*Article* **Ontology in Neolithic Britain and Ireland: Beyond Animism**

**Chris Fowler**

School of History, Classics & Archaeology, Newcastle University, Newcastle Upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK; chris.fowler@ncl.ac.uk

**Abstract:** A combination of new animism and new materialism has influenced recent interpretations of the Neolithic archaeology of Britain and Ireland, including decorative and figurative productions often referred to as 'art'. This article queries the appeal to animism in some of this work and considers four alternative ways to react to the use of the term. First it considers contextualizing animism by discussing Descola's identification of four kinds of ontologies—animism, totemism, analogism and naturalism—outlining examples of practices and material culture involved in each. After examining the effect of applying these to the Neolithic archaeology of Britain and Ireland, it then considers identifying Neolithic practices which seem at odds with animism without boxing these as indicative of other categories of ontology. After noting the wide range of Indigenous ontologies such models attempt to characterize, the article advocates an emphasis on ontological difference and attends to ontological diversity within the Neolithic.

**Keywords:** animism; totemism; analogism; art and architecture; mortuary practices; Neolithic Britain and Ireland; ethnographic analogy

## **1. Introduction**

A combination of 'new materialism' and 'new animism' has led to some inspiring and influential interpretations of British prehistory over the last twenty years. In some cases the implications of these approaches have been explored without identifying a specific form of prehistoric ontology (e.g., Conneller 2004) 1; in other cases a generalied sense of an animate world or animism is referred to (e.g., Johnston 2020, p. 20; Jones 2006; Jones et al. 2011; Pollard 2013; Richards 2013, pp. 27–29; Wallis 2009); and in rare cases specific versions of animism have been proposed (e.g., Wallis 2014). I am challenged by the theme of this Special Issue to consider the place of animism in understanding Neolithic Britain and Ireland (c. 4000–2500 BC), particularly in interpreting art, monumental architecture and mortuary practice. I will relate some concerns about the use of anthropological categories in this pursuit, and argue that we need to either set any interpretation of animism and animacy in the Neolithic in a broader ontological context or—far better—move beyond such categorization in favour of an appreciation of ontological difference which also attends to ontological diversity within the period.

## **2. From Cosmology to Ontology in Studying Neolithic Britain and Ireland**

An interest in the new animism developing in anthropology—attending to the relationality of living worlds and the embeddedness of humans with other-than-human

**Citation:** Fowler, Chris. 2021. Ontology in Neolithic Britain and Ireland: Beyond Animism. *Religions* 12: 249. https://doi.org/10.3390/ rel12040249

Academic Editors: Robert J. Wallis and Max Carocci

Received: 22 February 2021 Accepted: 25 March 2021 Published: 1 April 2021

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**Copyright:** © 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

<sup>1</sup> Conneller's analysis does not draw an analogy with Viveiros de Castro's ethnographic context but rather combines her reading of his analytical appreciation of that context with her own reading of Deleuze and Guatarri. Her account emphasises the specific archaeological evidence from Star Carr and does not compare that with material culture from an Amazonian community—rather, she draws on the philosophical basis of Viveiros de Castro's (1998) description of perspectivism, which is animist in character, to inform her own work. Yet there is an implication that the animal body parts at Star Carr were active in a perspectivist form of efficacy: '[t]he connection of the antler effects to the human body, which necessitated the taking on of the animal's bodily *perspective*, produced a new kind of body and way of acting in the world.' (Conneller 2004, 53 my emphasis). Conneller warns against using analogy to infer social organization or identity, and does *not* conclude that Mesolithic communities at Star Carr were animistic, but perspectivism is discussed in her article whereas totemic practices and understandings are not. This raises the question of which cultural contexts provide our theoretical inspirations, and what effect that has on the final interpretation.

