What lies beneath: Thinking about the qualities and essences of stone and wood in the chambered tomb architecture of Neolithic Britain and Ireland

Introduction

Stone has always featured heavily in accounts of the British and Irish Neolithic; from the mass of well-preserved monuments through to smaller stone tools, stone is ever-present in the record. For many years we have used geological techniques in order to source stones used in material culture sets, from stone axe quarries (Clough and Cummins, 1988) to the composition of large chambered tombs (Cooney, 2000: Fig. 137; Mitchell, 1992). The recent identification of a whole variety of stone quarries for megaliths has also refined our understandings of the origins and compositions of monuments (e.g. Mens, 2008; Scarre, 2009a). Alongside these advances in our knowledge, archaeologists have also explored concepts of materiality. Drawing on recent reassessments of our understanding of relational materialities and animistic ontologies, this article addresses the issue of how people may have conceptualized different types of stone in monumental architecture. It goes on to suggest that stone in chambered tomb contexts was a highly fluid and transmutable substance, which took on different meanings dependent on its context. Key to understanding the contextuality of stone is its point of origin and also the way in which it was quarried, transported and subsequently used. From this starting point, it should be possible to write a contextually specific account of the varying uses of stone in Neolithic megalithic architecture. Following on from this, the role of wood in the construction of monuments is also explored.

Different types of stone

As a starting point, this article follows the suggestion that there was no single monolithic category of stone in the past (see articles in Boivin and Owoc, 2004, for example). There were stones in the physical sense, but the wide variety of stones utilized by people in the Neolithic was almost certainly understood in fundamentally different ways. This idea is supported by recent work on materiality, which suggests that material substances are part of existing understandings of the world (Meskell, 2005). Of particular relevance to this discussion is Ingold’s recent work on the material world where he discusses how we understand and approach the world, particularly the interplay between materials, objects and artefacts (2007). He suggests that there was never a world of artefacts, just different types of material being used by people. Furthermore, he argues convincingly that it is not the properties of materials which were important (so in this case, that stone is the hard, concreted remains of geological processes) but rather the qualities of that material (2007: 9–13). This is because materials are not ‘the inanimate stuff typically envisioned by modern thought, [but] … the active constituents of a world-in-formation … Thus the properties of materials … cannot be identified as fixed, essential attributes of things, but are rather processual and relational’ (2007: 11–14). Critically, he argues, it would have been the qualities of things that would have given objects meaning in the past. It is possible to suggest that Ingold’s use of the words ‘properties’ and ‘qualities’ is problematic as there is an implication that the two words can be used to describe things that are different at some essential level. Instead, the two words can actually be used interchangeably as they both relate to the attributes or characteristics of things, externally visible or not. Nevertheless, Ingold’s basic point is sound and important: material substances are relational. Thus if we think through these ideas in relation to stone, it suggests that stones would have been understood in many different ways, but entirely dependent on their qualities and context.

Ingold’s approach to materiality can be seen to fit into a broader revitalized interest in animism, also known as perspectivism (e.g. Alberti and Bray, 2009; Alberti and Marshall, 2009; Viveiros de Castro, 1998). It has long been noted by anthropologists that many societies understand the world rather differently from most people in the modern West. Of particular relevance is the idea that human and animal worlds are not separate entities, but interchangeable and transposable. For example, in his consideration of Amazonian Amerindian conceptions of people and animals, Viveiros de Castro (1998) details how the difference between these kinds of being is in their form (their differing bodies) and not in essence (their underlying spiritual unity). In effect, then, people and animals are the same on the inside – they all have spirits – but vary on the outside, and it is that bodily difference that explains why different animals and humans act in differing ways (Viveiros de Castro, 1998: 478). Animism need not and does not extend only to animals. A common underlying spiritual unity can also be found in relation to substances and materials (things or objects). So, for example, some peoples believe that stones are the remains of ancestral beings (Robinson, 2004; Taçon, 1991). There are also numerous accounts of stones being animate objects, growing, procreating and moving around (e.g. Brumm, 2004; Kahn, 1990; Roe and Taki, 1999). Thus the wider notion of animism can be applied to both animals and substances.

