L.-IIOIM

Contents

THE MATERIAL AND IMMATERIAL IN CULTURE 1

Jes Martens

ARCHAEOLOGY AND RELIGION DURING PAST 20 YEARS 16

Inge Bodilsen

THE ARCHAIC ROOTS OF WOODLAND ESCHATOLOGY: 41

EVIDENCING THE ADENA MORTUARY COMPLEX IN

ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND ETHNOGRAPHICAL DATA

Thomas McElwain

THE MEANING OF MATERIAL CULTURE 53

Anne Birgitta Gebauer

MOTIVATIONAL CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN 5000 YEARS 89

OF FENNOSCANDIAN ROCK ART; A QUANTITATIVE APPROACH,

WITH AN AFRICAN OUTLOOK

Christian Lindqvist

PRQDUKTIONSMADE OG GRAVSKIK 132

Philip Jensen & Arne Nielsen

DISKUSSIONS 169

PROTOCOL OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY 189

PARTICIPANTS IN THE XVI KONTAKTSEMINARIET 193

APPENDIX 1: STATUES OF FRA 194

APPENDIX 2: KONTAKTPERSONS 196

Jes Martens (Arhus)

THE MATERIAL AND II-1MATERIAL IN CULTURE

What is "material culture" but reflexions of immaterial

relations? "Material culture" has no true existence of

it's own, and therefore must our fear for working with

"the immaterial" come to an end. We cannot avoid getting

in touch with it through our work with the material

remains of our forefathers; just the slightest guessing

about the function of an artifact, any dwelling on it's

outline - and immediately immaterial aspects are brought

into consideration. Artifacts do not multiply by

gemmation - anything touched by man has immanent

immaterial relations.

Thus when we talk about culture, material and immaterial

is a somewhat artificial division and to a certain degree

even a misleading starting point. However this

distinction seems to be quite common most likely due toithe idealistic understanding of the human as consisting of

a body and a soul transferred into an imagination of the

society as having a separate basis and superstructure -

where the latter often, like the soul of the individual,

is ascribed an independent life of it's own.

Before going into a deeper discussion of this, we will

make a short review over the most popular viewpoints on

this subject found on the desk in the ideological

supermarket.

Some traditional archaeological positions

What do we normally understand by the expression

"immaterial culture"? Among archaeologists it usually

brings about associations like religion, rituals,

symbolism, ideology and the like. Can we deal with such

variables in our science and how?

2. a The classic positivistic answer to this i "NO". Only

measurable facts are relevant for real science, and as

immaterial relations have the property of not being

material, they cannot serve as scientific material.

Dealing with them would be nonsense or at least not

scientific. In effect we can registrate the symptoms of

religion - we can measure the amount of sacrifices and

other material effects - but we cannot explain them - we

cannot work with the direct influence on society - we

even cannot work with society.

In. spite of that positivism has played a dominant role in

archaeology until the seventies, and as a result no

coherent theory of society nor development was ever put

forward in those days. Any hypothesis was only a

personal imagination - a product of fantasy. Even today

this opinion is shared by many Nordic archaeologists (1).

2 .b The classic marxistic position is that the non-material

culture, when understood as just mentioned (i.e.

religion, ideology and so on), is a superstructural

phenomenon and thus more or less a reflexion of the basis

or even of it's productive forces. Religion fx

legitimates of position of the ruling class - this is

it's origin and it's function. This means that we can

study immaterial culture directly/ but we cannot

understand it without knowing the basis of the society in

question and it's position on the historical ladder from

the primitive communal system to the victory of world

communism. The historical influence of the immaterial

relations is reduced to nothing because the development

in the contradictions of the social basis is regarded as

the "locomotive of history" however running on a

singletracked railway. But then again it seems to be a

necessary step to reduce the influence of the•

superstructure as long as it is claimed that history is

predestinated to end up in communism. This position

leads to the consequenses that ideology, thought and

religion is governed by the development of techniches as

fx the bow and arrow, the plough and axe etc, giving a

very mechanical outline of history. (2).

2.c A somehow similar point of view is found amongst

functionalists, who try to demonstrate the functional

reasons of almost any aspect of human behaviour. The aim

of the researches is to show that certain human

institutions may serve as some sort of thermostates of

regulators keeping society in balance or, as they term

it, "equilibrium". Thus religion and ritual have often

been mentioned in this connection.

