Exploring Prehistoric Identity in Europe: Our Construct or Theirs?

Identity is relational and a construct, and is expressed in a myriad of ways. For example, material culture and its pluralist meanings have been readily manipulated by humans in a prehistoric context in order to construct personal and group identities. Artefacts were often from or reminiscent of far-flung places and were used to demonstrate membership of an (imagined) regional, or European community. Earthworks frequently archive maximum visual impact through elaborate ramparts and entrances with the minimum amount of effort, indicating that the construction of identities were as much in the eye of the perceivor, as of the perceived. Variations in domestic architectural style also demonstrate the malleability of identity, and the prolonged, intermittent use of particular places for specific functions indicates that the identity of place is just as important in our archaeological understanding as the identity of people. By using a wide range of case studies, both temporally and spatially, these thought processes may be explored further and diachronic and geographic patterns in expressions of identity investigated.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: exploring prehistoric identity (Rebecca Enlander and Victoria Ginn)
Material culture of the dead
Introduction (Eileen Murphy)
2. Origin is in the eye of the beholder: analysis for in-grave ‘Eye-dentiy’ (Samantha Reiter)
3. Exceptional or conventional? Social identity within the chamber tomb of Quanterness, Orkney (Rebecca Crozier)
4. Is it possible to access identity through the osteoarchaeological record? (Sam Walsh)
Material culture of the living
Introduction (Caroline Malone)
5. Human bone as material culture of the living in Bronze Age Ireland (Kerri Cleary)
6. High and low: identity and status in Late Bronze Age Ireland (Eoin Grogan)
7. Who lives in a roundhouse like this? Going through the keyhole on Bronze Age domestic identity (Victoria Ginn)
8. Potty about pots: exploring identity through the pottery assemblage of prehistoric Malta (Sara Boyle)
9. A smith leaves traces; or, what material culture of the dead can say about the living? (Heide Wrobel Nørgaard)
Architectural and ritual expressions
Introduction (Dirk Brandherm)
10. Under the same night sky – the architecture and meaning of Bronze Age stone circles in mid-Ulster (Michael MacDonagh)
11. Reference, repetition and reuse: defining ‘identities’ through carved landscapes in the north of Ireland (Rebecca Enlander)
12. ‘Think tanks’ in prehistory: problem solving and subjectivity at Nämforsen, northern Sweden (Mark Sapwell)
13. Going through the motions: using phenomenology and 3D modelling to explore identity at Knowth, County Meath, during the Middle Neolithic (Eimear Meegan)
Our construct or theirs?
Introduction (Audrey Horning)
14. The trowel as chisel: shaping modern Romanian identity through the Iron Age (Catalin Popa)
15. Broken mirrors? Archaeological reflections on identity (Nicole Taylor)
16. Concluding thoughts. Expanding identity: archaeology, the humanities, and the social sciences (Tina Thurston)

the volume offers a number of stimulating and provocative articles. (David Clarke British Archaeology, Issue 139)