It is this approach to reconceptualizing ontologies, specifically in relation to thinking differently to standard western approaches to conceptualizing the world, which offers archaeologists a useful way of thinking about materials. While we should not directly apply ethnographic analogy onto the past, I find it highly unlikely that people in the Neolithic would have understood the nature of things to be the same as we do in the West in the present day. While we should assume considerable variation over space and time, an animistic ontology of some sort seems a much more likely way of being in the world in the past. Thus, in the Neolithic, stone may well have been considered to have spiritual properties or essences, and there may well have been many different types of stone, with their qualities the key defining factor in their place in the world. In addition to this, the meanings of different types of stone would have changed, dependent on context. It is this approach that is useful for thinking about a contextual archaeological approach to Neolithic megalithic architecture.

One way of exploring the idea that there were different ‘types’ of stone in the past is to think about the qualities of different stones. There is already a growing interest in a multi-sensual archaeology (e.g. Rodaway, 1994; Skeates, 2010) and archaeologists have explored these ideas in a number of cases. In relation to chambered tombs there has been a detailed consideration of the colour of stones employed (Bradley, 2000b; Jones, 1999; Scarre, 2004) as well as the texture of stones used at different points in a chamber (Cummings, 2002b). There has been an increased focus in recent years on the quarries from which the stones originated (papers in Brewer-Laporta et al., 2010; Scarre, 2009a) so that we can now write about the geological origins of specific types of stone. We have also searched for patterning to explain the particular use of specific stones in monumental settings (Scarre, 2004).

In addition to work on monuments as a whole, there has been detailed work on specific rock types, and the recent discussion on quartz is of particular note in relation to the use of stone in chambered tombs. Quartz is found in many different types of context in the Neolithic. Darvill (2002) in particular has discussed the significance of white quartz, focusing primarily on its colour and listing the wide range of sites where this material has been found in the Neolithic. Quartz is found in chambered tombs throughout both Britain and Ireland (Cummings, 2009: chapter 5; Darvill, 2002) and in the recumbent stone circle tradition of north-east Scotland. Indeed, it is at the latter sites that quartz has been interpreted as having a connection with the moon, due to its shiny and sparkly qualities (Bradley, 2004; Burl, 2000). Considering the qualities of quartz has led to suggestions that quartz may also be representative of bone, milk, semen, ice, snow and water (Bradley, 2004; Fowler and Cummings, 2003; Jones, 1999), which in a Neolithic economy of substances (cf. Thomas, 1999) may well have been powerful and evocative materials in their own right (cf. Taçon, 1991).

These discussions have illustrated the general qualities of quartz based on its external properties (white, sparkly, shiny, hard, cold, etc.), and the potential sets of associations with these qualities. It may have been the case that these associations were shared across space and time in the Neolithic; however, it seems more likely that quartz was understood differently dependent on context. Amongst early Neolithic chambered tomb architecture, for example, there is no consistency in the use and deposition of quartz (for full details see Cummings, 2009: chapter 5). For example, Pant y Saer on Anglesey had quartz pebbles deposited in the chamber (Scott, 1933): this site is unusual in that the chamber contained a large number of bodies (54 are claimed in the original report although this is likely to be an over-estimation: Mick Wysocki pers. comm.). Darvill (2002) has already suggested that quartz pebbles resemble skulls and the white of quartz could also be analogous to other parts of the body such as bone, fat or even the eyes. At Pant y Saer, then, quartz pebbles may well have been tokens of other bodies, or parts of bodies (cf. Fowler, 2004). On the Isle of Man quartz is found within the structure of monuments: at both King Orry’s Grave NE and Cashtal yn Ard quartz veins are found in the portal stones. Quartz veins here resemble streams running down the nearby hillsides, and there seems to be a very strong connection between stone and water at these sites. Indeed, it has been suggested elsewhere that the transformative power of water was the key metaphor in the Manx Neolithic (Cummings and Fowler, 2004; Fowler and Cummings, 2003).

