The Rhyton from Danilo: Structure and Symbolism of a Middle Neolithic Cult-Vessel

By Omer Rak and Theresa Alt

The so called rhyton from Danilo, an archaeological site near the coastal town of Sibenik in Dalmatia, Croatia, is a four-legged Neolithic vessel made of fired clay that according to the consensus of archaeological opinion was most likely a cult vessel used in rituals of unknown origin and content. "Danilo Culture" is the eponymous name bestowed on a culture flourishing in the period from about 5500-4500 BC at Danilo and at some neighbouring sites. This culture had great influence along the eastern Adriatic coast and its hinterland and produced a significant number of these vessels. Rhyta, which other Neolithic cultures also made, were dispersed throughout a vast area of southeast Europe, from Greece to the Alps. This book is an in-depth study of that mysterious, prehistoric archaeological artifact which, due to its antiquity, structure and symbolism, has become a kind of universal proto-matrix for all relevant mythological and spiritual structures of the Mediterranean zone of later, historic times.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Release date: Feb 28, 2011
• ISBN: 9781842175767

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Published by

Oxbow Books, Oxford, UK

© Oxbow Books and Omer Rak, 2011

ISBN 978-1-84217-977-2

PDF ISBN: 9781842175781

EPUB ISBN: 9781842175767

PRC ISBN: 9781842175774

Front cover image: Ceramic ritual vessel – a rhyton with decorations in the

form of double spirals on the handle. Middle Neolithic, Danilo Culture, Smilčić.

Archaeological Museum in Zadar, Croatia. Photo by: Branislav Grgurović.

Back cover image: Danilo Field near Šibenik, Dalmatia, Croatia. Photo by: Željko Krnčević

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rak, Omer.

The rhyton from Danilo : structure and symbolism of a middle Neolithic cult-vessel / Omer Rak

; translated by Theresa Alt and Wayles Browne.

    p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-1-84217-977-2

  1. Danilo culture--Croatia--Dalmatia. 2. Pottery, Prehistoric--Croatia--Dalmatia. 3. Excavations

(Archaeology)--Croatia--Dalmatia. 4. Dalmatia (Croatia)--Antiquities. I. Alt, Theresa F. II. Browne,

Wayles. III. Title.

  GN776.2.D3R35 2011

  939’.8--dc22

2010050962

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

Short Run Press, Exeter

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Preface to the English Edition

Foreword

Introduction: Archaeology and the Symbol

1     The Find

2     The Cultural Sphere of the Rhyton

3     A Bear or... ?

4     Cinnabar

5     Shamans

6     A Snake, Water and Horns

7     A Spiral (Double)

8     The Vulva and the Plough

9     The Androgyne

10    The Phallus

11    Conclusion

Plates

Bibliography

Index

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book would never have seen the light of day had not various individuals and institutions participated in its preparation, colleagues and friends who shared my goal of publishing it, for which I am infinitely grateful to them all.

I met with superb collaboration from the Director of the Archaeological Museum of Istria in Pula, Darko Komšo, as well as from the Curator of the Prehistoric Section of the Archaeological Museum in Zadar, Natalija Čondić, both of whom most generously permitted photographs to be made of the remains of the rhyta from the site Kargadur and from one of the richest sites of the Danilo Culture, the one in Smilčić near Zadar. I was pleasantly surprised by the readiness of the Regional Museum in Nikšić, Montenegro, especially curator Zvezdana Vušović-Lučić, to make and send me photographs of the rhyton found in the significant Crvena Stijena Cave site, as well as by her cheerful spirit that enlivened our every contact. I am deeply in debt to Dr. Paolo Biagi, the renowned Italian prehistoric archaeologist from the Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, who suggested the publisher to me, from the very beginning generously sent literature and illustrations indispensable for my work and remained constantly in contact with me. I also owe thanks to Dr. Muzafer Korkuti, who graciously allowed me to use illustrations from his book about the Albanian Neolithic and Chalcolithic.

Photographs of the finds of rhyta from the Greek Neolithic, especially the ones from Corinth, probably would never have appeared on the pages of this book if Sarah James, Assistant Curator, Corinth Excavations from the American School of Classical Studies at Athens had not located them and kindly sent them to me. I owe no less gratitude to her colleagues Carol A. Stein, Acting Director of Publications, and Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan, Head Archivist, for their thoughtfulness and professionalism.