However the difficulties become evident when deal with

societies in imbalance or under change: the starting

point of functionalism is an assumed, balance - which

however also is the goal of their argumentation (3).

But the notion that any human behavior should be governed

by functional aims already meets difficulties, when we

try to analyse our own society. If we fx. watch a man

sweeping the streets in our town, the functional

explanation would be that he is sweeping because the

streets are dusty. This seems at first sight to be

reasonable and rational. But if we bother to ask him, why

he is sweeping, he will put down the broom and answer:

"In order to earn some money to make a living for!" What

this man does, has no importance for him - he might as

well design nuclear powerplants - it is what he earns

that counts. Thus our functional explanation showed up

to be inadequate - if the man did not get any money for

sweeping, he would not be doing it. However rational our

conclusion seemed at the first place, it did not take one

crucial point into account namely that even what is

rational is not at all absolute; for certain it is one of

the most relative things on earth! This demonstrates the

insufficiency of functional analysing (4).'

3. Neomarxism

A popular point of departure is today the structuralistic

marxism ie. a certain french version of marxism'

originally developed by people like Louis Althusser in

the late fifties and adapted to etnography by Maurice

Godelier and later Jonathan Friedman. It is their

interpretation that in the late seventies reached

archaeology. The language used by these marxists is a

very complicated one, but however their basic ideas are

not less difficult to explain.-*•

In their words the society consists of different

structures, which basically can be divided into the three

major categories already pointed out by Karl Marx, namely

I: forces of production, II: relations of production and

III: superstructure. But when other marxists by this

already have said all about the relative relations

between certain social phenomena like ownership belonging

to the second sphere and religion belonging to the third

- the Neomarxists claim that the contents of the three

spheres {or socalled functional levels) are culture

specific - that means that fx religion in some societies

could be acting as a relation of production (5).

When looking on society as a whole, the structuralists

say that the structures alltogether form a net of

structures with different levels and relative relations,

but not only one structure dominates the others - they at

the same time condition it's existence and dominance.

This is called structural causality. The history is thus

determined by the structural causality and the

development in and between the structures of the specific

society (6).

Although this opinion is not shared by all neomarxists a

very important aspect of the theory of the Althusser-school

is their denial of history as having a certain goal and a

specific subject. As a result of the idea of society

being a product of history and history being a product of

the contradictions in and between the different

functional levels of the society follows that as each

civilization is specific in history, history as well is

specific and unique for each civilization. The history

goes as history can - that means that there exist some

limits of possible developments defined by the natural

and historical environment of each civilization. But

history has no specific goal like fx the land of glory

and socialism - and no subject like fx man, productive

forces, humanistic ideas or the like. History is also

history of nature - yes of the entire universe. Only

totalitarian ideologies claim that history inevitably

leads to their Utopia. And when believing in those

ideologies we at the same time direct .history to their

destinies.

As this theory has been adopted to archaeology fx by

Kristian Kristiansen lately (7), it leaves us with a few

complications. Firstly, in general it seems that a. human

involved in a structure-determined society is nothing but

a robot acting on the demands of the structural

causalities; secondly the way Jonathan Friedman (8) and

after him Kristian Kristiansen both have used the theory,

it only considers local systems but does not take their

"global milleau" into account. This, however, Friedman

has compensated for lately (9).

4. We invented God - then He created us

Looking through the ideological supermarket of today the

structure marxist way of thinking seems however to be the

most comprehensive offer. But.if possible we must try to

revise it. How can we avoid that the human becomes tied

up on the large historical wheel by mean of structural

causality? It would be obvious to say that as the

structures of his society determine man's mind, thus he

is the condition for the existence of the whole thing. In

this way the human is involved in a dual relationship

with the structures as their basis and thus determinant

in a way: - his thinking, his acting is the beginning of

everything. History can be changed by acting of the

individual as well as a group in the society. What they

have to attack at first, if their aim is to change

direction of history, is a certain causality called

"rationality" - what must be changed is the reason of

behavior, otherwise nothing really will be changed: the

example with the Russian revolution demonstrates how a

social revolt tried to remove a totalitarian system but

in reality only replaced it with another - because the

rationality remained the same.

