MAGICAL, MUNDANE OR MARGINAL? This is a free offprint – as with all our publications the entire book is freely accessible on our website, and is available in print or as PDF e-book. www.sidestone.com MAGICAL, MUNDANE OR MARGINAL? Deposition practices in the Early Neolithic Linearbandkeramik culture edited by Daniela Hofmann A publication of the Institute for Pre- and Protohistoric Archaeology (Institut für Vor- und Frühgeschichtliche Archäologie) of the University of Hamburg and the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion, University of Bergen. © 2020 Individual authors The authors are solely responsible for the contents of their contributions Published by Sidestone Press, Leiden www.sidestone.com Lay-out & cover design: Sidestone Press Photograph cover: Triton Shell from Ösel © Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum, Ingeborg Simon ISBN 978-90-8890-861-3 (softcover) ISBN 978-90-8890-862-0 (hardcover) ISBN 978-90-8890-863-7 (PDF e-book) Contents List of contributors 7 Structured deposition in the Linearbandkeramik — is there something to talk about? Daniela Hofmann 9 Isn’t it strange? Grinding tool deposits and deposition in the north-western LBK Caroline Hamon 33 Tracing LBK ritual traditions: the depositions at Herxheim and their origins Fabian Haack 53 Odds and end(ing)s. Aspects of deposition and ritual behaviour in the Linearbandkeramik of the Low Countries Luc Amkreutz and Ivo van Wijk 83 LBK structured deposits as magical practices Daniela Hofmann 113 Grave goods, refuse or the remains of rituals? Differences in the assemblages from the LBK burials of Arnoldsweiler-Ellebach Robin Peters and Nadia Balkowski 149 Suspiciously rich pits in the Wetterau Johanna Ritter-Burkert 169 The structure of chaos: decay and deposition in the Early Neolithic Penny Bickle 181 What happened at the settlement? The testimony of sherds, animal remains, grinding tools and daub Jaroslav Řídký, Petr Netolický, Lenka Kovačiková, Marek Půlpán and Petr Květina 205 Keeping order in the Stone Age Richard Bradley 227 The structure of chaos: decay and deposition in the Early Neolithic Penny Bickle Abstract A close relationship between material waste and the house is found throughout Neolithic Europe. This paper considers the ways in which depositional practices at Linearbandkeramik (LBK) settlement sites, particularly the means by which material culture reached the loam pits which flank the walls of longhouses, may have structured everyday life and experiences of architecture. This discussion is used as a starting point to consider LBK social and cultural attitudes to the left-over residues of everyday activities, or waste materials, and their deposition. The argument is put forward that waste was not considered as “polluted” or “polluting”, but rather kept deliberately close to houses, as it was effective at materialising particular temporalities for LBK communities. It is suggested that certain aesthetics of decay were desired, built out of attitudes to the past and desired futures. The discussion then considers how death and the dead, both in the form of human remains and abandoned houses, were incorporated into and shaped LBK settlements. Overall, the paper argues that careful attention to deposition practices can provide useful insights into broader themes around social life in the Neolithic, and can help overcome an artificial divide between the sacred and profane. Keywords: Neolithic settlement; Linearbandkeramik; depositional practices; decay; memory Introduction Attitudes to discard, decay and deposition are culturally defined and vary enormously between different cultures (Douglas 1966; Rathje and Murphy 1992; Thompson 1979). This was brought home to me when, in 1998, I spent four months living in the eastern highlands of Zimbabwe. The rubbish pit for our house was situated some five or six meters away, squarely opposite the front door and, just in the same way the house’s new foreign inhabitants sparked curiosity, so did the unusual contents of the pit. I was shocked when, shortly after our arrival, children started playing in the pit. Attempts to encourage them not to do so failed and over the months, items placed in the pit were returned to us (empty shampoo bottles and other plastics, an unspooled cassette tape (returned fixed), food cans, a broken flip flop etc.) or distributed, often to my horror, about the landscape. While I reacted negatively to this, the children did not have such qualms and were free to use the rubbish pit to inspire games and play. Over time, I came to realise how culturally defined my reactions had been. I had failed to understand that the material did not reach the bickle 181 end of its life by entering the pit, thereby breaking its connection with its owner. As such, the objects continued to be a meaningful way of getting to know the newcomers through their unusual classification of perfectly useable objects as waste. Furthermore, the action of discarding rubbish did not result in it becoming “dirty” or “polluted” just because it had been thrown away. In contrast, from my viewpoint, the objects changed their nature the moment they entered the pit. This example illustrates three Western attitudes to rubbish which should not be unthinkingly applied to archaeological contexts: 1) items of rubbish are contaminated or polluted (“dirty”); 2) as such, these objects have to be separated from daily life; and 3) the action of discard is itself neutral and without meaning (Chapman 2000a, 4; 2000b, 62). In the place of these assumptions, the residues of everyday life from the past can be reconfigured as meaningful, contextual and affective, while deposition can be viewed as a significant activity informative to archaeologists in its own right (Brück 1999; Chapman 2000a; 2000b). Building on these insights, studies of waste can provide powerful understandings of beliefs and attitudes to cultural institutions such as the house. Waste itself can occupy an ambiguous position, always potentially ready to be re-used or recycled into another object (Douny 2007; Edensor 2005). The emotions surrounding discard may not necessarily be straightforward, but can be highly charged, inspiring enjoyment and competition (Dikötter 2006, 63) or invoking sadness through the recalling of painful memories (Finn 2007). Failure to follow defined patterns brings in an element of risk, with potentially stark consequences for those who do not adhere to culturally accepted rules (Gosden 1999, 156). Concentrating material residues around the house was a practice recurrent in many prehistoric societies (Bradley 1996; Chapman 2000b, 83; Hodder 1990; Whittle 1996) and deposition may therefore