Maney Publishing

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Review
Author(s): Ian Hodder
Review by: Ian Hodder
Source: Journal of Field Archaeology, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Winter, 1991), pp. 496-498
Published by: Maney Publishing
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496 BookReviews
logical, and documentary data are carefully integrated: it
is good to have the Managing Editor of this journal show
his professional paces once in a while!
Vernon Scarborough has made the study of water-man-
agement systems his speciality, and here reviews William
Doolittle's study of irrigation in prehispanic Mexico, a
book with a developmental rather than dirigisteapproach
but flawed by adoption of a "unilinealdiffusionarymodel"
for the development of canal irrigation, which impedes
appreciation of the socioeconomic contexts within which
irrigation technology was thought necessary.Scarborough
also finds Doolittle's focus on canals restrictive in under-
standing water management policies as a whole, noting
that static irrigation facilities such as drained fields played
a significant role in ancient Mesoamerica.
Our last two reviews discuss methods by which these
structuredphenomena can be investigated. Fred Limp sees
Stephen Shennan'sQuantifyingArchaeologyas a handsome
introduction to what statistical approaches can do and
how to understand statistical ideas, methods, data, and
conclusions. In making the arcane comprehensible Shen-
nan has done the discipline a service.Quantifying Diversity
in Archaeologyshows how some of these methods have
been put into practice, and also how users disagree on the
utility of even some standard statistical methods.
Tim Baugh draws attention to the paper on Geographic
Information Systems [GIS] in the first volume of Schiffer's
revived ArchaeologicalMethod and Theoryseries, and em-
phasizes how important and useful such methods--the
arcana of the Eighties--can be in understanding the rela-
tionship between settlement, topography, resources, and
communications. GIS are likely to become as fundamental
a part of archaeological researchas statistical analyseshave
over the past two decades, and the satellite image and the
digitizer tools as common as the calculator.
N.H.
The Passage of Arms. An Archaeological
Analysis of Prehistoric Hoards and Votive
Deposits
RICHARD BRADLEY. 234 pages,41 figures,bibliography,
index. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
$45.00 clothbound. ISBN 0-521-38446-X.
Reviewed by Ian Hodder, Department of Archaeology,
Cambridge University, Cambridge, England CB2 3DZ.
This book is vintage Bradley, by which I mean that it
has all the characteristics that we have come to expect
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from his previous writings on British and European pre-
history. In particular,it is well written and, although deal-
ing with the specialized subject of hoarding in prehistoric
Europe, provides a readable and accessible synthesis. The
book is also an excellent example of the embedding of
theory in the intrepretation of data. It is perhaps true to
say that Bradley is not as well known in the United States
as his prolific writing and high reputation in Britainwould
lead one to expect. The reason for this is that his work
has focused on detailed interpretations of archaeological
materials, and he has not been much given to abstract
theorizing which might draw the attention of a wider
audience. His readers are largely restricted to those with
some knowledge of European prehistory; this is a pity
because his applications of theory are always stimulating.
His new book is another tour deforce.Within the descrip-
tive detail is a wealth of new ideas and new theories
applied to the data in interesting ways.
A positive prelude to a review can simply set the stage
for a swinging attack, and so, if he is unwise enough to
read reviews, I imagine Bradley at this point quaking in
his shoes. He can be reassured, although I do feel that
clarity of argument and a wider readershipwould be better
served with a fuller account of theoretical issues. Bradley
does not make great claims for the theoretical posture he
assumes, and indeed different readerswill come away with
different perspectives on the underlying message. Osten-
sibly, the book is about the reasons for depositing, bury-
ing, and hoarding axes, pottery, and metal items in the
Neolithic, Bronze Age, and Iron Age of Britain and Eu-
rope. But clearly it is about more than that. My own
interpretation of the contribution of the book to theoret-
ical debate, undoubtedly biased by my own views, is that
it provides an excellent, plausible example of the contex-
tual reading of symbolic meanings in prehistory. At the
beginning of the book [p. 4] Bradley notes that in Schif-
fer's writing on depositional and formation processes little
attention is paid to votive deposits. For Bradley, on the
other hand, deposition is not a universal phenomenon
organized by only practicalconstraints. Rather, it involves
symbolism and historical meanings.
At the end of the volume, Bradley acknowledges that
he has done a "contextual archaeology" [p. 192] in that
he has shown that similar deposits can have very different
meanings in different contexts. It is the fundamentalclaim
of any properly contextual archaeology that social and
symbolic meanings are not universal and cannot be linked
to form in any direct way. Thus an apparentlysimilar form
of deposition can have very different meanings in different
contexts through space and time, and these differences in
meanings can be inferred from associations, relationships,

and oppositions in reference to a proposed theory.
