Many theorists believe that some types of structured deposition served to delineate and reinforce the relationship between certain types of people, be they the quick or the dead, the contemporary community or the past inhabitants (Kuijt 2002; Hodder 2006; Kovacik 2003; Richards and Thomas 1984; Tringham 2000). Knowledge of ritual acts, timing, and location could confer status or authority to a select few, while the veneration of ancestors may have been accomplished with their own remains.
In a description of the contents of apparently ritual pits, Richards and Thomas describe the use of special elite items to display status (Richards and Thomas 1984: 192). However, they do not make the distinction between an elite item given to display personal abundance and a symbolically charged item deposited to honor the environment.
Similarly, Ian Kuijt, in the SENEPSE 8 volume, suggests that ritual deposition gave authority to participants who knew the appropriate timing of re-exhumation for secondary burial. It can be extrapolated from this that authority may also have been conferred upon those who knew the location of special depositions, especially if they were not specifically denoted by a marker (2002:
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85-7). That knowledge itself can be valued creates a new kind of elite, one with special access to a valuable resource. This assumes that the knowledge is neither communal nor is the special deposit marked in any way. The marking of important buried features is discussed in Goring- Morris (2000: 119), so it is clear that the location of every special buried deposit was not kept secret, though the contents or meaning may have been. Taussig (1999: 5) refers to a ‘public secret,’ which is something that is both known and never articulated. Even if the contents of a special deposit are not public knowledge, it may have been equally important to demonstrate that there is something to be known. Hodder (2006: 196) posits that every aspect of Çatalhöyük seems to be concerned with hiding and revealing; both information and objects. He sets up a dichotomy between secrecy, control, exclusion and privacy and discovery, exposure, inclusion and surprise.
Foundation-related deposition refers to "earlier objects or community actions through specific knowledge of what has been forgotten" (Kovacik 2003: 168). Knowledge of the forgotten does seem to be paradoxical, unless we have a stratified, specialized society with persons responsible for remembering. There is also an assumed time lapse, for few people need to be reminded of events they have witnessed. This then assumes the desire to be reminded of past communities. Why might this be so? Perhaps to teach new generations important behaviours by example, or to self-identify. Just as an old hat may trigger stories of Uncle Bob, family memories or lessons may resurface with the presentation of a catalyzing object. Perhaps related to this idea of referential memory is that of ancestor worship.
In a volume titled Life in Neolithic Farming Communites, Kuijt described in detail a particular type of structured deposition, that of skull caches, arguing that "these caches represent the
physical expression of very important household-level ritual events organized for the veneration of worshipping ancestors while serving to reaffirm relationships within and between households linked by marriage, political and economic ties" (2000: 149). This focus on the household springs from Kuijt's idea that, during the PPNB, rituals were based on the household as a unit (142). In the absence of evidence other than an assertion, it is not clear why community and individual actions are not taken into consideration as well. The caching of skulls is known across the PPNB, and does seem to be related to the preservation of some kind of memory, most likely that of an ancestor (This issue is still controversial, and many theories have been offered to explain the widespread practice of skull detachment, treatment, and caching. See Watkins 2010 on homoplasticity; Kuijt 1996 on equalizing group members through ritual; Hodder 2006 on the development from
representing general to specific ancestors). However, the evidence in favour of any particular type of individual (ancestor, hero, victim) is not particularly strong. The mainassumption here is
reaffirmation, by placing an ancestor’s skull in plain view, she or he is literally "still with us" and her or his relationships still exist.
Rowlands (1993: 146) makes a distinction between inscribed and incorporated practices of creating memory. An inscribed practice is one that leaves a lasting trace, such as the creation of a visible monument or the visible display of a skull. An incorporated practice is the creation of memory through an absence, such as a skull burial. It is interesting to note that skulls are both, and perhaps alternately, buried and displayed in the Near East. Different types of social relations
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are propagated by skull burial and display. Skull display is inclusive, the friends and honors of the deceased are conferred upon the surviving family, and outsiders who knew or knew of the
deceased are welcomed. On the other hand, burial is exclusive. Specific knowledge or marking is a prerequisite of this knowledge, and no outsiders are welcome to it.
The propagation of social memory in general is an interesting problem that many theorists have attacked. Tringham (2000) has suggested that bodies were deposited (buried) within houses to ensure social memoryand its continuation. Fentress and Wickham claim that "preliterate cultures need to devise conceptual receptacles which order and store memory" (1992: 80), though it seems probable that their receptacles could be physical as well. The deposition of a body as a vessel of memory storage is a direct referent to the person or family, while an object such as an eagle feather may act as a symbolic referent. Whether directly or indirectly referential to persons or events, objects cannot ensure social memory without an interpreter, without a person to demonstrate the significance.
One of the most well-published sites in the Near East with clear evidence of ritual deposition is the site of Çatalhöyük. In his discussion of deliberate deposition in building 1 and its later phase 5, Cessford (2007: 543-547) claims that "deliberate artefact deposition is linked primarily to moments of transition" (546) of individual buildings or to a "linkage between creation and
destruction" of these buildings (547). In other words, new periods of ownership or rebuilding may be commemorated or sanctified by the deliberate deposition of the artefacts used to bring about the transition. An example of this would be the placement of cattle scapulae used to plaster the structure, or the placement of the axe used to remove a timber feature. The creation, destruction or transformation of a structure is evident to others, but the act of deposition commemorates the human agents themselves and their intervention within their surroundings. This act then relates the humans to themselves, by recording their relationship with a structure.
