Bruck 2004

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Social Archaeology
Material metaphors : The relational construction of identity in Early Bronze

Age burials in Ireland and Britain
Joanna Brück
Journal of Social Archaeology 2004 4: 307
DOI: 10.1177/1469605304046417
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Journal of Social Archaeology ARTICLE
Copyright © 2004 SAGE Publications (www.sagepublications.com)

ISSN 1469-6053 Vol 4(3): 307–333 DOI: 10.1177/1469605304046417
Material metaphors
The relational construction of identity in Early Bronze Age
burials in Ireland and Britain
JOANNA BRÜCK
Department of Archaeology, University College Dublin, Ireland
ABSTRACT
This article challenges the traditional assumption that the European
Early Bronze Age saw the emergence of an ‘ideology of the indi-
vidual’. It argues that the Early Bronze Age self was constructed in
terms of interpersonal connections rather than the intrinsic attributes
of a bounded individual. A discussion of mortuary rites in Britain and
Ireland suggests that the objects placed in the grave allowed the
mourners to comment metaphorically on the links between the dead
and the living, as well as on the changes experienced by a community
torn asunder by death. As such, we may argue that identity was a rela-
tional attribute; it was people’s relationships with others that made
them who they were.
KEYWORDS
burial rites ● Early Bronze Age ● identity ● material culture ●
metaphor ● selfhood
307

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308 Journal of Social Archaeology 4(3)
■ INTRODUCTION
This article will examine the relationship between people and objects in the
Early Bronze Age of Ireland and Britain. It will question traditional
approaches in which objects such as grave goods are considered to directly
reflect aspects of personal identity such as wealth and status. Instead, it will
explore how artefacts were used to comment metaphorically on inter-
personal relationships and on the changes to these brought about by death.
Funerary practices form the focus of this study and I would like to begin
by describing how these have been characterized in the archaeological
literature to date.
During the Early Bronze Age, the communal mortuary monuments of
the Neolithic were replaced by traditions of individual burial. Both inhu-
mation and cremation were widely practised, although the latter appears
to have become the norm towards the end of the period. Inhumation burials
were usually laid on their sides in a crouched or flexed position; cremation
burials were deposited either directly into the grave or placed in a container
of some sort, for example a pottery vessel or leather bag. Individual grave
pits or cists (small rectangular mortuary chambers formed of upright slabs
of stone) were often marked by the construction of an earthen or stone
mound, usually circular in shape; such barrows or cairns can be up to c. 40
m in diameter. Once constructed, these monuments acted as a focus for
later interments.
In contrast to the Neolithic, when it was unusual for the dead to be
accompanied by objects, one of the most significant aspects of Early Bronze
Age mortuary traditions was the regular provision of grave goods. Ceramics
are the most frequent find: in some cases, pottery vessels may have been
used to hold food offerings for the deceased, while elsewhere they were
employed to store the cremated remains of the dead. Other types of grave
goods include tools and weapons, such as bronze knives, flint scrapers, bone
awls and stone battle axes and decorative items, such as jet buttons, amber
beads, bone belt hooks and sheet gold earrings.
Concepts of the self in the Irish and British Early Bronze Age
Most accounts of Early Bronze Age burial rites have interpreted these prac-
tices in broadly evolutionist terms. The change from communal to single
burial is often argued to indicate the emergence of an ‘ideology of the indi-
vidual’ (Clarke et al., 1985; Renfrew, 1974; Shennan, 1982). Moreover, the
provision of grave goods is seen as indicating the development of social
stratification. Social position in Early Bronze Age society is thought to have
been attained and expressed through the acquisition of ‘prestige goods’
(Bradley, 1984: Ch. 4; Braithwaite, 1984; Clarke et al., 1985: Ch. 4; Thorpe

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Brück Material metaphors 309
and Richards, 1984). As such, the variety, number and quality of grave
goods is considered to be a direct reflection of the personal wealth and
status of the deceased (Randsborg, 1973; Shennan, 1975).
However, there are a number of problems with such interpretations.
First, archaeologists have tended to assume that grave goods reflect intrin-
sic attributes of the deceased’s social identity. For example, the presence of
flint scrapers or bone awls might indicate that the person was a leather-
worker during life (Gibbs, 1990), the occurrence of exotic materials such as
gold and amber suggests an individual of high status (Clarke et al., 1985;
Piggott, 1938), while the recovery of weapons from male burials reflects
aspects of idealized masculine identity (Treherne, 1995). In each case, the
projected relationship between people and objects emphasizes notions of
‘ownership’ all too familiar from our own cultural context. The assumption
here is that wealth, status and identity were expressed through the display
of one’s personal belongings.
In contrast, a number of authors have recently argued that it seems likely
that at least some of the objects found in Early Bronze Age burials were
not the personal possessions of the deceased during life (Barrett, 1994:
116–18; Bradley, 1999a: 223; Parker Pearson, 1999: 85; Thomas, 1991;
Woodward, 2000: 113–15). Some may have been gifts from the mourners at
the graveside. Other objects were perhaps used in the mortuary rites, to dig
the grave or to build the coffin, to cook the funerary feast, or to prepare
the corpse. Decorative items may have adorned the corpse on its final
journey, even though they might never have been worn by that person
during life. If so, then the objects that accompany a burial cannot be taken
as a direct reflection of the deceased’s social identity (Barrett, 1991: 120–21;
Thomas, 1991). We need to be rather more subtle in our reading of the
messages that artefacts give out.
Second, there is something of an over-emphasis on questions of status
and prestige in much of the literature on Early Bronze Age burial rites
(Jones, 2002; Tarlow, 1992; Thomas, 1991). A vision of society is produced
in which warrior aristocracies vied with one another to obtain and display
wealth in the form of bronze, gold and other exotic materials. The mortuary
context is presented as one of the primary arenas in which such competi-
tive displays took place (Barrett, 1990; Clarke et al., 1985; Thorpe and
Richards, 1984). In contrast, this article will argue that Early Bronze Age
funerary practices were as much about coming to terms with loss and
discontinuity as communicating the social position of the deceased
(Shepherd, 1982: 131).
Third, as touched on above, this mortuary tradition has often been
taken to indicate the emergence of an ideology of individualism. The type
of person that is conjured in the archaeological literature bears an
uncanny resemblance to Cartesian concepts of the self (Brück, 2001;
Fowler, 2001; Thomas, 2002). Early Bronze Age people come to be

