Presentación de Resultados

If materiality is key to understanding some of the reasoning behind certain colour choices in Neolithic monuments, then it becomes important to understand the implications of a more object-orientated ontology that encompasses the agency of the materials themselves rather than merely focusing on the human element. Matter, states Jane Bennet, has a vitality of its own that should be respected; it is pure human hubris to view it as a dead, inert commodity and only given significance via human interaction (Bennet 2010). One particular theoretical framework encapsulates this emphasis on the breaking down of barriers between entities previously artificially separated by arbitrary categorisation into polarised groups, e.g., human and non-human. This is Actor Network Theory. It is a loosely-bound collection of theoretical approaches that sees physical objects as entities just as living beings that “share the capacity for making a difference to the world and to other beings” (Olsen 2012, 212). Within the vast relational networks that make up complex systems such as cultures, societies, towns, and families, things gain and retain influence and meaning by their uniqueness or useful individuality leading to a significant relationship with other things, whether they are sentient or not (Law & Hassard 1999). It is a way of seeing how relationships between things form, rather than just why (Law 2008).

Archaeologists to some degree have been reticent to use ANT as a theoretical framework, worried about giving agency to non-human entities and hand wringing over the possible ethical concerns of suggesting materials, places, objects or processes have in some way their own influence over events, and that the human “creators” therefore somehow bear a lesser degree of responsibility, or have become dehumanised by being lumped in with non-human entities (Olsen & Witmore, 2015). This is a curious criticism, as by Latour’s definition, any actor part of a network is “exactly what is not substitutable” – the difference and unique nature of each actor is what makes them valuable to the network, they are an integral part of it, not lost in a morass (Latour 2007). Indeed in the Deleuzian idea of Assemblage, similar in many respects to ANT when looking at the ideas of webs of influence and the agency of non-human entities,

53 views things as “ontologically one, formally diverse” (Deleuze 1992, 67). To this end, the agency of the stones themselves, and indeed the individual colours, should be considered as vital a part of the puzzle as the human thought processes involved.

One of the core concepts of ANT is that networks survive because of translation – that is, the original founding idea or principle they are based upon becomes translated over time through various processes in a manner that will maintain the influence of the network over its constituent actors, and that it can recruit new actors in order to spread its influence further (Law & Hassard, 1999). As the main focus of this research is colour use, then seeing how significant colours were used is in fact a study of how the ANT of colour use has been translated by people, places, and objects in the Neolithic. Looking at patterns in the way colour presents in certain regions, or monument types, or time periods, will enable a model for a network to develop that will highlight connections, fractions, and mingling of ideas surrounding colour use. Although the “why” of colour selection must be the end goal of this research (as the storytelling of a concept, artefact or culture is one of the main roles of the archaeologist) the “how”, as provided by utilising an ANT approach, gives a strong foundation upon which to build such conclusions.

To approach a more constructive and applicable modelling of Neolithic cosmology than is afforded by an ANT theoretical approach, Assemblage theory provides a way to visualise cosmology as a vast network that becomes gradually revealed trough investigation, discovery, and interpretation. Assemblage - the Deleuzean concept of fractal

inter-relatedness and connectivity between things as actants upon the behaviour and status of each other (Deleuze & Guattari 1980) - is a theoretical framework that allows social systems to be examined as the complex, difficult to model, messy structures that they are. Though originally conceptualised by Deleuze, it is the later refinements by Latour (2005), DeLanda (2006), and Bennett (2010) that make it a viable and valuable theoretical tool in the

archaeologist’s arsenal of interpretation. It is defined by Hamilakis (2013) as “the contingent copresence of heterogeneous elements such as bodies, things, substances, affects,

memories, information, and ideas” - living and non-living things, and their intrinsic ability to affect the other elements, form the relationships that define the assemblage.

Briefly put, societies, cultures, and other complex social systems are vast entities that do not evolve in a set and predictable manner, but instead are an assemblage formed of almost innumerate processes that both influence and are influenced by each other in a vast fractal pattern. They are a mosaic created of heterogeneous features, that interact with each other

54 in ways both obvious and subtle, which has the effect of making them difficult to predict.

Difficult, but not impossible.

Neolithic life can be viewed as one assemblage – a giant universe of stars, galaxies and phenomenon that interact with each other in both subtle and obvious ways. I this analogy, colour is a black hole within this universe – a black gap in our view of the world, that cannot be seen directly – after all, we have no direct connection to a Neolithic person to elucidate their use of specific colours, no ethnographic accounts to demonstrate their time-deep attachment of meaning and ritual and belief to specific colours and colour combinations.

Instead, like astronomers crunching vast data sets to extrapolate black hole existence by seeing the effects on space, light, and matter around it, archaeologists must examine the assemblage as a whole. Examine the ways stone as a material was extracted and moved.

Examine the ways landscapes were navigated. Examine the ways spaces were treated – artefacts and remains left, returned to, remade. Only by knowing more of the universe of Neolithic cosmology, can the black hole of colour be discovered and its place in that universe understood. The following section outlines both the fieldwork and theoretical methodologies that make this a possibility.

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3. Methodology

This chapter outlines ways that colour can be both recorded and subsequently analysed to provide data in two ways – both a gazetteer of coloured stone in Neolithic sites across Atlantic Europe, and to demonstrate patterns in the way this coloured stone manifest across the study area. This includes details of why certain digital techniques were selected,

touching on both technical and theoretical aspects of digital tools in archaeology.

Following this, there is some discussion of how this can be approached theoretically to begin to understand the way that colour fits into the wider Neolithic cosmology – locally, regionally, and across the entire region.