3.3.1 Gifts and men
A common way of creating or cementing a relationship with another person or group of people is through gift exchange. It must be assumed that such transactions occurred in prehistory to make the following discussion valuable. Again, we must turn to the anthropological literature in hopes of arriving at a conservative analogy. Our first guides will be Mauss' discussion of the
Kwakiutl of Vancouver Island, just before the first world war; Malinowski's account of the Trobriand Islanders during the war; and Godelier's recent critical work using the Baruya of New Guinea (1925; 1948; 1999). Both the types of objects involved in exchange and the types of exchange inform about how people relate to each other.
It must first be accepted that gift exchange is entirely disparate from barter or commercial exchange (Gregory: 1982). Giving a gift is a personal, voluntary act which is performed against the backdrop of the community, often with an audience present. According to Mauss, the act of giving a gift entails three obligations: giving, accepting the gift, and later giving again. Two of these obligations fall upon the recipient, who is put into the debt of the giver. As such, gift exchange can be either agonistic, or non-agonistic (Mauss 1925: 6).
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to our own, and this too separates gift exchange from barter. In a commercial exchange, the object given ceases to have ties to the previous owner; while in a gift exchange, the use of an object is ceded though the giver continues to have a kind of power over the given object (Mauss 1925: 8- 10; though see MacCormack 1982). In his attempt to find an answer as to why people seemed obligated to return what they have received, Mauss suggested that this spirit of the gift animated the object itself, while others focused on the power relationship between people (e.g. Godelier 1999; Weiner 1992). This spirit, or “immaterial aspect of human social relationships” (Sykes 2005: 74), was the social obligation and power created by reciprocity. The recipient accepts this power and gives again a gift to the giver (Godelier 1999: 44). This relationship is not arithmetic: one gift cannot cancel out a previous gift, but instead furthers the ties between the two participants.
Godelier (13) reminds us that the relationship or rank of the two parties prior to exchange must be considered to understand their relationship after the exchange. In a stratified society, the meaning of a gift and its effect on a relationship is changed if a gift is made to an inferior or a superior. Persons who give more than can be repaid are elevated to a higher rank. The highest ranks are reserved for the supernatural, from which comparatively little gifts are made in hopes of a larger return gift (30).
Mauss separates two kinds of wealth: those objects that can be gifted from those that cannot. This foreshadowed the development of spheres of exchange as an analytical tool in anthropology during the 1960’s. The concept was broadened to include a range of competitive exchanges between nearby groups, such as; emulation, imitation, competition and warfare as peer-polity interaction for its introduction to archaeology (Renfrew 1986), and is very similar to the tripartite network theory introduced in anthropology soon after (Turner and Maryanski 1991). The analysis of trading restrictions, taboo, hierarchy, competition as well as the manipulation of social and symbolic resources to control the movement of objects has of yet culminated in Watkins’ 2008 study of supra-regional networks. Focusing on the Kwakiutl and the phenomenon of potlatch, Boas demonstrated that certain copper objects must stay within a family group, and though they might be displayed during potlatch, they are never gifted, and sometimes even destroyed (1897: 564, 579). These objects are claimed to have spiritual and symbolic value, and thus are not given away. Weiner (1992) expands upon this by including knowledge and rites among the valuables that must be kept. She claims that it is necessary to withhold some goods from the exchanges and labels this keeping-while-giving. Godelier uses this idea as a springboard to claim that some objects are kept so that they can be given, and conversely that some things are given, such as marriageable sisters, so that they can be kept.
Returning to the caches of obsidian blades at Çatalhöyük, Carter (2007) focuses on the act of burial, and draws parallels from nearby sites (Jerf el-Ahmar, Cheikh Hassan, Akarçay tepe, 'Ain Ghazal, and Motza). Carter uses the theme of a reciprocating gift-giving society to structure his argument that these caches of obsidian are related to the withholding which is part of gift-giving (2007: 352). While fascinating, the argument is poorly supported, as it relies on the assumption that the best or most highly-prized percentage is withheld (Godelier 1999: 32 ff) and there is no evidence that these particular blades were of better quality than any other found at Çatalhöyük. He also argues that a specific cache also serves to identify the gift givers and their home, on the
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basis that this one particular cache was probably flaked from the same core. According to Carter, the deposit then serves a dual purpose of relating people to themselves, and relating people to others.
Similarly, Hermansen (1997: 333) suggests that some items that appear to be intentionally placed were left in lieu of items taken from the dead or from the supernatural powers that own the earth. Hermansen's evidence is the four stone sculptures left behind in a stone retrieval, or stone-robbing pit. The argument is very similar to Mauss' claim that exchange functions to
preserve the peace, in that reciprocal exchange serves to prevent conflict with the other world. In a culture revolving around exchange it would be most prudent never only to take, and certainly not from powerful, supernatural entities.