Technological Analysis of the World's Earliest Shamanic Costume: A Multi-Scalar, Experimental Study of a Red Deer Headdress from the Early Holocene Site of Star Carr, North Yorkshire, UK

TY - JOUR

T1 - Technological Analysis of the World's Earliest Shamanic Costume

T2 - A Multi-Scalar, Experimental Study of a Red Deer Headdress from the Early Holocene Site of Star Carr, North Yorkshire, UK

AU - Little, Aimée

AU - Elliott, Benjamin

AU - Conneller, Chantal

AU - Pomstra, Diederik

AU - Evans, Adrian A

AU - Fitton, Laura C

AU - Holland, Andrew

AU - Davis, Robert

AU - Kershaw, Rachel

AU - O'Connor, Sonia

AU - O'Connor, Terry

AU - Sparrow, Thomas

AU - Wilson, Andrew S

AU - Jordan, Peter

AU - Collins, Matthew J

AU - Colonese, André Carlo

AU - Craig, Oliver E

AU - Knight, Rebecca

AU - Lucquin, Alexandre J A

AU - Taylor, Barry

AU - Milner, Nicky

N1 - © 2016, Little et al.

PY - 2016/4/13

Y1 - 2016/4/13

N2 - Shamanic belief systems represent the first form of religious practice visible within the global archaeological record. Here we report on the earliest known evidence of shamanic costume: modified red deer crania headdresses from the Early Holocene site of Star Carr (c. 11 kya). More than 90% of the examples from prehistoric Europe come from this one site, establishing it as a place of outstanding shamanistic/cosmological significance. Our work, involving a programme of experimental replication, analysis of macroscopic traces, organic residue analysis and 3D image acquisition, metrology and visualisation, represents the first attempt to understand the manufacturing processes used to create these artefacts. The results produced were unexpected-rather than being carefully crafted objects, elements of their production can only be described as expedient.

AB - Shamanic belief systems represent the first form of religious practice visible within the global archaeological record. Here we report on the earliest known evidence of shamanic costume: modified red deer crania headdresses from the Early Holocene site of Star Carr (c. 11 kya). More than 90% of the examples from prehistoric Europe come from this one site, establishing it as a place of outstanding shamanistic/cosmological significance. Our work, involving a programme of experimental replication, analysis of macroscopic traces, organic residue analysis and 3D image acquisition, metrology and visualisation, represents the first attempt to understand the manufacturing processes used to create these artefacts. The results produced were unexpected-rather than being carefully crafted objects, elements of their production can only be described as expedient.

KW - Mesolithic, hunter-gatherer, Star Carr, Headdress, shamanism

U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0152136

DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0152136

M3 - Article

C2 - 27073850

SN - 1932-6203

VL - 11

JO - PLoS ONE

JF - PLoS ONE

IS - 4

M1 - e0152136

ER -