beings in those worlds (e.g., Bird-David 1999)—followed a period in which shamanism and cosmology had been posited as core to interpreting Neolithic art<sup>2</sup> and monuments. The Neolithic megalithic art of Ireland (i.e., carved, pecked and incised motifs at passage tombs) was interpreted via Lewis-Williams and Dowson's neuropsychological model which identified altered states of consciousness as a means by which certain abstract motifs could be generated by the human nervous system (e.g., Bradley 1989; Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1993; Dronfield 1995; Lewis-Williams and Pearce 2005). These interpretations argued that that some common motifs in Neolithic passage tomb art were diagnostic of entoptic phenomena that would be seen during altered states of consciousness. Some accounts associated these with the presence of Neolithic ritual specialists undergoing trance experiences to transcend the layers of a vertically ordered tripartite cosmos (e.g., Lewis-Williams and Pearce 2005). Interpretations of trance and shamanism had limited impact in Neolithic studies, however, since there are questions about the ethnographic basis of the model (Solomon 2014), geometric motifs such as lattices, lozenges, chevrons and spirals need not derive from entoptic phenomena, altered states of consciousness need not involve shamans entering trances, identifying the broad category of 'shamanism' does not help much with understanding this period (Jones 2017), and shamanism is seldom identified in sedentary agricultural communities of the kind that was inferred at the time for later Neolithic Ireland.

Other studies of cosmology in the British Neolithic have been more influential, such as Colin Richards' analyses of Late Neolithic houses, passage tombs and the Stone of Stenness henge on Orkney (Richards 1990, 1993, 1996a). These studies combined contextual post-structuralist and experiential approaches, the former being largely influenced by studies such as Henrietta Moore's ethnography of Marakwet communities in East Africa which exhibit a highly structured organization of space, substance and gendered activities (Moore 1986) and Bourdieu's studies of Berber communities which exhibit similar degrees of structuring (Bourdieu 1970; cf. Richards 1996b). Richards and others argued that routines of practice guided by forms of architecture could inform us about the organization of time, space and experience—the organization of the cosmos and society.

Studies from the 1990s and early 2000s were not so much directed towards studying ontology as religious or spiritual practice and cosmology. Since the mid-2000s the emphasis has shifted away from detecting such highly structured spatial patterns in several related directions which share an emphasis on relationality and draw on what have become known as new materialist approaches. One is a focus on the *process* of building monuments, especially the way that monuments emerged from events in which people worked with materials and places that had distinctive properties to produce specific ontological effects (e.g., Gillings and Pollard 2016; Harris and Crellin 2018; Jones 2020). For instance, Lesley McFadyen's work on 'quick architecture' (McFadyen 2006) situates people's bodies in the messy process of rapidly constructing an early Neolithic chambered long cairn, while Colin Richards' recent work on stone circles stresses diversity in the way such monuments were built and in the effects their construction achieved (e.g., Richards 2013; Richards and Wright 2013). Some studies of Late Neolithic passage tomb art have focused on the process of its creation and the experiential effects this produced rather than its symbolic meaning (e.g., Jones 2004; Jones 2012; Cochrane and Jones 2012; Jones and Diaz-Guardamino 2019). We will return to process-oriented approaches concerned with ontologically distinctive affect towards the end of the article.

Some interpretations also describe a generalised animistic ontology. Joshua Pollard's reflection on the charged animacy of chalk banks and ditches at Late Neolithic Avebury is a good example. Pollard (2012, 2013) argues that the Wessex chalkland landscape and its materials resonated with special meanings and effects, suggesting

<sup>2</sup> There is no room to discuss the use of the term art and its definition (for an excellent recent discussion see Robb 2017). The making of Neolithic motifs, images, sculptures was to my mind a form of effective and potent action equivalent to, for instance, the decorating of pottery or the polishing of axeheads. 'Art' production has profound and varied ontological effects (cf. Jones 2017).

