Going to pieces at the funeral: Completeness and complexity in early Bronze Age jet ‘necklace’ assemblages

Introduction

The scale at which we approach material culture can greatly influence the nature of our results. In studying individual objects, we can choose to examine the relationship between each thing and the larger classes to which it belongs; to reconstruct fragments to determine the form, usage or production technique of the whole object; and to analyse those fragments at a microscopic level to understand the physical properties of their constituent raw materials. Each of these levels of analysis adds to our understanding of individual objects and object types. In much the same way, assemblages of material culture can be approached on multiple levels to identify the individual things which constitute them, their ages, uses and meaning.

Recently, archaeologists have begun looking collectively at groups of objects, such as fragments of broken objects from multiple contexts or sites (Chapman, 2000; Chapman et al., 2007) or contemporary things of different types (e.g. Hulin, forthcoming a, forthcoming b; Sofaer, 2006). Research into these assemblages typically consists of the archaeologist bringing together things studied separately – pieces of broken figurines or ornaments, different ceramic types, ceramics and the buildings in which they were found – to attempt to delineate a more complete picture of the world as it existed in the past. This research focuses on archaeologically observable fragmentation and associations to reconstruct ancient values and meanings, but it also assumes that the things which make up a given assemblage were considered tangibly whole or complete. Moreover, it relies heavily on a largely unexamined use of pre-established normative types or categories of things and sites.

In this article, I suggest that we cannot afford to lose sight of the constituent parts which make up a given object, or of the possibility that its very wholeness may be an artefact of our own, contemporary ideas of material culture. I discuss the way British prehistorians approach, interpret and reconstruct one specific category of object – the Early Bronze Age ‘spacer plate necklace’ in jet – in order to highlight the ways in which archaeologists have failed to incorporate prehistoric functions and object/material categories into their interpretations simply by making the fragmentary and partial whole and complete. None of these ‘necklaces’ was found strung into a crescent, but most have been reconstructed to have this form by archaeologists and museum curators. I argue that, in stringing these beads into complete necklaces, we add a layer of interpretation that affects how we see the individual beads, particularly as there is overwhelming evidence, first, that not all of these assemblages of beads represent complete ornaments and, second, that many of their individual beads appear to have been crucial to determining the value of the whole ornament. Rather, I suggest that the apparent incompleteness of many of these assemblages is not only intentional but is, in fact, a necessary feature to study if we want to understand their value to the people who made, used and deposited them. In other words, by allowing the fragmentation apparent in the archaeological record to guide our interpretations rather than the normative categories traditionally used for classification, we can develop wholly new ways to understand the social contexts of artefact types and assemblages.

Assembling the past

In uncovering and reconstructing the archaeological record, we regularly encounter things generally considered to be whole, but which, with a little added information or a different point of view, are better thought about as assemblages of individual constituent parts. For example, the mummies recovered at Cladh Hallan (North Uist, Scotland) appear to be inhumations of single individuals, but several are actually composed of parts of two or more bodies of different ages (Parker Pearson et al., 2005, 2007a). In recent years, landscape archaeologists have had to grapple with the increasingly obvious fact that many sites and monuments presumed to be complete and whole are actually just the final stage of a series of construction processes. Stonehenge, now known to have been built in numerous phases lasting well over 1500 years (Allen and Bayliss, 1995; Bayliss et al., 1997; Parker Pearson et al., 2007b), is arguably the most famous prehistoric example of a seemingly complete site better understood as a palimpsest of ditches, banks, pits, timber posts and standing stones disassembled and rearranged to fit the needs of succeeding generations. Similarly, Johnston (2005) has suggested that Bronze Age field systems traditionally treated as some of the earliest evidence for planned land division actually developed organically in a piece-meal fashion based on patterns of land-use and occupation that had long been established in the area (cf. Wickstead, 2008).

In other words, careful excavation and more precise dating techniques indicate that sites and monuments antiquarians and early archaeologists would happily have classed as ‘bell barrows’ or ‘stone circles’ are actually the residue of repeated occupation, use and re-use of the prehistoric landscape rather than planned, finished sites (Last, 2007). Yet, ‘stone circle’ and ‘bell barrow’ remain in use because they serve as useful shorthand terms for categorizing sites – even if similar sites had very individual and divergent histories – and can be re-purposed to serve as interpretative tools rather than normative categories if applied with critical attention and reflexivity (cf. Needham, 2007).