Both close and productive was our collaboration with the young and promising archaeologist Emil Podrug, curator of the prehistoric collection of the Museum of the City of Šibenik, which holds a large part of the finds from the Danilo Culture’s eponymous site of Danilo Bitinj, as well as from other Neolithic sites from the nearby area. Our regular exchanges of information, exceptionally fruitful conversations about various aspects of the Neolithic as well as physical contact with Danilo ceramics, which I was allowed for my research, contributed in great measure to the genesis of this book. Words are not enough to thank him for his selfless help.

In addition to the translators Theresa Alt and Wayles Browne, who successfully undertook the difficult job of translating this text, frequently accommodating my numerous requirements and additions, I am indebted to my colleague Mirko Banjeglav without whose help I could not have conceived and designed the illustrations and photographs contained in the book. I would be indeed unjust if at the end of this roll I did not also mention and thank my own family – my wife Vesna and daughters Gala and Rea – who patiently persevered together with me, encouraging me and offering me support throughout the lengthy work on this book.

PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

The so-called rhyton (pl. rhyta) from Danilo, an archaeological site near the coastal town of Šibenik in Dalmatia, Croatia, is a four-legged Neolithic vessel made of fired clay that according to the consensus of archaeological opinion was most likely a cult vessel used in rituals of unknown origin and content. Danilo Culture is the eponymous name bestowed on a culture flourishing in the period from about 5500–4800 BC at Danilo and at some neighbouring sites. This culture had great influence along the eastern Adriatic coast and its hinterland and produced a significant number of these vessels. Rhyta, which other Neolithic cultures also made, were dispersed throughout a vast area of southeast Europe, from Greece to the Alps (6th–5th millennium BC). This book is an in-depth study of that mysterious, prehistoric archaeological artifact.

When it was published in Croatia in April 2008 (publisher: Gradska knjižnica Juraj Šižgorić, Šibenik), the book gained wide acclaim amongst prehistoric archaeological experts. Some of the most outstanding among them, such as A. Durman, Z. Brusić and T. Težak-Gregl, welcomed it at book launches, all hailing the important fact that the book is a turning point in the study of Neolithic cult symbolism, especially because it interprets some things that are not usually within the scope of archaeological investigation. It was repeatedly emphasised that the book will be valuable for future investigators of both the rhyton phenomenon and Neolithic cult symbolism. The book, indeed, explores many facets of the Neolithic in general, but the main emphasis is on the role of the rhyton and its structural and symbolic dimensions, which fit perfectly into the frame of Neolithic culture. Thanks to this approach, the rhyton has become a kind of prism reflecting the various aspects of the Neolithic mind. In fact, the entire study represents a complete new methodological approach to the cultural values of the first farming communities in southeastern Europe.

On the basis of the facts elaborated in the book, it is evident that the three parts of the rhyton (handle, receptacle and legs), indicating active and passive principles and the outcome of their union, present the rhyton’s lively and dynamic interconnected structure as a living, productive metaphor. The fired clay cult vessel is the image of the whole universe with its inner polarised interactive structure existing on all levels, so that the final analysis reveals the rhyton’s most stunning feature in this holistic picture – its androgynous nature. Everything in, on and about the rhyton aims at this point. Due to its antiquity, structure and symbolism, the rhyton was a kind of universal proto-matrix for all relevant mythological and spiritual structures founded on it in the mystical theology of the Mediterranean zone of later, historic times. As such, that cult-vessel was the turning point for the first European integration to have encompassed and connected the various, dispersed Neolithic human groups in a cultural and spiritual unification based on this famous cult vessel. Therefore the present book, The Rhyton from Danilo, is unique in highlighting this fact for the very first time. Moreover, revealing and describing the first prehistoric European integration has a powerful resonance and value today for current European integration.

This work is thus the result of detailed and intensive research into the phenomenon of the Danilo rhyton. I have undertaken a meticulous study of contemporary Neolithic cultures surrounding the Danilo Culture, exploring their cult objects and spiritual life and comparing all those results with symbolic representations from the historic period (Ancient Mediterranean, Middle East and beyond). Also, I have explored archaeology, ethnology, anthropology, mythology, linguistics, botany, zoology, geology... using as well some carefully selected hermetic symbols to interpret the vessel and its cult role, its colour, structure and symbolic surface patterns (various ornamentations such as double spirals, lozenges, meanders, zigzag lines, triangles).

