Bodies and identities in Central European Later Prehistory

This study aims to explore personal and group identity as the key issues of human existence, crucial to our understanding of prehistory as the lived experience of past people. Personal identities are comprised of a mosaic of changing variables, of different roles people play within societies, of which some might be termed gender, age, kinship, status, wealth, class, ethnicity or religion. Through the analyses of mortuary data and artistic representation, prehistoric notions of identity will emerge. The study of identity and personhood in prehistory is best undertaken by using the body as the medium of investigation, since the body is the primary locus of the person, through which the world is experienced and action can be performed. Body practices are used to construct and negotiate personal identities in the setting of societies, to create sameness and difference between group members and people outside their groups. How people perceive themselves and others becomes apparent, for instance, through the way they dress, move through their environment, use materials and material culture, interact, or the way they care for and bury their dead. The change from the Bronze to the Iron Age in Central Europe, the setting of this study, represents not only a change in material culture, but is also accompanied by a number of interesting social developments. Archaeologically they are visible, for instance, through the re-introduction of human images in art and a radical change in burial practices, in which the body becomes the focal point of the display of identity. Through two key methodologies, which are the in-depth study of burial remains and related evidence of mortuary practice along with the study of human representations in art, the project will examine how gender relations were constituted, maintained and practiced, how personal age contributed to the way individuals were perceived, how wealth and status came to be significant personal characteristics, and how different variables of identity were interconnected to form a coherent sense of personhood. To investigate how these aspects of identity differ through time and space, the project is designed along two analytical axes, the Bronze to Iron Age transition on one hand, and the relationship between distinct regional groups in Central Europe on the other. This will attempt to clarify how `making` identity changed through time, whether and how personal identity was constructed differently in different areas, and whether the construction of personal identity was crucial to the construction of group identities, thus investigating if and how people living in different areas and environments deliberately created and maintained difference from other contemporary groups. As a result, this study will bring significant advances to the understanding of the formation of ethnic groups and political entities at the threshold to history. The investigation of the very extensive and detailed data available from the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age in Central Europe promises fascinating results that will both help to develop the emerging field of an `archaeology of personhood`, and will integrate important components like wealth, power and status into discussions of identity in later European prehistory.