Bull’s head

Cattle heads, skulls and horns occur in a variety of Neolithic ritual and monumental contexts. Several examples are known from Wiltshire [1]. At the Sherrington earthen long barrow, an ox skull together with a deer antler was deposited in a cist of chalk blocks beneath the mound. At Manton Down, an ox skull was deposited in a pit in front of the tomb, approximately on its axis. At the Beckhampton long barrow, three ox skulls were found within the mound, associated with its axial construction. Comparable deposits are also known from continental Europe. Probst [2], for example, reports buried cattle skulls from Neolithic contexts at Heilbronn-Klingenberg and Weissenfels in Germany.

The symbolic importance of cattle is particularly evident at the Neolithic settlement of Çatalhöyük in central Anatolia. Cattle skulls, horn cores and representations of bull heads, often referred to as bucrania, were incorporated into walls, benches and other architectural installations. Some were plastered or modelled in clay around actual horns. The evidence indicates that wild cattle, or aurochs, had a particularly important role in the social and ritual life of the settlement.

Interpretation

The prominent horns of cattle provide a visually distinctive form that could acquire different symbolic meanings. Their curved shape has sometimes been compared with the lunar crescent, although formal resemblance alone does not demonstrate that bull horns were understood as lunar symbols in Neolithic societies.

Lewis-Williams and Pearce [3] discuss animals within their broader interpretation of Neolithic cosmologies and altered states of consciousness. Drawing on ethnographic accounts of shamanistic traditions, they note that animals can be understood as powerful non-human beings and that experiences of transformation into animals occur in some altered-state traditions. They apply such ideas as part of a model for interpreting relationships between humans, animals and different cosmological realms in the Neolithic.

Cattle, and particularly aurochs, would have been striking and potentially dangerous animals. Their repeated representation and the deliberate incorporation of skulls and horns into buildings and deposits suggest that they carried meanings extending well beyond their economic value. At Çatalhöyük, for example, wild cattle were disproportionately represented in feasting, imagery and architectural installations. Their importance therefore appears to have been connected not simply with domestication but also with concepts of wildness, power, hunting, memory and social display.

It is possible that cattle imagery participated in ideas about transformation, ancestors or relationships between different realms of existence, as proposed in some interpretations of Neolithic symbolism. However, specific meanings—such as identifying bull heads as symbols of spiritual journeys through a tiered cosmos—cannot be demonstrated directly from the archaeological evidence and should therefore remain interpretative hypotheses.

References

@book{Burl2002,
author = {Aubrey Burl},
isbn = {978-0300090871},
month = {May},
pages = {272},
publisher = {Yale University Press},
title = {Prehistoric {A}vebury},
year = {2002}
}

@book{Probst1991,
author = {Ernst Probst},
isbn = {978-3570026694},
pages = {619},
publisher = {Orbis},
title = {Deutschland in der Steinzeit. Jäger, Fischer und Bauern zwischen Nordseeküste und Alpenraum},
year = {1991}
}

@book{lewis2005inside,
author = {Lewis-Williams, David and Pearce, David},
publisher = {Thames \& Hudson},
title = {{I}nside the {N}eolithic mind: consciousness, cosmos and the realm of the gods},
year = {2005}
}