Cardiff University

Alumna, Cardiff School of History and Archaeology

Thesis Title: Ways of seeing, being, doing: reconstrcuting Early Neolithic worldviews in southern Britain

About

This thesis aims to reconstruct possible worldviews for the Early Neolithic period in southern Britain between 4000 and 3300 cal. BC. Animistic, perspectivist, totemistic and shamanistic ontologies offer unique opportunities for complex and fruitful discussion of archaeological themes, providing powerful worldview schemes in which close identification is made between different kinds of people and other types of being, be it animal, object, thing or essence. These concepts help to dissolve the nature:culture, subject:object, human:non-human dichotomies which continue to plague Western thought, and through this may provide us with helpful stepping stones into the reconstruction of Early Neolithic lifeways. The very nature of these concepts affords us with ambiguities and uncertainties: they blur definition but they shape understanding, making them rich points of departure for wider archaeological dialogues.
Rather than looking for similarities between them, I will be embracing ideas of diversity and change, using these concepts as backdrops for wider discussions relating to how people engage and make interventions in the world, touching upon several umbrella themes including monumentality, materiality, agency, performance and landscape. The purpose of this thesis is therefore twofold. One is to contribute theoretically to the study of animism, perspectivism, totemism and shamanism; the other is to re-evaluate the significance of these four concepts in relation to themes which occur in the Early Neolithic of southern Britain.