have had a substantial impact on how domestic architecture was experienced. The longhouse of the Early Neolithic Linearbandkeramik (hereafter LBK) culture is no exception to this union of deposition and architecture. Longhouses are rarely found without nearby pits, scattered across the settlement, and the loam pits, which either continuously or intermittently flank the axial walls of the house (a practice long acknowledged in LBK studies, e.g. Stäuble and Wolfram 2012, 36). In the absence of preserved floor plans1, these loam pits and their contents have had a prominent role in the study of LBK longhouses. Thought to have been created as “borrow pits”, when clay was sought for the construction of wattle and daub walls (Modderman 1988), the ceramic remains from these pits have played a crucial role in defining the chronology of settlement sites (Boelicke 1982; Boelicke et al. 1997; Lüning 1988; Modderman 1970) and it is on the basis of these remains, in conjunction with radiocarbon dates, that the 20–30 year use-life of the house was first proposed (Boelicke 1982; Boelicke et al. 1997; Jakucs et al. 2018; Modderman 1970; Stehli 1989; cf. Rück 2007; 2009). Similarly, finds from loam pits have been variously drawn on to characterise the house’s inhabitants. At Cuiry-lès-Chaudardes (Aisne Valley), Lamys Hachem (1997; 2000) suggested that households could be divided into different spatial groups on the basis of which animal species was best represented in the pits of different houses. She concluded that some households showed a preference for the hunting of wild boar while others predominately herded cattle or sheep, 1 In the Paris Basin, occupation levels appear to be preserved at only one site, Jablines (Lanchon et al. 1997; see below). 182 magical, mundane or marginal? extrapolating to propose groups of “hunters” and “herders” occupying LBK settlements (Hachem 1997; 2000). In another case, the status of certain houses was inferred from the occurrence of higher numbers of polished stone tools in their loam pits (e.g. Elsloo, Van de Velde 1990). The general assumption is that the materials within these pits represent, in an unbiased fashion, the “rubbish” of daily life, deposited in a convenient location close to the house. Whether the discarded objects are thought to arrive by chance or purpose, many researchers adhere to Coudart’s (1998, 73, author’s translation) view that the deposits around the longhouse were “a veritable log book, from which the daily life of the inhabitants can be recovered” (but see below). Once a longhouse was abandoned, the structure is thought to have mostly decayed in situ, leaving mounds often interpreted as ancestral to the long mounds found along the Atlantic Seaboard (Hodder 1984; 1990; Midgley 2005). Decay and dissolution therefore tempered the everyday during the LBK. In this paper, I consider the different practices (deliberate as well as unstructured) that brought varied materials to the loam pits in order to explore the ways in which these pits framed how communities encountered and experienced the construction of architecture and its subsequent decay. The aim is not to survey the entire spectrum of depositional practices and taphonomic processes which created LBK loam pits (for this see discussions in Hamon et al. 2013; Stäuble and Wolfram 2012), but rather to investigate the relationship between deposition and decay, considering their role in the daily experiences of life and death at Early Neolithic settlements. The majority of the evidence in this paper is taken from the westernmost region of the LBK: the Paris Basin. Longhouses were constructed in this region from about 5000 to 4700 cal BC (Figure 1). They belong to two successive and related cultures, the LBK or Rubané, which is itself divided into two phases (Rubané récent du Bassin parisien; RRBP and Rubané final du Bassin parisien; RFBP) and the Villeneuve-SaintGermain (VSG)2. Over its life the architectural practices of the LBK longhouse became a nexus of different routines and rhythms, and, if we are to recapture the broader role structured or ritual deposition played in forming LBK social life, then the everyday engagements between community, architecture and deposition, between the sacred and profane, should also be a part of the debate. Culture in the ground. Everyday accumulation and deposition Everyday accumulation Before I turn to explore possible attitudes to rubbish and discard in the LBK, several key questions must be asked of the taphonomy of waste material at settlements3. Central to this investigation are the loam pits which flanked the walls of the longhouses: when they were constructed, the speed and manner in which material remains entered the pits and how their fills related (temporally and spatially) to the house by which they were located. There is much still to be understood about the 2 3 This sequence is contested and some researchers have argued that the RRBP and VSG are actually contemporary (Dubouloz 2003; Jadin 2007). For our purposes here, I follow the consensus and envisage the VSG as succeeding the RRBP. I.e. how culture got in the ground. The title of this sub-heading is adapted from that of Tim Ingold’s (2004) paper Culture on the ground. bickle 183 taphonomic processes in play and how much of the pits has been lost to erosion, particularly as the loess soils on which LBK settlements were built suffered high rates of loss resulting in the erosion of walking surfaces (Stäuble and Wolfram 2012; Wolfram 2008). Table 1 is an attempt to summarise the different conclusions drawn by research into LBK settlements to date. There has been almost unanimous agreement that such pits were excavated at the same time as the longhouse was constructed; the unity of house and pit seemingly was a fundamental part of the living space at LBK settlements. This view dates back to the 1960s, when the “house complex” was first proposed (Soudský 1966), if not before. It has rarely been challenged and, although several different models have been offered since, they are variations on the same theme. However, the temporal relationship between the fill of the pit and longhouse occupancy continues to be debated, as are the means by which it was refilled. The proposed models vary from filled in immediately on construction, to waste only being collected in the pits after the house was abandoned (see Table 1). Whittle (2003) raised the possibility of the pit fills signalling foundational deposits (e.g. of feasting remains) at the beginning of a house’s life, after they had previously been suggested as immediately refilled after construction to support the walls of longhouses from the earliest phase of the