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represented as autonomous subjects with impermeable boundaries and

stable and homogeneous cores. Clearly, this is problematic, resulting as it
does in the imposition of ethnocentric assumptions onto the past (Jones,
2002; Last, 1998). The Early Bronze Age dead are identified as ‘chiefs’,
‘warriors’, ‘metalworkers’, ‘archers’ and the like. The underlying assump-
tion here is that identity is based purely on personal qualities such as one’s
prowess in war or one’s success in acquiring exotic and valuable objects
through exchange. In simple terms, while status in Neolithic society is
considered to have been largely based on kinship links – in particular on
genealogical proximity to significant ancestors – it was the success of the
individual in strategies of personal aggrandisement that is thought to have
determined social position in the Early Bronze Age. Of course, this vision
of the Bronze Age derives in part from an androcentric discourse which
constructs ancient ‘individuals’ as versions of an idealized modern
Western man (Gero, 2000).
Questioning the accepted model

In recent years, a number of authors have challenged this view of Early
Bronze Age society. Despite our preoccupation with the idea that indi-
vidual burial is the characteristic mortuary rite of this period, in actual fact
burials are usually grouped together in cemeteries. Work on the position-
ing of Early Bronze Age burials in relation to preceding interments suggests
the continuing importance of interpersonal relationships in the construc-
tion of identity (Barrett, 1991, 1994: 114–15; Garwood, 1991; Last, 1998;
Mizoguchi, 1993). The careful placement of burials allowed links with the
ancestral dead to be constructed, creating historical narratives that
depended on the drawing of contrasts and comparisons between the newly
deceased and previous interments.
Indeed, the bodies of the dead appear to have been treated in complex
and highly variable ways. Although traditional accounts of the period
portray individual burial as the normal mortuary practice, in fact the depo-
sition of multiple burials in the same grave cut is not unusual (Petersen,
1972). Bodies (whether burnt or unburnt) are often incomplete, and in
many cases burials are accompanied by one or two ‘token’ pieces of bone
belonging to a second person (Brück, in press; Gibson, in press). There is
also evidence for the defleshing or exposure of bodies prior to burial. In
other instances, graves appear to have been reopened after some time and
the bones of the deceased rearranged (Brück, in press; Gibson, in press).
Although the full extent and character of these diverse mortuary practices
remain to be defined, they suggest that Early Bronze Age funerary rites did
not always involve the maintenance of bodily integrity after death. The
bodies of the dead were subject to processes of dispersal, mixing and rein-
corporation which allowed the definition of the self in relation to others;

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we might envisage the reopening of burials to facilitate the encountering

and handling of the remains of the dead and the removal, circulation and
redeposition of ancestral relics. If so, the notion of the Early Bronze Age
self as an essential, bounded and historical entity can perhaps be ques-
tioned.
The narrative of individual status and achievement which underlines
accepted models of the Early Bronze Age self is also called into question
by regional variability in funerary rites across Britain and Ireland. ‘Beaker’
burials (inhumation burials accompanied by a specific suite of objects
including a Beaker pot) are well documented in parts of England and
Scotland, but are very rare in other areas including Ireland (Waddell, 1998:
118–19). ‘Rich’ burials accompanied by exotic materials such as gold, amber
and jet are clustered in specific areas, for example Wessex and East York-
shire (Piggott, 1938). The relative proportion of inhumation to cremation
burials varies from region to region: in Ireland, for example, cremation is
the dominant mortuary treatment (Mount, 1995: 107). Although barrow
cemeteries comprising large numbers of monuments are common in the
south of England, they are rare throughout much of Scotland and Ireland,
where lone ‘cemetery mounds’ covering a number of burials are more
frequent (Waddell, 1990: 27–35). Such differences in funerary practice hint
that there may have been similar variability in concepts of the self, chal-
lenging monolithic models of the emergence of the ‘individual’ during this
period.
This article will focus on the grave goods that accompanied Early Bronze
Age burials rather than the treatment of the bodies of the dead, but it will
enlarge on aspects of these previous discussions. In particular, I will argue
that identity is a relational attribute; it is people’s relationships with others
that make them who they are (Daniel, 1984; Fajans, 1985; Ito, 1985;
LiPuma, 1988; Morris, 1994; Strathern, 1988, 1993). The ways in which arte-
facts were employed in the mortuary practices of the period suggest that
the Early Bronze Age self was constructed in terms of interpersonal
connections rather than the intrinsic or essential attributes of a bounded
individual (Barrett, 1994: 116–19, 121–3; Jones, 2002; Last, 1998; Lucas,
1996; Woodward, 2002). In other words, identity is not something that
people have, an unchanging set of qualities; rather, it is an ongoing act of
production – an inherently fluid set of properties under continual construc-
tion and revision. As such, Early Bronze Age grave goods do not simply
reflect the social identity of the deceased; they communicate the character
of the relationships that made that person what he or she was (Hoskins,
1998). This article will therefore explore how the objects placed in the grave
allowed the mourners to comment metaphorically on the links between the
dead and the living, as well as on the changes experienced by a community
torn asunder by death.

