Abstract
This paper presents key results of theMaking a Markproject (2014–2016), which aimed to provide a contextual framework for the analysis of mark making on portable artefacts in the British and Irish Neolithic by comparing them with other mark-making practices, including rock art and passage tomb art. The project used digital imaging techniques, including Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), and improved radiocarbon chronologies, to develop a new understanding of the character of mark making in the British and Irish Neolithic. Rather than considering this tradition in representational terms, as expression of human ideas, we focus on two kinds of relational material practices, the processes of marking and the production of skeuomorphs, and their emergent properties. We draw on Karen Barad's concept of ‘intra-action’ and Gilles Deleuze's notion of differentiation to understand the evolution and development of mark-making traditions and how they relate to other kinds of social practices over the course of the Neolithic.
Highlights
This paper presents the results of the Making a Mark project (2014–2016), which aimed to provide a contextual framework for the analysis of mark making on portable artefacts in the British and Irish Neolithic by comparing them with other markmaking practices, including rock art and passage tomb art
This was achieved by: i) digitally documenting and analysing a suite of decorated artefacts from across Britain and Ireland and comparing both decorative motifs and practices of decoration with the recorded material from passage tombs and openair rock art; ii) using the new dates generated by Bayesian radiocarbon dating and modelling programmes (e.g. Bayliss et al 2017; Marshall et al 2016; Richards et al 2016; Whittle et al 2011) to provide firmer chronologies for the development of mark-making practices
The kinds of practices we have discussed for marked artefacts during the British and Irish Neolithic offer an excellent example of mattering; what our analysis reveals is the marks persisting from the intra-action between humans and materials
Summary
The mark-making traditions of Neolithic Britain and Ireland: a chronological overview. This is most clearly observed for the Folkton Drums, Yorkshire, and is the case for the abundance of decorated artefacts associated with human remains in Irish passage tombs This may be true for the deposition of chalk in the ditches of the oval barrow at North Marden, Sussex (Drewett et al 1986), though here the chalk artefacts are more likely to relate to the event of barrow construction rather than burial. The kinds of practices we have discussed for marked artefacts during the British and Irish Neolithic offer an excellent example of mattering; what our analysis reveals is the marks persisting from the intra-action between humans and materials These marks evince ways in which Neolithic communities in Britain and Ireland differentiated and configured the relationships between different kinds of materials. Neolithic marks are not one- or two-dimensional entities; instead they are four-dimensional events or processes involved in the mapping of relations yet to come
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