A significant problem encountered while writing the book was how to balance a rational scientific and empirical approach with interpretations based mainly on pre-industrial cosmologic concepts as well as on certain metaphysical postulates which were essentially more intuitive than observable. In these questions I have taken the firm position that no demonstration of rational proofs is able to reach the inner sanctum of the symbol, particularly when a certain number of fundamental symbols are closely observed in their transition from prehistoric to historic periods where they have found their integrity of expression in alchemy. Since alchemy in its holistic articulation is particularly inclined to intuition and artistic interpretation, discursive and logical thought processes are incapable of grasping the meaning of the symbols which, as a rule, are ambiguous, multidimensional and flexible, with a tendency to elude any attempt to define them once and for all.

In this regard, what immediately became clear to me is that an excessive and unprincipled reliance on such a kind of symbolic material can easily place the whole structure of the text on shaky ground, liable to let the accumulated material slide down into the domain of current widespread popular wisdom, eclectic and syncretistic in its nature, which is mass produced today under the common rubric of the post-modern New Age, so particular effort has been made to avoid that. Additionally, I have tried to arrange the huge number of scientific interdisciplinary facts in such a way as to avoid unnecessary confusion and to keep the text from becoming a dry, stale and unreadable recitation of established scientific data. I have painstakingly sought to balance both approaches and minimise personal biases and mental constructs of my own.

Researching and writing this book, collecting and interpreting almost all the domestic and the majority of foreign references to the rhyton has taken many years, but in spite of the high praise the book has received here in Croatia, the domestic arena is too limited for a full airing of its contents. Translated into English and published abroad, I trust it will attract all those interested in prehistoric archaeology and profound symbolism, especially since this new edition has been revised and expanded with further interesting facts and interpretations.

FOREWORD

Twelve years ago, during the excavations underway at Grotta dell’Edera, a seven metre thick cave sequence in the Trieste Karst in north-eastern Italy, a few fragments of a typical, undecorated, four-legged rhyton were brought to light from a well-defined Neolithic context, which was later radiocarbon dated to the middle of the seventh millennium uncal BP, and attributed to an impoverished aspect of the Dalmatian Danilo Culture, locally called Vlaška, a term introduced by Lawrence Barfield in the early 1970s. Potsherds of the same ring-handled pot were later analysed by one of my former students, Michela Spataro, now Scientist at the British Museum, London, who defined the origin of the paste and inclusions employed for their manufacture, and contributed to the understanding of the (local) production of these important ceramic fragments.

My interest in these unique vessel types had already been awakened a few years before, thanks to reading an interesting and innovative paper on the rhyta of the upper Adriatic basin, focused on their function, circulation and cultural attribution, written by my fellow postgraduate student, John Chapman. His provocative new interpretations greatly contributed to redirecting my attraction to the Neolithic of the Dalmatian coast, and the Balkan Peninsula in general, a topic I had always kept firmly in mind thanks to the lectures on transhumance and pastoralism in the Balkans by our supervisor, John Nandris, whose classes had benefited us both during our PhD courses at the Institute of Archaeology, London University.

Since then the number of studies on the Neolithic rhyta have multiplied. Several authors have contributed, in different ways, and from different viewpoints, to the interpretation of the origin, production, relative and absolute chronology, cultural attribution(s), territorial distribution, function and (symbolic) significance of this cult vessel that undoubtedly played a very important role in the life (and death) of both farmers and pastoralists of the early-to-late Neolithic of a great part of the Balkan and Aegean worlds.

Rhyta were conceived, adopted and developed in the very articulated and complex geographic and political landscapes of south-eastern Europe, a territory of fundamental importance for understanding the movement of peoples and transmission of ideas, at least from the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic onwards, at the meeting place of two different worlds, along the natural route that links Anatolia with Central Europe.

Surprisingly rhyta spread very rapidly, but not exclusively, along the coasts of the eastern Adriatic during the development of the Dalmatian Danilo Neolithic. They represent a common feature of several cultural entities, defined by archaeologists with different names, sometimes corresponding to chronologically or typologically similar or subsequent aspects. Rhyta were often marked by specific characteristics among which are the presence/absence of decorative patterns, scratched, grooved or painted geometric and/or spiral motifs, slightly different vessel shapes and handles, as well as four or double-legged specimens.

