Connective Tissue: Embracing Fluidity and Subverting Boundaries in European Iron Age and Roman Provincial Images

Miranda Aldhouse-Green

doi:10.3390/rel12050351

Abstract

There is a mounting body of evidence for somatic exchange in burial practices within later British prehistory. The title of the present paper was sparked by a recent article in The Times (Tuesday 1 September 2020), which contained a description of human bone curation and body mingling clearly present in certain Bronze Age funerary depositional rituals. The practice of mixing up bodies has been identified at several broadly coeval sites, a prime example being Cladh Hallan in the Scottish Hebrides, where body parts from different individuals were deliberately mingled, not just somatically but also chronologically. This paper’s arguments rest upon the premise that somatic boundary crossing is reflected in Iron Age and later art, especially in the blending of human and animal imagery and of one animal species with another. Such themes are endemic in La Tène decorative metalwork and in western Roman provincial sacred imagery. It is possible, indeed likely, that such fluidity is associated with deliberate subversion of nature and with the presentation of ‘shamanism’ in its broadest sense. Breaking ‘natural’ rules and orders introduces edge blurring between material and spiritual worlds, representing, perhaps, the ability of certain individuals (shamans) to break free from human-scapes and to wander within the realms of the divine.

Highlights

There is a mounting body of evidence for somatic exchange in burial practices within later British prehistory
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations
My intention with this paper is to consider a selection of key images that appear to exemplify these freeze-framed change processes and to consider the possible contexts for such imagery, not least the likelihood that the projection of shamanism might be a prime issue in the production of images that twist, subvert and meddle with the realities of the material world

Summary

Dissolving Identities

It appears that the bodies of certain deceased individuals were carefully treated in complex ritual ways, the end processes of which involved their removal from swamps after the preservative process had turned them into bog bodies, the wrapping of their remains and their curation over centuries before their deposition in the foundations of their descendants’ dwellings It seems that underlying these complex procedures was the notion of connection: the perceived need to link the past and the present, the long-dead and the living. The interpretation offered by researchers at the site is that funerals were the context for the distribution of bones so that mourners could remember their dead and keep them alive through memory Such events again took place at boundary places, such as house foundations, perhaps, as postulated for Cladh Hallan, to represent fluidity between different people in different time zones

Connectivity in Iron Age European Figural Art

Human-faced

From Gundestrup to Gloucestershire

Romano-British

Looking Both Ways

Conclusions