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Concepts of the self in anthropology and archaeology
In order to consider this further, we may draw on recent discussions of the

nature of selfhood in both archaeology and anthropology. Critiques of
Enlightenment models of personhood hold that the self is not an a priori,
ahistorical given but is a product of particular cultural conditions and
social practices (Foucault, 1973, 1977). The Western ideal of the bounded
and homogeneous ‘individua1’, a being that possesses free will and chooses
its course of action on the basis of ‘rational’ determination, is not a
universal (Mauss, 1985; Morris, 1991, 1994: 16). Indeed, even in the
Western world, this model has historically been applied to only certain
categories of person. During the nineteenth century, for example, women,
children, the lower classes, the ill and the insane were held to imperfectly
match this idealized model and as such were not considered knowledge-
able agents in their own right (Bordo, 1987; Jordanova, 1980; Lloyd, 1984;
Merchant, 1980).
In recent years, archaeologists have drawn on work in anthropology to
argue that the self can be conceived of in other ways. At the opposite end
of the spectrum, many societies consider that interpersonal connections are
the basis of selfhood (Fajans, 1985; Ito, 1985; Morris, 1994; Strathern, 1988,
1993). People do not exist in isolation from those around them, nor can
their character be properly grasped without knowledge of the links which
tie them into particular kin groups or other social categories. As such,
people cannot be thought of as bounded and independent individuals; it is
their relationships with others that make them who they are. This line of
argument calls Enlightenment models of agency into question (Gero, 2000).
It suggests that agency arises not purely from the innate capacity of the
individual; instead, the network of ties into which the person is connected
both constrain and enable her, so that the positioning of the self in relation
to others makes particular courses of action possible. Moreover, the notion
that the person is an homogeneous and internally-consistent entity is not
shared cross-culturally (Marriott, 1976; Strathern, 1988, 1993). Many
societies see the self as an amalgamation of elements brought together
through parentage, marriage, exchange and other interpersonal contacts.
Just as relationships change over time, so too the self is never a finished
entity but is always in production (Brah, 1996; Butler, 1990).
These points have been drawn on in recent years in studies of British
Neolithic mortuary practices (Fowler, 2001, 2002). Neolithic chambered
tombs usually contain the disarticulated and mixed remains of a number of
bodies; often skeletal elements appear to have been rearranged while
others were removed for circulation and reuse elsewhere, perhaps as ances-
tral relics. It is easy to see how models of the ‘dividual’ self, drawn from
anthropology, have come to form the basis for a convincing reassessment
of this material. However, is it possible to draw on anthropological work

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to challenge traditional interpretations of Early Bronze Age mortuary prac-

tices? An initial point here might be that even in the modern Western
world, the Enlightenment concept of the ‘individual’ is not the only recog-
nized model of selfhood. We also consider interpersonal connections to be
important in the constitution of the person (Gilligan, 1982; Morris, 1991).
It seems likely that, in most societies, the self is considered to be neither
completely open nor completely closed, neither a hostage to fortune (or
more properly cultural context) nor a free agent unfettered by social bonds,
but instead may lie somewhere along this continuum (Bourdieu, 1977;
Giddens, 1984); undoubtedly, the degree to which the person is seen as
dependent or autonomous will vary according to context within even one
society.
As I hope to demonstrate in this article, it is the links between people
and objects that suggest the existence of a relational, rather than an essen-
tial concept of the self in the Early Bronze Age. The way in which artefacts
are used to express aspects of personal identity has long been a subject of
discussion in archaeology (Earle, 1990; Ferguson, 1991; Hodder, 1982;
Tilley, 1999). In this article, I will argue that objects act as metaphors for
the self, as pivots around which narratives of personhood can be
constructed (Hoskins, 1998). They give material form to interpersonal
relationships, allowing people to think through their place in the world.
Here, however, I would like to suggest that the manner in which objects
were employed in the mortuary context indicates that the distinction
between people and things was not drawn as sharply in the Early Bronze
Age as it is in modern Western societies.
Within the field of anthropology, discussion of the difference between
gifts and commodities has provided particularly useful insights into the
relationship between people and objects (Gregory, 1982; Mauss, 1990;
Weiner, 1992). Gifts establish ongoing links between people. Even when
they have changed hands, they retain something of the character of their
original donor; in this sense, they are described in the anthropological
literature as ‘inalienable’. Commodities, on the other hand, are items
which are not so closely bound up with the identities of those who own
them. They can be disposed of easily and do not result in the creation of
long-term interpersonal bonds. In societies where there is a gift-based
economy, the boundaries of the self may not be coterminous with the
surfaces of the human body, but may extend to incorporate other objects,
places and people. In other words, things outside of the body can come
to form intrinsic elements of the person. As such, artefacts do not simply
act as ‘symbols’ of personal identity but are essential components of
selfhood. This means that the self is an inherently relational entity that
does not have an existence independent of its social and material context.
I would like to suggest that this appears to have been the case in the Early
Bronze Age.

