Identity and House Burning

In his overview of the Neolithic era, Douglas Bailey discusses the revolutionary new concepts of identity that emerged during this period. As human lifestyles dramatically changed with the advent of domesticated plants and animals, as well as with the move away from hunter-gatherer groups to communities of large settlements, ideas about human identities and relations also changed. Simultaneously, new modes and materials of expression were also appearing, providing Neolithic peoples with a way to convey their new ideologies of self- and person-hood. Figurines are extremely compelling products of this era, but the ritualistic house burning mentioned in Tringham and Conkey’s article is also an interesting and illuminating example of the changing ideas of the Neolithic era.

Tringham and Conkey discuss the correlations found between figurines and houses, suggesting that the figurines may have indicated certain stages of the house’s “use life.” What is interesting about this correlation is the fact that the figurines represent human bodies, thereby correlating not only the objects themselves, but also the human body with the house. This concept is not unfamiliar to later cultures, or even the present: the model of the house encapsulating life inside of it has been a fairly dominant metaphor for the human body with a soul inside—in fact, the conceptual merging of the house and human life were reiterated again and again after Hurricane Katrina stole thousands of people’s homes, a word which was often interchanged with “lives” in survivors' accounts. While the correlation between figurines and homes is telling, it also provokes questions about why houses, as symbols of life, were deliberately destroyed by fire. While Tringham and Conkey offer justifications for the ritual that include protection from spirits, the practice seems in keeping with Neolithic ideas about the self and perceptions of humanity.

The idea of “use life” is perhaps the most useful concept when thinking about the rationale behind ritualistic house burning, because it suggests a consciousness of temporality and transience. As Neolithic farmers began to learn the life cycles of crops and animals, as well as the cycle of seasons that are often equated with notions of life and death, concepts of beginnings and endings must have become forefront in their minds. Similarly, in large settlements, life and death become more visible as large populations gets larger and the disposal of the dead becomes a community issue. As these examples of life cycles became more apparent on a macro communal level, issues of individual and self temporality must have also come to the forefront. The discarding and destruction of anthropomorphic figurines is fairly obvious evidence of the grappling of these existential questions, and the burning of houses at the end of their “lives” is a conceivable extension of the correlation between the “lives and deaths” of material objects and the lives and deaths of people.

Bibliography

Tringham, Ruth and Margaret Conkey; 1998. "Rethinking figurines: a critical view from archaeology of Gimbutas, the "Goddess" and popular culture," in Ancient Goddesses: the myths and the evidence. Lucy Goodison and Christine Morris. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 22-45.

Bailey, Douglas; 2005. Prehistoric Figurines: Representation and Corporeality in the Neolithic. Routledge: Taylor and Francis Ltd.

http://katrinapatina.blogspot.com/ 3/4/07.