LBK (Cladders and Stäuble 2003, 493; Stäuble 1997). In contrast, Wolfram (2013) and Květina and Řídký (2017) argue that waste only collected around houses, and pits were finally filled in, after a longhouse was abandoned. The general consensus, however, is that the fill of loam pits was formed at least partly in a drawn-out fashion, at the same time as the house was occupied (Table 1). Pits appear to be open for a short while at least before refilling began. The lower layers of pits often seem to be relatively sterile and to have arisen from the initial erosion of natural loess soils. In the Paris Basin, Allard et al. (2013, 14) identify sterile layers 184 magical, mundane or marginal? Figure 1. The distribution of the LBK showing early (c. 5500– 5300 cal BC; darker shading) and later (c. 5300–5000 cal BC; lighter shading) phases. Sites mentioned in the text and Table 1, from west to east: 1 Poses; 2 Jablines; 3 Marolles-surSeine; 4 Bucy-le-Long; 5 Cuirylès-Chaudardes; 6 Berry-au-Bac; 7 Irchonwelz; 8 Remicourt “En Bia Flo II”; 9 Verlaine “Petit Paradis”; 10 Elsloo; 11 Geleen-Janskamperveld; 12 Bruchenbrücken; 13 HanauKlein-Auheim; 14 Altdorf-Aich; 15 Eythra; 16 Miskovice; 17 Bylany; 18 Strögen; 19 Mold; 20 Brunn am Gebirge; 21 Neckenmarkt; 22 FüzesabonyGubakút (Alföld Linear Pottery culture). The Paris Basin and Aldenhovener Platte are marked by stripes. Base map after Jeunesse 1997, 10, fig.1. Table 1 (opposite). Summary of interpretations of loam pit taphonomy. bickle 185 Reference Site Region Interpretive model (as indicated in the text) Overlapping house plans? Material culture type studied Proposed relationship of loam pits to house Method of infilling Speed of infilling Directness of infilling Stratigraphy identified in pits? Soudský 1966; Soudský and Pavlů 1972 Bylany Bohemia, Czech Republic House complex Some Architecture Excavated at house construction Gradual; during house occupation No definitive conclusion No definitive conclusion No Boelicke et al. 1997; Lüning 1988 Aldenhoven plateau Rhineland, Germany Hofplatz Some Architecture Excavated at house construction Gradual; during house occupation No definitive conclusion No definitive conclusion No definitive conclusion Cladders and Stäuble 2003; Stäuble 1997 Bruchenbrücken Hessen, Germany Hofplatz No Architecture; all finds Excavated at house construction Filled in to support walls of house at construction Refilled almost immediately Indirect No? Last 1998 Miskovice and Bylany Bohemia, Czech Republic House complex Some Pottery and lithics Excavated at house construction Gradual; variation in deposition at different locations around the house At least while house is occupied Both Yes? Coudart 1998 76 settlements Various House complex Some Architecture Excavated at house construction Gradual; during house occupation No definitive conclusion No definitive conclusion No? De Grooth 2013; Louwe Kooijmans et al. 2003; Van de Velde 2007 GeleenJanskamperveld Limburg, Netherlands Hofplatz/Yard Rarely Pottery and lithics Excavated at house construction No definitive conclusion No definitive conclusion Mostly indirect, but refuse practices poss. changed between Early and Late LBK No definitive conclusion Allard et al. 2013 Aisne valley Paris Basin, France House complex No Animal bone, human bone, pottery and lithics Excavated at house construction Not a single episode, but few recuts 1–5 years Both Yes — initial weathering Bosquet 2013 Remicourt “En Bia Flo II” Liège, Belgium Not stated No Pottery and lithics Excavated at house construction Gradual; during house occupation? Few years at most Indirect — after deposition in “open-air refuse dumps” Yes Wolfram 2013 Eythra and Hanau-KleinAuheim Saxony and Hessen, Germany Aim of research to test Yes All No definitive conclusion Dumps of material, possibly accumulating after house is abandoned No definitive conclusion Indirect No definitive conclusion Květina and Koncělová 2013; Květina and Řídký 2017 Bylany Bohemia, Czech Republic Aim of research to test Some Pottery Challenge assumption that pit fills are contemporary to houses Dumps of material, possibly accumulating after house is abandoned No definitive conclusion Indirect No definitive conclusion Burnez-Lanotte and Allard 2013 Verlaine “Petit Paradis” Hesbaye, Belgium House complex No Lithics Excavated at house construction Three types: immediate and discrete, diffuse layers, dispersed and heterogeneous No definitive conclusion Both Yes Domboróczki 2013 FüzesabonyGubakút (ALPC) Heves county, Hungary Row model No All Excavated at house construction Gradual over early part of house occupation 4–5 years; possibly up to 10 Indirect No definitive conclusion Rück 2013 Multi-regional (but mainly Aldenhoven plateau) All Row model Yes All available Excavated at house construction? Highly variable Impossible to define No definitive conclusion Yes at most sites along the Aisne valley. They conclude these layers form from the initial erosion of the pit sides, suggesting that there was a short gap in time between the creation of the pits and their infilling. Such layers can also be identified at other sites in the Paris Basin, such as at the Villeneuve-Saint-Germain site of Poses, where the depth of the layer can be estimated as up to 10 cm (Bostyn 2003, 51–3). Outside of this region, Lenneis (2013) also argues that at the large site of Mold, Lower Austria, no immediate refilling of pits could be identified. Overall, the presence of these layers strengthens arguments that pits were created for the extraction of the soils, rather than deliberately for containing waste (cf. Allard et al. 2013, 12). After an indeterminate period of time, therefore, during which pits were left open to the elements, material remains began to accumulate in the loam pits. The nature of this accumulation has been described in different ways. The main driver behind the description of pit fills has been to determine whether they can provide a reliable chronological estimate for the length of house occupancy (see e.g. Květina and Řídký 2017) and this has had an impact on the features of deposition which have been given attention to date. In contrast, the focus here is on what we can capture of social attitudes to waste disposal in the LBK, which has seen less direct debate. For the sake of space, I have attempted to summarise three elements of pit fill description which repeatedly appear (see Table 1): 1. Method of infilling: whether material entered in single or multiple episodes of “dumps”, or as a gradual accumulation of remains. 2. Speed of infilling: whether it was a quick event once it had begun, or slow (or rather, whether pits were infilled across the length of time the house was occupied). 