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The ties that bind

Let us turn now to the data itself. We might begin our discussion with items
that can be identified as gifts from the mourners. At Barrow Hills in
Oxfordshire (see Figure 1 for the location of sites discussed in this article),
the cemetery included a burial, flat grave 919, that contained the inhuma-
tion of a child accompanied by three copper rings (Barclay, 1999: 55–7;
Boyle and Harman, 1999: 56; Needham, 1999: 56). However, these items
are unlikely to have been worn by this individual during life. The child was
aged 4–5 years, yet the maximum diameters of the three rings lay between
16.9 mm and 21.5 mm, considerably larger than one might expect for a
person of this age. We might suggest that these items were given as gifts by
older mourners, expressions of affective ties between the child and
members of his or her descent group. Indeed, it seems likely that the choice
of copper rings as appropriate gifts said something quite specific about the
nature of those ties. In our own society, rings are the kinds of small items
exchanged between people bound together in intimate relationships; they
tend to be acquired at significant points in a person’s life cycle, and their
circular form symbolizes continuity. The copper rings from grave 919
perhaps played a similar role in defining and expressing particular types of
connection.1
Composite necklaces are another interesting example of the way in
which interpersonal relationships were given material form. In recent years,
several authors have written interpretative accounts of some of these finds,
arguing that their worn and fragmentary condition suggests that they may
have been heirlooms and that the presence of beads of different materials
and forms indicates that at least some such collections represent the
remains of several necklaces, dispersed and reconstituted through the
mechanisms of inheritance and gift exchange (Barrett, 1994: 121–2; Jones,
2002; Sheridan and Davis, 2002; Woodward, 2000: 116–19, 2002). Barrett
(1994: 121–2) suggests that such beads may have had known histories, so
that the deposition of these objects in the grave located the deceased person
in a web of kinship relations. As such, composite necklaces were the visible
evidence of kinship connections, a stringing together of people across the
generations.
It is usually assumed that such necklaces were the personal possessions
of the deceased. However, in certain cases, beads may have been given as
gifts by the mourners, and may never have been worn by the deceased
during life. For example, the excavation of a stone cairn at Bedd Branwen
on Anglesey produced a cremation burial (burial H) under an inverted
collared urn. The burial was accompanied by a number of ‘jet’2 and amber
beads, along with a single bone bead (Figure 2; Lynch, 1971). The bone
bead was burnt and was found lying among the cremated remains. This had
clearly formed part of the costume of the deceased as the corpse lay on the

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Figure 1 Location of sites discussed in the text. (1) Barrow Hills; (2) Bedd
Branwen; (3) Carrickinab; (4) Loose Howe; (5) Latch Farm; (6) Shrewton; (7) Tara;
(8) Egton; (9) Grange; (10) Reardnogy More; (11) Langton; (12) Towthorpe; (13)
Life Hill; (14) Calais Wold; (15) Cloburn Quarry
funeral pyre. The ‘jet’ and amber beads, on the other hand, had not been
burnt, and lay at the mouth of the inverted urn, their stratigraphic position
suggesting that they had been placed in the pot after the cremated bone.
The ‘jet’ beads were found lying close together in a small group and all were

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Figure 2 The grave goods from cremation burial H, Bedd Branwen,

Anglesey: H, collared urn; Ha–Hf, amber beads; Hg, bone bead; Hh–Hl,‘jet’
beads; Hm, bone pommel (after Lynch, 1971: Fig. 10, with kind permission
from Archaeologia Cambrensis)
complete. In contrast, the amber beads were more widely scattered; several
were broken, suggesting that they may already have been old on deposition.
As such, the ‘jet’ and amber beads appear to have come from at least two
different sources, and their distribution suggests that they probably never
formed part of a single necklace. Instead, we might envisage these as gifts
from those at the graveside, an evocative way of expressing the links
between the living and the dead.
Of course, relationships are created and sustained through activities
other than the giving of gifts and the inheritance of heirlooms. Early Bronze
Age burials are not only accompanied by decorative items such as beads
or rings, but also by tools and equipment for particular tasks or activities.
The cremation burial at Carrickinab in County Down was accompanied,
among other things, by two flint scrapers and a bronze awl (Collins and

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Evans, 1968). Of course, these tools might have been the possessions of the
deceased. However, we might also suggest that they evoked memories of
the activities that others undertook for that person during life. The presence
of scrapers and an awl, for example, might have recalled the working of
leather clothing for this individual by close relatives. The act of placing such
evocative items into the grave would have recalled those ties and precisely
defined the relationship between the deceased and those who were left
behind.
A similar example is provided by grave 203 at Barrow Hills (Figure 3;
Barclay, 1999: 136–41; Boyle and Harman, 1999: 138; Bradley, 1999b:
Figure 3 Grave 203, Barrow Hills, Oxfordshire: P75, Beaker pot; F99,
barbed-and-tanged arrowhead; S4, fragment of iron pyrites; WB12–13, bone
awl and antler spatula; F82, flint scraper; F83–7, barbed-and-tanged
arrowheads; F88–90, flint flakes; F91–94, flint flakes, scraper and piercer; M7,
bronze awl; F95–8, flint piercer and flakes (after Barclay and Halpin, 1999: Fig.
4.76, with kind permission from Oxbow Books)

