People, ritual and meaning

In 1984, Richard Bradley suggested that “in the literature as a whole successful farmers have social relations with one another, whilst hunter-gatherers have ecological relationships with hazelnuts”. With this proposition as a background, it could be argued that archaeological research in Flevoland is dominated by an ecological-deterministic and cultural historical paradigm. The many ecological sources of information available have led to a great deal of attention being paid to landscape, vegetation, existence and exploitation, while the research into material culture focused on the development of a chronological framework. These are all aspects that have also been discussed in other chapters in this book. This could give the impression that the prehistoric inhabitants of Flevoland were indeed exponents of the hunter-gatherer theory as outlined by Bradley. As has been discussed in passing in the previous chapter, it is evident that for the prehistoric inhabitants of the region, which now comprises the three polders of Flevoland, more was important to them than just how to find the daily food supply. The archaeological record itself provides many starting points for a perceptive design of the cultural world by means of burial ritual, different treatments of human skeletal material, depositions of material culture and the conceptual connection between material culture and meanings (materiality). These aspects of Flevoland archaeology are central to this chapter.