Personal Ornaments in Prehistory: An exploration of body augmentation from the Palaeolithic to the Early Bronze Age

Chapter 1

Introduction

Tens of thousands of years ago at the site of Sunghir in Russia a number of people were buried with grave goods, including truly extraordinary personal ornaments – thousands of beads made of ivory, hundreds of teeth from foxes as well as beautifully drilled and detailed stone pendants in red and black, and bracelets made from thin strips of laced ivory (Figure 1.1) (White 1993; Trinkaus et al. 2014; Trinkaus and Buzhilova 2018). These discoveries are well known, as would be expected for such an interesting find. The people who made and used them were hunter-gatherers of the Upper Palaeolithic, living before permanent settlement, and before agriculture or herding. As the traditional narrative would have it, these artefacts were also made before such things could exist, because stone beads and the use of drills to make neat bidirectional perforations, and the mass production of thousands of almost identical disc beads, an almost unimaginably labour intensive task, just aren’t part of the pre-Neolithic narrative. They are a paradox of the archaeological story of prehistory and one of the reasons that I am writing this book.

In archaeology perspective is everything, and from my perspective, as an archaeologist of the prehistoric Near East, specifically Anatolia, stone beads and detailed working of materials are part of a different narrative, that of the Neolithic, the almost mythical time when humans, animals and plants all became domesticated and took material culture with them on the ride. In the narrative paradigm of my field of research, stone beads are part of the domestication process, they are not fundamental to being human, but they are part of being a domesticated human. So how can I make sense of the artefacts from Sunghir? This book takes the reader for a journey from the Palaeolithic to the Bronze Age, to rewrite and re-understand the history of personal ornaments from a different perspective – a really long and really wide perspective – that breaks the boundaries of formalised academic study of ornaments to ask what the view is like on each side of the various borders. The point of this is not that there is deficiency in any one area of study, or that some are better than others, but that there is a lack of communication between different areas of specialisation and that perhaps we can’t see the wood for the trees. Given that both big and deep history have become increasingly popular in recent years, it seems time to take a look at the temporally and geographically bigger picture of ornaments and ornamentation practices.

Figure 1.1: Photo-montage of Grave 1 with burial Sunghir 1, adult male, from Sunghir, Russia, 34,000–30,000 cal BP, early–mid Upper Palaeolithic (Image: K. Gavrilov, courtesy of A. Buzhilova).

Personal ornaments, beads, pendants, bracelets, necklaces and labrets among many others, were one of the first forms of material culture used by humankind in the Palaeolithic and have remained both physically and psychologically close to the human species ever since. As a means of expression, a way to create identity, an experimental ground for new technologies and materials and an almost universally available source of evidence, ornaments are one of the most diverse and information rich areas of prehistoric material culture.

This book looks at how the relationship between people and their personal ornaments developed in the Palaeolithic and how it changed from the end of the ice age, before permanent settlement when mobility and interaction with the landscape were fundamental to daily life. It follows ornament use through to the Early Bronze Age by which time social organisation and technologies had undergone significant change and the path was laid for the foundation of cities, stratified societies, specialised production and the accumulation of personal wealth. The examples of personal ornaments that are discussed in this volume are drawn from Turkey, the Near East, Greece and the Balkans and in some cases further afield into Asia and Europe. This area encompasses regions that hosted the earliest uses of many materials and technologies in ornamentation, and the roots of many events in the human journey. Prehistory has traditionally been characterised in terms of a linear progression in complexity from the Palaeolithic to the beginning of urbanism in the Bronze Age and this narrative has been supported by artefacts and ecofacts strongly associated with subsistence strategies – stone tools, pottery, plant and animal remains. The grand evolutionary narrative inevitably affects the prioritisation of evidence in archaeological research, and in the significance attributed to certain artefact categories in interpretation.