Before getting further into the discussion of rationality

we have to turn to the notion of "mind". A lot of

symbolistic and structuralistic research has been carried

out in etnography as well as in archaeology with the

conviction that mind was something which basically

remained unchanged throughout thousands of years. Maybe

the "fields of thought" had changed, but the structures of

thinking ever remained the same. This idea is common to

formalists as well as to people like the famous

structuralist Claude Levi-Strauss and after him the

structure marxist Maurice Godelier (10).

However, psychology - especially Russian psychology - has

demonstrated among other things the relativity of

perception. The mind does develop - of course it does -

and this in interplay with the social development. And

mind keeps changing. As A.N. Leontyev puts it:

"Mind is not something immutable. Some of it'sfeatures in any concrete historical circumstancesare progressive, with prospects of development,others are survivals doomed to extinction, whichmeans that consciousness, the psyche, needs to beregarded in it's change and development, in it'sessential dependence on men's way of life which isdetermined by actual social relations and by theplace a person occupies in them." (11)

Another Russian psychologist, A. R. Luria, has carried

out researches in remote areas of Russia just after the

revolution in order to investigate what happens when a

feudal-like society all of a sudden has to live up to

Western European standards of education, production and

material life. He was met with a very strange way of

perception, of generalisation and of selfunderstanding.

On the question fx. "what is wrong with you as a person?"

he could get the answer: "I have no cows", or "I have

only one dress" etc. ' And his conclusion is inevitably:

The fundamental categories of human psychic life can now«

be understood as products of social history..." (12).-

The result of our short journey into psychology is that

mind and perception is closely attached to the social

praxis and change in interplay with it. Mind is at the

same time cause and effect. And at this place we can

return to the notion of "rationality". Rationality is a

way of reasoning, specific to each society; rationality

determines what is rational, what is moral, what is

considered as good and bad and how to act in any

connection. Rationality is a way of understanding life,

the world and oneself. Thus rationality governs our way

of thinking; rationality is in a way like God, because it

created us as we are - as we think - but for the

rationality as for God it goes, that they determine us,

but we condition them - we invented God - then He created

us. Of cource materialists usually deny the material

existence of God, but anyhow already Karl Marx pointed

out in the preface to his doctor dissertation -that

"... all Gods, heathen as well as Christian, have had a

real existence. Did not the old Molok execute his power?

Was not the Delfian Appollon a true power in the life of

the Greeks?" (13) Gods and rationalities materialise

themselves in the way people are acting. Thus a lot of

work in ancient Egypt was spent on building - for us it

seems - completely useless pyramids and huge temples -

all in honor of an idea - a tribute to their large

gallery of gods.

Well, Marx seemed to be aware of this phenomenon, but he

did not draw the consequenses theoretically. But as the

French neomarxist school has demonstrated, it is often

the case that fx religion is a relation of production

more than just an appendix to a "mode of production"

(14). Actually religion as well as all the other aspects

of the marxist notion of superstructure are included in

the rationality, and rationality always is a relation of

production, as it determines the rules of behavior. The

consequenses are that the traditional marxist model of

society with it's three levels must be replaced by a

twoleveled model:

Trad, and Superstructure Alternative Rationality

neomarxist Relations of suggestion

model of production for a social Forces of

society: Forces of model: production

production

However non of these models takes into account the global

milleau of the single society. If we want to analyse a

specific society, we are guilty of a fatal error, if we

just use the above advanced model unadapted. It is a

general model (15). If we want to deal with specific

examples, we have to add a third dimension - the economic

and physical frames of the social entity in question.

This level consists of both political and enonomic frames

as well as the biological and geographical limitations of

the development:

Specific, Rationality V possibilities

alternative Forces of production '

model Economic-physical milleau - limitations

But of course what ought to be stressed is that

rationality is not national - it can be limited to

certain spheres of life as fx the family, or it can be

common to a whole civilization as fx the capitalistic.

And it was this very civilization which was so briliantly

analysed by Karl Marx. It has a rationality of

economising. And it is an expansive rationality. We try

to make any society throughout the world accept and adopt

our way of thinking. And in our own world the

narcisistic culture is an expression of that the

rationality now is spreading to areas which former formed

a sphere of their own - the family sphere.

