This article advances fragmentation by integrating landscape fragmentation into the existing framework of object and human body fragmentation. We propose a revised "Fragmentation Premise": places, bodies, and objects have been deliberately fragmented, with the resulting fragments often being reused ‘after the break.’ Through three refitting studies from European prehistory - a Late Neolithic anthropomorphic face-pot from Öcsöd (Hungary), marble figurines from Kavos on Keros (Greece) from the Early Bronze Age, and heavily fragmented deposits of human and animal bones, ceramics, lithic materials, and singular finds from the LBK site at Herxheim (Germany) - we demonstrate how enchainment and synecdoche operated at different scales and with different materials. At Öcsöd, fragmentation consolidated the local identities of households. At Kavos, systematic pilgrimage transported deliberately fragmented marble objects from several Cycladic islands, evidencing complex curation practices. At Herxheim, we propose a bodily mobility model: parts of recently deceased ancestors from upland and lowland communities were transported to this ritual centre for fragmentation and final deposition over a span of 10 to 75 years.
[1] For a brief history of fragmentation studies, see John Chapman, “The fragmentation of place: towards an integrated theory of fragmentation.” To appear in Grygiel and Bogucki Festschrift, Eds. Michał Grygiel and Peter J. Obst (in press).
[2] John Chapman, Fragmentation in archaeology (London: Routledge, 2000).
[3] John Chapman and Bisserka Gaydarska, Parts and wholes (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2007), 2, 8-10, 18.
[4] Chapman, Fragmentation, 134-179.
[5] Chapman and Gaydarsa, Parts and wholes.
[6] John Chapman, “Deviant’ burials in the Neolithic and Chalcolithic of Central and South Eastern Europe,” in Body parts and bodies whole, Eds. Katharina Rebay-Salisbury, Marie Louise Stig Sørensen, and Jessica Hughes (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2010), 30–45; John Chapman, Rosalind Wallduck, and Sevi Triantaphyllou, “Disarticulated Human Bone Disposal During the Mesolithic, Neolithic and Chalcolithic in the Balkans and Greece,” in Annales Universitatis Apulensis. Series Historica 18, II (2014): 11–46.
[7] Chapman et al., “Disarticulated,” 39-42.
[8] Ian Hodder, Entangled. An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things (Chichester: Wiley & Sons, 2012).
[9] Richard Bradley, An archaeology of natural places (London: Routledge, 2000), 88.
[10] Chris Gosden, “Afterword,” in Materialitas. Working stone, carving identity, Eds. Blaze O’Connor, Gabriel Cooney, and John Chapman. (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2009) [Prehistoric Society Research. Paper 3], 181-184.
[11] Chantal Conneller, An archaeology of materials. Substantial transformations in early prehistoric Europe (London: Routledge, 2011), 25.
[12] André Leroi-Gourhan, Le geste et la parole. I. Technique et langue (Paris: Albin Michel, 1964).
[13] Emmanuel Mens, “Re-fitting megaliths in western France,” in Antiquity 82 (2008): 25–36.
[14] Burcin Erdoğu, Mihriban Özbaşaran, Rabia Erdoğu, and John Chapman, “Prehistoric salt exploitation in Tuz Gölü, Central Anatolia: preliminary investigations,” in Anatolia Antiqua XI (2003): 11–19.
[15] Christopher A. Singer, “The 63-kilometer fit,” in Prehistoric Quarries and Lithic Production, Eds. Jonathon E. Ericson and Barbara A. Purdy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 35-48.
[16] Lucy Shaw Evangelista and António Carlos Valera, “Segmenting and depositing: the manipulation of the human body in ditched enclosures seen from Perdigões,” in Fragmentation and depositions in pre- and proto-historic Portugal, Ed. António Carlos Valera (Lisbon: Núcleo de Investigação arqueológica, 2019), 47-70.
[17] Chapman and Gaydarska, Parts and wholes, 170.
[18] With apologies to Monty Python’s Life of Brian.
[19] Igor Kopytoff, “The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process,” in The social life of things, Ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 64-91.
[20] Hans-Peter Hahn and Hadas Weiss, Mobility, meaning and the transformation of things (Oxford; Oxbow Books, 2013).
[21] Several examples are discussed at length in Chapman, “Fragmentation of place”.