The categorization of sites and artefacts into types based on shared features is of fundamental importance to archaeological interpretations. Typo-chronologies lay at the heart of archaeological enquiry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Trigger, 2006), and even today site dating and feature sequences often rely as much on the recognition of key artefact types as on scientific dating. Moreover, the presence of predetermined categories based on morphological and technological characteristics is a necessary tool for understanding and reconstructing the highly fragmentary objects recovered from archaeological contexts. Consequently, it makes sense that we are loathe to relinquish these typological categories or to accept that they encompass objects with very different origins, developmental histories and/or significance to the people who made and used them (cf. Miller, 1985).

Furthermore, as Pollock and Burnbeck (2010) take pains to remind us, the categories we develop are, in and of themselves, interpretative tools which we use to create the past. They argue that, in failing to question or critically examine these categories, we are artificially limiting the scope of archaeological enquiry by imposing functional and material boundaries on the objects themselves and by confining ourselves to repeat earlier interpretations of similar things as if those ideas were our own. In applying traditional categories uncritically, not only is our understanding of the past circumscribed, but we are even prevented from examining the material things themselves with fresh eyes open to new ideas.

Moreover, the fact that these categories are used to order and display archaeological collections to the public serves to reify them in the public and academic imaginations and further curtail the scope of reinterpretation or recategorization. In particular, objects or assemblages which are reconstructed in their entirety or from their constituent parts for presentation to the public are considered wholly authentic by visitors (Holtorf and Schadla-Hall, 1999), despite being based on a complex process of guesswork, previous experience and probability. The very reconstruction of archaeological data – by pen and ink, through computer modelling or with adhesive in three dimensions – is an interpretative act which creates an idea of the past place or thing that reflects how the artist or archaeologist thought it made the most sense, a process to which modern cultural sensibilities are inherent (Moser, 1992; Smiles and Moser, 2005). If archaeologists create different pasts by interpreting ancient remains in the present, museums have the ability (though many strive against it!) to amplify a single past while drowning out others (Karp and Wilson, 1996). Jones and Pay (1994: 161), discussing the presentation of femaleness in museums, note the example of a curator who, when confronted with historical inventories listing axes in eighteenth-century ladies’ bedchambers, saw their deliberate exclusion from reconstructed bedchambers ‘justified, even though historically inaccurate’ because it did not fit his own ideas about what material culture was suitable for presentation in a lady’s bedchamber. In other words, in studying what is left of past societies so as to assemble a vision of how they lived and what they did and believed, we need to be doubly sure that contemporary ideas about social structure, value systems and material culture are not allowed to obfuscate the actual patterns visible in the archaeological record.

Characterizing ‘jet necklaces’

In discussing jet spacer plate ornaments, I demonstrate how the normative categories discussed above can hamstring our attempts to develop social theories of object function and value. To bypass the sedimentation of traditional interpretations which are intrinsically linked to these normative categories, it is necessary to re-examine the entire artefact class from the ground up.

Ornaments in a variety of materials including jet, amber, bone, copper-alloy and faience are characteristic finds in burial assemblages from the British/Irish Earlier Bronze Age and date roughly to the centuries 2200–1800 BC (Sheridan, 2003). From the Neolithic onwards, jet and other jet-like materials shaped into beads of various types and sizes were frequently used to make ornaments or dress equipment, many of which are interpreted as single or multi-stranded necklaces and bracelets. Ninety-six of these ‘necklaces’ include rectangular, trapezoidal and triangular plates bored to separate and, often, to increase the number of strands. These jet spacer plates are found almost entirely in Britain, with a few peripheral finds in Ireland and France, and are regularly displayed in museums strung into large, multi-stranded crescents (Frieman, in prep.) (Figure 1a). Along with the quadrilateral spacer plates and triangular terminal plates, the assemblages from which these crescentic necklaces are reconstructed typically comprise a number of other types of beads, including small toggle beads (usually triangular) and a number of smaller fusiform, disc or button-shaped beads (Figure 2). The spacer plates themselves are skillfully made with careful perforations that tend to increase the number of strands (e.g. from one strand to three or four to six), and are often beautifully decorated. Frequently, the various beads included in individual assemblages are heavily worn, curated and reworked; and some assemblages are clearly composed of beads of different ages, raw materials, styles and origins (Craw, 1929; Sheridan and Davis, 2002). These jet beads and buttons are often linked to the social status or gender of the deceased person interred with them (Sheridan, 2003; Sheridan and Davis, 2002), and spacer plate bead assemblages have traditionally been considered a uniquely female ornament.

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Figure 1.

