Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T17:26:25.549Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Of ‘Little People’ and Ancient Monuments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Ton Lemaire
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Roymans' article is an original and valuable contribution to an interpretation of the ‘cultural biography’ of the landscape of a specific area by combining archaeological and folkloric evidence. His study concentrates on the sacred places of this landscape, especially the urnfields and barrows, because ‘these are focal points from which local communities order and interpret the surrounding landscape’. The author rightly stresses that funerary monuments not only had a certain significance in the societies that constructed and used them, but that they also had a prominent place in the landscape of later societies up until pre-modern times. He suggests that, in the Meuse-Demer-Scheldt region, there has been ‘a long-term incorporation of prehistorical burial monuments in the mythical landscape of later inhabitants’. Archaeology itself, for that matter, should be understood in the perspective of the (dis)continuing biography of the landscape because it presupposes the destruction of the ancient mythical geography, including the Christian one. Archaeology is the product of the ‘modernisation’ of space: it is presupposing and reflecting (upon) the coming of the modem world with its rationalisation and Entzauberung (disenchantment) of the landscape. In a similar way the study of folklore (Volkskunde in both Dutch and German) has been made possible and interesting by the waning of rural popular culture as a consequence of both the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution. Thus, it is no accident that modernity produced the conditions of becoming aware of the mythical meaning of the landscape exactly at the time that its traces are disappearing in the physical landscape as well as in the memory of the rural population.

Type
Discussion
Information
Archaeological Dialogues , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , January 1995 , pp. 30 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barraud, C., and Platenkamp, J.D.M., 1990: Rituals and the comparison of societies, Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en volkenkunde 146, 103–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barrett, J.C., 1991: Later prehistoric landscapes. A biography of place (paper presented to TAG, Leicester 1991).Google Scholar
Beex, G., 1954: Twee bronstijdgrafheuvels en enige graven uit de Merovingische tijd te Casteren (gem. Hoogeloon c.a.), Brabants heem 6, 57–65.Google Scholar
Bender, B., 1992: Theorising landscapes, and the prehistoric landscapes of Stonehenge, Man (N.S.) 27, 735–755.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bender, B., 1993: Stonehenge – contested landscapes (medieval to present-day), in Bender, B. (ed.), Landscape: politics and perspectives, Oxford, 245–280.Google Scholar
van den Berg, M., 1993: De volkssage in de provincie Antwerpen in de 19de en 20ste eeuw, Gent (Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde).Google Scholar
de Blécourt, W., 1980: Volksverhalen uit Noord-Brabant, Utrecht and Antwerpen.Google Scholar
Bloch, M., 1962: Feudal society, London.Google Scholar
de Bont, A.P., 1969: Dialekt van Kempenland 3. Geografische namen, Assen.Google Scholar
Bradley, R., 1990: The passage of arms. An archaeological analysis of prehistoric votive deposits, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Brown, P., 1981: The cult of saints, its rise and function in Latin Christianity, Chicago.Google Scholar
de Coppet, D., 1985: …Land owns people, in Barnes, R.H., de Coppet, D. and Parkin, R.J. (eds), Contexts and levels. Anthropological essays on hierachy, Oxford (Jaso Occasional Papers 4), 78–90.Google Scholar
Derks, T., in prep.: Goden, cultusplaatsen en offergaven. De romanisering van de inheemse religie in Noord-Gallië.Google Scholar
Dumont, L., 1986 (1980): On value, modern and non-modern, in Dumont, L. (ed.), Essays on individualism. Modern ideology in anthropological perspective, Chicago and London, 234–268.Google Scholar
Eliade, M., 1959: The sacred and the profane. The nature of religion, San Diego and New York.Google Scholar
Gielis, M., 1994: De duivel in het volksgeloof en in de rooms-katholieke verkondiging, in, Rooijakkers, G., Dresen-Coenders, L. and Geerdes, M. (eds), Duivelsbeelden. Een cultuurhistorische speurtocht door de Lage Landen, Baarn, 329–355.Google Scholar
Glasbergen, W., 1955: Het rijengrafveld te Broekeneind bij Hoogeloon, Eindhoven (Bijdragen tot de studie van het Brabantse heem 6).Google Scholar
Gurevich, A., 1985 (1972): Categories of medieval culture, London.Google Scholar
Gurevich, A., 1988: Medieval popular culture. Problems of belief and perception, Cambridge and Paris (Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture, 14).Google Scholar
Heringa, J., 1985: Lijnen en stippellijnen in de geschiedenis van de buurschap, Nieuwe Drentse volksalmanak 102, 69–93.Google Scholar
Heylen, A., 1837 (1790): Historische verhandeling over de Kempen, Turnhout.Google Scholar
