Being Mesolithic in Life and Death

Abstract

Fifty years ago, approaches to Mesolithic identity were limited to ideas of 'Man the Hunter' and 'Woman the Gatherer', while evidence of non-normative practice was ascribed to 'shamans' and to 'ritual', and that was that. As post-processual critiques have touched Mesolithic studies, however, this has changed. In the first decade of the 21st century a strong body of work on Mesolithic identity in life, as well as death, has enabled us to think beyond modern Western categories to interpret identity in the Mesolithic. These studies have addressed the nature of personhood and relational identities, the body, and the relationship between human and otherthan-human persons. Our paper reviews these changing approaches, offering a series of case studies from a range of different sites that illustrate how identity is formed and transformed through engagements with landscapes, materials, and both living and dead persons. These are then developed to advocate an assemblage approach to identity in the Mesolithic.

High level connections as a key component for the rapid dispersion of the Neolithic in Europe

“…The intrinsic link between an individual's activities and material productions, and interactions between people and identities, implies that the study of past material culture and related practices is insightful for the exploration of past identity constructions and changes (Dobres and Robb 2000). Approaches employed to explore the production and negotiation of identity in the archeological record rely on a broad range of cultural proxies, including tools, plant and animal exploitation, settlement organization, and body modification (Cobb and Gray Jones 2018;Finlay 2006). In this chapter, I will emphasize the recent conceptual, theoretical, and methodological developments in the exploration of past identities through the study of personal ornaments during the transition to the Neolithic in Europe.…”