Returning to the work on materiality and animism, we must be wary of assigning meaning to quartz based only on appearance. The underlying idea behind perspectivism is that it is not the surface of a thing that is significant. Indeed, the surface can often hide similarities in essence (as with human and animals in the case of the Amazon: Viveiros de Castro, 1998). It is what lies beneath that is significant. Thus, the idea that quartz looks like body parts or eyes, or looks like water or ice, may not have been relevant in the Neolithic. Therefore, to suggest that there was one set of qualities and one set of associations for quartz is too limited, but to examine their individual qualities in specific contexts may be more revealing. Thus there may have been many different ‘types’ of quartz, their meanings drawing on their qualities, contexts and underlying natures. Indeed, at certain times and places quartz may well have been thought to be alive as part of a broader animistic ontology.

How, then, do we explore the different types of stone used in chambered tomb architecture, employing these ideas on materiality and animism? Clearly we need to use approaches already utilized: exploring the qualities of stone and the contexts in which those stones are employed within particular monuments. In addition to this we also need to consider these stones as potentially animate objects and try to consider them as we would other beings. One of the ways we can explore this is through finding out where they came from. This is why we now turn to the issue of quarrying and how we can explore quarry sites.

The quarrying of different stones

There is a long history of locating stone quarries in the British and Irish Neolithic. After the initial identification of stone axe quarries such as Tievebulliagh, Penmaenmawr and Langdale, important work was done on sourcing stone axes from the 1960s onwards (Clough and Cummins, 1979, 1988; Cooney and Mandal, 1998). Bradley and Edmonds’ (1993) work on the Langdale stone extraction sites was another important milestone in the consideration of the quarry sites. In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in locating quarries, this time those quarries that produced the stones for megalithic architecture, including chambered tombs and stone circles (Bukach, 2003; Darvill, 2009a; Richards, 2004b; Scarre, 2009a, 2009b). Thinking about the quarrying site and the quarrying process is critical if we follow the idea that all the different types of stone were not inanimate in the Neolithic, but part of a broader animistic understanding of the world (Basso, 1984; Scarre, 2009b). Stones, then, like other people, animals and objects, were simply another component of an active and living world. The identification and study of quarries enables us to add to our understanding of the biography of individual stones (Gillings and Pollard, 2000). If stones, like people, animals and objects, were animate beings, then they are likely to have been understood as being born, having a life and then dying (Gosden and Marshall, 1999; Kopytoff, 1986). As archaeologists we usually encounter objects once they have ‘died’, finding their final resting place. Quarries, however, enable us to talk about the start of a stone’s life.

A whole variety of different types of place were used as the source of stones in the Neolithic. Stone axes typically were quarried from mountains: Tievebulliagh, Penmaenmawr and Langdale are all visually distinctive mountains in the landscape. The quarries at Langdale, for example, were not easily accessible from the valley floor, and some workings utilized enormous buttresses of rock such as Harrison Stickle (Bradley and Edmonds, 1993). In contrast, some quarries were from much smaller outcrops of rock. Altdrumman portal tomb, Co. Tyrone, and Ballymacdermot, Co. Armagh, both used small rock outcrops as the quarry site: in both these cases, the monument was built immediately next to the outcrop (Cooney, 2007: 142; Cummings, 2009: 99). At other sites, quarrying simply involved digging up a small outcrop: at Carreg Samson in south-west Wales, for example, an outcrop was dug up and raised in situ as the capstone (Lynch, 1975). At Carreg Samson, and indeed many other chambered tombs in Britain and Ireland, a number of different stone sources were utilized (Darvill, 2009b), so that each monument was actually a collection of different types of stones from different places. Unfortunately, the vast majority of quarry sites for these stones have not been located. Nevertheless, the origin and ‘birthplace’ of different types of stone would surely have played a critical role in how people subsequently understood those stones. It may well be the case that these outcrops were already known places in the landscape. Furthermore, converting those places into monuments would have been a highly potent, and potentially quite dangerous act (Cummings and Whittle, 2004: chapter 7; Richards, 2004a; Tilley, 1994; Whittle, 2004).