5. Conclusion

And to what conclusion has our discussion led us? We

have now demonstrated how immaterial culture influence

and determine our everyday. We have shown how each

culture has a rationality of it's own which certainly

does not have to be "rational" in the functionalistic

sense of the word. We have argued that the history is a

process without subject and goal. And finally we have -

pointed out the dual relationship between human mind and

society - both are cause and effect, condition and

determinant. All this leads us to the recognition of the

fact that the only law which rules history is the law of

random. <

10

All this must be evident - the complications firstly rise

when we try to adapt the just presented point of view to

our practical archaeological interpretation work, but

that is a question which unfortunately must be left out of

the range of this paper (16). However, as much can we

say as, from what is said above, we may conclude that

only an analysis considering all sides of life, including

all remains from a society in their totality, has a real

chance of getting closer to an understanding of the

society behind the material remains. Dealing with only a

single aspect of immaterial culture is from our point of

view without possibilities of getting any closer to a

comprehension of the prehistoric reality and is thus at

least without sense (17). The best, we can recommend, is

to begin an analysis at a place from where we have

knowledge of the time up to the situation in question,

remains of religion, trade, .craftmanship, foodproduction

- conditions of life and death - in short: the Danish

bronze and early iron age.

11

Notes

Introductory remark:

This paper was originally meant to be a first part of alarger, more elaborate and throughgoing article dealingwith theory as well as theory applied to practice.However time and space - the two eternal limitations oflife - put an effective limit on my efforts.

Anyway thanks ought to be given especially to IngeMeldgard and Ole H^iris, Institute of Social Anthropologyand Ethnography, Moesgaard, University of Aarhus, formany a good and inspiring discussion.

(1): We avoid here to go into detail in the argument againstpositivism, as it has so often been done by others morelearned in those matters. We only have to mention fx thehuge production of Karl Popper, and more specific theinstructive introductions by Uffe Juul Jensen 1980 andOve K. Pedersen 1983.

(2): However convenient the marxist notion of history - theso-called historical materialism as it is defined by KarlMarx himself in 1859 and later demonstrated by JosephStalin 1938 - may seem to the archaeologist, it must berejected for it's too simplistic and thereby inadequateexplanation of the social dynamics of history. KarlPopper and Louis Althusser have both - although fromdiffering starting points - given good critiques of thiswhat they term "historicism". Shorter works on thetopic: see Friedman 1974 and O.K. Pedersen 1983. Thenecessity of refuting the above mentioned mechanical ideaof history has arised especially since the middle of theseventies when many Scandinavian archaeologists adoptedit to their research (fx Mahler et al. 1983 and otherworks from those hands). It ought to be mentioned thatthe Frankfurter -school of Marxism has given up theprecapitalistic researches because of this.

(3): Inside functionalism there exist a wide range ofdiffering opinions defined by people like fx. Malinowski1944, Radcliffe-Brown 1952, Vayda and Rappaport 1968 andRappaport 1971 + 1977. In the late sixties andthroughout the seventies it has been quite a popularviewpoint among archaeologists. For a comprehensivecriticism see Friedman 1974 and 1979a.

(4): This example was given to demonstrate the irrationalityof rationality in any society. Fx if we met the same manin an Inka-like society, he would probably be sweepingfor the Son .of the Sun. Another obvious example is thesacred cow in India, where from time to time people havebeen starving, but still the cows are left untouched.

12 !

(5): Especially ethnographers like Godelier 1975, 1977 a,b;and Friedman 1975a, b and 1979b.

(6): An instructive introduction to the Althusser-school isgiven by O.K. Pedersen 1983. In the form it has reachedarchaeology, see Godelier 1972 and Friedman 1975b and1979b.

(7): Kristian Kristiansen 1982 + 1984.

(8): Friedman 1974, 1975b, 1979b.

(9): Friedman 1979b, preface; 1981, 1982 and Ekholm andFriedman 1980.

(10): For a critique, see Jenkins 1979.

(11): Leontyev 1981 p. 221.

(12): Luria 1977. Unfortunately both of these psychologistsnesessarily have to adopt the Stalinistic vulgarmarcistic approach to their theory of science. Anywaythis does not invalidate the significance of the resultsof their investigations.

(13): Marx 1962 (E-I, p. 371-372)".

,1 A*(14): See note 5.

(15): As by the way already Althusser claimed for his model.

(16) : See the introductory remark.

(17): This goes for periods with written sources as well.Historical science does not avoid the just mentionedproblems because the nature of human civilization doesnot change by the fact that some pieces of writinghappened to survive through the ages.

•"13

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Abo Akademis kopieringscentra! 1985