[22] Pál Raczky, Magdalena Seleanu, Gábor Rózsa, Csilla Siklódi, Gábor Kalla, Boldizsár Csornay, Hargita Oravecz, Magdolna Vicze, Eszter Bánffy, Sándor Bökönyi, and Péter Somogyi, “Öcsöd-Kováshalom. The intensive topographical and archaeological investigation of a Late Neolithic site. Preliminary report,” in Mitteilungen des Archäologischen Instituts der Ungarischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 14 (1985): 251-278; Pál Raczky, “Öcsöd-Kováshalom. A settlement of the Tisza culture,” in The Late Neolithic in the Tisza region, Ed. Pál Raczky (Budapest–Szolnok: Szolnok County Museum, 1987), 61-83; Pál Raczky, András Füzesi, and Alexandra Anders, “Domestic and Symbolic Activities on a Tell-Like Settlement at Öcsöd-Kováshalom in the Tisza Region,” in The Image of Divinity in the Neolithic and Eneolithic: Ways of Communication (Suceava: Karl A. Romstorfer, 2018), 117-140.
[23] Raczky et al., “Domestic and symbolic.”
[24] Colin Renfrew, “Evidence for ritual breakage in the Cycladic Early Bronze Age. The Special Deposit South at Kavos on Keros,” in Thravsma: Contextualising the intentional destruction of objects in the Bronze Age Aegean and Cyprus, Eds. Kate Harrell and Jan Driessen (Louvain: Presses Universitaires de Louvain, 2015), 81-98; Colin Renfrew, Olga Philaniotou, Neil Brodie, Giorgos Gavalas, and Michael J. Boyd (Eds.), The Sanctuary on Keros and the origins of Aegean ritual practice: the excavations of 2006-2008, Vol. 1: The settlement at Dhaskalio (Cambridge: MacDonald Institute, 2013); Colin Renfrew, Olga Philaniotou, Neil Brodie, Giorgos Gavalas, and Michael J. Boyd (Eds.), The Sanctuary on Keros and the origins of Aegean ritual practice: the excavations of 2006-2008, Vol. 2: Kavos and the Special Deposits (Cambridge: MacDonald Institute, 2015).
[25] Colin Renfrew, “The Special Deposit South as a ritual deposit,” in Renfrew et al., Sanctuary on Keros, Vol. 2, 381-396.
[26] Colin Renfrew, “The Special Deposit South.”
[27] Neil Brodie, “Appendix 13A. Joins analysis of the stone vessel assemblages,” in Renfrew et al., Sanctuary on Keros, Vol. 2, 391-392; Georgos Gavalas, “The stone vessels,” in Renfrew et al., Sanctuary on Keros, Vol. 2, 259-354.
[28] Dimitris Tambakopoulos, Yiannis Maniatis, Peggy Sotirakopoulou, and Colin Renfrew, “Appendix 13B. Figurine joins from the Special Deposit South,” in Renfrew et al., Sanctuary on Keros, Vol. 2, 392-396.
[29] Colin Renfrew, “The Special Deposit South,” 383.
[30] Brodie, “Appendix 13A,” Fig. 13.1.
[31] Gavalas, “The stone vessels,” 338.
[32] Tambakopoulos et al., “Figurine joins,” Fig. 13.2.
[33] Renfrew, “The Special Deposit South,” 387.
[34] Renfrew, “Evidence for ritual breakage.”
[35] Carl Knappett and Irene Nikolakopoulou, “Inside Out? Materiality and Connectivity in the Aegean Archipelago,” in The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean, Eds. Arthur Bernard Knapp and Peter van Dommelen (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014), fig. 2.1.
[36] Evangelista and Valera, “Segmenting and depositing,” 64.
[37] Andrea Zeeb-Lanz, Fabian Haack, Rose-Marie Arbogast, Miriam Noël Haidle, Christian Jeunesse, Jörg Orschiedt, and Dirk Schimmelpfennig, “Außergewöhnliche Deponierungen der Bandkeramik – die Grubenanlage von Herxheim,” in Germania 85 (2007): 199-274; Andrea Zeeb-Lanz, Rose-Marie Arbogast, Silja Bauer, Bruno Boulesin, Anthony Denaire, Fabian Haack, Christian Jeunesse, Dirk Schimmelpfennig, and Rouven Turck, “Human sacrifices as ‘crisis management’? The case of the Early Neolithic site of Herxheim, Palatinate, Germany,” in Diversity of Sacrifice. Form and Function of Sacrificial Practices in the Ancient Word and Beyond, Ed. Carrie Ann Murray (New York: Sunny Press, 2016) [The Institute for European and Mediterranean Archaeology Distinguished Monograph Series], 171-189; Andrea Zeeb-Lanz (Ed.), Ritualised destruction in the Early Neolithic – the exceptional site of Herxheim (Palatinate, Germany). Volume 1 (Speyer: Direktion Landesarchäologie, Aussenstelle Speyer, 2016); Andrea Zeeb-Lanz (Ed.), Ritualised destruction in the Early Neolithic – the exceptional site of Herxheim (Palatinate, Germany). Volume 2 (Speyer: Direktion Landesarchäologie, Aussenstelle Speyer, 2019).
