- In prehistoric societies, the definition of ‘ritual’ remains open to debate. The term is used by some to define actions or practices which sit outwith the day-to-day routine. Ritual practice may take place in a specific place, time, or use a particular suite of material culture. It has been argued that such intercessions with supernatural forces such as gods, spirits or ancestors cannot be divorced from their wider social context.
- The language and imagery of ritual practice would have been rooted in terms readily understood by both onlookers and participants. Hence, the sound argument that the repeated practices which underpin day-to-day routines and structure the material world will also provide the wellspring for ritual practice. This means that evidence for ritual practice has the potential to inform our understanding of daily life, and vice versa.
- Death provides a key moment in the human life-cycle, when normal routine is challenged and human relations must be reassessed. However, there are no confirmed Mesolithic or Upper Palaeolithic grave sites in South West Scotland for researchers to have gained insights into this moment.
- The antiquarian find of seven adults and a child associated with a midden of dog whelk shells from the old raised shoreline at Dounan (now Holm Park), near Ballantrae (Moore 1881, Moore and Smith 1885) had been speculated as being Mesolithic (Morrison 1981, Morrison 1982). This inference was in part due to the comparability of the inhumations and the lagoonal environment at Ballantrae to Danish Mesolithic inhumations. Recent research drawing on Glasgow Museums’ archive (Finlay et al 2020) has revealed a 1931 reinvestigation of the site that both recovered more skeletal material and a small Mesolithic lithic assemblage. This research secured a radiocarbon date from the skeletal material, showing these to be early Medieval burials co-located with the earlier lithic assemblage (Chapter 9).
- Researchers need either complex, stratified sites or a series of single use sites excavated under modern standards to be able to achieve any robust understanding of how day-to-day life may have shaped and informed the ritual sphere. While several projects may in time offer analysis of complex, stratified sites from the region (Monamore Bridge and Dunure Road in particular), only West Challoch has been realised so far. Given the composition of the lithic assemblage, the researcher highlighted the anomaly that three pitchstone pieces had been deposited in a pit. Given the distinctive character pitchstone and its rarity off-Arran during the late Mesolithic, they considered it ‘exotic’ and that its deposition may have been related to the ritual deposition of special objects (Ballin 2021). However, there remains limited knowledge as to how settlements, craft industries or individual structures were organised, so any recognition of ritual is inevitably very tentative.
- Ethnographic studies show that intercessions with the natural world, and with spirits residing in animals or the land, may have been important. This type of intercession is supported, to some extent, by the discovery of red deer antler frontlets from an English site, Star Carr. These were perforated in a way which could have enabled attachment as a head-dress. There is no comparable evidence in South West Scotland.