'...recognition of an ontological status different to that of modern geological definitions; perhaps even, on occasions, stones being perceived as invested with a certain animism...' (Pollard 2012, p. 98)

Pollard (2013) also draws a direct analogy with Polynesian concepts of *mana* and *tapu*, accentuating the volatility and danger of potency without presuming effective control of this potency through hierarchical political power (which has often been previously inferred as lying behind the construction of large henge monuments such as Avebury). Pollard explains that an animistic ontology could sit with a variety of forms of social organization.

Pollard's interpretations are subtle, insightful and productive, and exemplify much of what is presented below as the way forward. At the same time mentions of animism in prehistory, even in passing, make me wonder whether we ought to give some shape and boundary to the concept, and set it alongside other ontological possibilities for the period. I can think of four ways to approach this. Firstly, we can define what we mean by animacy and animism by comparison with other ontological frameworks. Comparison with ontologies categorized as totemism and analogism by Phillipe Descola (2013, 2014a, 2014b) would be one possible way to contextualize animism under this perspective. Secondly, we could highlight aspects of Neolithic activity that do *not* seem to be animistic, without yoking those to some other ontological category, in order to distinguish different ontological modes. Thirdly, we could take from new animism (and new materialism) a critique of the ontological basis of archaeology (and other disciplines with western and colonial origins) and use that to deconstruct our preconceptions about ontology (Alberti 2016; Todd 2016). This leaves the door open for things and places to be animate or socially and spiritually affective entities without evoking animism as an ontology. Fourthly, and also in keeping with the third move, we could reject the usefulness of ontological categories such as animism for appreciating ontological difference. Instead of seeking categorical terms for past ontologies we can instead focus on the relational affects of prehistoric bodies and other media, for instance (e.g., McFadyen 2006; Harris and Crellin 2018). I will explore the first and fourth approaches in most detail, and, given the focus of this Special Issue, I will discuss the role of 'art' wherever possible.

#### **3. First Approach: Comparing Categories of Ontologies by Deploying a Model**

In order to do justice to the first approach I have considered the material aspects of animistic, totemic and related ontologies as cast by Philippe Descola in order to think about what these materialities *do* and how they might be used as heuristics in refining our interpretation of prehistoric ontologies. Descola has formulated a comparative perspective on ontologies over the last two decades and crystalized these into a heuristic schema (most comprehensively set out in English in Descola 2013). He defines ontology as 'basic assumptions as to what the world contains and how the elements of this furniture are connected' (Descola 2014a, p. 273), and 'framing devices' that shape 'interactivity' (ibid., p. 274). He argues that cosmologies and what he calls 'social collectives' distribute the components of ontologies in a patterned way in time and space (Descola 2014a, p. 278; Descola 2014b, p. 437). In his view ontologies are part of the fundamental conditions for what is possible—they are how the character of the world, entities and relations (including forms of power) are perceived. Descola identifies four ontological categories: naturalism, animism, analogism and totemism. Descola uses the term naturalism to refer to western ontologies that emerged from the Enlightenment period and dominated the nineteenth and twentieth centuries AD in particular. In this ontology nature is classified endlessly and divided by species, forms and materials. The human species is treated as exceptional: we visit a zoo, but our role there is unique compared with the other animals. The social world is organized by and revolves around humans. Within our own species differences exist by culture or society. Personhood is largely individual, indivisible and the province of human beings alone (but see Fowler 2004, pp. 16–22; 2016, pp. 404–5).

In animistic ontologies, Descola argues, 'nature' is modelled on 'society', so there is one society of beings with many natures—human, jaguar, tapir" etc. Relationships take place between equals, specific individuals who may be human or jaguar or tapir. Non-human beings are negotiated with dialogically: some of those beings may reveal themselves to be persons. *S*hamans intercede in the dialogue if needed—essentially to put right any grievances and heal any injuries arising from difficult interactions. Such interactions are not all equal nor necessarily peaceful, and Descola emphasises predation and giving as two different modes of relations common in animistic communities. Descola (2013, p. 332) argues that animists do not venerate their dead ancestors, but the dead may be animate and have to be treated and transformed with care. The transmission of skills and knowledge is more important than genealogical transmission or the tracing of lineages. Social action continually activates and renews the world, and therefore Descola classifies animism as *anthropogenic*. If totemism and analogism are seen as forms of animism (as Sahlins 2014, suggests), Descola's animism is arguably best described as perspectivism, as defined by Viveiros de Castro (1998), although the latter would dispute such categorization (Latour 2009, p. 2).