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139–40). Here, the inhumation of an adult male produced 18 flint objects,

including scrapers, piercers and flakes, as well as tools made from bone,
antler and bronze. Use-wear analysis of the flint artefacts indicated that
these had been employed for tasks that included the scraping of hard and
soft materials and the cutting and whittling of wood. All of the flint objects
had been struck from a single nodule, suggesting that they were made
especially for the funeral rite. One group of grave goods, placed behind the
back of the body, included a flint side scraper, a bone awl and an antler
spatula. These items might, for example, have been used to work leather
into a shroud for the corpse. Similarly, the flint artefacts used for cutting or
whittling wood may have been employed to work the timber for a coffin or
a bier. It seems likely that the roles played by the mourners in Early Bronze
Age funerary rites would have been carefully defined and circumscribed
depending on their specific relationship with the deceased person. Particu-
lar responsibilities may have been given to those most closely connected to
the deceased. The inclusion of objects employed during the mortuary rite
was therefore another way of characterizing the relationships between the
dead and the living. For example, the careful deposition next to the body
of the tools used to prepare and dress it for the funeral rite would have
highlighted the identity of those who undertook this intimate task.
Wrapping and containment

Various types of material metaphor were employed in Early Bronze Age
funerary rites (Thomas, 1991). The concept of wrapping or containment
provides an interesting example, with people and objects being treated in
similar ways. The coffin burial at Loose Howe in Yorkshire, for instance,
produced a number of fragments of cloth, perhaps the remains of a shroud
(Elgee and Elgee, 1949). At Latch Farm in Hampshire, a distinct and
compact lens of clean cremated bone packed around with loam and gravel
may originally have been contained in a textile bag, perhaps secured by the
bronze awl found just outside of the deposit (Piggott, 1938: 173).
Interestingly, grave goods were also often wrapped, or placed in bags or
boxes. The primary Beaker burial from barrow 5K at Shrewton in Wiltshire
was accompanied by a small copper dagger which had been wrapped in
moss and then in cloth (Green and Rollo-Smith, 1984). Grave 11 at Barrow
Hills produced a dagger covered with mineral-replaced textile (Barclay,
1999: 141–8; Barclay et al., 1999: 145; Needham, 1999: 143–4; Wallis and
Hedges, 1999: 145). This item, a bone ring-headed pin and a bone tweezers
lay immediately alongside one another in a tight group, and it seems likely
that they had originally been deposited in a container of some sort; indeed,
possible fragments of the container were also recovered. Other graves have
produced similar tightly grouped collections of objects. Grave 203 at
Barrow Hills produced three distinct groups of artefacts (Fig 3; Barclay,

03 bruck (ds) 6/9/04 1:59 pm Page 319
1999: 136–41; Bradley, 1999b: 140). Close to the waist lay a side scraper, a
bone awl and a bone spatula, behind the feet were five barbed-and-tanged
arrowheads, and under the lower legs were eight flint flakes, a scraper, two
piercers and a bronze awl; these collections may once have lain in bags or
boxes, and in two cases, awls may have secured the openings of these
containers.
What might the symbolic significance of such practices have been? To
begin with, wrapping serves a protective function (Weiner and Schneider,
1989). One might suggest that the wrapped objects needed to be protected
from damp ground or jealous eyes; alternatively, it may have been the
mourners who required protection from objects tainted by death. Wrapping
allows objects to be kept hidden. It prevented people from knowing the
nature of the items contained, so that a veil of secrecy might be draped over
certain parts of the funerary rite (for similar arguments in relation to monu-
ments, see Barrett, 1994; Exon et al., 2000; Richards, 1993; Thomas, 1999:
Chs 3 and 6). Containment is also a means of control; it allows specific
groups of artefacts to be brought together, yet to be kept separate from
other things facilitating processes of categorization that would have been
central to the social function of mortuary rites. Finally, the use of cloth may
have called to mind metaphors of binding and connection, which could be
usefully employed to reconnect a family or community torn asunder by
death. For example, gifts from the mourners might have been combined
into particular groupings and wrapped together, creating links between
objects that expressed, reaffirmed or altered interpersonal relationships.
The deliberate destruction of objects at the graveside

Of course, objects also allowed the mourners to express and to think
through the changes wrought by death. The deliberate destruction of
objects during Early Bronze Age funerals has been noted and commented
on by many authors (Ashbee, 1960: 96, 103; Mortimer, 1905: l; Needham,
2000: 44; Shepherd, 1982: 131; Woodward, 2000: 107). For example, a
cremation burial from Tara in County Meath was accompanied by a shaft-
hole axe which had been placed on the funeral pyre with the deceased and
deposited burnt and broken into the grave (Kavanagh, 1976: 309). The 15
jet beads that accompanied the cremation in barrow 124 at Egton in North
Yorkshire were described by Canon Greenwell as lying ‘at intervals of
several inches apart’ and he suggests that they ‘must have been removed
from the cord on which they had been strung and strewn across the burnt
bones’ (1877: 334). Metal objects were rendered unusable in various ways.
At Grange, County Roscommon, a burnt and crumpled bronze dagger
accompanied a cremation burial beneath an inverted urn (Figure 4;
O’Riordain, 1997). Hardaker (1974: 28) describes the dagger as ‘rolled up’;
it is unlikely that this degree of deformation could be purely the result of

