Rough and tumble

Or yet another digression from my perusal of reference 1, this time in connection with the use of tree trunks for construction and funerary purposes in lowland Scotland in Neolithic times, when there were probably more trees than there are now.

The starting point of the digression being the book at reference 2. A glossy looking book which, to judge by the number available secondhand, sold pretty well. With the secondhand prices varying a great deal - and with that snapped above being unusually cheap. 

But that did not stop the book getting a rather bad review at reference 3. A bad review which had the important virtue of telling you about quite a lot about the book under review before getting stuck into criticism of it - a virtue which is often missing from reviews in the pages of the NYRB or the TLS, in which the book ostensibly under review is more a peg on which to hang an essay about something more or less related. In this case, part of the trouble is alleged to be undue haste to publish a glossy version of what started out as a PhD dissertation, haste prompted in part by the scoring of academics and academies according to their tonnage of publications.

She also mentions the modern habit of including all sorts of pictures of marginal relevance in one's text, a habit she appears to find very irritating. Which brought me up a little, as I do a fair bit of this myself. I think it livens things up a bit.

It so happens that I am reading Richard Church (at reference 4) on the subject of reviews, both from the point of view of the reviewer and the reviewed. In his case, he often also knew the author of the subject of his reviews. And on his account, friendships at least sometimes survived bad reviews. 

While I wonder now how well I would cope with an adverse and public review? Perhaps the answer is that one gets used to it; it is all part of the rough and tumble of the literary world. Or in this case, the archaeological world, a world in which this reviewed author, Gordon Noble, went on after this book, to have a successful career as both author and academic.

I associated to the rough and tumble of drafting papers and reports in the Civil Service, which are apt to be thoroughly savaged by one's colleagues, elders and betters in the course of their production. Savaging or knocking about which is all part of the process of arriving at a good product. And one does, indeed, get used to it.

One part of the Neolithic story in Scotland, might have been huge funerary bonfires, with one idea being that one wanted to make a stirring event of a funeral in order that the memory of the departed would be fixed, at least for a while, in the minds of the participants. A way of binding the group together in the absence of any kind of written record? Perhaps the funerary games of the Greeks and Romans served a similar end?

Another part might have been the erection of split tree trunks as markers of burials. A fairly permanent marker of a burial, an alternative to the long barrows, where the same split tree trunks may have functioned as a sort of ridge pole.

I associated to the ease with which one could split quite large logs when they were fresh, in the aftermath of the great storm of the late eighties: a cold chisel and a club hammer were enough. No need to mess about with an axe. We had a fine 5th November bonfire that year, on a vacant plot on a housing estate on the eastern outskirts of Norwich. The same logs would have been much less tractable when they had dried out a bit, when they had seasoned.

But the question for today is, do such speculations about the psychic purposes of activities which are pretty speculative in themselves serve any useful purpose?

Off the top of the head, my answer for now is yes. It is a way into how these minds might have worked, more than five thousand years ago. Not quite the same as how the Neanderthal minds might have worked fifty thousand years before that, and for which we have much less to go on, but it is a start of sorts.

PS 1: in the margins of all this, I learn that Scotland boasts impressive public archaeology, if references 5, 6 and 7 are anything to go by. Perhaps, being less densely populated, there is more of it left. Notice that both the present author (Noble) and his reviewer (Sheridan) appear together at reference 7. I also learn that the Dogger Bank vanished long before Neolithic immigration from Europe kicked in. For which see reference 8.

[Among the best-known features of Great Langdale are the Langdale Pikes, a group of peaks on the northern side of the dale. From below, they appear as a sharp rocky ridge, though they are precipitous only on their southern side; to the north, the land sweeps gently to High Raise, the parent peak of the range. The Pikes themselves include (from west to east) Pike of Stickle, Loft Crag, Harrison Stickle and Pavey Ark]

PS 2: also that you can locate the source of something like a stone axe head by its chemical signature, with the mix of trace elements being as good as a fingerprint. Well almost: a bit like with yesterday's pollen of reference 9, you can never be quite sure that some quarry you don't know about won't come up with the same chemical signature as that of the quarry you do know about. In the meantime, lots of axe heads from all over the country have been put down to Great Langdale in Cumbria. A place I remember as being somewhat spoiled by the large number of spoil heaps from dead mines and quarries.

References

Reference 1: The Circular Archetype in Microcosm: The Carved Stone Balls of Late Neolithic Scotland - Chris L. Stewart-Moffitt – 2022. 

Reference 2: Neolithic Scotland: Timber, Stone, Earth and Fire - Noble, G. - 2006.

Reference 3: review of same by Alison Sheridan, then of the National Museums of Scotland. Cambridge Archaeological Journal - 2007. Turned up by Bing. Sheridan is now, I think, something of a media archaeologist.

Reference 4: The voyage home – Richard Church – 1964.

Reference 5: https://www.pkht.org.uk/.

Reference 6: https://scarf.scot/regional/pkarf/. 

Reference 7: Cremation Practices and the Creation of Monument Complexes: The Neolithic Cremation Cemetery at Forteviot, Strathearn, Perth & Kinross, Scotland, and its comparanda - Gordon Noble, Kenneth Brophy, Derek Hamilton, Stephany Leach, Alison Sheridan - 2017.

Reference 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland.

Reference 9: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/02/a-botanical-digression.html.