Archaeology archetype and symbol : a Jungian psychological perspective on the Neolithic archaeology of the British Isles

While the advent of modern technologies has increased our understanding of the physicality of prehistoric artefacts for instance their place and method of manufacture and has helped to establish more precise chronologies, the actual meanings tend to elude us. It is in this connection that the insights derived from the work of C. G, Jung could help to shed light on the significance of some of these objects and the practices with which they are associated. One worthwhile line of enquiry entails a more personal approach based on some psychological perspectives from the work of C.G. Jung. It was Jung who emphasised that the scientific rationalist perspective of modernity is just another paradigm and by no means the only way of understanding the world. Another of his important insights was to search for meaning in all human behaviour no matter how bizarre or senseless it might appear. As well as being a modern discipline, Jung’s work can I believe be extrapolated back to the past as he himself stated that some of his insights could be usefully applied to past objects and situations (Jung 1986:5).The problems involved in attempting an analysis of meaning from a period from which no literary evidence survives was one rejected as impossible, (Renfrew & Zubrow 2000) but this problem can be redressed by the application of Jung’s collective unconscious a concept concerned with recurrent patterns in human behaviour. In his view, studies based on an isolated individual are inadequate. Moreover, with regard to the Neolithic period where no written records are extant, it is virtually impossible to reconstruct such detailed information at this level. The following quotation underlines the importance Jung attached to this interpretation:-“Therapy stands or falls with the question. “What sort of world does our patient come from and to what sort of world does he have to adapt? The world is a supra-personal fact, which only deals with the personal element in man. Man is also a part of the world, inextricably involved, he carried the world in himself, something at the same time, impersonal and supra-personal (Jung 1946:30).