From regional identities to assemblages of difference: rethinking the communities of Late Neolithic Britain

通过这个项目，我试图从一个广泛的后遗主义者的角度来探索不列颠群岛新石器时代晚期社区之间的差异。在英国史前的这段时期，考古记录突出了不同地区之间的巨大差异，这一趋势被考古学家注意到，如皮戈特(1954)，他在20世纪50年代将几种新石器时代的次要文化归类。尽管人们认识到了这些独特的身份，并随后在过去60年里发现了更多的数据，但这些差异还没有得到彻底的探索。然而，新数据和新理论的发展为考古学家提供了新的机会，尽管考古学中已经有关于身份的重要工作(例如Jones 1997)，但在该学科中，差异的概念(身份形成的关键部分)还没有那么关键的分析。新唯物主义则不是这样，这是过去十年发展起来的一个新的理论框架，它强调人与非人类相互作用的关系，其中差异不是一个消极的、往往是贬义的术语，表示事物之间的差异，而是积极的，因为它探索了不同的事物如何在世界上存在(Braidotti 2013)。因此，我这个项目的目的是利用一个新的唯物主义框架来重塑英国新石器时代晚期社区的差异。利用马恩岛、奥克尼和约克郡(新石器时代晚期传统上被视为不同的地区)的案例研究，我将根据历史环境记录(HERS)的数据、对博物馆藏品的访问和现有出版物，为这些地区编制一个新石器时代晚期考古记录的Access数据库。这样做将使我能够批判性地分析和对比该地区的每一项考古记录，并有助于理解非人类变量的差异。我将把这些地区的社区重新思考为新兴的和富有情感的(Sensu Harris 2013；2014)，这些社区彼此不同，但总是比人类更具人情味，因此将能够提供新石器时代晚期英国的更微妙的图景。

With this project I seek to explore the differences between Late Neolithic communities in the British Isles from a broadly posthumanist perspective. During this period of British prehistory the archaeological record highlights substantial variation between regions, a trend noted by archaeologists such as Piggott (1954) who in the 1950s classified several 'Secondary Neolithic cultures'. Despite the recognition of these distinctive identities, and the subsequent uncovering of more data over the past 60 years, these differences have not been thoroughly explored. However new data as well as the development of new theories provide archaeologists with new opportunities and though there has been important work on identity in archaeology (e.g. Jones 1997), the concept of difference (a key part of identity formation) has had less critical analysis within the discipline. This is not the case in new materialism, a recent theoretical framework developed over the past decade that stresses the relationality of human and nonhuman interactions, where difference is not a negative, often pejorative, term denoting the difference between things, but is positive in that is explores how different things come to exist in the world (Braidotti 2013). The aim of my project, then, is to recast the differences seen in British Late Neolithic communities utilising a new materialist framework.Using the case studies of the Isle of Man, Orkney, and Yorkshire (regions traditionally viewed as 'different' during the Late Neolithic), I will compile an Access Database of the Late Neolithic archaeological record for each of these regions based on data from Historic Environment Records (HERs), visits to museum collections, and pre-existing publications. Doing this will allow me to critically analyse and contrast each of the region's archaeological records and help to understand the differences in nonhuman variables. I will rethink communities in each of these regions as emergent and affective (sensu Harris 2013; 2014) that are differentiated from each other but always more-than-human, and therefore will be able to provide a more nuanced picture of Late Neolithic Britain.