Archaeologists often shy away from interpreting sym-
bolism overtly because of the supposed dangers of an
interpretive contextual analysis. Indeed, at one point [p.
34] Bradley seems to argue that the original meanings of
symbolic systems can never be brought to light. But this
is a difficult claim for him to maintain since the whole of
his book is an attempt to distinguish the motivations
behind the hoarding of materials.His aim is to distinguish
merchants', founders', utilitarian, votive hoards. In dis-
cussing Breton Neolithic axes he argues [p. 56] that the
axes themselves may have been associated with supernat-
ural powers because of their depiction in art in relation to
signs that are interpreted as "entoptic." In such a case, one
symbolic interpretation is piled on another because of the
observed contextual associations.
The Scandinavian Neolithic axe hoards are interpreted
as votive because they were placed in wet places where
they would have been difficult to recover, because they
are large and the objects are in fine condition, and because
food and human bodies are also placed in wet places. This
contextual reading leads to a symbolic interpretation of
the hoards as votive. Other contextual associations for
some Bronze Age hoards lead Bradley to different conclu-
sions. In hoards of metal objects that include small
casting jets and fragments of slag, a utilitarian ratherthan
votive interpretation is preferred [p. 118].
Bradley's overall account of the shift from Bronze Age
to Iron Age is dependent on an interpretation of internal
meanings. He argues [p. 154] that bronze and iron had
different meanings in Western Europe. The sources of
copper and tin are relatively localized in Europe, and
bronze often had an exotic, prestigious character.Bronze
production was placed under pressure at the end of the
Bronze Age because of a votive (not utilitarian) need for
exotic bronze items such as weaponry. The change to iron
brought about by the scarcity of bronze caused a wide
range of social changes because iron, more readilyavaliable
than copper and tin, had a different meaning and could
not play the same social role as had been played by bronze.
So the main theoretical contributions of the book are
to show how symbolic meanings, particularlythe ritual or
votive meanings of artifacts and depositional acts, can be
reliably reconstructed, and to show how symbolic mean-
ings in past societies can have an important impact on
sociocultural change. Another important theme of the
book, again only really referred to at the end [p. 193], is
long-term history. Bradley shows how the past structures
the present. The book is ultimately a historical reconstruc-
tion, which perhaps explains the lack of attempt at gen-
eralization. As within the tradition of Braudel and the
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18, 1991 497
JournalofFieldArchaeology/Vol.
Annales school, Bradley sees actions as taking place within
historical traditions that had meaning to people. The vo-
tive deposition of objects in water is identified as a long-
term tradition in Europe extending over millennia, from
the Neolithic to the Iron Age, and even into the stories
of King Arthur, Excalibur, and the Lady of the Lake. But
Bradley also recognizes, in accordancewith the contextual
emphasis already described, that the meanings of axes or
votive water deposits change through time. Thus, in the
Neolithic, votive deposits are interpreted as sacrifices [p.
199], and this idea is then seen as having been transformed
and manipulated in the Bronze Age when the deposits
came to mean offerings or competitive gifts to the gods.
In the Iron Age both these sets of meanings continued
but are given new social significance. The long-term struc-
tures are transformed contextually.
The book has four main sections. In the first [chapter
1] Bradley reviews archaeological approaches to hoards
and their classification. He also discusses the various the-
ories, largely derived from anthropological literature, on
the function of hoards in relation to social display. For
example, he introduces the idea, used throughout the
book, that the conspicuous destruction or burial of valu-
able artifacts such as axes or weaponry each functions in
some way to raise status and keep artifactsout of general
circulation. These general social and economic functions
perhaps sit uncomfortably at times with the attempt to
conduct historical interpretation of specific meanings.
The second chapter concerns the Neolithic and Early
Bronze Age. In the Neolithic, axes had come to have
various types of special symbolic significance in hoarding.
In the Early Bronze Age a distinction is noted between
Central Europe (the area with or near metal sources) and
Northwestern Europe. In the former area, distinctions
between what is deposited in graves and hoards are much
less than in Northwestern Europe. This regional difference
is related, following Bradley'scontextual approach, to the
evidence of larger, fortified, settlement sites in Central
Europe and hence a different social system. Following
Bradley's commitment to long-term history, the regional
differences are also related to different Neolithic back-
grounds, in particular the long history of ritual monu-
ments in the Neolithic of Northwestern Europe.