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exposure to heat. At Reardnogy More, County Tipperary, a bronze razor

was found among the cremated remains of a woman (Waddell, 1969). The
end of the hafting plate of the razor is missing and the excavator notes that
this is an old break. The blade was also slightly twisted, indicating that it
had been subjected to the action of heat. We might suggest that the handle
was deliberately torn off, and the blade placed on the pyre with the body
of the deceased.
Presumably, such acts of destruction were powerful symbolic statements
of the social impact of death. These items could never again be used, just
as the relationships that they had once sustained and signified had them-
selves come to an end. Such practices meant that heirlooms and items that
were deliberately broken were juxtaposed with objects in mint condition
made especially for the grave. Hence, the mourners were provided with a
series of contrasts, between the complete and the incomplete, the new and
the old, the usable and the unusable. By drawing on these oppositions, it
became possible to think through questions of continuity and change;
mortuary rites were, after all, the context in which relationships between
Figure 4 The dagger and bone pommel from Grange, County Roscommon
(after O’Riordain, 1997: Fig. 7, with kind permission from Hadrian Books)

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descent groups, neighbours and friends were recast in the face of profound
personal loss.
People and place

Relationships between people and place were also expressed in the
mortuary context. A dense network of ties binds each one of us to places
of personal significance, and these ties contribute to our sense of self-
identity (Feld and Basso, 1996; Layton, 1995). In the Early Bronze Age,
such links were sustained in the mortuary context through the deposition
of local and non-local materials, a mapping out in the grave of personal and
community geographies. For example, the inhumation burial of a woman
from barrow II at Langton in North Yorkshire produced an extraordinary
array of items (Greenwell, 1877: 138–9). Lying close together in front of the
waist was a selection of objects including three bronze awls, a jet bead, a
boar’s tusk, a beaver’s tooth, three cowrie shells and fragments of fossil
belemnite. As metonymic referents to locations that had been important to
this individual during her life, these objects documented her lifecourse in
material form, identifying and drawing together the places that had made
her what she was.
However, links between people and places were not solely expressed
through the deposition of particular artefact types. The mounds or barrows
that covered Early Bronze Age burials could also be used to give material
form to aspects of personal identity (Owoc, 2002; Brittain, forthcoming).
At Towthorpe, East Yorkshire, Barrow C37 covered the remains of an adult
male accompanied by a bronze dagger and flint knife (Mortimer, 1905: 6).
The materials which made up this mound came from three distinct sources:
first, soil from the immediate vicinity of the barrow; second, clay from the
area around Burdale, approximately one mile to the west; and third, clay
from the vicinity of Duggleby, some one and a half miles to the north. The
excavator states that each kind of clay predominated at the side of the
mound nearest the place from which it had been brought. Layers of these
clays, alternating with layers of surface soil, formed the whole of the
mound.
There are two ways of interpreting this monument. We might suggest
that the locations from which the clays had been taken were of particular
personal significance to the deceased individual – places that he had regu-
larly encountered during life. The act of building the barrow therefore
became a means of defining his identity in terms of key places in the local
landscape (Jones, 1999; Bradley 2000; Cooney, 2000: 136; MacGregor, 2002;
Bukach, 2003). Alternatively, the addition of these materials to the mound
might have been a way of underlining the relationship between the
deceased and particular groups of mourners. We might envisage a situation
where the deceased individual was linked through lineal descent and

03 bruck (ds) 6/9/04 1:59 pm Page 322
marriage to two different kin groups, each of whom brought materials for
the construction of the barrow from their own place of origin. In either case,
the barrow literally became a metaphor for the deceased – a model of the
elements and relationships that had constituted that person during life.
If we view the mortuary context in this way, then the next logical step is
to consider the spatial disposition of objects in the grave. For inhumation
burials, particular points of the body were consistently marked out (Clarke,
1970: 257; Lucas, 1996: 103; Thomas, 1991). Grave goods were placed in
front of the face; above or behind the head; in front of the chest; behind or
below the hips; and under the feet. For example, Grave 1 in barrow 294 at
Life Hill, Yorkshire, contained a crouched inhumation with a bronze dagger
and flint knife in front of the chest, five or six small flint flakes around the
skull and a food vessel under the hips (Mortimer, 1905: 201–2; Figure 3
provides another good example). This careful arranging of objects in the
grave created a narrative that situated the deceased person in relation to the
places which had been important to him during life. As such, we might
suggest that the grave cut itself worked as a mappa mundi, a context in which
the relationship between different locations could be set out, the qualities
of the materials that defined those places compared and contrasted, and the
position of the deceased person within that world made evident.3
Of course, there were other ways in which the placement of grave goods
allowed the mourners to build an image of the deceased person in the form
of objects (Battaglia, 1990). The precise location of artefacts may have been
used to describe the different types of relationship that together constituted
this person. Maternal and paternal relatives, for example, may each have
been thought to have contributed specific elements to the deceased, and
there may have been appropriate places in the grave for the items deposited
by each category of kin. Lucas (1996: 103) makes some similar points, noting
that grave goods often emphasize points of bodily articulation, such as the
hips or the knees. He argues that dividing the body into its constituent
segments made it possible to talk metaphorically about the dynamics of
kinship and affiliation. In other words, the arrangement of objects in the
grave allowed social relationships to be expressed in spatial terms by empha-
sizing the metaphorical significance of different bodily elements.
Humans and animals

Finally, animal remains often accompanied the bodies of humans into the
grave, and it is useful to consider how these may have been employed to
comment metaphorically on the identity of the deceased. We have already
seen the inclusion of a beaver’s tooth in the burial at Langton, and there are
many other equally interesting examples. At Barrow Hills in Oxfordshire, a
mallard skeleton and a pair of pike jaws were deliberately deposited into
the ditch surrounding barrow 12 (Barclay, 1999: 99). Barrow C72 on Calais