When Descola selected examples of art for each of his ontological categories for an exhibition in Paris in 2012 he chose a transformation mask from the north-west coast of North America to exemplify the duality of the interior–exterior relationship he sees as central to animism (Simay and Descola 2012). Such masks are designed to display transformation: in its closed position, for instance, Kwakwaka'wakw Eagle masks, show the head of an eagle, but if the wearer pulls strings threaded through the eagle's head, its face opens up to reveal a carved human face beneath. For Descola this reveals the fact that human and animal are equivalent (cf. Ingold 2000)—although these masks also depict the totemic animal of the eagle clan. Descola does not say much about the material foundations of animism beyond this depiction of a shared interiority. Ingold (2000) stresses the naturalism of animistic depictions of animals, shown in motion, while Bird-David (2006) has discussed the scarcity of decoration and figurative depictions in immediate return foraging communities, among whom, she says, performers act differently as they engage with the beings seen in visions (Bird-David 2006, p. 39). She concludes that unlike circumpolar animists, Nayaka animists in South India do not categorize the perspective of non-human persons differently to their own: such beings 'cannot be looked *at*; rather one has to look *with* them sharing a perspective' (ibid., p. 48, original emphases). While performers shift stances in engaging with other beings, they do not change their bodily form or affordances so do not therefore adorn their bodies with animal body parts or imagery or masks. Different art, different engagement, different ontology; at the very least, this suggests different animisms.

Descola's definition of totemic ontologies draws heavily on ethnographies of Aboriginal Australian communities. Power, vitality, comes from the action of beings that created the landscape (i.e., from the past), and is invested in places as life energies which pass *directly* into people who are conceived at those places (i.e., it lies within the landscape and flows from there into bodies). These places frequently include bodies of water. According to Descola (2013, p. 263), human lineage may be less important than this connection with an ancestral being. Totemic communities are internally differentiated according to which ancestral being each member derives from, and communities are conglomerations of those different beings. The community is segmented, with each segment consisting of human and non-human beings which share some ancestral connection (ibid., p. 258). There may be overlapping means of segmentation, including by kinship, sex, generation, place of birth or conception and cult (ibid., p. 259). Non-human beings such as animals can be *like* persons, and are also derived from ancestral beings, but lack a creative element specific to human beings (ibid., p. 298): humans and non-humans are analogues for one another but not the same kinds of entities (ibid., p. 294: 'animals and plants are not persons', he argues). Totemic places are curated and creation events ritually re-enacted there; rites of renewal are crucial in practising these *cosmogenic* ontologies. Ritual knowledge is passed down from a senior to a junior practitioner throughout life. According to Descola, and Ingold (2000), shamanism is not a feature of totemic ontologies, and while animistic ceremonies negotiate

with other-than-human beings, totemic ceremonies renew the world by re-enacting creation events. Totemic communities change in ways that are situated within, and renew and reaffirm, tradition (cf. Morphy 2007, pp. 72–82).