This innovative and comprehensive volume by Omer Rak on this unique cult vessel falls within the complicated framework of the Balkan Neolithic outlined above. The author, apart from providing the reader with a detailed history of the rhyton’s archaeology, its first discoveries and descriptions by archaeologists in former Yugoslavia, points out the geographic distribution of these pots and the variable cultural contexts from which they were recovered. His attention is attracted by the concept of its non-functional value, its importance in the spiritual world of the Neolithic farmers and its multi-regional distribution, possibly indicating a "first integration of European territory in prehistory".

He continues with the interpretation of this cult vessel by different authors, within the spiritual world of the Neolithic populations of the Balkans and the Aegean, widening his scope to Anatolia and the Far East, looking for historical and philosophical contexts and explanations from which to extract spiritual values, in an attempt to explain such an intricate archaeological phenomenon. He experiments with the stylistic interpretation of the geometric decorative patterns, which ornament some of the ceramic types, pointing out the symbolic importance of the rhyta, which constitute a unique "irreproducible phenomenon" that spread from the Aegean Sea to the Alps. Although he partly accepts the idea of previously suggested, although interpretatively restrictive, relationship with other cult objects within the broader framework of a fertility cult, where the rhyton represents the female counterpart, he also poses a number of important new questions regarding the complexity of its potential role in ceremonies/sacrifices, possible reason in the funerary rites for its fragmentary recovery status and dislocation, and its importance in "the spiritual and cultural integration of the inhabitants".

These are but some of the reasons why this volume by Omer Rak represents an important contribution to the study and understanding of a unique Neolithic cult vessel. It supplements and integrates earlier papers by several authors on the topic, and poses new questions on the nature, interpretation and possible function(s) of the rhyta. It is an updated and widened English version of a successful volume by the same author on the same subject written in Croatian in 2008.

Paolo Biagi

Ca’ Foscari University, Venice

July 31st, 2010

INTRODUCTION: ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE SYMBOL

For lack of written sources, in interpreting particular non-material aspects of prehistoric culture, it has turned out to be indispensable to develop an interdisciplinary approach drawing not only on archaeology but, as well on mythology, ethnology, folklore, symbology and some other disciplines so as to construct a systematic picture of the nature of prehistoric symbols. This in no way means neglecting the strictly rational, positivist approach, rather, helping it to move toward recognising the patterns of archaic worldviews surviving in later cultural tradition in Eastern and Western hermetic doctrines which, most often in the language of allegory and metaphor, or paradox, transmit the sense of ancient symbolic conceptions whose origin is frequently lost in the haze of prehistory. An approach formulated in such a way is a particularly strong tool in the hands of those who seek a holistic interpretation of the structure and symbolism of prehistoric artifacts, especially the cult objects. The present work belongs to this kind of methodological mind set.

The fact is that such a, to give it an oxymoronic name, rational-intuitive approach, which takes data from finds in the field, but also the ever more successful interpretations of archaeologists, and supplements them with the preindustrial, traditional interpretation of the symbol, can throw light on the symbolic meaning of artifacts over a much broader range than can the rigid, stale methodology of an anachronistic scholarly apparatus. The inadequacy of the latter is its positivist, indeed vulgar materialistic approach to phenomena which manifestly elude such treatment and demand a subtler and more comprehensive approach. For the majority of archaeologists, especially those of the Anglo-Saxon and Soviet schools, belief in the accuracy of the natural sciences has become unshakeable. Hence the striking rapprochement between archaeologists and natural scientists, which has resulted in their close collaboration in an atmosphere of mutual trust and the best intentions on both sides to explain the human being and his behaviour in the past through joint efforts. However, the hypertrophied growth of the role of natural sciences in archaeology, clearly observable in some circles, as the archaeologist D. Srejović remarks, has reduced the archaeologist to a collector of samples for laboratory analysis or an interpreter of the results of others, the reliability of which he is not in a position to verify. On the other hand, to make his science exact, the archaeologist avoids discussing any phenomenon contained in the archaeological material that he cannot test by experiment or natural-science methods. Some recent archaeological monographs come down to kitchen archaeology, since they primarily consist of long lists and accompanying statistical tables of everything that a person used for food, the precise number of all species of wild and domestic animals, as well as grains, fruits and legumes supplemented by a great number of pages with parallel dates obtained by physico-chemical methods, complete menus and a list of all raw materials used, while only a line or two is devoted to religion, art or ideology. The intentions are obviously good, the data useful, but the mistake is that the relevant data obtained from the natural sciences are only stated and not explained (Srejović 2001). We are referring of course to a kind of sheer empiricism which is in no way capable of putting the pieces of the puzzle together into a coherent picture which will serve as a solid handle for interpretation.