3. Directness of infilling: whether deposits were made straight into the pit (direct) or material reached the pit from nearby middens (indirect). For each of these different aspects of pit infilling, there is also the possibility that material made its way into the pit in a variety of ways, and the majority of approaches acknowledge that this was likely. From Table 1, it seems that most researchers favour gradual accumulations of material in the pits, arriving from middened material nearby. This conclusion is based on fragments from the same object found dispersed spatially, and in more recent research, vertically through the pit (e.g. Allard et al. 2013; Bosquet 2013), mostly through analysis of the ceramic and lithic remains. This focus on lithics and ceramics may be partly due to preservation, as animal bones are not uniformly preserved across the LBK (Lüning 2000, 109). Where animal bones are preserved, attempts have been made to assess the rate of accumulation in terms of season and calendar years. The discarded deer antlers found in loam pits at Cuiry-lès-Chaudardes suggest they were open for at least a year, but shorter than the entire duration of house occupation (Allard et al. 2013, 16). The extent of preservation here (though erosion rates are high) allows for comparison between different forms of evidence and Allard et al. (2013, 20) make a useful distinction between the recurrent build-up of waste from food preparation and more irregular accumulation from craft activities, such as the manufacture of tools. Accompanied by few identified episodes of recutting, therefore, pit fills seem from current research most probably to have come together piecemeal (or at least over the course of a year) as a mixture of deliberate and gradual accumulation of material (see also Stäuble and Wolfram 2012, 42–3). There is no denying that we have lost a significant amount of material, which may obscure some patterns. However, it seems probable that there was no deliberate sorting and separation of waste. It also seems likely that waste was not treated as in any way polluted, resulting in it being discarded at a greater distance from the settlements. 186 magical, mundane or marginal? Figure 2. The “empty” spaces identified as the possible location of middens at Remicourt “En Bia Flo II”. After Bosquet (2013, 38). Basic domestic units Pits outside basic domestic units Activity zones and middens/recycling areas? bickle 187 The question then remains where material was collected before deposition in the pits. The only instance of an Early Neolithic surface being preserved in the Paris Basin is at the settlement of Jablines, where about 10 cm of occupation debris survived, indicating material was kept close to the longhouses (Bostyn et al. 1991; Hachem 2000; Lanchon et al. 1997). Wolfram (2008; 2013) has examined one of the few cases where an occupation layer is preserved (to be specific, when material is not recovered contained within cut features) at the site of Hanau-Klein-Auheim (Hessen). The layer, which showed no evidence of stratigraphy or features, was on average between 20 and 30 cm thick (Wolfram 2013, 81). After examining the size, abrasion and weight of pot sherds, Wolfram (2013, 82) suggests the material was well trampled, having accumulated around houses during and after occupation. Wolfram (2013, 83–4) makes a distinction between the “clean” internal spaces of houses and the external accumulation of material; very little material gathers alongside the inside of walls during occupation, but it does so as the house decays. A similar result was also seen at Altdorf-Aich in Lower Bavaria, where phosphate traces were low within the houses themselves, but relatively high in and around pits and pit complexes (Lüning and Reisch 2011, 251). At Remicourt “En Bia Flo II”, Bosquet (2013, 38) identifies particular “empty” spaces between house rows at the settlement, where material may have accumulated as middens (Figure 2). The spatial distribution of material residues in loam pits has also inspired considerable debate about activity zones around houses (Boelicke 1982; 1988; Boelicke et al. 1994; Last 1998; Stäuble 1997), but very little about the impact of the pits on how the settlement and longhouse were encountered (though Hofmann 2006 is a notable exception). At Jablines no overall uniform patterns of discard could be identified, but there were distinct areas of flint knapping to the north and west of the house (Hachem 2000, 308; Lanchon et al. 1997, 328). This pattern is repeated at Hanau-Klein-Auheim, where “chipping floors” were identified behind houses (Wolfram 2013). A similar in situ cultural horizon was found at Altdorf-Aich, Lower Bavaria, containing sherds, small pots and a grinding stone, along with three spreads of small stones (Kieselrollierung: pebble paving or surface) possibly representing hearths or ovens (Engelhardt et al. 1997, 34), but again this layer was outside houses and fairly mixed (but see Lüning and Euler 2011). At the Bohemian sites of Bylany and Miskovice, deposits near the southern or south-western door appear to be characterised by sweepings from inside the house, while deposits at the back of the house may have built up from specific activities taking place nearby (Last 1998, 26–7). However, unlike the regularity of house plans (Coudart 1998), variability seems to be the main attribute of pit deposits and patterns identified on one site or in one class of object are not necessarily repeated elsewhere (Last 2015). Thus the deposition of scrapers and burins in a location spatially distinct to other flints in a loam pit of house 200, Cuiry-lès-Chaudardes (Chataigner and Plateaux 1986, 322), may suggest that certain tools, and by extrapolation certain activities, were kept separate, but this specific pattern has only been found to date in this instance. At Cuiry-lès-Chaudardes house 380, refitting fragments of decorated ceramic and flint ended up on both sides of the house (Ilett et al. 1980, 39) (Figure 3). Overall, this discussion suggests that houses were kept clean, perhaps they were swept on a regular, if not daily, basis. In contrast, the outside of houses may have been characterised by the gradual accumulation of material, the gathering of which accelerated after the house was abandoned and began its decay. These patterns suggest that moving around an 188 magical, mundane or marginal? Figure 3. The distribution of refitting lithic and ceramic material found in the loam pits of house 380 at Cuiry-lès-Chaudardes. Lines indicate refitting pieces found either side of the house. After Ilett et al. (1980, 39). LBK settlement meant being surrounded by the residues