Totemic images depict a prototype of originary power which Descola says 'unites a variety of species... descended from this model'. Art also illustrates the traces of those beings in the landscape. Howard Morphy (2007, p. 42) describes how Yolngu motifs depict designs worn on the bodies of the creation time beings—making art is a special practice which reveals 'the reality of the unseen... underlying forces in the landscape' (ibid., p. 88); motifs are scaled to fit on the human body where they were painted during mortuary rites (Morphy 2007, p. 75) and rites of passage (ibid., p. 94). Yolngu painting actively reveals ancestral presence through the 'shimmering' effects of colours, contrasts between delineated areas of light and dark, and cross-hatching (ibid., p. 92). Designs belong to clans, but variation in motifs among neighbouring clans may be extremely subtle (ibid., p. 100). The meaning of geometric motifs is polyvalent (ibid., p. 103), so the seemingly abstract motifs support curated knowledge which is needed to interpret them. Ingold (2000) stresses the depiction of humans and other beings in ways that show the combination of ancestral essences within their bodies. As with animistic ontologies, figurines of humans or animals are made in *ephemeral* media. Funerary structures, like log mortuary containers, were left to decay after use (Oxenham et al. 2008, p. 50); in some regions mounds were raised over burials or burial structures (Oxenham et al. 2008, pp. 43–44). The dead can mediate between spirit beings and the living, particularly during their mortuary transformation. Some funerary architecture, such as sand sculptures which temporarily house the bodies of the dead or mourners surrounding the time of the funeral, are very ephemeral while others last for a few years but are left to decay naturally. By contrast, stones or hard wood plaques or panels, *tjurunga*, may be curated for generations at sites associated with totemic beings. These are decorated with circular and linear motifs. In some cases, trees next to burial sites were also carved with designs—sometimes daubed red, especially during rites of world renewal (ibid., pp. 44–45).

Descola's final category is analogism. Power derives from the alignment of society with the cosmos—it is *cosmocentric*. Properties are carefully divided into complementary categories which are distributed among the elements, celestial bodies, colours, body matter, times of day, the year, or life-course, and the directions of the compass. The concept of humours is a good example of how the same differentiated elements are present in the body and wider world: phlegm (water), black bile (earth), yellow bile (fire), and blood (air). The same patterns are evident at different scales through a process of homology (or shared form) and shared orientation: bodies, houses, tombs and landscapes are presented as analogous in form and composition. Beings are understood as different in kind and composition. Lineages, classes or castes may be formed out of the fixed properties invested in things, materials, places, substances and bodies. Human genealogy may be a concern, including the veneration of human ancestors, and potentially traced back to divine ancestors. Sacrifice is common. There are often multiple deities each with discrete fields of responsibility. Heterarchical relations where people are divided into distinct groups which may be ranked in some but not all domains of activity are prevalent, but may give way to hierarchical relations where one form of ranking is authorative in all realms of activity. In the latter case certain groups become predominant in the community, such as deceased ancestors or a priestly class. Descola's examples include city states and indigenous communities in north America (e.g., the American Southwest), upland South America, the Tallensi of west Africa, Hawaii, and pastoralists from Siberia and West Africa. Analogism thus groups together diverse societies with different subsistence bases, population densities, social institutions, etc. Art and architecture can include cosmograms, while beings are often depicted with set attributes (e.g., carrying certain objects), and somet are as hybrids combining the physical attributes of different species.

Art is an integral part of ontology, and I have considered the art forms associated with each of Descola's categories. Animistic ontologies might have no or little figurative art because human actors are so embedded in relations they do not depict them from the outside, or might depict the natural poses and motions of animals (Ingold 2000), and sometimes reveal their interior personhood. Here, art is a media for dialogue between beings. Totemic ontologies illustrate the pervasiveness of relationships that conjoin different ancestral essences within bodies and/or trace ancestral events that produced that result; art is a means of affirming and renewing these ancestral connections. Analogic art demonstrates the graded order of the cosmos with power figured at a central point; art serves to represent or bring about the order. David Wengrow (2014) has argued on the basis of hybrids in art that analogism is first properly evident in European prehistory with the emergence of Bronze Age states in the near East—however, it is not clear that all analogic ontologies produce such artworks given the breadth of Descola's category3.