It may be surprising to many that for most periods ornaments are one of the least researched groups of archaeological artefacts, despite their visual appeal and early association with treasure, precious metals, jewels, wealth and even human cognitive development. This can be attributed to their supporting role in the historical narrative in which they have been overshadowed by the dominance of chipped stone and ceramics. Research into ornaments largely bypassed the culture historical approaches that built the foundation of other artefact studies, and therefore lacks the underpinnings provided by decades of catalogues and reports. While in some ways this is a disadvantage, in others it provides ornament researchers with a unique opportunity to shape their own subject area without the baggage that generally attends an archaeologist in the formation of their interpretations. In the research that has proliferated in the last 20 years, a somewhat top-heavy scientific literature has accumulated. There is currently far more published evidence about the production of ornaments, their material and chemical composition, and their origins than there is about the basic details of their form, context and use. There is also far more published material and theoretical consideration of the Palaeolithic period than any other in prehistory, although the gap is rapidly being closed by research in later prehistory.

There are very few excavated assemblages that have been completely published – a situation that is true, with some degree of variation, for all the regions and time periods that are covered by this book. This has both acted as the inspiration for this book, which provides an opportunity to take a step back and consider how research of personal ornaments has developed in the past decades, and has also highlighted just how sparse the evidence remains. This book therefore has two fundamental aims, firstly to question the way in which personal ornaments are approached theoretically by archaeologists and secondly to provide a document of the state of knowledge and interpretation in the field. In working towards these aims it also questions the traditional narratives of prehistory, provides examples of how non-linear development can be traced through artefacts and considers different perspectives on the ‘revolutionary’ changes that paved the way for the cities and economies on which the classical world was founded.

What is a personal ornament?

Although the term personal ornament is in common use, and the title of this book can be readily understood, these words carry heavy implications about aesthetic quality, display and association with the individual. A personal ornament can be many things; a necklace, a bracelet, earrings, nose rings, headdresses, painted skin, tattoos, to name but a few. Personal ornament is a catch-all term and personal ornaments are by definition ornamental in purpose, driven by aesthetic motives – primarily visual objects worn on or around the human body. However, the idea that the objects that we refer to as personal ornaments were of only aesthetic consideration is to limit their agency and breadth of importance in the past. An item classified as an ornament might in fact be a vehicle for magic or protection, an indicator of status or achievement, an experimental ground for technological innovation, a facilitator of communication and above all might be a private object with no relation to display or aesthetics. The things we characterise as personal ornaments based on some of their physical characteristics have sensorial, temporal and social aspects that lie beneath their form and material. The personal ornament in archaeology is necessarily a more bounded concept, restricted by considerations of preservation, deposition context, and our modern-day ability to understand an object’s intended use.

In practical terms, the most numerous unit of ornamentation identifiable in the prehistoric archaeological record is certainly beads (perforated objects that can be strung, including pendants) and as a result these will take principal place in the evidence discussed here. Alongside beads are also bracelets (solid annulets or bangles) as well as other items such as those used in body piercings (labrets, plugs etc.). Basic units such as beads can also be combined to make more complex items and in this respect ornaments often have multiple scales of visual or social impact depending on presentation, combination and location as well as interpretations of meanings imbued by these factors of context.

Our ability to convey the findings of the study and interpretation of ornaments relies on both terminology and typology as the core elements of engagement. Ornaments are assessed and categorised according to their physical features, usually including form, colour, material, size and traces of technology. After excavation methodology, the approach to the use of typology and terminology has the next greatest influence in the way that ornaments are presented and interpreted. For example, the use of terms such as amulet, that have meaning related to context of use, intention in production and agency of both ornament and user, is unjustified in cases where evidence of the accompanying social factors is not provided. Terminology has the capacity to pre-interpret artefacts, thereby conflating two steps of the research process. Likewise, typology had been largely taken for granted as a fundamental part of the study process, but in reality, the divisions that are made between different forms need to be statistically supported and should aim to offer clarification of understanding. The traditional culture historical approaches to items considered to be ornaments do not necessarily take account of the complexity of these theoretical and practical factors.

Researching this book has involved a voyage through archaeological thought and has led to an exploration of places and times as well as ways of thinking. To produce the depth of understanding necessary to consider personal ornaments in detail it has been essential to consider many different areas of the world as well as a variety of different points of view. Something that I hope will become clear throughout the course of this book is that, paradoxically, regarding personal ornaments as ornamental items is to do them an injustice by placing them within a fundamentally western, economically and visually driven, view of beads, bracelets, clothing decorations and other similar items. These artefacts have more depth to their meaning than just manufacturing technology and economic worth – they are often related to belief, medicine, magic, lifestyle, material properties, status, skill, age, group identity, individual identity, phase of life and many other factors. In many cases their relationships with people and other things can, and should, be allowed space within academic discourse.