The bead assemblage found in an Early Bronze Age burial cist at Burgie Lodge, Rafford (Moray, Scotland). (a) The bead assemblage is currently strung and displayed in this configuration based on use-wear analysis carried out on several of the beads. Photograph by C. Frieman, © The Elgin Museum. (b) An illustration of the same bead assemblage based on the position of beads when they were excavated. After Callander, 1916: Fig. 1.

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Figure 2.

Various shaped beads in jet or jet-like materials frequently found together and assembled to form crescentic necklaces. A) terminal plate; B) spacer plate; C) fusiform bead; D) disc bead; E) button-shaped bead; F) triangular toggle.

A number of the individual beads are made from true jet, a brown coal formed from semi-fossilized monkey puzzle trees (Muller, 1980, 1987). Like amber, it is electrostatic (meaning it can hold a static electric charge); and it has several other unique physical properties which require extensive knowledge and/or careful handling to observe: when burnt, it gives a blue-green flame; it gains a polish and floats when immersed in water; and it is warm in the hand. The primary British source of true jet is on the east Yorkshire coast near the town of Whitby. However, a number of other black, jet-like materials were also used to make individual beads and complete assemblages.

Traditionally, the spacer plate necklaces are thought to be directly related to crescentic lunulae made of hammered sheet gold, highly decorated and found in Ireland, Britain and on the near continent (Clarke, 1932; Craw, 1929; Sheridan, 2003; Sheridan and Davis, 2002; Taylor, 1970, 1980) (Figure 3). This relationship is based on their complementary (that is, more or less mutually exclusive) distribution (Clarke, 1932), their shared crescentic shape when restrung beads are concerned, the similarity in decorative motifs used to ornament spacer plates and gold lunulae (Craw, 1929; Sheridan and Davis, 2002; Taylor, 1970, 1980), and the placement of these motifs on the lunulae compared to the placement of decorated beads in restrung jet necklaces (Craw, 1929; Sheridan and Davis, 2002). In other words, these bead assemblages are deposited in regions where gold lunulae are not (and vice versa); and, when they are strung by museum curators, jet necklaces look like gold lunulae.

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Figure 3.

Gold lunula from Gwithian, Cornwall. © Trustees of the British Museum.

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Figure 4.

Sheridan and Davis’ parallel-stranded reconstruction of the bead assemblage found at East Kinwhirrie, Kirriemuir (Angus, Scotland). Dashed lines indicate broken edges of some beads and other beads thought to be missing from the assumed crescentic stringing. After Sheridan and Davis, 2002: Fig. 1.

Prior to the 1920s, too few spacer plate ornaments had been excavated or recorded to a high enough standard for any discussion of bead placement or stringing to be made. Consequently, many were reconstructed with little regard for how they might actually have been worn in the past, and contemporary jewellery fashions seem to have been highly influential. Generally, necklaces were strung with the decorated beads at the front as breast plate or pendant hanging from longer fusiform or disc bead strands (e.g. Figure 1b). Occasionally, some information about bead location was recorded, such as the physical relationship of the bead assemblage to any skeletal material. For example, 40 of the beads found at Burgie Lodge (Rafford, Moray) were found across the breast and neck of a skeleton with several appearing to be laid out in a star-shaped design, leading to the reconstruction in Figure 1b (Callander, 1916: 204).

The crescentic shape was originally proposed by James Hewat Craw in the 1920s. He noticed that the decorations on spacer plates and terminal beads were similar to those near the horns of many of the Irish lunulae and rearranged several bead assemblages with spacer plates to mimic the lunulae’s form: four spacer plates and two terminal plates at the shoulders, smaller beads arranged in cross shapes across the breast and one small triangular bead as a toggle fastener rather than a pendant (Craw, 1929: Fig. 6). ¹ Peltenberg’s (1979: Fig. 4) careful documentation of rescue work at Kintyre Nurseries, Campbeltown (Argyll and Bute, Scotland), demonstrates a very similar stringing style to what Craw proposed, although this assemblage includes only one terminal plate of a size to be strung with the four spacer plates. Furthermore, recent use-wear analyses appear to confirm more widely Craw’s placement of the spacer plates at the shoulders and the triangle beads at the rear, but show little evidence for the sort of star-shaped stringing pattern suggested by the placement of the Burgie Lodge beads in situ, leading to the decision to string the fusiform beads in long, parallel strands as can be seen in Figure 1a (Marshall and Ferrier, 1963; Sheridan and Davis, 2002: 816).

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Figure 5.

