Around here Prehistoric enclosing is sometimes considered an
easy issue. Maybe because it is approached as a Prehistoric matter of obvious and
literal meaning. However, not just prehistoric issues aren't easy and obvious, but
also enclosing is a complex sociological attitude.
Enclosing is a decision that can respond to many
different social and psychological reasons. Therefore, Sociology and Social
Psychology cam help archaeology (if archaeologists let them).
A good example of this is the work of Tim Insoll (professor
of the University of Manchester), that has been studying shrine contexts in
Africa. I attend to one of his talks in Oxford and it became clear to me that
there is a lot of matter in this kind of work that can be useful for the
research of Prehistoric enclosures (maybe that is why he was invited to talk in
a meeting dedicated to Prehistoric enclosures).
The shrine is a sort of memorial, monument or grave
structure that encloses something, being to protect or conceal what is inside or to
protect what is outside (from what is inside). In his studies in Africa, Insoll
deal with a lot of different forms of enclosing: material ones, symbolic ones;
evident or just suggested; completely involving the object or space, or just
demark it. Sometimes those shines were made to protect what was inside, sometimes it was precisely the opposite.
An example of a modern shrine: the statue of the Portuguese
physician Sousa Martins that lived in the second half of the XIX century
(located in Campo dos Mártires da Pátria, Lisbon). By his work he was venerated
by his patients and it became a legend and a saint for the public, that until the
present pray for his intervention in times of need of medical assistance. The
statue is now a shrine, involved by hundreds of plaques that thank his “miracles”.
The plaques involve him, protect and generate a internal space of holiness.
Those examples tell us that we need to have a solid theoretical
background about the phenomena of enclosing to approach enclosures, since the
issue is not an easy one. Enclosing is a sociological and psychological problem.
It is an attempt to control and conform, not the world, but the world as it is
expressed by some ideas. They are built to prevent, to protect, to differentiate,
to separate, to hierarchize, to impose pathways, to impose visibilities, to
represent ideologies, to spatially materialize social and political structures,
to communicate. The reasons for
enclosing may be quite diversified and may respond to several different
motivations.
There is a lot to learn in the social and psychological
phenomena of shrining that can be helpful to researches that deal with prehistoric
enclosures.
Detail of the shrine of plaques in Sousa Martins statue.