Archaeologies of the body in early farming society

This was my first research project - a social archaeology centered upon notions of ideology and corporeality in segmentary lineage society – human body and body politic. A multivariate statistical analysis of the human remains of all published neolithic monuments in Wessex, England illustrated the manipulation of bodies and body parts in chambered and earthen long barrows (selection according to body part, sex, age and left/right). This was related to the dynamics of competition in classless society.

Theoretical background – Lukàcs, Althusser, various sociologies of knowledge.

The study was first presented as an undergraduate dissertation, Cambridge 1980. It was extended in further work with Christopher Tilley on Swedish monuments.

Publication

Ideology, symbolic power and ritual communication: a reinterpretation of Neolithic mortuary practices. With Christopher Tilley, in I.Hodder (ed), Symbolic and Structural Archaeology. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982

See also the chapter on neolithic monuments in ReConstructing Archaeology: Theory and Practice. With Christopher Tilley. Cambridge University Press, 1987, Second edition: Routledge, 1992

Subject revisited in Experiencing the Past: On the Character of Archaeology. Routledge, 1991

On prehistoric bodies see also Theatre/Archaeology. With Mike Pearson. Routledge, 2001