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Local Identities: Landscape and Community in the Late Prehistoric Meuse-Demer-Scheldt region

by Fokke Gerritsen

Amsterdam University Press, 2003
eISBN: 978-90-485-0514-2 | Cloth: 978-90-5356-588-9
Library of Congress Classification GN803.G47 2003
Dewey Decimal Classification 930.1

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | TOC

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Gerritsen's study investigates how small groups of people—households, or local communities—constitute and represent their social identity by shaping the landscape around them. Examining things like house building and habitation, cremation and burial, and farming and ritual practice, Gerritsen develops a new theoretical and empirical perspective on the practices that create collective senses of identity and belonging. An explicitly diachronic approach reveals processes of cultural and social change that have previously gone unnoticed, providing a basis for a much more dynamic history of the late prehistoric inhabitants of this region.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Table of Contents - 6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS - 10 1 INTRODUCTION - 12 1.1 General theme and aims of research - 12 1.2 Continuity and change in the archaeology of first millennium BC temperate Europe - 13 1.3 Recent trends in landscape and settlement archaeology - 16 1.4 A long-term perspective and its implications - 22 1.5 Geographical and chronological framework - 26 2 ARCHAEOLOGY IN A SANDY 'ESSEN' LANDSCAPE - 28 2.1 Aspects of geology and geomorphology - 28 2.2 The premodern landscape and its implications for archaeological research - 30 2.3 A brief overview of investigations into the late prehistoric Meuse-Demer-Scheldt region - 33 2.3.1 The period of heathland archaeology - 34 2.3.2 The period of 'essen' archaeology - 37 2.4 The Meuse-Demer-Scheldt region as a research area - 40 3 THE HOUSE AND ITS INHABITANTS - 42 3.1 An anthropological perspective on houses and households - 42 3.1.1 Introduction - 42 3.1.2 Houses and the socio-cosmological order - 44 3.1.3 The house as a social category - 45 3.1.4 The temporality of domestic architecture - 46 3.1.5 The cultural biography of houses - 48 3.1.6 House, farmyard, farmstead - 49 3.2 Constructing house and household - 50 3.2.1 Introduction - 50 3.2.2 Building the house: an overview of house construction types - 50 3.2.3 Social considerations in the choice of farmstead location - 67 3.2.4 Ritualised aspects of house construction - 74 3.3 Inhabiting the house - 77 3.3.1 The use and ordering of space inside houses - 77 3.3.2 The farmyard - 81 3.3.3 Farmstead and household dynamics - 86 3.3.4 Depositional practices associated with the phase of habitation - 90 3.4 Abandoning the house - 106 3.4.1 Introduction - 106 3.4.2 Abandonment practices - 107 3.4.3 Farmstead abandonment and farmstead continuity in a diachronic perspective - 113 3.5 Houses and households: concluding remarks - 116 4 LOCAL COMMUNITIES AND THE ORGANISATION OF THE LANDSCAPE - 120 4.1 Settlement territories and local communities - 120 4.1.1 Introduction - 120 4.1.2 The symbolic construction of communities - 122 4.1.3 Community and landscape - 124 4.1.4 Approaches to territoriality and land tenure in archaeology - 126 4.2 Cemeteries and burial practices - 129 4.2.1 Introduction - 129 4.2.2 Burial practices from the Middle Bronze Age to the Early Roman period - 132 4.2.3 Burial in cemeteries and alternative ways of treating the dead - 149 4.2.4 Urnfield cemeteries and older burial monuments - 151 4.2.5 Changing relationships between local communities and ancestors - 156 4.3 Enclosed and open cult places and other enclosures - 161 4.3.1 Rectangular enclosures with funerary connotations - 161 4.3.2 Enclosures without apparent funerary connotations - 167 4.3.3 Other types of cult places - 172 4.3.4 Cult places and cult communities - 174 4.4 Arable lands, celtic fields and agricultural systems - 178 4.4.1 Celtic fields in the Meuse-Demer-Scheldt region and the Northwest European Plain - 178 4.4.2 Arable lands, farmsteads and barrows - 181 4.4.3 Celtic field agricultural systems and the dynamic use of arable lands - 183 4.4.4 The development of a new agricultural regime in the later part of the Iron Age and the Roman period - 189 4.4.5 Local communities and arable lands - 190 4.5 Settlement nucleation - 192 4.5.1 Introduction - 192 4.5.2 Early examples of settlement nucleation - 193 4.5.3 Settlement enclosures - 197 4.5.4 The local community and its settlement in the Late Iron Age and the Early Roman period - 197 4.6 Local communities and settlement territories in time: discussion and synthesis - 200 4.6.1 The Middle Bronze Age - 200 4.6.2 The Urnfield period - 201 4.6.3 The Middle and early Late Iron Age - 203 4.6.4 The Late Iron Age and the beginning of the Roman period - 205 4.6.5 Conclusion - 208 5 MICRO-REGIONAL AND REGIONAL PATTERNS OF HABITATION, DEMOGRAPHY AND LAND USE - 210 5.1 Introduction - 210 5.1.1 Research questions - 210 5.1.2 Methodological issues - 211 5.2 The habitation histories of four micro-regions - 215 5.2.1 The Bladel-Hoogeloon region - 217 5.2.2 The Weert-Nederweert region - 221 5.2.3 The Someren region - 224 5.2.4 The Oss region - 227 5.2.5 The four micro-regions compared - 229 5.3 Regional settlement patterns and demographic trends - 230 5.3.1 The Middle Bronze Age - 230 5.3.2 The Urnfield period - 231 5.3.3 The Middle Iron Age and early Late Iron Age - 234 5.3.4 The Late Iron Age and the beginning of the Roman period - 235 5.3.5 Summary - 236 5.4 Changing settlement patterns and environmental degradation - 237 5.4.1 Population densities and soil degradation, an environmental model - 237 5.4.2 Changing agricultural regimes in the later part of the Iron Age - 242 5.5 Conclusions - 243 6 LANDSCAPE, IDENTITY AND COMMUNITY IN THE FIRST MILLENNIUM BC - 246 6.1 Flexible patterns of social identity and land tenure in a Middle Bronze Age barrow landscape - 246 6.2 The Middle Bronze Age to Late Bronze Age transition and the genesis of urnfields - 248 6.2.1 Agricultural production, elite competition and demography in macro-regional and regional interpretations - 248 6.2.2 The mythical dimensions of the landscape and the formation of stable local communities - 250 6.3 Local communities, land and collective identity in the Urnfield period - 253 6.4 Changing habitation patterns and social fragmentation at the end of the Urnfield period - 255 6.5 New forms of social identity and land tenure in the Middle and early Late Iron Age - 258 6.6 Diversified social foundations in the Late Iron Age and the beginning of the Roman era - 259 6.6.1 The 'longue durée' and conjectural history - 259 6.6.2 Social relationships and land tenure in a changing world - 261 6.7 Concluding remarks - 265 ABBREVIATIONS - 266 REFERENCES - 266 APPENDIX 1: MEUSE-DEMER-SCHELDT REGION. DISTRIBUTION OF URNFIELDS - 298 APPENDIX 2: CATALOGUE OF URNFIELDS - 302 INDEX OF GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES - 310

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