For modern science (including archaeology), truths or general laws, without which experience would only be quicksand, are nothing other than simplified descriptions of phenomena, useful, but always only temporary abstractions, as T. Burckhardt (1987) would say. The analytic mind of science, therefore, is nothing more than a knife that follows the grooves of the object and serves to get a better view. Goethe knew that very well when he said: in broad daylight ... what nature does not want to reveal to us will not be pried from her with crowbars and screws. It is obvious however that all systematicisations in use [in archaeology] today have one characteristic in common, and that is that they base their interpretative logic on the selective analysis of selected materials, using for this general theoretical positions and existing but insufficient results from interdisciplinary studies and sometimes from exact sciences (Leković 1996, 103). Traditional explanations and existing conventions based on the analysis of formal-typological characteristics, stylistic-statistical data, stratigraphic and comparative-evolutionary observations with a cultural-historical interpretative orientation that has its shortcomings only make it possible to run in circles (Ibid).

In contrast to such an approach stands the innovative work of the very popular Lithuanian-American archaeologist M. Gimbutas (died 1994), whose impressionistic theses still provoke numerous controversies from scholarly-academic circles to the ecofeminists and New Age enthusiasts. Gimbutas was in any case right when she claimed that the Neolithic symbols of Old Europe form a complex system in which each part is connected with all the other parts. No single symbol, she holds, can be viewed separately; understanding the parts leads to understanding the whole, which, again, leads to better understanding of the parts. Thus, to say it in her parlance: Neolithic artifacts and the associated symbols are visual metaphors that represent the grammar and syntax of a kind of meta-language by which an entire constellation of meanings is transmitted (Gimbutas 1989, XV ).

Cult objects that contain very little information and allow for a broad spectrum of interpretation can be viewed as remnants of a set of symbols, an integral part of a lost system of communication and the reflection of spiritual contents in material culture (Bánffy 2004), or as a form of nonverbal communication. Symbols can be approached processually – taking them as signs that represent reality, or structuralistically – considering them the mental bearers that give form to cultural actuality, or they can be pointed to in a postmodern manner as arbitrary fragments incorporated in phenomenological experience. However it may be, any more serious investigation of ancient societies requires work with symbols. The newest approaches to archaeology and its subject matter, such as cognitive archaeology, aim at an understanding of the ways in which early people formed their different constructs of reality, and of how these concepts could lead to a worldview that exists in today’s human community. No wonder therefore that human cognitive evolution is closely linked with fundamental epistemological questions, such as: what is the nature of the processes that have led us to experience the world in the way we now understand it, and in what way are the frames of reference created which people use to define the physical reality that they observe to exist, etc. Such approaches, as practice bears witness, exclude some previously dominant approaches, first and foremost the palaeoanthropological ones, that is, those that consider the study of the remains of hominid skeletons to be the central methodological model for studying the development of humanity. The bones of our early ancestors can tell us much about the physical evolution of people, but they tell us nothing about their humanity. One of the most taxing problems in archaeology is to determine about what and in what manner did prehistoric people think. Is it possible to make the ‘mute stones speak’, and will they tell us how (if not what) our predecessors were thinking? asks C. Renfrew (1994, 9). Most often it is impossible to understand the meaning of symbols from a certain culture exclusively from the symbolic form of the presentation or the symbol itself. The least that can be expected is to discover the way in which that form was used and, especially, to see it in the context of other symbols. Therefore the new approaches in archaeology demand dealing carefully with regard to the specific context of the discovery of the find itself since what is essential is the set, the whole, and not the individual object by itself.