We should also not just be thinking about what types of site were used as quarry sites, but the different ways in which stones were quarried (and see Mens, 2008). Again, this will vary from source to source, with potential variation within each source. In some cases stones could be easily prised, or dug up, from the ground, but many stone sources would require more effort. Wooden wedges or antler picks could have been driven down fault lines, large hammerstones used to fracture the rock or fires set (Bradley and Edmonds, 1993: 78–9, 142). These different ways of extracting stone add another quality to each stone: birth by fire or by stone shaping the way that stone was perceived and subsequently used. Moreover, this would have been a reflexive relationship: the qualities of each stone also had an effect on the way they could be quarried. Laminated stones which can easily be split using wooden wedges may have taken on some of the qualities of the material used to quarry it: indeed many chambered tombs in Britain and Ireland use stone which shares visual characteristics with wood, a theme returned to later.

In addition to the location of the stone, and the way in which stone was prised from the earth or rock face, we could also consider what else was going on at the quarry site. For example, were people living close by the quarry sites, or were they going there only to remove stone? This is clearly an interesting avenue for research, which has only been explored in a few cases. At the stone quarries on Langdale, for example, the general inaccessibility of the stone source high on a mountain means people were probably not living there all year round. However, the excavations by Bradley and Edmonds (1993: 142) suggest that people may well have been living up there some of the year as part of a broader utilization of the uplands for hunting or summer grazing.

Another crucial point involves the size of the stones quarried and how stones were transported. Many stones in Neolithic chambered tombs were fairly modestly sized, even stones used to construct chambers and façades. In many cases, stones could have been moved around fairly easily by only a relatively small number of people if so desired (e.g. Atkinson, 1961), although we should be wary of reducing everything to principles of ‘least effort’ (see later). However, many chambered tombs used enormous stones in their construction (and see Scarre, 2011). The most extreme example of this is the capstone at Brownshill (Kernanstown) in County Carlow, which weighs over 150 tonnes (Figure 1). Here it is estimated that a bare minimum of 200 people would have been required just to lift this stone (Kytmannow, 2008: 47). The movement of large stones would have required not only manpower but also considerable planning and resources: rollers, rope and grease for moving a stone, the clearance of the landscape along the path of movement, and food to feed the workforce (Richards, 2004a: 77). The social significance of stones which required a considerable workforce to move must not be underestimated (cf. Hoskins, 1986), and the quarrying and moving of the stone may have been of primary importance, with its final resting place potentially of secondary concern. All of these different aspects can potentially inform our understanding of different stones, and I now want to explore these ideas in more detail through a case study. OPEN IN VIEWER

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Table 1.

The qualities of different stones at Blasthill and possible interpretations.

A cairn of many stones: The case of Blasthill chambered tomb

Blasthill chambered tomb (Figure 2) is an early Neolithic monument which was recently partially excavated as part of a wider project in southern Kintyre (Cummings and Robinson, 2009). Blasthill chambered tomb is part of the ‘Clyde’ class of monuments found throughout western Scotland and with many similarities with the court cairn tradition of eastern Ireland (Cummings, 2009: chapter 4). The project investigated the area surrounding Blasthill through walkover survey, geophysical survey and fieldwalking, while Blasthill chambered tomb was investigated through excavation. Two trenches were opened over the monument itself, one on the forecourt and one over the body of the cairn. A third trench was opened to explore potential quarry sites located in the immediate vicinity. Our excavations revealed that the monument had been constructed in a series of phases, as evidenced at other Clyde monuments in western Scotland (e.g. Corcoran, 1969). The primary phase seems to have comprised a small, open-ended chamber set within a small round cairn. At a later date, this small chamber was incorporated into a long cairn with façade, and another terminal chamber was added: this ‘converted’ the monument into the typical configuration found at other Clyde monuments (Figure 3). OPEN IN VIEWER

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Figure 3.

The sequence of construction at Blasthill. 1. The primary round cairn. 2. The main phase of construction, where the monument is converted into the more familiar Clyde design. 3. The monument as it survives today.