of everyday life scattered around, and there may have been middened and mixed heaps of objects, and decaying organic waste, across the settlement. Structured deposits In contrast to the apparent gradual and haphazard way in which loam pit fills came together, a number of specific “events” or structured deposits appear to have been made, although the extent to which the material was laid out in specific forms appears to have varied. At Berry-au-Bac, Hachem and Auxiette (1995, 134) suggested that the animal bone in the pits represented specific butchery episodes in which the meat was prepared for consumption. At two Early Neolithic sites in Austria, Neckenmarkt and Strögen, flint artefacts and animal bones accumulated in the same areas of the loam pits, which the excavators, Lenneis and Lüning (2001, 59–63), suggested were the result of episodes of meat preparation. Deposits of this nature, along with flint working debris, may have resulted in material going into the pit in one-off events, but even these stand out from occasions when clear structure can be attested. The starkest example of this was identified by Hamon (2008, 204) at Berry-au-Bac, where three querns were found in a loam pit placed face-down in an arc over their corresponding grinders. This does not appear to be an accidental configuration of objects, as similar arrangements are attested elsewhere (Constantin et al. 1978; Hamon 2008, 204; this volume). Constantin et al. (1978) suggested that a comparable find of querns at Irchonwelz, Belgium, was a terminal deposit marking the end of the house’s life. However, as Hamon (2008, 206) argues, they could easily have been retrieved from the pit and they could have been placed here for storage when not in use (cf. Allard et al. 2013). Echoing this suggestion is a collection of limestone beads from the loam pit of a longhouse at the VSG settlement of Marolles-sur-Seine (Augereau and Bonnardin 1998, 25, 34). These beads were roughouts and had not yet reached their finished form, but were contained within a pot (or base of a pot) and probably once bickle 189 wrapped in some form of perishable material (Augereau and Bonnardin 1998, 25)4. Nestled in amongst the accumulated residue by the house, perhaps those responsible for placing this collection of items in the loam pit intended to retrieve it at a later date and finish the production of the beads. Therefore, while these seemingly transient and carefully placed deposits are admittedly rare, they may indicate that the contents of the pit were sorted through and objects retrieved. Proof for this will be difficult to come by, but it is an interesting proposition. Wolfram (2013, 84) argues that broken pottery was kept along the outer walls of houses for “recycling”. Recovered or not, after material had accumulated by the house, there is no reason to consider it to have been “dead” or no longer active in everyday routines. Therefore, a number of different practices which brought material remains to these pits can be identified, from the collection of refuse from people working close by and sweepings from inside the house to the gradual build-up of middened material, to name but a few of the suggestions. Despite the difficulty in defining their temporality directly, the loam pits seem to have come together gradually through everyday tasks and movements in the spaces between longhouses rather than in one “event” or through an overly deliberate and structured pattern of deposition. Human remains Human remains are also found in a disarticulated state in loam pits, caught up with other materials. In the Paris Basin, the association of human remains with houses follows that of other materials, perhaps evidenced by the unstructured finds of disarticulated remains in loam pits at Cuiry-lès-Chaudardes (Pariat 2007). Pariat’s (2007) study of the human bone found in the loam pits at Cuiry-lès-Chaudardes concluded that the pieces ended up in the pits accidentally after first being middened with other detritus. Earlier burials, one assumes, were disturbed by later pit digging and the remains unceremoniously allowed to disintegrate with the rest of the rubbish. I find this argument unconvincing, as burial on settlements is often close to houses, which are not subsequently built upon5. The child burials in the Paris Basin are often considered to be associated with loam pits (see e.g. Jones 2005, 209), and this has fed into a general assumption that settlement burials were low status (critiqued in Hofmann 2009; Hofmann and Bickle 2011). In fact, this is rare and only four (from a total of 27) child burials in the Paris Basin were actually placed in part of the loam pit, two of which were interred in especially extended sections of the pit (Bickle 2008, 191, 444). For the majority of burials associated with houses, an individual pit was created between the loam pits and the walls of the houses and occasionally it appears as if the burial was placed in the line of the wall (e.g. the two child burials at Berry-au-Bac “Le Chemin de la Pêcherie”; Farruggia and Guichard 1995). When child burials are found in loam pits they do not appear to have been unthinkingly included in the pit, as if thrown out with the rest of the rubbish. In one instance, burial 271 at Cuiry-lès-Chaudardes, a child was placed on the edge of a loam pit, in an apparently extended section created specifically to receive the burial (Soudský et al. 1982, 75; see Hofmann and Bickle 2011, fig. 9.5). Thus the child was placed in association with the pit, but at the 4 5 The same pit, north of house 1, also contained flint and bone tools thought to be used for preparing the limestone beads (Augereau and Bonnardin 1998, 25). Overlapping house plans are very rare in the Paris Basin (there are four instances currently known; Bickle 2008). This is not the case for all Early Neolithic sites in central Europe and further east sites appear to have been more densely packed. 