely largely on archaeological evidence to , hedraws out some of the possibilities for different regimes of embedded,tethered, logistical and circulating mobility. Significantly, hepresents ethnographic evidence that neither livestock, nor cultivation,nor the building of substantial dwelling structures need necessitatefull-time sedentism. In contrast, Gabriel Cooney mounts a rear-guardaction on behalf of the sedentary farming Neolithic. I find the argumentno more convincing the second time around, and it is underlain un��der��lain?v.Past participle of underlie. here by awhiff of nationalism, presenting 'the Irish evidence' as adistinct entity defined by modern political boundaries. As Martyn Berberpoints out in a later paper, the limited evidence for Neolithic economicpractices in Britain and Ireland has meant that what has been found inone location is often taken as characteristic of all, resulting in ahomogenized and hybrid picture. So, while Cooney is able to point to aseries of large timber buildings with rich assemblages of carbonizedgrain, it is an open question whether one sees these as characteristicfarmsteads (of which there must at one time have been many more), orwhether they are a specialized type of site, connected with storage,redistribution or conspicuous consumption conspicuous consumptionn.The acquisition and display of expensive items to attract attention to one's wealth or to suggest that one is wealthy.Noun 1. . Pointing to the specificcharacter of the Irish Neolithic, Cooney emphasizes the enduringsignificance of place. Yet an attachment to place need not be anexclusive prerogative of sedentary communities. The pathways followed bymobile groups lead between significant places, of which Ayers Rock ismerely the most obvious example. However, Cooney's strong suit isan emphasis on regional variability. As he says, we should not expectthe same subsistence practices and patterns of residence to haveprevailed throughout Neolithic Britain and Ireland. Having said this, itmay have been precisely the belief that the Neolithic was underlain by auniform economic system which retarded any concern with geographicalvariation any variation of a species which is dependent on climate or other geographical conditions.See also: Geographic .The potential complexity of economic activities is underlined byJenny Moore's paper on the use of cyclical burning to maintain openwoodland, while Mark Patton attempts to integrate monuments and tracesof domestic occupation in his study of the Channel Islands. Pattonrecognizes that a landscape approach provides a framework for bringingtogether different aspects of the evidence, although like Darvill'schapter his account of Neolithic Jersey as divided between a sacredupland and a secular coastal lowland is a little formal andstructuralist in tenor. Miles Russell demonstrates that the wealth ofexisting evidence for Neolithic Sussex will sustain new interpretations,while Barber faces the opposite problem of the paucity of sites andfinds in Kent. As he argues, if our understanding of the period has beenconstructed in other areas with a richer record, a series ofexpectations are likely to be imposed upon less-studied regions. DaveField, Nigel Brown Nigel Brown (born 1949 in Invercargill) is a New Zealand painter whose work is mainly about the history of New Zealand and its natives.In the 1970s, he was inspired by expressionism and inf luenced by painter Colin McCahon. and Gill Hey provide chapters based upon recent fieldprojects on flint mines, southern Essex and the Upper Thamesrespectively. All present rich new material, and Hey's account ofYarnton in particular shows how an investigation framed at the landscapelevel can produce stunning results.Finally, Keri Brown and John Chapman discuss settlement in thelandscapes of the Tavoliere and the Great Hungarian Basin. Brown'sinformation on hundreds of enclosed Neolithic settlements is remarkable,but her story of stress caused by soil exhaustion and decreasingrainfall being solved by mass migration is a little one-dimensional.Chapman's is a weighty and densely argued contribution, whichsuggests that, rather than being just another kind of artefact See artifact. orcultural marker, tell mounds are the outcome of a long-term process ofbecoming. This process was underwritten by a decision on the part of acommunity to stay in one place, a nucleation nu��cle��a��tionn.1. The beginning of chemical or physical changes at discrete points in a system, such as the formation of crystals in a liquid.2. The formation of cell nuclei. of households insubstantial houses, social mechanisms to avoid fissioning, and a changedattitude to burnt daub, which became physical evidence of ancestraldwellings. One questionable element in the argument is the notion of'vertical competition', whereby larger tells might have beenawarded greater esteem or sanctity. Given that tell-formation would havetaken many generations, it is difficult to imagine authoritative peoplestriving to increase the height of their tell.JULIAN THOMAS Department of Archaeology University of Southampton In the most recent RAE assessment (2001), it has the only engineering faculty in the country to receive the highest rating (5*) across all disciplines.[3] According to The Times Higher Education Supplement