We were inspired by the finding of the Neolithic rock map in northern France, It came about as the characters Lan and Deek were coming into our imagination and exploring the Sirhowy river landscape in South Wales. Mike was exploring the Glamorgan coal archives to see what the industrial landscape looked like as within just decades it had almost entirely vanished. Inevitably that led to the British Geographical Society and all the amazing geology maps, as well as the Ordnance Survey maps with land contours.
Although the map may seem just decorative it is actually a contour map of a particular stretch of the Sirhowy Valley, and the map lines and symbols represent the interest/s of Neolithic people living in the area as we imagine our first story about Lan and Deek and the discovery of coal.
In practice Neolithic people could have made lots of ceramic maps if they had wanted or had been inclined to. But we think the French map carved in rock is a specific piece with a particular purpose not a general map. It is in interesting it is in rock which as with stone circles isnt the easiest material to make a map with. We are quite taken with Jim Leary and his archaeology book Footmarks. This has oddly been the kind of thinking we’ve had about people, and specifically Neolithic people in its approach. The book explores how humans move and always have wanted to around the Landscape. Neolithic farmers did it even more than hunters gatherers so you start to unpick the layers of old and poor thinking of school days on the late stone age. So he also explores how people moved and travelled and were very skilled at it.
We know how sat navs destroy your sense of direction, but it seems even boy scouts, yes Mike was one, are not particularly skilled about getting about relatively. We had got to this thinking about time awareness for Neolithic people, but it applied to travel too even more than we thought. People found a way to travel by reading the landscape in ways we can only imagine. No doubt we will. Neolithic people didnt need or use maps it seems, as they had no need to. They probably didnt even need to build a map in their heads but some other way of piecing travel knowledge together. Even our notion of male explorers seems incorrect as there is plenty of evidence that women travelled and alone again it seems.