Personal ornaments as an academic subject

Ornaments have been objects of fascination for collectors and travellers for centuries, there are extensive museum collections, including particularly items highly regarded for their fine workmanship and exotic materials (for example Istanbul Archaeology Museums, Karalom 2007; Rezan Has Museum, Istanbul; the Beck Collection of Beads in the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology; see also Lankton et al. 2003). As with other items of early ‘art’, it is probably their nonutilitarian nature, the aesthetic rather than subsistence driven activity as well as unique closeness to the ancient human that has helped to attract attention. In contrast personal ornaments were an academic slow-starter. The work of Beck (1928) on typology marks a point in the 1920s when their research became widely known. There is still a thriving scene for amateur experts, collectors and the interested public, indeed there is perhaps as much work carried out in the amateur sphere, particularly in ethnography, as the professional, a point well attested by specialist conference attendance (Glover et al. 2003; Allen and Hector 2007). The position of ornaments within the archaeological excavation had a pronounced effect on the degree of attention that they received; those found in large quantities within burial contexts were more likely than the individual lost artefact to be found and studied. Indeed, early excavation methodologies took little account of the retrieval of small artefacts, being based around fast excavation without the extensive use of fine sieves. Improved methodologies and the introduction of consistent dry and wet sieving and/ or flotation has led to a much-improved retrieval rate. A more formalised academic approach to the study and interpretation of items of personal ornamentation is taking shape, and is still mostly based on culture historical approaches which seek to place artefacts within sequences of types, changes in which can be traced diachronically and lead ultimately to the identification of development (or increasing complexity) through time.

Some of the fundamental theoretical and methodological issues that affect archaeological interpretation, particularly in its earlier years, have had, and continue to have, a disproportionate effect on approaches to ornaments. Ideas of status, prestige, exotica and a linear (evolutionary) trajectory towards inevitable complexity for many years led to early prehistoric ornaments – those lying in the simplest terms between the attention-grabbing firsts of the Palaeolithic period and the gold of the 5th millennium BC to be largely overlooked in scholarship. Indeed, in all respects innovations have dominated the scene in ornament studies, and shaped the research agenda, feeding the fascination with invention and the evolution of human creativity. The inevitable result of this is that the items not considered to be newsworthy are overshadowed both in academic discourse and in the media presentation of ornament studies. This book foregrounds examples of these less extraordinary (indeed ordinary) ornaments to argue that herein lies the potential to inform us about social and technological structures and practices and to elucidate, perhaps better than any other artefact class, complex relationships of contact and exchange between far-removed geographical regions.

Such scientific and academic use of ornaments requires thorough recovery from the archaeological record. Recent years have seen significant improvements in recording techniques with increasingly accurate three-dimensional plotting of individual artefacts that allows relationships between different objects to be established. There has also been a greater focus on the recovery of evidence for the working of materials within settlements that means production spaces can now be identified and microscale associations between, for example, materials, production debris and the tools used to work them, established.

Post-excavation assessment of ornaments now relies on a combination of scientific methodologies and interpretive frameworks to produce interpretations of material use, social significance, interaction, technology and many other aspects of these artefacts. Scientific analyses make it possible to directly compare geographically distant objects and to understand processes such as heating or surface treatments that were used to manipulate natural materials. Until recently the haphazard approach to ornament recovery from the archaeological record was accompanied by lack of theoretical consideration of ornaments. As archaeological research has advanced mechanistic approaches to the archaeological recording and interpretation of excavated ornaments is increasingly unable to cope with the subtle nuances of production processes, use and recycling, material choice and variation, colour and texture. The traditional form-based typology system that relies on conformity to recognised shapes to identify cultural and geographical variation is inflexible in its outlook and in many cases outdated in its types, being neither scientifically rigorous nor well suited to the archaeological materials at hand. This situation is beginning to be questioned through the application of statistical analyses of the forms of beads as well as wider reassessments of their occurrence and numbers and the agency and intentionality of those who made and used them. While it has long been assumed that ornaments were ‘prestige’ items and were designed to display or advertise status or group and social identity – with a fundamentally ‘ornamental’ role, the consideration of ethnographic examples, while not providing exact parallels, certainly argues for a wider interpretation of beads, bracelets and other items of ‘ornamentation’.

