IAN HODDER
RITUAL AS A MEDIUM FOR CREATIVE DEVELOPMENTS
If I am right about the predominance of associational, linking and fitting creativity in social life, then periods of major change must often be the cause of disruption of routine and must be dealt with in special ways. If the bodily routines and daily practices are to be realigned, for whatever reason, the new schemes may have to be introduced in peripheral or liminal areas before they can be adopted widely. Such a scenario implies that innovation is imposed or introduced, the problem simply being of achieving the widespread acceptance of change. However, it may often be in peripheral or marginal or liminal areas that creativity is enhanced. This may be because it is on the margins that routines can be questioned. It may be the case that marginal, subordinate groups most see the need for change and actively promote it. It may be that subordinate groups have less invested in traditional routines and have more to gain from change.
Ritual is often described as creating a liminal zone, outside space and time, outside the daily codes of conduct (Turner 1966). Indeed, in ritual, social relationships may be inverted or disrupted so that they can then be renewed. As such, ritual may often be involved in the maintenance of tradition, in the legitimation and reinforcing of the status quo. But I want to argue here that the very liminality and ‘in-betweenness’ of ritual also provide a moment for creativity and for the breaking of established schemes. It seems to be a common personal experience amongst those that describe creative moments that they ‘let their minds go’, ‘think about something else’, ‘empty their minds’, ‘freely associate’, ‘let their minds go blank’. Whether it is a matter of creating new nodes or new links, the liminality and difference of ritual may provoke alternative ways of looking at the world. Thus ritual may not only promote the acceptance of change but also promote its creation.
In a number of instances in European prehistory, ritual sites or processes seem to predate non-ritual counterparts and major social change. For example, it can be argued (Hodder 1988) that Neolithic non- domestic enclosures, including those involving special activities, have a longer time span than defended or bounded occupation sites. The evidence is perhaps most clear in southern Scandinavia. At a number of sites such as Bjerggard, Toftum, Budelsdorf, Sarup, Trelleborg and Stavie, settlement traces continue after the initial uses of the enclosures for ‘ritual’ activity. The latter is indicated by special deposits in the ditches of complete pots, small heaps of tools, human jaws or, for example, dog skulls on a stone paving (Madsen 1988). However, at the tops of the ditches, above the ditches and in the interior there is often evidence of occupational use. In southern Scandinavia it is possible to argue that the idea of settlement agglomeration and communal centres first came about in a ritual context (Hodder 1988:71).
A ritual context for major innovation is also seen in the formation of lineages in Neolithic northern Europe and in the introduction of the plough (ibid.). Cauvin (1978) argued that the domestication of cattle in the Near East derived from an initial symbolic domestication within ritual. Other, less well-documented examples include the following (Hodder 1988): the introduction of pottery in the Near East and the introduction of metallurgy in Europe, and the transition from theocracy to bureaucracy in many societies throughout the world.
CONCLUSION
I have argued in this chapter that discussions of creativity are problematic if they deal only with cognitive aspects. Instead, creativity needs to be understood in the context of mind/body. The creative process and the definition of creativity are undoubtedly historical and social. Creativity involves practical consciousness and the practices and routines of the body. It is worked at within the context of a mind/body search for resonances across different domains of life and experience. Play a Mozart piano sonata and then one by Beethoven. In the detail of the treatment and development of themes and in the details of the chord sequences one cannot help but wonder at the creative leap made by Beethoven. The discords, tension, anger and emotion so cleverly transform existing musical form. They seem minor in themselves but major in their accumulated effect. They usher in a new movement in music that we call ‘Romanticism’. But the development of the Romantic spirit is part of a wider movement. The creativity demonstrated by Beethoven at least partly derives from resonances drawn with other spheres of life, whether new sensibilities about self and death (Tarlow 1992) or a new spirit of consumerism (Campbell 1987), or new social and political goals. Creativity, even of the most radical kind, is often largely about associational linking. The importance of this type of associational creativity is suggested by the archaeological evidence for a predominance of gradual and slow processes of change over the long term. I have argued here that the examples of major creativity that create new nodes may often result from backward looking re-evaluations of history in ideological terms.
They may also result from a consideration of creativity at too short a distance. A longer-term view sees the specific and sudden in terms of the long and gradual. It sees an emphasis on creating links rather than creating differences.
Creativity occurs in the tension between routines and contingency. Such statements are of course very general, and in specific terms a wide range of diverse skills is involved in the general notion of creativity. Indeed, the latter term seems to be used whenever processes such as intelligent human adaptation lead to novelty and change. In describing creativity it has been necessary here to distinguish between different processes, such as interpretive understanding and goal—directed problem solving. But it remains difficult to distill out something distinctive as the ‘creative process’ from intelligence, imagination, adaptation, agency, problem recognition and problem solving. Music, art, engineering, archaeology all involve different creative skills. What is defined as creative changes historically. The concept dissolves. But, standing back, from an archaeological perspective, how it dissolves and how we creatively make it dissolve resonates with wider debates. We tinker and transform, within a long-term trend.
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