The main problem in the archaeology of the symbol still remains understanding the way different kinds of symbols are connected with one another. Symbolic expressions are not only words but pictures/performances, figurines, dances, rituals.... Symbols have a powerful and, seemingly, anarchic power of association capable of encompassing a meaning which otherwise could not be poured into a word, phrase or any other form of spoken or written expression. Long ago the archaeologist G. Childe remarked that we can project our own theories about those symbols based on notions from the historic period but we risk mixing up knowledge and fiction. This remark certainly valid, since earlier generations of archaeologists, wishing an explanation of prehistoric finds, given the complete lack of written sources invented a sort of parallel history, imagining (or perhaps better – inventing) what ancient people thought or believed.

However, although it is impossible to determine precisely what prehistoric symbols meant to their creators and worshippers, it is not impossible to determine the analogy between prehistoric symbolic productions and the physical phenomena to which they referred. The human characteristic of expressing symbols in pictures-performances surely was no less developed in prehistoric man than in modern man. Hierophany (Greek: hiero – sacred; phainein – to show), an expression that M. Eliade first coined, arose to explain the way in which a manifestation of the Sacred was symbolised through the epochs of history. According to Eliade everything was hierophany somewhere at some moment in history: all animals, tools, toys, all gestures, children’s games, dances, musical instruments, chariots, boats, etc. (Eliade 1958, 10–12). Such a view of the Sacred, of course, presupposes a holistic concept of religion. Today it is generally accepted that what clearly separates the human species from other forms of life is our capacity to use symbols. Both thoughts and language are based on symbols, since words are, in and of themselves, symbols of the actual world.

Prehistoric artists used an abstract expression not because they were incapable of expressing themselves naturalistically but because their art was intended for reading in symbolic and archetypal terms. The symbolic system of early people was no less subtle (sometimes perhaps even more subtle) than our modern one. The distinction between primitive and modern is a notion that should have been discredited and discarded long ago. A symbolic system of the complexity of the Old European type is not only a simple metaphor that agrees with the patterns of early agricultural life – such a definition is unnecessarily utilitarian, although it can find its foundation also in such patterns. Nevertheless, what is evident is that in their religion can be found an extreme subtlety of symbols, which represented for those advanced, successful and creative people a dynamic and vital symbolism that reflected a living, generative metaphor, a collection of archetypes that informed their life and the perception of their life – not as credo or belief, but as a grammar of spirituality. What our scholarship is about...is the simple and straightforward attempt to understand how our ancestors looked at things and lived their lives, in order to see how we got where we are, and to see if they have anything to teach us....it is pretty clear that they do, and that we have quite a lot of work ahead of us working our way through the labyrinth of reconstruction and comparison (Everson 1989, 280).

Let us also recall that in more recent times some archaeologists in explaining their theories have embraced a so-called post-positivist philosophy or one of the relativism of post-modernism, thus developing an interpretational approach with abundant use of hermeneutic-semiotic analyses derived from theoretical frameworks developed in linguistic studies. This approach in any case came to the peak of ripe science as the philosopher and historian of science T. Kuhn calls those sciences that have come to a level of development where the language of their communications has become completely incomprehensible to nonspecialists, but also to a large part of their colleagues from the discipline.

This work arose as a kind of reaction against, let us call it, external symbolic exegesis, against superficial understanding of the object of study, i.e. Neolithic cult vessels, whether it came from the old inductive school of archaeology that was inclined to jigsaw puzzles or from those newer deductive ones that are very attracted to discovering the nature of cultural dynamics in the past. As practice has shown, the first approach will not delve into any more thorough interpretation of the cult nature of individual artifacts than merely establishing the fact that it is a cult object; the second will frequently bring in the social component, i. e. the context of social relations in which a certain cult object arose and which are, according to this approach, reflected in the symbolic structure of the object but also in its spiritual and/or functional aspect. Or, in the manner of the postprocessual approach, it will emphasise that the artifacts and the material world that we construct are not mere reflections of our social reality becoming embodied in a material object but, what is more, that the material culture and the actual objects contribute to a large part of everything which makes possible the functioning of society. Material culture and society, in I. Hodder’s view, mutually constitute one another within a historically and culturally specific set of ideas, beliefs and meanings. In this way, for example, the connection between burial and society directly depends on attitudes toward death (Hodder in Hodder and Hudson 2003, 3).

None of these latter approaches in archaeological