The geological assessment of the stones in the monument revealed the use of a variety of different stone types. The bulk of the monument is constructed from olivine dolerite which outcrops in a number of places in the immediate area (Roger Anderton pers. comm.). Indeed, many of these quarried outcrops are still visible immediately around the monument itself, so that it is possible to say that the stone for the monument was therefore quarried from these locations (Figure 4). One of our trenches also exposed one of these quarried surfaces. Other stone types were also found in the monument. A few slabs of non-local banded chert with distinctive green pigmented bands were located around the entranceway at the very edge of the primary cairn (Dave Jenkins pers. comm.). In the second phase, when the monument was converted to a more typical Clyde cairn form, a number of conglomerate slabs were incorporated as part of the cairn material. A small quantity of red siltstones were also found, stacked up as drystone walling between two of the portal stones in the forecourt (Figure 5). Large numbers of quartz pebbles were also found, primarily round the edge of the cairn. The use of different types of stone in the make-up of a chambered tomb is not unique and is recorded elsewhere (Darvill, 2009b; McFadyen, 2006). However, I now want to suggest that, following the ideas outlined above, we can explore what these different types of stone may have represented at Blasthill, dealing with each rock type in turn and in relation to the different phases of the monument. OPEN IN VIEWER

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Figure 5.

The pink drystone walling slabs in the facade at Blasthill.

In its primary phase, the monument was made from two stone types: the local dolerite quarried from the immediate locality on Blasthill, and imported banded chert. The local dolerite makes up the vast majority of stones at Blasthill. Prior to quarrying, some dolerite would have been visible as weathered boulders, with angled, polygonal fractures similar to those found at Fingal’s Cave (Roger Anderton pers. comm.). This stone would have been easy to quarry with wooden wedges, water and hammerstones, the latter found in small quantities within the monument.

It is too easy to suggest that this stone was used simply because it was convenient. We should also be wary of understanding it as a homogeneous whole. It is possible to argue that the communities living in southern Kintyre may have created myths and stories surrounding the stones at the outcrops that were visible prior to the construction of the monument, perhaps thinking of them as the animate remains of ancestors or spirits (see earlier). But this is not to imply that all stones on Blasthill were understood in this way. There may well have been crucial differences relating to the individual life histories of these stones. We should also consider the broader context of the location of these stones. From the slopes of Blasthill, particularly at and around the chambered tomb, there are wide views out to Ireland and Arran. This may well have added another dimension to some of the stones quarried here, creating specific connections with other people and other places. Through survey and excavation across Blasthill we found substantial evidence for post-Neolithic occupation, but nothing contemporary with the monument itself (Cummings and Robinson, in preparation). This might suggest that people were not living up here in the Neolithic, although we know they were living in the valleys around Blasthill from fieldwalking (Figure 6). Perhaps, then, the monument was built of stones that were a combination of the mythological remains of ancestors, and stones freshly cut from the earth, born through wood and water, and taking on components of those elements, to become part of the monument. OPEN IN VIEWER

The banded chert slabs found in the primary phase of the monument are unfortunately harder to source but probably come from the Carboniferous lava succession (Clyde Plateau Lavas), the nearest of which is at Machrihanish (Roger Anderton pers. comm.). This may suggest the deliberate import and incorporation of something visually very distinctive, and references to a wider world. These are small slabs, which could be carried by a single person, and are present at the site in only small quantities. Their location around the entranceway into the primary monument suggests the deliberate display of these presumably significant stones.