The case of obsidian provides an illustrative example of what might be achieved when research questions are broadened, and a full range of physical and theoretical analyses is applied to artefacts. Obsidian has been at the forefront of research into the exploitation of natural resources during the prehistoric period, partly as a result of the chemical signatures that allow the identification of the source of each artefact’s raw material and therefore tie an item to its place of origin. This gives a single-material window onto the obsidian related activities of ancient communities. In the case of beads and other ornaments that are made from a variety of materials, the sources of some of which can be very specifically pinpointed (obsidian, meerschaum, carnelian and lapis lazuli for example), and the remainder of which can often be associated because of shared production practices, a multi-dimensional picture of activities, associations, contacts and material cultural similarities can be built up. The small size of both ornaments and obsidian artefacts and their resulting portability means that they were highly mobile. In the case of personal ornaments, their association with the body, with some of the most advanced manufacturing processes and technologies and with possible cultural affiliations gives them even more power as a tool for understanding past activities. This is just one example of the potential of ornaments to contribute to the wider questions of archaeological research agendas at multiple scales and dimensions.

As academic archaeologists work in separate fields – for example specialists who work on Palaeolithic material would only rarely be involved in Bronze Age projects – their research and publication are also often separate both in approach and outcomes. For this reason Palaeolithic archaeology has for some time seen personal ornaments as a key indicator of the manifestation of human identity and communication and theorised them accordingly, while Neolithic archaeology has given them less importance in study or interpretation and little theoretical attention. The data presented here therefore varies enormously in its quality, in the way that it has been recorded, in the research agendas of those who carried out the work, and in the theoretical interpretation and results produced. A broad diachronic and interregional view of ornaments, a big and/or deep history, is needed to integrate the available data and allow the identification of the most useful aspects of each approach as well as allowing for thorough reinterpretation of the existing data.

Ornaments in prehistory: a very long story

The timeframe covered in this book, focusing on the period 40,000 BC to 2800 BC – from the Palaeolithic which saw the very first use of ornaments up to the Early Bronze Age which encompassed vast changes in technology and social organisation – has been chosen for a variety of reasons. The first, and most pressing, is that that to understand ornaments it is important to consider why they were made and to do that, a depth of time-knowledge is necessary. Single-period, single-material or single-site studies are the normal scale for archaeological consideration of ornamentation practices. While these provide an important window on ornaments and offer a cumulative wider view of regions and timespans, discussions of relationships and the ‘big picture’ have little chance to develop. The second reason is that archaeology focuses on change, and ties material culture variations to the narrative of prehistoric developments. Taking the long view allows the discussion not to be based around episodes of change or associated with, for example the effect of transitional periods such as the introduction of agriculture on personal ornamentation. This also allows the narratives themselves to be questioned – as they increasingly are (Hodder 2018) – and the role of time and the way archaeologists perceive evidence to be reassessed in a broader sense. This is best seen in the geographical relationships that can be examined, questioning whether contemporary activity and the perceived level of social development in different regions (Neolithic in the Balkans, Chalcolithic in the Levant and eastern Anatolia etc) are realistic or useful representations of how people saw themselves and their interactions with others.

It is somewhat ironic that the period with arguably the least amount of evidence for personal ornamentation, as well as the most difficult archaeological record with which to work scientifically, is currently the best known and most intensively academically discussed of all. As well as the emergence of anatomically modern humans, the Palaeolithic saw the beginning of human self-expression, one of the earliest and most prolific indicators of which is the manufacture and use of beads and pendants at sites across a vast geographical area. Indeed the presence of personal ornaments is now considered as a key indicator of modernity in human evolutionary development (White 2007, 287), and also perhaps of the emergence of self expression (Malafouris 2008, 406). As the Palaeolithic period progressed, and evidence for human activity increases in density, more complex patterns of human resource exploitation emerge such that by the Epipalaeolithic period, a time when Homo sapiens sapiens had begun to organise the production of food and to make increasingly complex and more permanent shelters and houses, personal ornaments already showed consistency in material use, engagement with landscapes, and social meaning. A wide variety of materials was already in use, including some traditions that started thousands of years earlier, and there were innovations in material, form and technology that reflect the routes taken by hunter-gatherer groups through diverse landscapes.