[38] Andrea Zeeb-Lanz and Fabian Haack, “History of research at Herxheim – an ‘interpretative thriller’,” in Zeeb-Lanz, Ritualised destruction 1, 1–13.
[39] Andrea Zeeb-Lanz, “The Herxheim ritual enclosure – a synthesis of results and interpretative approaches,” in Zeeb-Lanz, Ritualised destruction 2, 429.
[40] Fabian Haack, “The early Neolithic ditched enclosure of Herxheim – architecture, fill formation processes and service life,” in Zeeb-Lanz, Ritualised destruction 1, 22–23.
[41] Haack, “The early Neolithic ditched,” 113-115.
[42] Christian Jeunesse, “Enceintes à fossé discontinu et enceintes à pseudo-fossé dans le Néolithique d’Europe central et occidentale,” in Nécropoles et enceintes danubiennes du Ve millénaire dans le Nord-East de la France et la Sud-Ouest de l’Allemagne. Rhin, Meuse, Moselle, Eds. Anthony Denaire, Christian Jeunesse, and Philippe LeFranc (Strasbourg: Université de Strasbourg, 2011), 31-72.
[43] Haack, “The early Neolithic ditched,” Pl. 68, 81 & 84.
[44] Anthony Denaire, “Pottery re-fits and connections from Herxheim,” in Zeeb-Lanz, Ritualised destruction 2, 38. However, this sensible suggestion ignores the inter-contextual re-fits which he has done so much to identify.
[45] Zeeb-Lanz, “The Herxheim ritual enclosure,” 466.
[46] Zeeb-Lanz et al., “Außergewöhnliche Deponierungen,” 266.
[47] Fabian Haack, “Early Neolithic,” 64.
[48] Denaire, “Pottery re-fits,” 34.
[49] Bruno Boulestin and Anne-Sophie Coupey, Cannibalism in the Linear Pottery Culture at Herxheim (Oxford: Archaeopress Archaeology, 2015); Silja Bauer, “Human bones from the research excavation 1996-1999. Examination of selected material (excavation slots 282-100 to 282-107)” in Zeeb-Lanz, Ritualised destruction 2, 3-24.
[50] Zeeb-Lanz, “The Herxheim ritual enclosure,” 431.
[51] Bauer, “Human bones,” 11.
[52] E.g., on the surface of the enclosure or in as yet unexcavated parts of the ditches: Andrea Zeeb-Lanz and Fabian Haack, “Ritual und Gewalt in Herxheim (Pfalz),” in 12. Mitteldeutscher Archäologentag: Rituelle Gewalt – Rituale der Gewalt | Ritual Violence – Rituals of Violence (Halle/Saale: Tagungen des Landesmuseums für Vorgeschichte Halle, 2020) [Band 22/I], 181-196.
[53] ‘Fresh’ bone is taken to mean that the flesh was still on the bone when the cut mark was made to remove the flesh: Bauer, “Human bones,” 5.
[54] Boulestin and Coupey, “Cannibalism”, 65; Bauer, “Human bones,” 16.
[55] Haack, “The early Neolithic ditched;” Denaire, “Pottery re-fits;” Oliver Mecking, “Clay analysis of the pottery from Herxheim,” in Zeeb-Lanz, Ritualised destruction 2, 41–54.
[56] Mecking, “Clay analysis.”
[57] Mecking, “Clay analysis,” 51 - 53.
[58] Arbogast, “Faunal assemblages,” 144.
[59] Luc A. Janssens, Rose-Marie Arbogast and Andrea Zeeb-Lanz, ‘Dogs of the final Bandkeramik at Herxheim: re-fitting and pathology,” in Zeeb-Lanz, Ritualised destruction 2, 233-246.
[60] Dirk Schimmelpfennig, „The lithic material from Herxheim with special emphasis on the 2005–2008 excavations and the latest LBK phase (the ‘ritual phase’ at Herxheim),” in Zeeb-Lanz, Ritualised destruction 2, 81-138.
[61] Ibid.,102.