In the second phase of the monument, the small primary monument was converted into a more typical Clyde cairn by adding another chamber and a façade (thus creating a forecourt area), and incorporating the whole into a long cairn (Cummings and Robinson, 2009). This phase (or phases) saw the further use of the local dolerite and more extensive use of different, non-local stone types. The first of these is a conglomerate stone which was most likely quarried 2 km away at Macharioch (Figure 6). A small number of these conglomerates were found, in sizes that could be transported by a single person. The conglomerate was used in the cairn, and was mixed in with the dolerite cairn stones. The stone itself has distinctive qualities, particularly when compared to the dolerite. As a conglomerate it consists of a mix of stones, including lumps of quartz. Its source at Macharioch may well have been crucial in understanding its careful incorporation into the monument. Fieldwalking, geophysical survey and excavation at Macharioch have revealed the long-term occupation of the area, from the Mesolithic through into the Neolithic. There were large lithic assemblages from all fields investigated at Macharioch, as well as the remains of a possible house structure, although it has not produced any securely stratified material to date it (Cummings and Robinson, in preparation). Macharioch is also the location of another chambered tomb. This monument has been badly damaged and consists of only two upright and in situ stones, both of which are conglomerates. This area around Macharioch is very sheltered from the prevailing westerly winds, and has wide views of Ailsa Craig and to mainland Scotland. Ailsa Craig seems to have been a key focal point in the landscape for chambered tombs elsewhere, particularly Arran, and it may have been perceived as a particularly potent natural feature (also see Cooney, 2004). Thus it could be suggested that the significance of the stone from this area is linked to the chambered tomb found there, built from the same material, and the communities that lived around it. By incorporating this visually distinctive stone into the body of the cairn it may have made key connections with another monumental site and another community. This stone type, then, may have been representative of both living and dead communities at Macharioch, fitting perhaps for a conglomerate stone. These stones were added to the body of the cairn, a small part of a bigger whole.

Small pink slabs of siltstone were also added during the second phase of construction. They are found in only one part of the monument, in between the façade stones which frame the forecourt. A smooth but angular reddy-pink colour, these are visually the most striking stones in the monument, and for a monument which held the dead, may have created connections with blood, fire or birth (cf. Jones and MacGregor, 2002). These stones would have been quarried from outcrops at Machribeg near Southend, an area which saw repeated occupations in the late Mesolithic (Cummings and Robinson, in preparation). Their angular form clearly shows that these were quarried slabs and, again, these are slabs small enough to have been carried up by a single person. Their source is a coastal location, with wide views of the sea and good landing places for boats. There are also wide views of Ireland, Sanda Island and Dunaverty rocks, a very distinctive landmass which was later the site of a castle. These stones would have been highly visible for people standing in the forecourt, looking at a monument that now had been in use for quite some time. Their vibrant colour, careful quarrying and shaping, origin point from a location used heavily in the Mesolithic and their prominence in the outer skin of the monument could suggest that these stones represented ancestral beings, whose bodies were very carefully displayed, and whose essential essence contained and controlled the remains of those buried at the monument.

The main monumental phase also saw the extensive use of quartz pebbles. These pebbles were not quarried but would have been collected on the beach or raised beach (Hugo Anderson-Whymark pers. comm.), both of which are within 1 km of the site. Individuals could have carried these stones to the site. For the most part these quartz pebbles were smashed into smaller pieces, into halves, quarters or even eighths and scattered around the edge of the monument. This is unique to this type of stone: only the quartz pebbles were broken up on the site, and we could suggest this process of fragmentation was to reveal the hidden nature of each stone. These smashed pebbles appear to have then been used to ‘dress’ the outside of the monument, as they were only found around the edges and on top of the cairn, so they were essentially ‘wrapping’ the monument with their essences. There may also have been connections with the transformative power of water: just like the monument transformed people (both the living and dead), these stones were themselves being transformed at the site.

These were not the only stones used at Blasthill: struck flint, struck quartzite and Arran pitchstone were also found in small quantities and deposited in very specific parts of the monument, other types of stone representing other people, places, and events, and quite conceivably with long biographies prior to deposition. Although there is not the space to explore this idea here, these different types of stone should also be considered along with other finds from Blasthill, including pottery, organic material and human bodies. The qualities of all of these different materials therefore created a monument which drew on broader themes, but in a biographically and contextually specific way. This was not simply a stone monument, but a monument incorporating many different types of stone essences that may well have been shared with other beings in their world. At certain points, some of these stones may even have been thought to be alive.