One portion of the bead assemblage from Melfort House, Kilninver and Kilmelford (Argyll and Bute, Scotland) arranged in a crescent. This is the manner in which the British Museum displays (only a part) of this bead assemblage. The rest of the assemblage is not displayed. © Trustees of the British Museum.

One real change that began after Craw published his crescentic model for necklace stringing and that continues to the present day is that each new bead assemblage uncovered is no longer treated as more or less sui generis. That is, instead of the excavators or local museum curators reconstructing the beads found in an assemblage into a variety of different ornament forms, bead assemblages are strung far more uniformly in crescents – even when those assemblages are not quite ‘complete’ enough or lack the standard number and types of beads necessary to make the full crescentic shape.

Recombination and fragmentation in complex assemblages

If, instead of accepting these ornaments as more or less complete whole necklaces, we consider them to be complex assemblages with long histories of fragmentation and recombination, highly novel interpretations of their social, particularly funerary, roles present themselves. Clearly, the ability of the spacer plate ornaments to be broken up and retain meaning – and moreover, their capacity for recombination into composite ornaments or assemblages – is a significant factor in determining the role they played in society. Unlike the static, multi-stranded crescents we see in museums, ornaments of jet which included spacer plates were highly variable, incomplete and frequently composed of two or more original assemblages upon deposition and, perhaps, for much of their time in circulation. Additionally, different bead formations or morphologies may have carried different significance regarding the category or social position of their wearer (cf. Sciama and Eicher, 1998). Similarly, different local tastes or values seem to have been expressed in the stringing of these individual parts into larger wholes.

Interestingly, there are some possible regional trends in terms of where composite and fragmented necklaces are deposited. Larger proportions of composite assemblages have been recorded in the Western Isles and in the Peak District than elsewhere in Britain. Clearly, in these areas the mixing of bead assemblages (and of different materials within bead assemblages) was more acceptable. The area with the fewest obvious composite necklaces is east Yorkshire, the point of origin of true jet (and, following Sheridan, 1999, possibly also of jet spacer plate necklaces). It appears that, the further one moved jet beads from Yorkshire, the more necessary it was to combine them together to make ornaments for deposition, and the more acceptable it was to do so.

Similarly, bead assemblages tend to be larger in the Western Isles and the Peak District than in the east of Britain, perhaps indicating a difference in burial rite and in the value accorded to jet beads compared with the larger assemblages to which they formed part. Moreover, in many cases these larger assemblages (particularly those found in Scotland) conform better to Craw’s conception of a ‘complete’ 4–2–1 crescent. Since the deposition of larger, apparently complete necklace assemblages was privileged in these areas, it would make sense that smaller bead assemblages would have been collected and combined to make a conceptually ‘whole’ necklace prior to deposition. The lesser proportion of composite necklaces along the east coast of Britain might reflect that, in this area, it was ritually appropriate to deposit bead assemblages with less than the four spacer plates and two terminals more common in Scottish contexts.

Additionally, both the Peak District and the Western Isles have yielded assemblages with a greater than average number of strands. Among the classic examples of this trend is the very large, composite assemblage found at Middleton Moor, Youlgreave (Derbyshire, England), which consists of 348 disc beads, 54 fusiform beads, 11 button beads, three terminal plates, four spacer plates (one of which is of bone and one of which is heavily fragmented) and one triangular toggle (Bateman, 1847, 1852, 1978[1861]). Another larger than average assemblage was found in a cist at Inchmarnock, North Park, Bute (Argyll and Bute, Scotland). This assemblage is the largest known in Britain, and conforms to Craw’s 4–2–1 crescent model; but it appears to comprise portions of at least five separate, original assemblages (Marshall, 1980; Marshall and Ferrier, 1963; Sheridan, 2006). Sheridan (1999) and Sheridan and Davis (1998) suggest that these large, composite assemblages may reflect people at the edges of the jet distribution sphere trying to out-do or out-shine each other.

On the other hand, the areas around Strathclyde and the Western Isles and the Peak District seem to have been centres of some importance at this time, as testified to by myriad monuments, such as the banked-and-ditched, recumbent stone circle at Arbor Low which lies 750 m southeast of the barrow in which the Middleton Moor assemblage was found and the tombs of the Kilmartin valley (Butter, 1999), as well as frequent deposits of elaborate artefacts (Bradley and Hart, 1983; Clay, 1999; Sheridan, 2008). It is certainly possible that people living in these centres acquired jet spacer plate ornaments and some of the practices associated with them through trade or communication with other areas, but consciously chose to reinterpret them and utilize them in different rites in order to invest them with local significance and incorporate them into the regional power structure (cf. Sheridan and Davis, 1995). Nevertheless, we are left with the question of what specifically made these ornaments so valuable and so useful in so many different funerary contexts.

