Iron age people were emotionally attached to objects, research shows

Dilemma of finding it hard to part with ‘problematic stuff’ we no longer need could date back more than 2,000 years



A replica of a roundhouse in Wales. Archaeologists think iron age people had trouble discarding ‘problematic stuff’ just like we do.

Photograph: Liquid Light/Alamy
Nicola Davis Science Correspondent
@NicolaKSDavis

Tue 22 Jun 2021 01.00 EDT

From outgrown baby clothes to hideous mugs once used by a parent, there are certain items it is curiously hard to part with. Now research suggests difficulty of what to do with such objects could date back at least 2,000 years.

Writing in the journal Antiquity, Dr Lindsey Büster, an archaeologist at the University of York, argues that bone spoons and gaming pieces found between the walls of an iron age roundhouse at the Scottish hillfort settlement of Broxmouth, as well as worn-out grinding stones in its floors, could be a centuries-old example of the same conundrum.

The locations of the items, said Büster, were clearly not an accident, while their low value meant they were not put away because of their worth. Instead she said they could have been what she has labelled “problematic stuff” – items that cannot be jettisoned, even if no longer needed or liked, for emotional reasons.

“We have things like grave goods, which people understand as things to accompany the dead into afterlife, and we have hoards – really shiny objects deposited in certain places without bodies which people interpret as maybe gifts for the gods or hidden for safekeeping,” Büster said.

“But then there is this category of artefacts – these little caches of objects which aren’t necessarily accompanying the dead and they are not high material value or of exotic quality but they are clearly not just rubbish either. They have been very deliberately deposited.”

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jun/22/iron-age-people-emotionally-attached-objects-researcher