190 magical, mundane or marginal? Phase House Disarticulated human remains present Trenched NW end Rooms (in western end) 1 1 2 45 2 X 90 X 112 X 126 X 390 X 320 X 400 X 440 3 X X 500 X X 520 560 3 X 11 X 380 X X X X X X 580 X 85 X 89 X 245 5 X X 570 Table 2. The pattern of human bone and architectural features at the houses of Cuiry-lès-Chaudardes (Aisne). Data collated from Pariat (2007) and Coudart (1998). X 360 420 4 X X X 320 X 425 X 460 X 80 X 225 280 410 X X X X 450 X 530 X same time a certain separation from the loam pit was maintained. The burial was placed on a layer of sprinkled ochre (Ilett et al. 1980) further marking out the ground the child lay upon. The relative timings between the pit and the burial are uncertain, but it can be suggested that space was made in the tumultuous and unruly deposits for the burial, as if space was being made in everyday routine for mourning and ritual, even if only temporarily. At the nearby site of Berry-au-Bac “Le Vieux Tordoir” (Allard et al. 1995), Thévenet (2004) suggested that burials may have remained open, with the deceased placed in a niche enclosed by an organic (e.g. wooden) covering. Remains could have then been removed and deposited with other waste or taken further afield. The buried human body might not have been forgotten or disregarded, but viewed, like the quernstones or limestone beads, as recoverable and always capable of rejoining the daily engagement of bodies, material and decay — or the process of decay could have been carefully monitored (this will be returned to below). The majority of the disarticulated remains from Cuiry-lès-Chaudardes are found in houses built during bickle 191 the third phase of five, which sees substantial architectural changes (Allard et al. 2013; Bickle 2008, 198; Hachem 1997; Pariat 2007) in the western/north-western end of the house, limited to this phase. First, this phase sees the most houses with a trench-built north-west end (four out of a possible seven), which contrasts with only one each belonging to phases one, two and four; and second, rather than the majority of houses having one “room” in the western part of the house, five houses have two or more (Bickle 2008, 191, 198) (Table 2). The connection between architectural changes in this section of the house and human remains turning up in the loam pits is interesting in light of Bradley’s (2001, 53) suggestion that this end of the house was possibly a mortuary shrine (expanded on by Lüning 2009). The burial of the child at Cuiry-lès-Chaudardes discussed above (burial 271) would have forced people to touch the contents of the loam pits. This may also have been the case for loam pit 151 at Vignely “La Porte aux Berges”, where the excavators suggested that an inhumation was placed in the pit, with the main bones later recovered (Thévenet 2018, 193). The material excavated from the loam pits today is hard and relatively clean and in a different state to the teeming, rotting mass that would have surrounded the LBK longhouse (Hofmann 2006; Wolfram 2008). During the LBK, therefore, communities would have lived with the decaying mass of material on either side of their houses and across the settlement. The remnants of tool making would have mixed with broken pieces of pot (possibly someone’s favourite?) alongside organic matter that has not survived today. Such accumulations of material in the daily living space, in which people came into contact with its textures, views and smells, may have been actively sought. In her anthropology of the Dogon, Mali, Douny (2007, 311) describes how their houses were “surrounded by agglomerations of flies, multiple forms of straw, rags, tin cans, animal bones, tree leaves, dung, torn plastic bottles, and shredded plastic bags” which “accumulate[d] in the furrows of the paths that weave around Dogon households”. The experience of waste “between your toes” is viewed positively by the Dogon, while cleanliness is viewed unfavourably, considered to indicate lifelessness or laziness (Douny 2007, 311, 315). In a comparable way, I propose that the build-up of material by LBK longhouses could have been desired: evidence of a busy, active household. Patterns of deposition across the settlement Early Neolithic longhouses in the Paris Basin were most often constructed in settlements of various sizes, of which the largest was the settlement of Cuiry-lès-Chaudardes with more than 35 preserved house plans (Coudart 1998; Hachem 1997). Often the deposition histories of houses are regarded as uninfluenced by their setting amongst other houses, with the area around a house viewed as a “Hofplatz” marking out an independent social unit (Boelicke 1982; Lüning 1988). Rück (2007; 2009) has recently suggested that LBK settlements were arranged in rows, but does not really comment on the forms of relationships that existed between houses and the independence of houses seems to be borne out in how rarely refitting objects are found dispersed across the settlement (Ilett et al. 1986, 36). However, given the enormous task of checking for refits across a large settlement, such instances are likely to only be spotted when preservation is particularly good (Hofmann 2006; Wolfram 2008). “Next Neighbour Analysis” from the sites of Brunn am Gebirge and Mold, Austria, demonstrated that material tended to stay close to houses, with houses situated close to each other demonstrating the strongest similarities 192 magical, mundane or marginal? Figure 4. The “paired” houses at Cuiry-lès-Chaudardes, indicated by the straight lines joining each house with its “opposite”. After Hachem (1997, figs 8−9). in ceramic designs (Stadler 2005, 270, fig.13; Stadler and Lenneis 2009). While care must be taken in transposing the evidence from Austria wholesale onto sites in the Paris Basin, it seems likely that material from different houses was not actively mixed in the loam pits, bar the occasional intrusive object. Despite this, in the Paris Basin, certain houses seem to be linked through depositional practices. At Berry-au-Bac “Le Chemin de la Pêcherie”, in all three houses more remains ended up in the loam pits on the southern side of the house than the north (Constantin 1995, 151). There are numerous explanations as to why this might be the case. The southern side could have received more deposition because it was not shaded by the house and therefore people gathered here preferentially when carrying out tasks. However, this tendency to deposit remains on the southern side of the house is not repeated at other sites. For example, at Bucyle-Long, Boiron (2007) found that the places of deposition were not regularised nor repeated between households. She concludes that each household arranged the spatial location of its own tasks (Boiron 2007, 305). Such patterns then speak to the kind of habitual bodily routines and preferred styles of movement, such as those described by Bourdieu (1990) in the concept of the habitus or Ingold (2000; 2011) in the taskscape, with structure and pattern arising in how people chose to walk around the settlement and carry out tasks, rather than in deliberate strategies. Of the 23 houses at Cuiry-lès-Chaudardes whose loam pits have been studied, a tendency for material to be placed on the southern side of the house has been identified at 15 (Constantin 1995, 151; Ilett et al. 1986). This pattern is further complicated as houses seemed to be “paired” along an east–west