Stone was not the only substance to be used in the construction of the monument at Blasthill. There was also evidence that organic matter was a key component of the monument, particularly in the second phase. Where excavated, the cairn was covered with a deep layer of soil, which was the heavily bioturbated remains of turves added on top of the cairn (Clare Wilson pers. comm.). A quick reconstruction at the site demonstrated how the addition of turves would have added height to the monument with very little effort (Figure 7). In addition to this we had always assumed that the absence of capstones on the chambers at Blasthill was due to subsequent disturbance or robbing. However, the use of turf at the site alerted us to the possibility that organics were used for elements of the monument. The deep deposit of soil over otherwise undisturbed chamber deposits led to speculation that the chamber roof had been wooden and secured in place with turf, which subsequently rotted down. Indeed, wooden components are commonly found at other chambered tombs (see later), and while this remains speculation at Blasthill, we should not be surprised to find the use of non-stone material at these monuments. The use of organic components may well have added yet more materials with distinctive qualities, biographies and spirits to the monument. Thus, this article will now think beyond stone, and consider the use of other materials in chambered tombs. OPEN IN VIEWER

Discussion: Thinking beyond the stone at chambered tombs

One of the most influential interpretations of materials over the past decade or so has been Parker Pearson and Ramilisonina’s (1998) account of Stonehenge. In this article they suggest that stone is inexorably linked with the dead, specifically the ancestral dead, and they argue that this means that Stonehenge was essentially built for the ancestors. In contrast, they suggest that wood is connected to the living, and, thus, wooden monuments such as Durrington Walls were monuments built for the living. These ideas seemed to be further substantiated at other late Neolithic complexes such as Avebury, and also by the presence of large numbers of houses (for the living) in the recent excavations at Durrington Walls (Parker Pearson et al., 2005). A key component of this argument is the notion of hardening and transformation: things built out of wood could undergo a process of hardening, after which the living were replaced by the dead, and wood was replaced by stone (Parker Pearson, 2004: 75). This metaphorical transformation from wood to stone, from living to dead, has been drawn on in other contexts beyond Stonehenge. Specifically in relation to this article, the transformation from wood to stone is seen to tie in with the early Neolithic wooden mortuary structures that were later converted into stone monuments. Mortuary structures have been found at a number of sites in southern England, including Wayland’s Smithy (Whittle, 1991) and Fussell’s Lodge (Ashbee, 1966). They have also been found in Ireland and Scotland, for example at Lochhill, Dumfries and Galloway (Masters, 1973) and Dooey’s Cairn, County Antrim (Evans, 1938). At all these sites, wooden monuments associated with the dead were later rebuilt in stone. Before we consider the problems of applying this idea to chambered tombs, first we move to consider the qualities of wood, and the potential animate nature of trees.

People would have used wood on a daily basis in the Neolithic, and it is highly unlikely that they understood all forms of wood in the same way. Dry wood and twigs would have been collected for firewood, for heat, light and cooking. Wooden objects would have been commonplace, everything from hoes for maintaining garden plots of cereals (cf. Whittle, 2004) to bows and arrow-hafts (the objects found with the iceman give a good indication of the various uses of wood: Spindler, 2001). Wood in the form of large timbers was also used extensively in different forms of monument throughout the Neolithic, including at the wooden mortuary structures. This demonstrates the variety of different types of state that wood can be found in (dry wood, wet wood, green wood, twigs, branches, mature wood and so on). Within these broader states of being, there may have been many different ‘types’ of wood, all of which had distinctive qualities. Mature woodland obviously contrasts with younger trees. Different trees within woodland would have had different characteristics: ash, oak, lime, elm and hazel have different leaves, different bark. Certain types of wood had other significant qualities; for example, yew was preferentially used for making bows (e.g. the Meare Heath bow: Webb, 1991). While we understand these different types of tree as varying species within the broader genus of ‘tree’, people in the past may have been more aware of and interested in their qualities (hard, soft, easy to bend, durable, etc.).