[62] Ibid., 91.
[63] A ‘manuport’ is an unworked object not local to the site, which has therefore been brought onto the site.
[64] Zeeb-Lanz, “The Herxheim ritual enclosure,” 436.
[65] Schimmelpfennig, “The lithic remains,” 130–131.
[66] In addition to these finds, there was a large faunal assemblage of slightly under 15,000 bone fragments, not as heavily fragmented as the human bones, which were not re-fitted: Rose-Marie Arbogast, “Analysis of the faunal assemblages of the LBK site of Herxheim: the larger mammals,” in Zeeb-Lanz, Ritualised destruction 2, 139-232.
[67] Rouven Turck, “Where did the Herxheim dead come from? Isotope analyses of human individuals from the find concentrations in the ditches,” in Zeeb-Lanz, Ritualised destruction 2, 313-421.
[68] Turck, “Where did the Herxheim.”
[69] Zeeb-Lanz, “The Herxheim ritual enclosure.”
[70] Alexander Gramsch, “Prestige durch rituelle Handlungen – cui bono?,” in Ansehenssache. Formen von Prestige in Kulturen des Altertums, Eds. Birgit Christiansen and Ulrich Thaler (München: Herbert Utz, 2012), 355-384; Daniela Hofmann, “Bodies, houses and status in the Western Linearbandkeramik,” in Beyond elites. Alternatives to hierarchical systems in modelling social formations, Eds. Tobias L. Kienlin and Andreas Zimmermann (Bonn: Rudolf Habelt, 2012), 183-196.
[71] Zeeb-Lanz, “The Herxheim ritual enclosure,” 463.
[72] Ibid., 454.
[73] See above, 47-51.
[74] Andy Jones, Prehistoric materialities. Becoming material in prehistoric Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 19-20.
[75] E.g, in the inner ditch in slot 282-139.
[76] E.g, in the inner ditch in slot 282-12.
[77] It is ironic that this misleading claim was made by the specialist who re-fitted the pottery: Denaire, “Pottery re-fits,” 39.
[78] Zeeb-Lanz, “The Herxheim ritual enclosure,” 457.
[79] Denaire, “Pottery re-fits,” 35.
[80] Denaire, “Pottery re-fits,” 38. However, Zeeb-Lanz objects that the variety of sediments in which the sherds were deposited could also have produced spalling. The issue remains for further scientific study.
[81] Denaire, “Pottery re-fits,” 27.
[82] Chapman and Gaydarska, Parts and wholes, Chapters 3, 6 & 7.
[83] Not their real names!
[84] E.g., in the case of the fragmentation of Hamangia figurines, whose new fragmented identities created a change of gender: Chapman and Gaydarska, Parts and wholes, 53-70.
[85] Jörg Orschiedt and Miriam Noël Haidle, “Violence against the living, violence against the dead on the human remains from Herxheim, Germany. Evidence of a crisis and mass cannibalism?,” in Sticks, Stones, and Broken Bones: Neolithic Violence in a European Perspective, Eds. Rick Schulting and Linda Fibiger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 121-137. See also: Jörg Orschiedt and Miriam Noël Haidle, “The LBK Enclosure at Herxheim: Theatre of War or Ritual Centre? References from Osteoarchaeological Investigations,” in Journal of Conflict Archaeology 2, 1 (2006): 153-167.
[86] Turck, “Where did the Herxheim.”
[87] A current debate on the settlement chronology of LBK Phase 5 may change this conclusion (p.c., A. Zeeb-Lanz).
[88] Daniela Hofmann, “Not going anywhere? Migration as a social practice in the early Neolithic Linearbandkeramik,” in Quaternary International 560-561 (2020): 228-239.
[89] Chapman and Gaydarska, Parts and wholes, 106-107.
[90] Chapman, Fragmentation, 64.
[91] For a discussion of the reasons for the origins of the ritual phase at Herxheim, see below, 74-76.
[92] Ashley E. Green and John J. Schultz, “An examination of the Transition of Fracture Characteristics in Long Bones from Fresh to Dry in Central Florida: Evaluating the Timing of Injury (Report),” in Journal of Forensic Science 62, 2 (2017): 282-291.
[93] Martyna A. Janjua and Tracy L. Rogers, “Bone weathering patterns of metatarsal v. femur and the postmortem interval in Southern Ontario,” in Forensic Science International 178 (2018): 16–23.
[94] Danielle A. M. Wieberg and Daniel J. Wescott, “Estimating the time of long bone fractures: correlation between postmortem interval, bone moisture content, and blunt force trauma fracture characteristics,” in Journal of Forensic Science 53, 5 (2008): 1028–1034.
[95] Alison Galloway, Lauren Zephro and Vicki L. Wedel, “Diagnostic Criteria for the Determination of Timing and Fracture Mechanism,” in Broken bones: Anthropological Analysis of Blunt Force Trauma, Eds. Alison Galloway and Vicki L. Wedel (Springfield IL: Charles C. Thomas, 2014), 47-58.
[96] Tom J. Booth, “An Investigation into the Relationship Between Funerary Treatment and Bacterial Bioerosion in European Archaeological Human Bone,” in Archaeometry 58, 3 (2016): 484-499.
[97] Chapman et al., forthcoming, Germania discussion paper.
[98] Irka Hajdas, “Radiocarbon dating of human bones from Herxheim,” in Zeeb-Lanz, Ritualised destruction 2, 277-283.
[99] Riedhammer’s suggestion of a ‘relatively short-term set of events, perhaps spanning no more than 50 calendar years’ is not based upon her Bayesian modelling but on Zeeb-Lanz et al., “Human sacrifices” published views: Katrin Riedhammer, “The radiocarbon dates from Herxheim and their archaeological interpretation,” in Zeeb-Lanz, Ritualised destruction 2, 289.
[100] Zeeb-Lanz, “The Herxheim ritual enclosure,” 439, 448.
[101] Peter Demján and Peter Pavúk, “Clustering of calibrated radiocarbon dates: Site-specific chronological sequences identified by dense radiocarbon sampling,” in Radiocarbon DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/RDC.2020.129.
[102] Hajdas, “Radiocarbon dating”; many dates were rejected because they were considered to be inaccurate outliers.
[103] Riedhammer, “The radiocarbon dates.”
[104] Orschied and Haidle, “Violence.”
[105] Bouleston and Coupey, “Cannibalism.”
[106] Bauer, “Human bones.”
[107] Turck, “Where did the Herxheim.”
[108] For a distribution of Latest LBK lowland sites near Herxheim, see Zeeb-Lanz, “The Herxheim ritual enclosure,” Figs. 2 and 4.
[109] We have suffered from similar problems for the upland Zemplén Block 3 of the Upper Tisza Project: John Chapman, Mark Gillings, Robert Shiel, Enikő Magyari, Bisserka Gaydarska, and Chris Bond, The Upper Tisza Project. Studies in Hungarian landscape archaeology. Book 3: Settlement patterns in the Zemplén Block (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2010) [BAR International Series 2088].
[110] See discussion of burials per annum in Noah Honch, Thomas Higham, Bisserka Gaydarska, Henrieta Todorova, Vladimir Slavchev, Yordan Yordanov, Branimira Dimitrova, and John Chapman, “Pontic chronologies and diets: a scientific framework for understanding the Durankulak and Varna I cemeteries, Bulgaria,” in Interdisciplinaria Archaeologica Natural Sciences in Archaeology 4, 2 (2013):147–162.
[111] Eszter Bánffy, Anett Osztás, Krisztián Oross, István Zalai-Gaál, Tibor Marton, Éva Ágnes Nyerges, Kitti Köhler, Alex Bayliss, Derek Hamilton and Alasdair Whittle, “The Alsónyék story: towards the prehistory of a persistent place,” in Bericht der Römisch-Germanisch Kommission 94 (2013): 283-318.
[112] John Chapman, Forging identities in the prehistory of Old Europe. Dividuals, individuals and communities 7000 – 3000 BC (Leiden, Sidestone Press), in press.
[113] For a very different form of prehistoric pilgrimage, see the Pilgrimage Model for the Trypillia megasite of Nebelivka: John Chapman and Bisserka Gaydarska, “The pilgrimage model for Trypillia mega-sites: the case of Nebelivka, Ukraine,” in Digging in the past of Old Europe. Studies in honor of Cristian Schuster at his 60th anniversary, Eds. Valeriu Sîrbu and Alexandra Comşa (Brăila: Istros, 2019), 73-102.
[114] Hofmann, “Bodies, houses and status”; Andrea Zeeb-Lanz, “Anthropomorphic and theriomorphic figurine fragments and other small clay finds from the ritual enclosure of Herxheim,” in Zeeb-Lanz, Ritualised destruction 2, 55-80.
[115] Daniela Hofmann, “Not going anywhere.”
[116] See above, p. 45.
[117] Hofmann, “Not going anywhere,” 3.