axis, with both houses preferentially depositing material on either the side further away from to the house they are paired with or the side facing it, but never do both bickle 193 houses choose their north or both their south pit, suggesting deliberate choice (Hachem 1997; Plateaux 1993; see Bickle 2013, fig. 7.6) (Figure 4). This network of depositional practices suggests that different houses had varying relationships to each other. It can therefore be expected that there are a number of explanations as to why certain depositional practices developed. We can envisage a situation where slightly more convivial relations led to households preferentially sitting on the same external side of the house, opposite one another, talking and sharing jokes, with people moving backwards and forwards across the intervening space and a residue of waste building up in the vicinity where people worked. However, in later phases the remains of earlier houses would also force contemporary houses into different relationships with each other. Where the other sides of the houses were favoured for deposition, perhaps relations were a little cooler and people took to working on the other side of the house or conceivably households wanted to hide certain tasks or the disposal of some objects. It is equally possible that the materials placed alongside the houses and in the loam pits were on display to other members of the settlement and, therefore, where deposition on the same side was favoured, households were perhaps engaged in some form of competition. Instead of trying to distinguish whether this was associated with closer cooperation between houses or with increased competition, as we are unlikely to ever satisfactorily determine between these options, this pattern is best interpreted as revealing the interconnectedness of the architectural structure of the house and the practices of inhabitation during the LBK. Here, there is a tension between each house standing alone as a separate structure, emphasising household identity, with only rare instances of refitting objects occurring in the pits associated with more than one house (see discussion above), and depositional patterns around the house, which were partly created through interaction with nearby households. Therefore, although the focus for everyday routines was probably organised by individual households, at the same time how and where they were carried out was influenced by the very fact of being part of a wider community. Decay and dissolution: deposition of the longhouse Analogous to the decay alongside houses and in the loam pits, longhouses are thought to have decayed in situ, with few if any interventions or alterations after their abandonment (Coudart 1998; Modderman 1970; 1988; Whittle 1996; 2003; cf. Rück 2007; 2009). From the size of the posts, it is estimated that these houses could have lasted for 80 or so years, yet the phasing and duration of the settlements suggest that they were occupied for about 20 to 30 years (Boelicke 1982; Boelicke et al. 1997; Bradley 1996; Coudart 1998; Hodder 1990; Lüning 1988; Whittle 1996; 2003; cf. Rück 2007; 2009). Therefore, after the initial phase of the settlement, the inhabitants would live with the decaying remains of the past around them; a very tangible reminder of specific people and events from the previous decades of the settlement. As post pipes do occur during excavation in some cases, it seems highly likely that at least the posts from some houses were left (Allard et al. 1995, 60). The rarity of overlapping house plans in the Paris Basin suggests more strongly that in this region houses were left to decay, while elsewhere in the LBK a substantial effort may have been put into clearing older houses to make way for new buildings. There is of course the possibility that some posts could have been removed at ground level or re-used in subsequent houses (Hofmann 2006). 194 magical, mundane or marginal? It is likely that the wattle and daub walls, as well as the roof, went first, leaving upright posts protruding from a mound of clay and straw (Bickle 2008, 164; Borić 2008, 127; Hofmann 2006). Borić (2008, 127) evokes Hugh-Jones’ (1995, 247, my emphasis) anthropology of the Maloca6 in north-west Amazonia: the “roof and walls rot away leaving the heavy hardwood columns, standing like bleached bones on a site full of memories, the histories of its residents”. These mounds and uprights would eventually have been taken over by plants. This process might have been viewed as analogous to the re-growth of woodland, which is not clean, but involves decay and disintegration (see Bickle 2013, fig.7.7). Plants, dead leaves and fallen branches litter the floor of the forest, with new shoots forcing their way through the messy tangle situated above the soil level. As the posts decayed and fell, plants would begin to take over, first grasses and weeds, then more substantial shrubs and bushes. Just as the material in the loam pits decayed in full view, moving from recognisable object to concentrated mass, so did the longhouse. The build-up of material and its subsequent decay allowed, through an intimate engagement with its fabric, for the history of the house to be felt and known materially. Borić (2008, 127) has argued that taboos originating in ideas of the house becoming polluted on the death of particular individuals may have been a prominent reason for the abandonment of Starčevo–Köros houses (see also Tringham 1991) and, furthermore, that this may have been transferred to the earliest LBK houses (Bánffy 2004; Domboróczki 2010). Given evidence in the Paris Basin for the continued access to graves and little to support the deliberate burning of houses at the end of their use-life, pollution may not be a useful concept for imagining the end of the houses in this region. Rather, notions of a drawn-out dissolution, encompassing not only the break-up of the household, but of its physical structure as well, appear more appropriate. Hence, in place of a temporally shorter and dramatic rite ending the house (though see Midgley 2005, plate 21, reproduced as fig. 7.7. in Bickle 2013)7, the longhouse of the Paris Basin continued on after it was abandoned, probably for some significant time, with waste accumulating around it. These houses would have been at once both familiar and unfamiliar: a sensory mix of “smells, profuse and intrusive textures, surfaces, peculiar and delicate soundscapes, and perplexing visual objects, juxtapositions and vistas” (Edensor 2005, 144). Just as the accumulation of remains around a living longhouse may have been viewed as integral to a successful household, subsequent decay would texture the