As mentioned earlier, assemblages which are too small to be strung into a ‘complete’ 4–2–1 crescent seem to show more wear than the supposedly complete assemblages. Similarly, many of the individual beads in very large and obviously composite assemblages are also quite worn. In other words, and quite logically, the longer one of these assemblages was in circulation, the more beads it lost (and, for that matter, the more beads from other assemblages it gained) and the more wear it developed. It is possible, though not able to be definitively proved, that what we see as the incompleteness of most bead assemblages reflects the selective deposition of portions of necklaces while the remaining portion remained in use. A clear example of this sort of behaviour can be seen in the broken jet pendants from Barns Farm, Dalgety (Fife, Scotland), which had been snapped in half prior to their inclusion in the burial assemblage (Brück, 2006). Half of each was deposited, while the other half remained in circulation, or at least was kept out of the burial assemblage (Shepherd, in Watkins, 1982). This sort of deliberate destruction and fragmentation of artefacts was a regular part of the funerary rite at this period and may have reflected the death of the social persona of the deceased and the transformation of their interpersonal relationships (Brück, 2004, 2006). That being said, it is both possible and likely that bead assemblages were broken up and restrung outside of funerary contexts; there are many examples of broken beads that were clearly handled and strung subsequent to their fragmentation and of beads with chipped and rounded edges and corners, indicating curation and use over long periods of time.

One can only speculate about the significance of these beaded ornaments to Bronze Age people, but the prevalence of beaded ornaments and necklaces across Europe at this time suggests that it was important for specific individuals or categories of people to ornament their necks and chests, perhaps to display access to wealth, specific roles held in their communities or as amulets (Donley-Reid, 1990; Rivers, 2003: 53; Sciama and Eicher, 1998). Specifically, the fact that jet beads circulated individually and in assemblages and appear to have been restrung in many ways by many people indicates that they may have been used to maintain and display affiliation to contemporary kin networks and previous generations (Brück, 2006, 2009; Woodward, 2002). Their presence in funerary contexts may reflect the gathering together of kin for the burial rites or the desire to materialize the deceased’s personal network for the afterlife (Brück, 2004).

It is notable that the majority of these bead assemblages accompany inhumations, particularly as they are usually considered to be primarily women’s ornaments. Brück (2009) suggests that, during the third and second millennia BC, women were preferentially cremated at death so that their fragmented remains could be circulated among all the communities to which they were linked, with only a small, token amount being deposited. Similar processes took place with regard to significant artefacts so that, in fragmenting them, the social persona of the deceased would be destroyed while ties between communities could be maintained through the retention of broken pieces of the deceased’s possessions (Brück, 2006: 78; cf. Chapman, 2000; Chapman et al., 2007). Thus, it is possible that these ornaments, in embodying the personal and ancestral network of the deceased (or, perhaps, of his or her social category), had a similar significance as the human remains. That is, if necessary or desired, they could be fragmented and distributed in place of the body. In places where cremation was not the dominant rite, this sort of material fragmentation of the deceased’s persona may have been a much preferred way of maintaining ties between people and with the past, and may explain to some degree why so many of the bead assemblages found in funerary contexts would not allow a ‘complete’ 4–2–1 crescent to be strung.

While wear traces show these bead assemblages to have generally been strung tightly (Sheridan, pers. comm.), the presence of composite necklaces and heirloom beads means that, at times, the individual beads within a given assemblage were separated and handled. Interestingly, the special physical properties of true jet which have led Sheridan (2003) to suggest that it was particularly valued cannot be seen with the naked eye, but only become evident when a jet object is handled and manipulated. Clearly, if we accept the idea that true jet beads were uniquely special in the Early Bronze Age and, consequently, were carefully curated and circulated over great distances, then we also accept that people were handling these beads and manipulating them, perhaps destructively, to make these physical properties manifest. Further, the inclusion of disc beads and buttons in a number of bead assemblages also highlights a characteristic variety in composition which would necessarily have entailed variety in form and stringing well beyond the 4–2–1 crescentic model with its neat, parallel strands of identical fusiform beads. Not only were these ornaments not always strung in a crescent, the acts of disassembling, distributing and recombining individual beads or larger assemblages seem likely to have been a significant part of their function and were clearly manifest in funerary rites.