Parts of trees can also be understood differently: for some people the world tree (the tree that stands at the centre of the world) has roots (representing the underworld), the trunk (representing this realm) and the branches (representing heaven: Davies, 1988; Ovsyannikov and Terebikhin, 1994). This gives us another way of thinking about the contextual use of wood, and there have been additional links with the treatment of the body of the tree being analogous to the treatment of other, human bodies (cf. Fowler, 2004). Trees could well have been seen as animate beings at particular points. Furthermore, trees also have a temporal aspect, with deciduous trees losing their leaves for the winter (see Cummings and Whittle, 2003). This gives trees a changeable character which may tie in with when they were and potentially were not animate.

As with stone, it can be suggested that the way in which wood was acquired was important in helping us understand its biography. Some wood would have been cut down with axes (cf. Coles and Coles, 1988), but ring barking was an effective, if much slower, way of getting wood, and fire may also have been used. The ‘birth’ of wood, then, may have involved other materials: wood with fire, wood with stone (axe), wood with time. Unfortunately, we will never be able to source the precise location from where wood came, unlike stone, but if people were deliberately choosing specific sources of stone to incorporate into monumental architecture, they may well have also done the same with wood. The ways in which wood was then worked actually shared many similarities with stone. Just as with splitting stone, wood could have been split using wooden wedges and hammerstones. The term quarrying refers only to stone, but we might want to suggest that people were effectively quarrying wood.

To take this even further, wood and stone actually share many qualities. Both are durable substances which can be worked and shaped in broadly comparable ways. Both can be broken up by fire. Indeed, returning to the case of Stonehenge, Atkinson (1979: 177) suggested that carpentry techniques were used to shape the sarsen stones (Darvill, 2009a: 45), which would have been softer and easier to shape when first quarried from the earth. These were stones, then, that shared some qualities with wood. We could envisage the bluestones originally being ‘felled’ from their source in the Precelis, where they originally may have been upright stones, blurring the boundaries between natural and constructed (Bradley, 2000a; Cummings, 2002a).

It has already been suggested that people may not have understood stone as being a single substance. Likewise, it seems highly unlikely that people would have understood wood as a single substance. This certainly problematizes the notion that wood and stone were binary opposites in Neolithic monumental contexts. It may be that the overall qualities of wood and stone were perceived as being radically different and diametrically opposed by those people involved in the construction and use of Durrington Walls and Stonehenge. Indeed, in this context it may have been a metaphor that endured over a relatively long time scale. However, just because that metaphor was manifested in this particular cultural context does not make it a universalized scheme that operated everywhere and throughout the Neolithic. Instead, it is much more likely that the qualities of the stones in Neolithic monuments were linked to their own individual biographies as has been suggested for the Avebury stones (Gillings and Pollard, 2000). In addition, each stone’s biography and broader place in the contextual and relational understanding of substances was almost certainly set within an animistic ontology. The same could be argued for individual trees. All of this suggests a simple wood versus stone, living versus dead, interpretation of the monuments is based entirely on a modern, albeit ethnographic, understanding of materials that was almost certainly not shared in a Neolithic conception of the quality of materials.

Conclusions

In this article it has been argued that we should focus on the qualities of materials in monumental contexts. Stone was not a single type of material, but a transmutable substance, its understanding based entirely on its qualities, its essence and its biography. The focus in the past has been very much on the death of stones, focusing on their final deposition, but we are increasingly able to comment on the birth of stones by looking at quarry sites. The identification of the origin of a stone enables us to discuss the specific associations of that type of stone, linking it to a particular point in the landscape, and exploring the materials which themselves helped create that stone. Detailed fieldwork can also tell us the history and use of that location. Perhaps this was why a hammerstone that was almost certainly used for quarrying stone at Blasthill was deposited in the chamber along with human remains. This stone being played a critical role in the creation of the monument and it was appropriate to lay it to rest along with other members of the community. Once we begin to see materials such as stone as animate, invested with contextually specific meanings and with varying qualities, it is also no longer possible to suggest a simplistic opposition of wood and stone. Instead, these were fluid materials, whose qualities were of vital importance in assigning meaning, and whose birth, use and final deposition reveals what lay beneath.