Food, Sex and Death: Cosmologies in the British Iron Age with Particular Reference to East Yorkshire

Abstract

The reconstruction of prehistoric cosmologies and attitudes to the body is an area of research which has benefited considerably from structuralist and poststructuralist theoretical perspectives. This case study is an attempt to identify the underlying rules which structured human experience during the pre-Roman Iron Age of the British Isles, by applying these theoretical approaches to evidence which is largely archaeological in its origin. The act of decoding prehistoric material remains relies to a large extent on the accessibility of different forms of material expression; in this case, architecture and settlement layout, human burials, animal burials, artistic depictions, portable artefacts, and their spatial, contextual and topographical inter-relationships. Orientation -facing east in life and deathOur entry point to understanding the British Iron Age is to appreciate how people were oriented in their daily lives and how, through the 'natural symbolism' of their bodies, they classified and acted in the world. We approach this problem by examining the use of space in terms of house, compound and cemetery organization, particularly in the provision of gateways and doorways (Parker Pearson & Richards 1994b), thereby understanding the orientations of people's movements in relation to the built spaces of house and tomb. Throughout Britain, the roundhouses which characterize the Iron Age share a consistent set of orientations, with few exceptions, during the period from the Late Bronze Age after c. 900 BC until the first century AD (Parker Pearson 1996). The majority of house entrances are orientated towards the east and -southeast (Fig. 1), not so as to provide optimal sunlight or shelter from the wind but so that their doorways might be aligned on sunrise at the equinoxes or at midwinter (Oswald 1997

Diet in the Iron Age cemetery population at Wetwang Slack, East Yorkshire, UK: carbon and nitrogen stable isotope evidence

“…[21]). One of the possibilities suggested for social distinction within the East Yorkshire burial tradition relates to the inclusion of animal remains as grave goods, some with pig and some with sheep [36]. The sampling programme used for this research encompassed two of the human burials with sheep inclusions, three with pig and one with both pig and goat (see Table 1).…”

Dynamics of Power: an Architectural Reading of the Concentration of Power (Ullastret, 4th-3rd Century BC).

“…From the above discussion, it is reasonable to suppose that Gou-Batlle was consecrated by the upper class, since these types of offerings only appear in Ullastret in spatial units associated with the gentry such as the necropolis. In this context a comparison emerges, for it has been argued the role played by animal offerings in the British Iron Age is a marker of social rank (Pearson, 1999). As we have seen at length, the role of animal offerings is crucial in understanding the inner dynamics of power in Ullastret.…”

De vierbeukige huizenbouw tijdens de midden- en late ijzertijd in de Kempen en Zandig Vlaanderen

“…252 Rapoport 1969;Rapoport 1976;Bourdieu 1977;Giddens 1984;Bourdieu 1990;Lemonnier 1993;Carsten & Hugh-Jones 1995;Dietler & Herbich 1998;González-Ruibal 2006;Hoorne et al 2021, 29-30;Deschepper 2022, 320-322. 253 Hodder 1990Parker Pearson 1999;Huijbers 2007, 318, 393-394, 397;Eriksen 2013;Sofield 2017;Eriksen 2019, 22-25. 254 Voor etnografische en historische referenties naar 'huizen als lichamen' en architecturale elementen als menselijk of dierlijke lichaamsdelen, zie o.m.…”