This approach seems appealing in offering some material anchorage for drawing inferences about ontology. However, inferring such categories of ontologies from prehistoric art or other archaeological evidence—and even in ethnographic studies—is far from straight forward. For instance, there is a blurred boundary between Descola's view of animism and totemism whereby aspects of the two are combined: Descola (2014b, pp. 485–86) outlines how the Amazonian Tukano relate the journey of ancestral anacondas, one of whom donated part of its body to form their human ancestors, and whose community maintains distinct descent segments—which sounds rather totemic. He also identifies Exirit-Bulagat Mongolian pastoralists as animistic in their relations with wild animals and otherwise analogic. Descola's categories have several modes of interaction in common, making diagnosis difficult4, yet the differences between them are important: Descola argues that protection—such as pastoralists looking after animals—and transmission—such as handing things, places and substances down across generations—erode the efficacy of animism, shifting from open dialogue towards more hierarchical relations. The personhood of animals, plants and places is diluted by taking them under continual control, increasing the possibilities for incipient analogic features. A further complication is that ontologies overlap, intersect and compete. Caroline Humphreys (1995) describes the contested use of Mongolian *oboo* (cairns) by shamans and Buddhist priests. The shamans operate an animistic ontology in a heavily differentiated upland landscape with caves, streams, peaks, while a more analogic ontology prevails in the organisation of nomadic domestic space as animals are herded around a flat, broad landscape. These overlapping ontologies compete where landscape zones meet. People may also shift ontological modes as they engage with such different places and practitioners (cf. Harris and Robb 2012). Perhaps we can imagine similar situations in Neolithic landscapes, with locally overlapping cosmologies and ontologies. However, not all ontological categories deal with ontological diversity in the same way. For instance, analogism rigidly polices society with respect to cosmos, invoking chimeras where needed, and each event belongs in a single cosmic order which can be visualised graphically (e.g., as a cycle).

There are other problems with this approach. Graham Harvey (2006, pp. 166–68) argues that totemism and animism are 'more related than opposed', proposing that totemism is a *form* of animism, and animism pervades pretty much all communities in one way or another. Sahlins (2014) persuasively argues that totemism is 'the animism of segmentary collectives' while analogism is 'hierarchical animism', compared with the 'communal animism' identified by Descola as simply animism. In other words, we are left with the equation that 'non-Western ontology = animism + social organization'. Jones et al. (2011) rightly argue that it is difficult for prehistorians to distinguish between totemism and animism, and Jones has warned convincingly against slotting our evidence 'into preexisting,

<sup>3</sup> Descola (2013, p. 279) also argues that hybrids appear in totemic fusions of human and animal collectives (though he is not referring to art here) and refers to analogic segmentation as 'not hybrid but mixed'.

<sup>4</sup> Descola (2013, pp. 309–35) argues that all categories of ontology exhibit predation and giving as modes of interaction but these are dominant in animistic ontologies; all practice exchange but it is dominant in totemic ontologies, while protection, transmission and production are modes of action that are dominant in analogic ontologies and weak or absent in animistic and totemic ontologies (noting that totemic identity is transmitted directly from mythic beings rather than through human lineage).

and overarching, anthropological categories' (Jones 2017, p. 176; cf. Insoll 2011). Attempts to differentiate between totemism and animism in Neolithic Britain and Ireland are, indeed, rare (e.g., Hensey 2012; Reynolds 2012; Wallis 2014). Reynolds (2012) suggests that totemism explains why deer were rarely consumed in the period, though does not present any evidence for a diagnostic association between food taboo and totemism or explain why a taboo on eating specifically deer would be widespread. While this pushes beyond a generalized sense of animacy and animism it does little beyond offering a different category of ontologies. A version of analogic ontology has arguably seeped in through contextual archaeology and post-processual work on cosmology (such as Richards 1990, 1993, 1996a, 1996b), but has not been defined as a specific ontological frame. While we might think productively about what combinations of animistic, totemic and analogic relations might have been active in different *events* rather than entire regions and periods, this still defers interpretation to Descola's categories5.