The transition to the Neolithic period, the slow ‘revolution’ that lasted for many thousands of years and finally decisively domesticated the human species as well as the plants and animals that are used for subsistence needs, was host to an already established ornamental repertoire in most of the regions considered in this volume. Indeed many of the practices and technologies that were established in the Upper Palaeolithic were continued into the Neolithic, long after settled life and agriculture had changed the old hunter-gatherer relationship with the landscape. The nature of the Neolithic itself, the speed at which it occurred and the effect it had on human populations are reflected in ornamentation practices. The inclusion of a wide geographical region here also allows the consideration of how different periods and dates relate to one another and whether our periodisation terminology is useful in identifying and talking about items of material culture.

Despite all previous social and organisational change associated with domestication and settled life, it was not until the second half of the 7th millennium BC in Turkey and the Near East (corresponding to the latter portion of the Neolithic period) that there was fundamental change in the way that ornaments were conceptualised, made and used. During this period routinised high volume production came into focus, along with the emerging metal technologies that played an important role in the future developments of ornamentation practices as well as the expansion of one of the most important technologies in human history. The movement of a greater variety of materials can be traced, making regional and interregional relationships easier to see during this period of established settled life. In addition, the aesthetic qualities of ornaments underwent fundamental change, with larger ornaments and lighter, brighter, colours and reflective surfaces.

Although the Chalcolithic is treated as a separate entity it was, in reality, a bridging period, largely characterised by continuity, that spanned the time between the profound ornament changes of the later Neolithic period and the equally deep advancements in scale, materials and technologies that accompany the very earliest signs of the beginning of the Bronze Age. Although glass making was established in the Bronze Age, its foundations undoubtedly lie in the Chalcolithic with the heating technologies and transformative processes that were associated with other materials. Likewise, precious metals that became signs of prestige and wealth in highly stratified societies were used, and indeed beautifully worked, in the Chalcolithic. Institutionalised mass production also started in this period, as did the organisation that was necessary for its maintenance. Among most of the regions considered in this book it is the ornaments of the later periods, the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age that are least researched and published and so many findings are preliminary or geographically sparse, although the trajectory of development on a wider scale is clearer.

The reader may question why the book stops at the Early Bronze Age and does not continue to deal with the very important events that built the foundations for classical civilisation. This decision relates to the point at which important materials, technologies and organisations were introduced; by the Early Bronze Age all the features that carried on into later periods were already in operation – precious metals were in use, hard minerals as well as a variety of gem stones were all worked in high volume production, glass technology was in its infancy, and long distance trade was flourishing. It is therefore at this point that we leave the story for others to carry on.

The book presents a diachronic evaluation of the story of prehistoric ornamentation practices that takes into consideration innovation and transformation through technology and changing social practices over many thousands of years. However, it also considers in detail the deep continuities that seem to have been important in the organisation and identity building of the past societies it encompasses and uses these to consider which features of ornaments and ornamentation practices may have been important to those who made and used them. The story of personal ornaments is a very long one, and as with any story, only truly makes sense when it is told in full.

What is in this book?

As part of a Western discourse on history (Young 1990 in Lucas 2005, 135) archaeology looks at its objects from a certain perspective – one that interprets ornaments according to the way we use them, as primarily decorative but occasionally symbolic (wedding rings for example) objects of many or indeed any material/s. A single book is not enough to cover the entire history of ornaments, in either breadth or depth. This book therefore focuses its attention on a broad time period, including the whole of the prehistoric period, but within a limited geographical region. The reasons for this choice are manifold but primarily driven by the area of my own research, Turkish prehistoric ornaments, as well as the long term lack of publication in the core of the region included here – modern Turkey. The surrounding regions, the Near East, Balkans, Aegean and Greece are also covered in considerable detail, as all are intertwined through contact and influence. As areas that encompass many of the crucial social and technological developments of the prehistoric period as well as their subsequent spread these regions are useful as a gauge of the relationship between personal ornaments and the wider narratives of archaeological research.