The third section of the book concerns hoarding during
the Late Bronze Age. Through various associations and
oppositions between the contents of hoards and burials,
Bradley recognizes a link between these two domains. This
leads, in an interesting study, to a search through early
accounts of collections made in wet contexts (e.g., rivers)
and through museum collections. In the Thames deposits,
for example, he finds large numbers of human skulls,
498 BookReviews
which supports his hypothesis that votive hoards were
linked to burial. As burial became less important in the
Late Bronze Age, people turned to the alternative tradi-
tion of wet deposition. The river deposits were partly
funereal, but they also involved making gifts to the gods
in exchange for social prestige.
In the final interpretive section, Bradley turns his atten-
tion to the Iron Age. At this time, votive deposits changed
their meanings and became more associated with the fer-
tility of the land and of humans. Such claims are made
because of contextual clues such as the human and animal
deposits at the base of grain storage pits.
At times the book seems uncertain whether it is about
Britain or Europe and, as alreadynoted, a more thorough
theoretical argument might have introduced useful ele-
ments into the discussion concerning, for example, the
multivalent nature of much material symbolism and the
reflexivity of interpretation. Much as I missed these com-
ponents of the argument, Bradley undoubtedly provides
a broad, authoritative sweep that not only allows us to
appreciate the long-term perspective but also remains sen-
sitive to context. He rises above the detail of the data in
stimulating ways to provide a broader view. This is using
archaeology in the best possible way, exploiting the long
range evidence to contribute to our understanding of the
nature of history.
Death, Women, and the Sun: Symbolism of
Regeneration in Early Aegean Religion
LUCY GOODISON. xix + 261 pages, 336 figures, appen-
dix, bibliography. London: University of London, Insti-
tute of Classical Studies (Bulletin Supplement53), 1989.
?40 paperbound. ISBN 9-00587-56-3.
Reviewed by Tracey Cullen, AmericanJournal ofArchae-
ology,675 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215.
The investigation of religious symbolism in the early
Aegean, the stated goal of Lucy Goodison's book, de-
mands a certain scholarly courage. The author herself ad-
mits that every generation of scholars tends to turn away
from those areas of study "in which its predecessors most
obviously made idiots of themselves," leading to lacunae
in scholarship [xii, quoting West 1975: 15]. Although
material designated as religious abounds in Bronze Age
Aegean studies, little theory has been articulatedto struc-
ture work on the subject (see Renfrew 1985 for a notable
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exception), and religion and ritual still often stand as "ex-
planations" for puzzling archaeological conundrums. Re-
cent work on prehistoric Greek religion has often focused
on the identification and elucidation of cult practice and
place (e.g., van Leuven 1978; Higg and Marinatos 1981;
Gesell 1985; Rutkowski 1986) rather than on the sym-
bolic infrastructure of religious thought itself, as mani-
fested in the archaeological record.
Within this context, Goodison's book constitutes a ma-
jor contribution to the study of Aegean religion. The
author's central thesis is that solar symbolism represents
an important-and previously overlooked-aspect of pre-
historic Greek religion. Far from looking strictly at solar
imagery in the archaeological record, however, she at-
tempts to sketch the cognitive outlines of a vast universe
encompassing attitudes toward death, women, fertility,
nature, and divinity from the Early Bronze Age to the
beginning of the Archaic period in Greece (ca. 3200-700
B.C.). She draws her material from the entire Aegean
basin, focusing primarily on Crete and the Cyclades, and
to a lesser extent the Greek mainland. The book is divided
into a brief introduction, three chapters exploring the
symbolism of regeneration in the Aegean through time, a
concluding chapter entitled "How are symbols formed?"
and an appendix on the Early Bronze Age Aegean as a
cultural continuum. A full third of the volume is devoted
to illustrations, many unfortunately of poor quality. There
is no index.
Goodison states at the outset that her intention is to
trace specific symbols through time, and relate the changes
observed to the socioeconomic structure of the society
under consideration. She first challenges the assumption
that anthropomorphic deities were the focus of early Ae-
gean religion. Definitions of religion that refer to divine
ruling powers or supernaturalforces do not apply well to
animistic religions, which impute a spiritual essence to
natural phenomena such as the sun. In this way only does
she prepare the reader for her own investigation of the
symbolism of natural forces in the Aegean. Strikingly ab-
sent is any theoretical perspective on her task: how exactly
will she recognize and interpret religious symbols in social
terms? How, indeed, are we to understand the concept of
religion in the context of early societies? The only defini-
tion of religion she offers (misattributed to Onians) is one
that she dismisses, yet a replacement is not suggested. She
briefly dissociates herself from structuralistefforts to elu-
cidate religious beliefs, yet again offers the reader little
substitute except a vague reference to the dynamic rela-
tionship between a society and its symbols. To be fair,
Goodison does not intend the introduction to serve as a
theoretical orientation for the reader, considering it suffi-