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Wold, East Yorkshire, contained a crouched inhumation lying on its left side,
with its head to the NNW (Mortimer, 1905: 163). At the feet of this body
were the remains of a young pig and two sheep or goats. All three animals
were placed on their right sides, but like the crouched inhumation, lay with
their heads to the NNW. Here, the bodies of both people and animals were
treated in similar ways, although both contrasts and comparisons were
drawn in terms of the details of bodily placement. At Cloburn Quarry,
Lanarkshire, the inclusion of burnt fragments of animal bone in deposits of
cremated human remains suggests that the bodies of animals accompanied
the deceased onto the pyre (Roberts, 1998: 122–3).
In order to interpret this evidence, we might consider the following
example in more detail. Grave 4969 at Barrow Hills contained the inhu-
mation of a child lying in an alder coffin (Figure 5; Barclay, 1999: 119–21,
Figure 5 Grave 4969, Barrow Hills, Oxfordshire: AB21–25, red deer antlers;
AB26, base and posterior of cattle skull; AB27, fragment of pig calcaneum; F78,
flint piercer (after Barclay and Halpin, 1999: Fig. 4.62, with kind permission
from Oxbow Books)

03 bruck (ds) 6/9/04 1:59 pm Page 324
Fig. 4.62; Boyle and Harman, 1999: 122–4; Levitan and Serjeantson, 1999:
128). Six red deer antlers had been carefully placed along the sides of the
coffin, four on one side and two on the other. Only one showed evidence
of use as a pick, so we are not simply seeing the discarding of the tools used
to dig the grave. Moreover, a cattle skull and a fragment of pig calcaneum
had been placed directly opposite one another on either side of the coffin.
These may have derived from animals eaten during the mortuary feast, or
might have been placed as food offerings into the grave.
The careful placement of animal remains in relation to the burial, as
well as the choice of particular skeletal elements (from the head and from
the feet), suggests that they were used to define some aspect of that
person’s identity and it is worth briefly considering what these might have
been. In many societies, clans or families may be closely identified with
particular animals considered to be the founding ancestors of the group in
the mythical past (Lévi-Strauss, 1962). The animal in question acts as a
totem or symbol of clan or family identity. The occasional recovery of
unusual animal remains from Early Bronze Age burials, for example birds
of prey, beavers, foxes, and in this case deer, could well be explained in
this way.
Alternatively, it is possible that the antlers were employed to comment
metaphorically on the character or identity of the deceased individual and
his/her descent group. The metaphoric value of animals means that in our
own society, people’s personal characteristics are often described using
animal analogies (Douglas, 1966; Lienhardt, 1961; Tambiah, 1969; Tilley,
1999). We may say that someone is ‘as stubborn as a mule’, for example, or
we might describe someone as ‘a wily old fox’. It seems possible that the
incorporation of antlers into this burial might have served this purpose,
acting to draw attention to the personal qualities of the deceased. Finally,
the deposition of the cattle and pig bones on either side of the child’s body
created dimensions of opposition or complementarity that could be used to
express different types of relationship between the deceased and the living.
One could suggest, for example, that beef and pork were considered appro-
priate food offerings from different categories of mourner, for instance
from maternal and paternal relatives (Battaglia, 1990).
Whatever the case, it seems likely that the categorical distinction main-
tained between people and animals in our own society was not articulated
so strongly in the Early Bronze Age. The strict conceptual divide between
culture and nature in post-Enlightenment thought is one of the tools used
to constitute the modern Western self as an autonomous, rational subject
(Bordo, 1987; MacCormack and Strathern, 1980; Merchant, 1980); the prop-
erties which define human beings are considered to differ in essential ways
from those that typify animals (for critiques, see Descola and Palsson, 1996;
Ingold, 1988, 2000: 111–31). The relationship between humans and animals
in our society can be characterized as either orientalist or paternalist in

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character (Palsson, 1996), and it would generally be considered inappro-

priate or distasteful to deposit the remains of animals together with the
bodies of the dead. In the Early Bronze Age, on the other hand, humans
and animals were treated in similar ways in the mortuary context. We might
argue that humans and animals were considered to share particular charac-
teristics, so much so that they may not have been thought of as intrinsically
different types of being. Just as the boundary between people and objects
was blurred, relationships with animals appear to have constituted an
important element of the self. Animal metaphors may also have been used
to describe the links between people.
■ CONCLUSION
This article has argued that we need to consider the items deposited with
the Early Bronze Age dead not as a reflection of intrinsic attributes of the
self, but as an expression of the relational character of identity – it was
relationships with friends, kinsfolk and neighbours, and with significant
places, that made Early Bronze Age people who they were. Gifts from the
mourners constructed the identity of the deceased in terms of inter-
personal links – links that stretched across both time and space. These
objects retained the essence of the giver, forming a material context in
which the boundaries between the living and the dead were rendered indis-
tinct. The manner in which each had comprised a significant part of the
other in life could therefore be acknowledged. The categorical distinction
drawn between people and objects in our own society can also be called
into question. Both human bodies and artefacts were treated in similar
ways; they were wrapped in specific combinations, burnt, fragmented and
buried. This is because objects constituted part of the person. The bound-
aries of the self did not coincide neatly with the limits of the physical body,
but incorporated elements ‘outside’ of it.
This point is corroborated by other aspects of Early Bronze Age
mortuary practices. Animals, too, often formed part of the funerary
context. In some cases, the bodies of animals and those of humans were
mixed together; in others, the treatment afforded to both was identical.
Again, the boundary between self and other appears to have been differ-
ently constructed in the Early Bronze Age to our own society. Moreover,
the remains of animals provided a source of metaphor which could be used
to describe relationships with others. Personal identity was also defined in
terms of links with significant places. This supports the argument that
identity is a relational construct; important elements of the self lay outside
of the ‘individual’ human body so that the division between culture and
nature, so central to modern Western definitions of the person, does not

