Tan-Tan and Berekhet Ram Items Before considering further the emergence of a spatial element to ritual, it is necessary to consider what could be the earliest known archaeological manifestations of any kind of belief system; these are natural objects resembling the human body (or parts of it) which have received minor amounts of intentional modification in order to bring out the similarity further. Three of these pierres figures are known, two from the Lower Palaeolithic and one from the Middle. A Lower Palaeolithic assemblage at Berekhat Ram in the Golan Heights, Israel, dominated by Levallois flakes and containing a handful of bifaces dated imprecisely to between 230,000 and 780,000 BP (most probably 350-500,000 BP), yielded a small (3.5 cm in maximum dimensions) pebble of basaltic tuff containing scoria clasts resembling a human torso and head (Goren-Inbar and Peltz 1995; see Figure 21.2). This has been the subject of optical and scanning electron microscope study by DErrico and Nowell (2000), who concluded that, unlike other pieces of scoriae found at the locale, grooves found on the neck and sides of the piece were consistent with those produced by flint points used experimentally and thus that the figurine was intentionally modified. Similarly, theMiddle Acheulian (-400,000 BP) deposits at Tan-Tan, on the banks of the River Draa in Morocco, yielded a quartzite cobble (5 .8 cm in maximum dimension) again reminiscent of a human body and modified with eight grooves and with red pigment (Bednarik 2003). Finally, the Middle Palaeolithic cave site of La Roche Cotard (Indre-et -Loire, -32,000 BP) yielded a block of flint around the periphery of which several flakes have been removed and through which a natural perforation runs, into which a bone splinter has been wedged. It has been suggested that the overall effect is to resemble a face (Marquet and Lorblanchet 2003), with the protruding ends of the bone splinter effecting the eyes. Although one cannot at present rule out a purely fortuitous association of the removals and bone wedge with the cobble, and also the observation that the piece can hardly be described as artistically achieved (Pettitt 2003) the possibility remains that it, too, can be placed in the pierres figures category. While a sample of three, widely spaced in Pleistocene time, is hardly grounds for robust interpretation of pierres figures as unambiguous indicators of early symbolism, let alone ritual, we should not write them off as casual lithic doodles as Dennell (2008: 285) has noted. Instead, he argues that like the appearance of precocious lithic technologies in the Lower Palaeolithic such as end-scrapers and burins at Berekhet Ram, symbolism (and by extension perhaps, ritual) drifted in and out of use over evolutionary time. In this case rather than dismissing objects as nonsymbolic that would be regarded as symbolic if found in later contexts, it might be advisable to consider instead why they are so rare, and under what circumstances they might occur (ibid.: 285). Perhaps one might also view in this light six large mammal bones recovered from the Lower Palaeolithic site of Bilzinsleben (discussed below) that bear fine engraved lines which have been interpreted by the excavators as geometric symbols (Mania and Mania 2005: 110-14). These all bear numerous parallel, radiating or diverging lines of a regularity that it is difficult to see arising simply from butchery or from using them as small work surfaces on which perhaps hides were cut. One tarsal of straight tusked elephant from Bilzingsleben bears on its concave surface a number of superimposed rectangles. Although these need of course bear no relation to religion or ritual, it is their context that makes them interesting in this light, as discussed below. Insoll, T. (2012). The Oxford handbook of the archaeology of ritual and religion. Oxford, United Kingdom. Oxford University Press.
Posted on: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 07:37:08 +0000
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