14 April 2013

I'll start with the pots. They look old, obviously. Maybe something ethnic, from an African village maybe?, collectors' items. Of course, I would love to hold them, own them, place them on the shelf together with all the other bowls and ceramics I have been hoarding. To be able to touch them, run my fingers along the patterns. 


These pots, or rather "food vessels" as is the correct term, are safely hidden in a museum considering that they are from the Bronze Age. That is from the period 1900 - 1300 BC.
Sometime in the Early Bronze Age in places like Ireland people started to bury their dead in single graves. I can only guess what they may have done earlier, mass graves like the giant big megalithic tombs, leave them to the elements, recycle, cremate, eat them? I am not good at archaelogy. The dates, all these zeros alone are too much for me to comprehend.
For whatever reason, a change occurred in the way Early Bronze Age society was organised. Not every person, but certainly a growing number of significant individuals was buried that way. Significant apparently did not necessarily mean important as in political or religious leader. But again, I am baffled by the way archaeologists come to their conclusions. 
The individual graves were just large enough to hold the body and several accompanying pots, beautifully crafted, with drink and food for the journey from one state to the next.
But what is the most moving of these burials is that in some of them, the dead have been placed in a foetal position, curled up as if they were curled up in the womb.
Early Bronze Age people were obviously looking very carefully at the human body, they knew the shape of a child in the womb, they had the capacity to observe humanity. And looking at these pots I can glimpse their desire to transcend it.
I find that thought very comforting.

1 comment:

beth coyote said...

What a beautiful post. I've always loved pots and their 'uterine' shape. Enclosed. The thought of being buried with food and drink for the journey, very maternal.

~Beth