Vindrola-Padrós, Bruno;
(2021)
The Early Neolithic 'Broken World': The role of pottery breakage in south-eastern and central Europe.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
One of the most materially evident yet socially obscured aspects of modern consumer society has been the increasing accumulation of broken objects considered as ‘waste’ or ‘rubbish’. During the Neolithic period, central and south-eastern Europe were also to witness an unprecedented explosion of material remains, mostly pottery fragments, that would affect the social lives of local inhabitants, referred to as the Linearbandkeramik (LBK) and Starčevo-Körös-Criş (SKC) groups respectively. However, because of our modern tendency to write (pre)history in stages of technological development, the Neolithic is conventionally characterized as the moment where humans became masters over nature. Thus, it is emphasised that sedentism, agricultural production, and economic innovations like pottery were introduced. In contrast, the redefinition of the Neolithic as a 'thing-heavy world' (Robb 2013) allows envisioning the Neolithic as a world charged with broken objects. As such, this period can inform us of a unique form of knowledge on what people do when objects break. Determining how they were broken and deposited represent a fundamental way to understand this social knowledge. Through the study of the breakage and alteration of pottery fragments by a combination of wear, morphometric and failure analysis I show how breakage actions and broken objects shaped social practices in SKC sites from the Upper Tisza/Tisa Basin (NW Romania, NE Hungary and SW Ukraine), and LBK sites from the Northern Harz Foreland (northern Germany). Results indicate there was a significant variation in social responses to breakage in both regions resulting from the ubiquitous presence, continued exposure and movement of fragments through daily life, as well as from the paradoxical resilience and extensive cracking behaviour of their organic-tempered ceramics. This knowledge brought by living with broken objects marks a stark contrast to present lifestyles, and it becomes clear then that the modern waste crisis signals an epistemological crisis.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | The Early Neolithic 'Broken World': The role of pottery breakage in south-eastern and central Europe |
| Event: | University College London (UCL) |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2021. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Institute of Archaeology |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10134483 |
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