Understanding the broader importance of ornaments relies on strong methodological and theoretical underpinnings. Before considering specific archaeological examples, the way that we look at and talk about ornaments occupies the following two chapters dedicated to the many theoretical aspects of the archaeology of personal ornaments. They explore the issues raised here in the introduction and particularly how personal ornaments exist within the wider world of archaeological research. They question fundamentally whether the very concept of the ‘personal ornament’ is helpful within archaeological discourse and consider how a less overtly interpretive terminology as well as a more scientific approach may help to establish the role of beads, bracelets, labrets and other such items as an important aspect of material culture in prehistoric periods. Chapter 2 lays out the scope of ornaments in terms of both the range of evidence that they provide in their own right, and their potential to help us understand the wider issues of prehistory that have not traditionally been approached through the study of ornaments. Chapter 3 then focuses on the two major theoretical parameters that are encountered in the rest of the book. Firstly the geographical understanding of ornaments and whether they can be used to identify cultural or social affiliation, contacts, trade and tradition and secondly time is considered with particular reference to the conceptualisation of continuity versus change in the construction of archaeological narratives.

Archaeology has often given weight to episodes of change, preferring to identify differences in artefact assemblages that help with typology and chronological distinction. However, this book aims to exemplify the power of continuity – in the case of some examples for tens of thousands of years – that tell us much about how humans viewed themselves in relationship to their material culture and to others and how the practices surrounding ornamentation may have been important as acts of memory and social structuring that transcended episodes of social change, the advent of settled life, agriculture, new technologies and all other measures by which the human story is usually punctuated. These chapters contend that ‘personal ornaments’ have the potential to provide more information about some aspects of prehistoric society than some of the materials and technologies that are generally relied on as primary sources of data and type fossils for each period. Craft activity, trade, exchange, regional and interregional contacts, material procurement, use and distribution are all argued to have more to offer, due to the sheer breadth of evidence, than artefacts such as chipped stone tools that have been a primary marker of material procurement, working and distribution in prehistory.

The remainder of the book gives a chronological overview of surviving personal ornaments of all types and materials while simultaneously considering how they have been interpreted, how they might be interpreted and their role within the wider narratives of the development of human society in prehistory. The historical chapters offer a view on how data and ideas can be aligned, and in many cases demonstrate that ornaments do not show parallel processes of change with other areas of material culture, underlining therefore that tracing change in one artefact type and using it to characterise a culture’s structure and development does not give a universal understanding of wider social process. These chapters are structured around themes that best typify the developments in ornamentation processes during each period of prehistory with a number of central themes that run through the whole book – continuity, distance and meaning. Examples that are used are diverse, chosen for their representativeness of the general situation at a given time or to illustrate innovations and interpretive questions. It is impossible to include as much information as I would like within the scope of a single volume, but the bibliography is designed to provide food for thought for interested readers.

The chronological chapters deliberately remove items of personal ornamentation from their usual interpretational paradigm and interrogate them from a range of different perspectives and scales. This allows an approach to ornaments as vehicles for the communication of identities and desires in their many forms, as well as permitting a diachronic approach to their changing role during periods of profound socio-economic transformation – the beginning of farming and herding, year-round settlement, specialised production and the first large-scale settlements. Using a diachronic perspective as a tool to understand how ornament use related to these social and economic changes allows consideration of the effect of often slow processes on daily life. It is now, for example, well understood that the ‘Neolithic revolution’ was a process that lasted for several thousand years, far beyond the experience of the human lifespan. Therefore, the lived experience of the period would have given no perspective on either its beginning or end, rendering it largely invisible to those who lived through it. Daily practice as seen through a variety of different artefact types is an important window onto how individuals did or did not actively experience change.

As terminology is one of the key issues questioned in this book it is used advisedly, each term being defined when it is first used and where major questions of inaccuracy exist, practical solutions are sought. These problems range from the fundamental insufficiency of the term ‘personal ornament’ to the terminology for the last phase of the Palaeolithic period, which varies by region. Likewise, the terminology associated with typology,