North of Here: Imagining the Human and Other-Than-Human in Late-Upper Palaeolithic Britain

Skelton, Richard Edward (2020) North of Here: Imagining the Human and Other-Than-Human in Late-Upper Palaeolithic Britain. Doctoral thesis (PhD), Manchester Metropolitan University.

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Abstract

What were the cosmogonies, mythologies, rituals and ontological beliefs of the LateUpper Palaeolithic peoples who returned to the ‘British’ peninsula when the ice sheets began to retreat, some 15,000 years ago? More specifically, can we come to understand how they conceived of place, landscape and the natural world? Those working within the field of archaeology are rightly circumspect, but artistic practitioners, I suggest, are not bound in the same way by material evidence, and can consequently venture more freely. What, therefore, can speculative creative writing say about the deep past, and how can it bridge the gulf of time between us and our ancestral selves? North of Here is a ‘Creative Geographies: Writing Place’ project in the form of a long poem; a dialogic and visionary narrative that imbricates both ancient and contemporary ways of being. Drawing on environmental science, archaeology and the anthropology of circumpolar Indigenous cultures, it explores the human and other-thanhuman in terms of shared personhood, and the values of respect and reciprocity that govern non-hierarchical ‘social universes’. In particular, it examines consent-seeking and transgression in hunting, and the role of ‘special’ animals such as the bear in cosmogonic beliefs. This thesis will document the evolution of my interest in landscape and otherthan-human studies leading up to this PhD project. It will primarily contextualise the poem itself within anthropological and mythological literature, and therefore argue that the creative writer can meaningfully engage with cross-disciplinary subject matter. Moreover, in light of the so-called ‘creative turn’ in the humanities, it will suggest ways in which creative writers can contribute to interdisciplinary knowledge exchange.