A neolithic culture on the analytic couch. I spent ten years working as an ethnographer among hunter gatherers, agriculturalists, pasturalists and early urban dwellers in Kenya and then trained for six years to be an ethnoarchaeologist at Cambridge. All along, my primary interest has been the psychological uses of the archaeological data. Warning - this paper is about feelings.
Archaeologists are often uncomfortable talking about emotions.
Back in the 20 s Roheim. I want to make them explicit but stress that I see my perspective as only one of many possible interpretations. My ideas are provisional because of the lack of detailed contextual data. I am going to give a brief review, of the psychological underpinning of how objects are given meaning. And then explain how, I think this psychological process allowed conflicts to he resolved, which enabled larger settlements to form and domestication of cattle and plants to evolve.