Finally, it is worth briefly revisiting the nature of their relationship with the gold lunulae after whose form Craw originally reconstructed the 4–2–1 crescent model. Not only are lunulae never found in funerary contexts, but, despite being very fragile, fragments are rarely found, suggesting that, when broken, lunulae had no apparent, ornamental use. Their intactness was carefully guarded and their full, crescentic form curated through protective cases, folding or rolling to prevent tears (Cahill, 2005) and deposition in safe places (such as beneath large rocks or near natural landmarks) (Jones, 2002). I would suggest that the lunula’s social role was actually constrained by its static form and nature so that they were consciously excluded from funerary contexts. The unchanging wholeness of these gold ornaments, their general careful curation and natural lack of tarnish perhaps made them seem too eternal or immortal to be deposited with the dead.

Conclusions

This brief discussion of beaded ornaments from Early Bronze Age Britain should serve as a reminder to archaeologists that, while universal models of behaviour or appearance are appealing in their simplicity, they are rarely likely to reflect the messiness and complexity of human societies (Pollock and Burnbeck, 2010). In Miller’s (1985: 163) words, ‘the linearity of academic discourse… imposes closures which in turn have to be reopened’. As archaeologists, we are constantly confronted with a highly fragmented view of the past: the knowledge we have about it is constructed from a very circumscribed set of very broken objects, and our interpretations rest on finding patterns in this very limited data. Particularly when dealing with funerary assemblages, we need to be aware that what we find are not random, perfect and representative snapshots of how things were for everyone, but a carefully composed and singular picture that effectively effaces the dynamism and variety of daily life for the majority of the people who lived it (cf. Parker Pearson, 2003).

I have demonstrated here that, although we discuss them as crescentic necklaces and reconstruct them in ways that emphasize that crescentic shape and the ‘incompleteness’ of many of the bead assemblages, spacer plate ornaments were worn and deposited in a variety of states of completeness and disintegration. Their ability to be broken up and retain meaning – and moreover, their capacity for recombination – is a crucial factor in determining the role they played in society. Both their parts and their wholes were significant; and significant individual parts may have augmented the power or consequence of any given whole ornament (Sheridan and Davis, 1998). Yet a tension exists between the uniformity of the constituent parts – spacer plates, terminal plates, fusiform beads, etc. – and the variability of the assemblages in circulation. However, I would suggest that the uniformity of these constituent parts may have facilitated the recombination of bead assemblages into meaningful burial goods as, while their gross morphology was fluid, they could never lose their meaning or ability to communicate.

Since the categories into which we group objects clearly affect our ability to interpret and explain the past, we must be constantly prepared to rethink – or even abandon – these groupings in the face of novel or contradictory evidence. Ford and Spaulding famously debated the artificiality of archaeological typologies and their ability to be used as proxies for historical interpretations (Ford, 1954; Ford and Steward, 1954; Spaulding, 1953, 1954). Yet, while metrical, functional and technological classifications have become ever more sophisticated, the role of classification systems in social interpretation has been infrequently addressed in the intervening decades (cf. Whittaker et al., 1998). Moreover, even though studies of material culture increasingly emphasize the interconnectedness of technologies, objects and broader aesthetics to create meaning and affect human relationships, our most fundamental tool for understanding individual objects, stylistic/functional typology, does not incorporate the broader material assemblage or archaeological context.

I propose that we should treat artefact or site categories as assemblages of contexts, individual parts or characteristics in order to undercut the normative interpretive hegemony of these categorizations without losing hold of the similarities extant between specific things or places. Moreover, adopting a multi-scalar approach in which the variation of individual attributes can be directly contrasted with larger assemblages of which they form part gives us the chance to ask how specific variations affect the assemblage as a whole. That is, moving from microscopic analysis, to bead, to bead assemblage to ornament type and back, allows us to compare the pattern in use wear, in bead recombination and in raw material across assemblages and across regions to produce a picture of regional variation in how bead assemblages with jet spacer plates were worn, valued and deposited. In the tension between the individual parts and the larger whole of an assemblage – whether a pile of beads, a funerary mound or the remains of a whole household or community – we can begin to unravel the complexity of the past worlds we study, even if they do not fit our own ideas of completeness. Tacking back and forth between the two brings the dynamic relationship between them to the foreground and allows us further avenues for interpretation and understanding. These, in turn, can serve to undermine singular, normative narratives of past societies, allowing for alternate interpretations, reconstructions and points of view to be better incorporated into our public discourse and displays.