3.1 Definitions

Throughout the course of this research, the specific terms related to colour will be used, of which there are several which appear to be similar in nature until they are discussed. Here are the most salient terms and the usage which shall apply through the course of this document.

Hue

Hue is generally what someone means when they say “colour”; it is the discrete quality of a particular part of the spectrum that we split off and give a name to. Thus, red, green, yellow, blue, purple, and orange are hues, and gain modifiers such as pale green, dark red, rich blue, to denote differing shades. When colours of individual stones are recorded, it is the hue that is being referred to.

Brightness

Brightness is the quality of a particular object or substance that states to what degree it appears to emit or reflect light. For example, the moon will appear bright on a clear winter’s night, but appear less bright if still visible on a clear summer’s morning. When stones are recorded, a note on their surface texture and their geological composition will also be noted, to explain the relative brightness of stones to each other.

Lightness

Lightness is similar, but not to be confused with, brightness. It is the relative brightness of a material to a white material under the same lighting conditions. It is more commonly used in comparative scales. For example, several pieces of cloth with the same fibre content, one

56 white and others dyed with successively stronger dyes, will show a range of lightness values when examined under the same lamp or light source.

Saturation

Saturation is to what degree a particular hue is composed of the wavelength it corresponds to and to what degree of intensity this originates from; simply put, it is the hue of an object in relation to its own brightness. For example, a green LED will emit light in a highly concentrated light source very close to pure the green segment of the wavelength of visible light, and so we see it as a very clear, bright source of green.

Gain

In digital photography and other image capture technology, gain refers to the relationship between the input signal and the output signal. Higher levels of gain amplify the signal, resulting in greater levels of brightness and contrast. Lower levels of gain will darken the image, and soften the contrast. For the purposes of this research, gain is a feature of the colour sensor (see 3.3.2) which needs careful adjustment to record accurate hue of stones.

The Munsell Color System

57 Fig 5. The Munsell Colour System. Diagram by Jacob Russ, used under Creative Commons

Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license, 2018.

The Munsell Color System is a three dimensional representation of colour, that depicts colour space as a range with three value axes; hue, value (lightness), and chroma (saturation). It is widely known in archaeological literature as a method for categorising soil types, but more widely is a comprehensive system for categorising colour shades by measuring particular values.

Hue, measured horizontally, is a value with a certain percentage of one of five “principal hues”;

red, yellow, blue, green, and purple, and five further “intermediate hues” that fall exactly between these, where a blend of the two colours will form a continuous variation. Value is a vertical scale, from black at 0 to white at 1. Chroma is slightly more complex, being related to the saturation of a particular hue – i.e. a scale from the pure hue, to gradually paler (Thompson 1995, 46, munsell.com 2015). Together they form a near-spherical model, as seen in figure 1.1 above.

The colour chips mentioned in this study, particularly as historic measures for colour categorisation in studies such as BCT, are all a selection taken from set Munsell Color System values; for ease of interpretation and comprehension they are placed on a flat “chart” rather than on the spherical model.

RGB Colour

The most common expression of colour values in design and related disciplines is RGB - that is, the makeup of a particular colour in relation to the percentages of red, green, and blue it contains. The colours recorded in this research have been logged as RGB values to enable meaningful depiction of them in illustrated form, and standardised descriptions and values should the data be used in future by other researchers.

Open Source software

The digital solutions selected for data capture and analysis in this research have been deliberately selected to be open source - that is, free at point of download, with free and open technical support and transparent distribution models. This not only affords the study repeatability among non-academics and those without access to expensive licences, it also means that legacy projects to further the objectives of this research can easily generate compatible, relevant data with minimal setup expense.

58 3.2 Site Selection

3.2.1 Geography of Atlantic Europe

For the purposes of this research, “Atlantic Europe” refers to the coastal and near-coastal strip of land (and interconnecting seas) that reaches from its southernmost point in the Iberian Peninsula at southern Portugal, up through the western and northern regions of Spain and France, the British Isles, Belgium, the Netherlands, northern Germany, Denmark, Norway, and southern Sweden. A comprehensive study of monuments from every region within this broader one would be a physical impossibility given the timeframe of a doctoral research degree, and so a sampling of sites was made to encompass temporal, typological, and geological variation across Atlantic Europe.

3.2.2 Islands and Mainlands

In order to look at patterns across the region, a number of locations were selected to survey.

These represent a spread across the Atlantic façade of Europe and are not meant to be comprehensive, rather, to give a sampling across the region that could be expanded upon in future studies. Sites were chosen to select areas where monuments lie in relatively close geographical groupings, both for ease of access and upon the assumption that even if they are not constructed contemporaneously, their presence in the same area of the landscape suggests at least awareness and perhaps inter-connected use and mutual influence between the sites.

Sites clustered upon islands not only provide groupings easy to categorise geographically, but also an opportunity to see what happens to cultural mores such as megalithic tomb building when it happens on the confine of an island. The Deleuzian idea of islands as conceptual places “good to think with” (Rainbird 2007), a place apart from the world and embodying the liminality of the border between land and sea, makes them interesting case studies in distilled culture. Contrasting this with mainland groupings will highlight if any significant similarities carry across both landscapes, or if differences are associated with either of them.

With these considerations in mind, the following case studies were undertaken:

 Anglesey, Wales – an island of passage graves

 Pembrokeshire, Wales – dolmens that look to the sea

 Falbygden, Sweden – the passage grave heartland of Sweden

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 Møn, Denmark – a Baltic island of well-preserved passage graves

 Central Wessex, England – the Sarsens of the Avebury and Stonehenge landscape

 Drenthe, Netherlands - giant’s graves and boulder clay