passing of time at a settlement. Newly abandoned houses could still have been entered, their contents available for reuse, while older buildings may have become more dangerous places with the risk of being hurt by falling posts and inhabited by the memories (or ghosts) of individuals known only through stories. The history of the settlement could thus be known through its architectural structures and the relative states of decay. However, as well as perhaps tapping into a generic sense of ancestry sensu Bradley (1996; 2001), these histories were most likely also specific, contingent and local. In this sense the decaying longhouses of a settlement were not only a significant aid to social memory, the physical presence of the house demanded that their stories were told (Borić 2008, 127; 2010, 53), but the histories of different houses were layered together, built up out of a network of different relationships (Bickle 2008, 292). We can think of this as 6 7 A longhouse housing several families (usually related through patrilineal lines) in different compartments (Hugh-Jones 1995). The reconstruction of a longhouse, built by Constantin, was attacked by vandals and burnt (Midgley 2005). As the photo demonstrates, a considerable amount of the house remained. bickle 195 the “present past”, closely co-located with the living. Elsewhere in the Neolithic, it has even been suggested that houses were deliberately abandoned in the early stages of tell formation as an active process of memory creation (Draşovean et al. 2017) Decay thus tempered life at LBK settlements, forging links between past and present, and it may have done so with death as well. Working in south-east Asia, Adams (1971; 1977) argued that funerary rites paralleled everyday activities, particularly around the action of pounding. Sounds familiar to everyday life (the pounding of rice, of the ground prior to planting, in metalworking and in clothes washing) are echoed in the rites surrounding death, with regular pounding of gongs and rice pestles (Adams 1977, 47). This parallel between everyday activities and ritual expressions articulates something of the fabric of this particular world view, in which noise making accompanies transitions in state: from rice to flour, from bare earth to planted, from raw material to tool, from dirty to clean, from life to death. For the LBK, concern with and particular experiences of decay may have in a similar way framed the transition from life to death. While lived in, longhouses were regularly swept clean, in an action of what was probably daily care. As the household and the longhouse came to an end, deposition and decay continued, while sweeping was discontinued. Material was allowed to gather around the building, perhaps becoming part of a midden which was part house, part more recent remains of daily life. Similarly, the decay of bodies does not seem to have been controlled, nor do attempts at preservation appear to be in evidence. There is also little suggestion that the body on death became “polluted”, nor did discarded waste material. In contrast, the transformation from alive to dead (or rather from active part of the settlement to blended with its history) could have taken place over a prolonged period of time, in which decay was an essential part of the process (Bloch and Parry 1982). Decay of houses and persons, therefore, may have taken place on analogous paths of transition, always materially present to be investigated and renewed. I am not the first to suggest that the LBK communities made links between human bodies and houses (e.g. Jones 2005; Whittle 2012), but here I am making a slightly different argument. Rather than suggesting that bodies and houses were thought of as analogous in the LBK, I propose that they were subject to the same aesthetic and material processes, in which decay was part of the experience of deposition, and the present past at LBK settlements. Conclusion Concentrating material residues around the house was a practice recurrent in many prehistoric societies (Chapman 2000b, 83) and while this has provided a wealth of possibilities for capturing daily life through the materials themselves, it is rarely seen as an inherent part of the architectural structure and everyday life. Considering the routine and rhythm of inhabitation (how houses were lived with) permits exploration of the qualities of building and decay of the longhouse in the Paris Basin and how they framed a cyclical pattern of creation and disintegration that may have applied as much to human relations as to the longhouse architecture itself. So, in the sense that longhouses in the Paris Basin were likely left to decay in situ and the space the house occupied was not subsequently built upon, the longhouse outlived the household. This potential abandonment and decay must have been part of the anticipated future for the longhouse as it was built, and in turn, also that of the household. Thus, following Douny (2007, 329), the 196 magical, mundane or marginal? processes of accumulation and decay materialised particular temporalities for Rubané communities in the Paris Basin. Rather than disregarding the contents of the loam pits of LBK longhouses as a by-product of material practices, when taken together the homogeneous and unstructured deposits are physically connected in their affect and temporality. Once space had been cleared and the house constructed, the material practices which took place in and around the house were inscribed onto that architectural space. These are inhabited networks in which the pits are a focus for activity and a crucible for creating an experience or aesthetic of decay in the LBK settlement context. Eventually, the pit contents collapsed in on themselves and would have disappeared from view completely. More broadly, therefore, the wider community was partly constituted out of these histories of decay. The growing settlement may have been seen as analogous to the build-up of remains around longhouses. In the same way, depth of time at settlements may have been desired, as it stimulated particular emotions associated with belonging and affiliation, but difficult to achieve, as it required commitment to and negotiation of the everyday making of relationships. In some cases this led to more substantial numbers of houses being constructed, while in others, the area was abandoned after a couple of generations. This discussion hopes to provide a starting point for re-casting how the sacred and profane are considered in LBK contexts, and for rethinking deposition and decay as meaningful ways of getting on and making life happen in the LBK. 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