van Impe, L., 1978: De Partisaensberg te Kasterlee, in Conspectus MCMLXXVII, Brussel (Archaeologia Belgica 206), 20–24.Google Scholar
Janssen, L., 1993: Nicolaas, de duivel en de doden, Baarn.Google Scholar
Kolen, J., 1993: The cultural biography of the landscape. A re-appraisal of history (paper presented to TAG, Durham 1993).Google Scholar
Kommers, J., 1994: Mythische geografie. Landschap en wereldbeeld in niet-westerse culturen, in Driessen, H. and de Jonge, H. (eds), In de ban van betekenis: proeven van symbolische antropologie, Nijmegen, 46–69.Google Scholar
Kopytoff, I., 1986: The cultural biography of things: commoditisation as process, in Appadurai, A. (ed.), The social life of things. Commodities in cultural perspective, Cambridge, 64–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Laet, J.J., and Glasbergen, W., 1959: De voorgeschiedenis der lage landen, Groningen.Google Scholar
Le Goff, J., 1980: Time, work and culture in the Middle Ages, Chicago.Google Scholar
Lemaire, T., 1970: Filosofie van het landschap, Baarn.Google Scholar
Liebers, Ci., 1986: Neolithische Megalithgräber in Volksglauben und Volksleben, Frankfurt am Main (Artes Populares. Studia Ethnographica et Folkloristica 9).Google Scholar
Modderman, P.J.R., 1967: The Kattenberg and the ‘De Paal’ urnfield near Bergeyk (North Brabant), Berichten van de Rijksdienst voor het Oudheidkundig Bodemonderzoek 17, 59–63.Google Scholar
Oosten, J.G., 1985: The war of the gods. The social code in Indo-European mythology, London.Google Scholar
Otto, R., 1963 (1917): Het heilige. Een verhandeling over het irrationele in de idee van het goddelijke en de verhouding ervan tot het rationele, Hilversum.Google Scholar
Peeters, K.C., 1969: Volkskunde en archeologie, Oisterwijk (Bijdragen tot de studie van het Brabantse heem 11).Google Scholar
de Roeck, F., 1981: De demonologische heks en de sage-heks, Volkskunde 82, 129–168.Google Scholar
Rooijakkers, G., 1994: Rituele repertoires. Volkscultuur in oostelijk Noord-Brabant 1559–1853 Nijmegen (Memoria. Cultuur- en mentaliteitshistorische studies over de Nederlanden).Google Scholar
Roymans, N.(n.d.): Sagen uit de Acht Zaligheden, opgetekend in de jaren 1973–1978.Google Scholar
Roymans, N., 1991: Late urnfield societies in the Northwest European Plain and the expanding networks of Central European Hallstatt groups, in Roymans, N. and Theuws, F. (eds), Images of the past. Studies on ancient societies in Northwestern Europe, Amsterdam (Studies in prae- en protohistorie 7), 9–89.Google Scholar
Roymans, N., 1993: Romanisation and the transformation of a martial elite-ideology in a frontier province, in Brun, P., van der Leeuw, S. and Whittaker, Ch.R. (eds), Frontières d'empire. Nature et signification des frontières romaines, 33–50.Google Scholar
Roymans, N., and Derks, T. (eds), 1994: De tempel van Empel. Een Hercules-heiligdom in het woongebied van de Bataven, 's-Hertogenbosch.Google Scholar
Roymans, N. and Kortlang, F., 1993: Bewoningsgeschiedenis van een dekzandlandschap langs de Aa te Someren, in Roymans, N. and Theuws, F. (eds), Een en al Zand. Twee jaar graven naar het Brabantse verleden, 's-Hertogenbosch, 22–41.Google Scholar
Roymans, N. and Tol, A., 1993: Noodonderzoek van een dodenakker te Mierlo-Hout, in Roymans, N. and Theuws, F. (eds), Een en al zand. Twee jaar graven naar het Brabantse verleden, 's-Hertogenbosch, 42–56.Google Scholar
van der Sanden, W.A.B., 1981: The urnfield and the Late Bronze Age settlement traces on the Haagakkers at St.-Oedenrode (prov. of North Brabant), Berichten van de Rijksdienst voor het Oudheidkundig Bodemonderzoek 31, 307–328.Google Scholar
Schneider, J., 1990: Spirits and the spirit of capitalism, in Badone, E. (ed.), Religious orthodoxy and popular faith in European society, Princeton.Google Scholar
Sinninghe, J.R.W., 1938: Limburgsch sagenboek, Zutphen.Google Scholar
Sinninghe, J.R.W., 1973 (1936): Noord-Brabantsch sagenboek, 's-Hertogenbosch.Google Scholar
Slofstra, J., 1991: Changing settlement systems in the Meuse-Demer-Scheldt area during the early Roman period, in Roymans, N. and Theuws, F. (eds), Images of the past. Studies on ancient societies in northwestern Europe, Amsterdam (Studies in prae- en protohistorie 7), 131–199.Google Scholar
Theuws, F., 1989: Middeleeuwse parochie-centra in de Kempen 1000–1350, in Verhoeven, A. and Theuws, F. (eds), Het Kempenprojekt 3. De Middeleeuwen centraal, Waalre (Bijdragen tot de studie van het Brabantse heem 33), 97–216.Google Scholar
Theuws, F., 1991: Landed property and manorial organisation in northern Austrasia: some considerations and a case study, in Roymans, N. and Theuws, F. (eds), Images of the past. Studies on ancient societies in northwestern Europe, Amsterdam (Studies in prae- en protohistorie 7), 299–407.Google Scholar
Thomas, K., 1983: Man and the natural world, Harmondsworth.Google Scholar
Thompson, E.P., 1974: Patrician society, plebian culture, Journal of social history 7, 382–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turnbull, C., 1976 (1962): The forest people, London.Google Scholar
Verhagen, J.H., 1994: Een urnenveld bij Rijsbergen (N.Br.), ontdekt in 1811, Brabants heem 46, 64–68.Google Scholar
Weiner, A., 1992: Inalienable possessions. The paradox of keeping-while-giving, Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar