Personhood and Social Relations in the British Neolithic with a Study from the Isle of Man

Studies of collective or corporate burial in the British Neolithic have focused largely on ancestors, clans and lineages, or the production of a microcosm of reality. Social relations are often described as egalitarian, or egalitarianism is taken to be the ideological impetus for corporate burial, belying inequalities in life. Studies of individual burial focus more on concepts of individual power, autonomous agency, status and possession. In this contribution acts of depositing Neolithic bones are interpreted as citations of social relations. The possibilities for studying Neolithic social relations between different aspects of life (human, animal, object, place) are explored using theories developed to understand how persons - and their worlds - are produced through activity. Such activities are considered as struggles with different kinds of ideological regulatory fictions about personal identity and social relations. The study starts with a consideration of ethnographic approaches to personhood, reviews recent work on British Neolithic mortuary practices, and concludes with a case study from the Isle of Man.