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appear to have been drawn in such categorical terms. The positioning of

objects in the grave gave material form to the various relationships which
had together constituted the deceased during life. This indicates that the
self was not considered a unified and homogeneous whole but comprised
different elements from a range of sources. The location of these artefacts
literally mapped out the interpersonal links which made the deceased who
she was, giving her a particular place in the world.
If accepted, the suggestions made in this article have implications for
other periods and other regions. Where the normal mortuary rite is indi-
vidual burial with grave goods, it is all too easy to project ethnocentric
concepts of personhood into the past. The arguments outlined here hint
that the relationships between people, objects, animals and places take
complex and culturally-specific forms. Even in the modern Western world,
the notion of the bounded and autonomous individual works only for
certain types of person and in certain contexts. For us too, things beyond
the edges of the human body form important elements of the self. As
archaeologists, our focus of research is the material world left to us in the
archaeological record. If we argue that objects and the practices into which
they were drawn both reflect and constitute aspects of the self, this suggests
that it is possible to consider how people in the past thought about them-
selves, about others and about the world around them. A further import-
ant point is that mortuary rites are not purely concerned to express and
maintain personal status; again, the emphasis on status in much of the litera-
ture on Early Bronze Age burial results from the imposition onto the past
of modern concepts of the individual – a being whose sense of worth is often
highly dependent on success in competitive strategies of personal aggran-
disement.
For the Early Bronze Age, thinking about identity in the ways outlined
here allows us to move beyond the uncritical reproduction in the past of
modern Western models of personhood. It suggests that arguments for the
existence of an ‘ideology of the individual’ during this period are, at
the very least, all too simplistic. Of course, the degree to which concepts of
the self varied across the British Isles remains to be considered and would
certainly form a useful focus for further research. Certainly, the ways in
which both the bodies of the dead and the artefacts that accompanied them
were treated are far from uniform either across time or space. Whatever
the case, the mortuary practices into which objects were drawn allowed
mourners to express and to cope with the social impact of death. This was
important, not only at a personal level for the individuals involved, but
at a community level too (Barrett, 1991; Battaglia, 1990; Clark, 1993;
Humphreys and King, 1981; Metcalf and Huntingdon, 1993). Death
requires the recasting of a world temporarily thrown into disarray. Early
Bronze Age funerals can therefore be seen as enterprises in world-building
– strategic representations of identity, purpose and place.

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Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of this article were delivered at conferences held by the Prehistoric
Society, Archaeology Ireland and the Bronze Age Forum, and I am grateful to
participants for their constructive responses. Many thanks also to Ann Woodward
and to JSA’s anonymous referees for further helpful comments.
Notes
1 These items might also be interpreted as ascribed wealth (Shennan, 1975;
A. Woodward, personal communication), indications of status inherited by the
child – either during life or after death – from kinsfolk.
2 Sheridan and Davis (1998: 156, 158, Table 12.2) have recently analysed the ‘jet’
beads from this burial and have concluded that these were not made of jet, but
of a jetlike substance – possibly a material such as cannel coal that would have
been available locally. During the Early Bronze Age, jet from North Yorkshire
appears to have been highly prized for its aesthetic and magical qualities
(Sheridan and Davis, 1998; Jones, 2002). Where this material was not easily
available, people often used local substitutes that, visually at least, resembled
jet.
3 But see Woodward’s suggestion (2000: 119–22) that such unusual collections of
objects may represent the accoutrements of shamans or ritual specialists.
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JOANNA BRÜCK is a lecturer at University College Dublin.Her research

focuses on settlement, landscape and ritual practices in the British Bronze
Age. Recent publications include the edited volumes Making Places in the
Prehistoric World:Themes in Settlement Archaeology (1999) and Bronze Age
Landscapes: Tradition and Transformation (2001). She is currently co-
directing a field project investigating prehistoric land enclosure on
Dartmoor, Southwest England.
[email: joanna.bruck@ucd.ie]

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Material metaphors : The relational construction of identity in Early Bronze

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Journal of Social Archaeology ARTICLE

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represented as autonomous subjects with impermeable boundaries and

Questioning the accepted model

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we might envisage the reopening of burials to facilitate the encountering

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Concepts of the self in anthropology and archaeology

In order to consider this further, we may draw on recent discussions of the

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to challenge traditional interpretations of Early Bronze Age mortuary prac-

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The ties that bind

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Figure 2 The grave goods from cremation burial H, Bedd Branwen,

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139–40). Here, the inhumation of an adult male produced 18 flint objects,

Wrapping and containment

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The deliberate destruction of objects at the graveside

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320 Journal of Social Archaeology 4(3)

exposure to heat. At Reardnogy More, County Tipperary, a bronze razor

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People and place

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Humans and animals

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character (Palsson, 1996), and it would generally be considered inappro-

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appear to have been drawn in such categorical terms. The positioning of

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