 Dear EAA members, dear virtual annual meeting participants, I would like to welcome you to the last keynote in this conference, which at the same time will conclude this meeting. I am very happy to introduce to you Maria Wunderlich, a very promising young scholar who has agreed to share her thoughts and research with us. I would like to give you a few words on her biography. Currently, Maria is a lecturer and research fellow at the Institute of Pre- and Protohistoric Archaeology at Kiel University. Since 2020, she has been involved in the research of the CRC 1266, Scales of Transformation, Human-Environmental Interaction in Prehistoric and Archaic Societies. In her MA thesis, she focused on the inventory, the multifaceted use of a passage grave in northern Germany during the phases of the middle Neolithic. During her PhD, between 2014 and 2018, she was a research assistant in the DFG project Equality and Inequality. Social differentiation in northern Central Europe 4300 to 2400 BC, also at Kiel University. In her PhD, she focused on the relation between monumental architecture and development of social systems. She has conducted ethno-archeological research on Sumba in Indonesia and in Nagaland in northeast India. Her thesis, which she concluded only in 2018, she was awarded the travel grant of the German Archaeological Institute in 2020. Being interested in social archaeology and comparative analysis, she combines different theoretical approaches with material data derived both from recent and prehistoric contexts. She is author of the book, Megalithic Monuments and Social Structures, Comparative Studies on Recent and Funnel Beaker Societies. And she has co-edited volumes on Megaliths societies' landscapes, early monumentality and social differentiation in Neolithic Europe, and also archaeology in the Sita-Vabeli, the LBK and Ciellovoge settlement site of Ravel. Her research is focused on the intersection of archaeological and cultural anthropological questions with an emphasis on the Neolithic of Central and Northern Europe. Please, Maria, speak to us. Thank you so much, Sophie, for this kind introduction. So I would like to start with expressing my gratitude for this opportunity to speak here today and would also like to thank the whole organization team for their efforts in making this organization possible despite the circumstances. Now, in the following talk, I will focus on the question you can see here on the title of the first slide, and I would do so from a kind of specific perspective, namely perspective of an anthropologically informed archaeology. And in order to somehow approach this kind of question, I would like to start with two statements. The first of the statements is that archaeology, in my opinion, requires the willingness to include different worldviews and also possibly altering translations of overarching ideas. Secondly, especially features we might conceive as profane and utility-oriented might, in fact, be often of multilayered meaning. Now, from these two statements, I think we can conclude that we are indeed in need of diverse and variable ways of understanding and also of different angles of interpretation. And I would like to first approach this question on a quite specific example. And this example is concerned with the broader topic of water and waterscapes and more specifically with the implications of artificial water sources. And the reason why I choose this example, you can see here a statement by two cultural anthropologists from 2010 who called water a total social fact. And this kind of statement was a statement. Sorry, it's actually derived from Marcel Mose, who in his famous work on the gift called Exchange a Total Social Phenomenon. And what he's meaning with this is that a phenomenon, also archaeological phenomena, in my opinion, might be including multiple meanings and mechanism which are somehow pooling together in them. So there might be giving expression to, for example, religious, moral, economic, or also political aspects of the societies we are talking about. And I will talk about this kind of example on the basis of my own as an archaeological research. So this will be the first case study I will present to you. And I will also offer a glimpse into the archaeological record. But I would like to start very briefly with a kind of notion on the theoretical frameworks of archaeological interpretation, which I see as a subject to intermingling meanings. And I would like to just briefly point to what three different aspects which are in my own research very important and which also are, in my opinion, gaining more increasing momentum in at least the last 10 years. First of all, these are bottom-up perspectives. And with bottom-up perspectives, I also mean increasing focus on non-elites and also the application of diverse theoretical frameworks, such as, for example, anarchist theory. And the very good thing, in my opinion, about these kind of frameworks and theoretical approaches, they are indeed trying to give them or talk about the choices people do in the very grounding mechanism of the societies involved. Now, the second aspect, which is very much in the heart of any kind of archaeological interpretation, is the aspect of analogical reasoning. And the notion of archaeology as an anthropology is, of course, rather old, but it's still a topic of major importance, not only in archaeological approaches. We can, for example, also see in more current approaches like agent-based modeling that also these kinds of methods are very much relying on analogical inferences. And lastly, I would like to point towards the massive importance of reflective approaches or perspectives. So we saw lively debates on the question of determinism within the archaeological frameworks, and we can also see how important the reflection of our epistemological basis is. And lastly, we also can see how the urges to establish post and anti-colonial archaeologies are also gaining more prominence. And since I myself, from the context of archaeological research, I would like to go a bit more into detail of this subject, and I would like to start this by, first of all, saying that, in my opinion, one of the major advantages of ethnarchological research is that they are indeed offering global perspectives. So although ethnarchology is derived from this new archaeology context and also from an American point of view, so to say, of research, we can see various independent schools of research which developed, and in the last years, different approaches to ethnarchology, for example, in Asia, in the Americas, in Russia, and so on. So ethnarchological research is indeed offering many false perspectives. But of course, regardless of the context that we are talking about here, one of the major problems lies in the issue of direct analogies. And what I mean here is that there is an extensive critique, still lasting critique, on the direct transfer of anthropological models onto archaeological case studies. And this is very much concerned, especially with this very complex and very concrete, but also very specific models or examples of human social organization. For example, topologies of societies who probably only all know these examples, for example, big man societies achieve them. And I think when we are simply using these kind of models to explain the archaeological record, we are in danger of actually using variability. So I do agree with a lot of the critique which was concerned at the direct use of analogies. And what's the dangers? I'm shown here, I mean, for example, the loss of variability, because in my opinion, we have to assume that in the past there is a sheer endless possibility of different forms of social organization. So if we now focus too much on this very big and broad and ever all explaining models, we are in danger of losing this kind of variability. And we also might search for the present in the past. But of course, there are alternatives to this kind of direct analogies. And I would like to point here towards an approach which is focusing more on particular traits or particular phenomena. So we are, of course, able to compare specific phenomena in the recent examples. And of course, it's also necessary to contextualize these kind of examples. But they might be used to construct frames of reference. And these frames of reference might in turn be used to be tested for their validity in the archaeological record. But most of all, they can be used to broaden our understanding of possibilities in the past. So this is very much, very much not about search for similar causal mechanism. But this is how analogical reasoning might be used in its explanatory potential of archaeologically invisible aspects. And from this kind of notion, I think a lot of potentials are deriving. For example, I think we should always ask ourselves which presumptions are still influential within our frames of interpretation. For me, an example might be how do we actually perceive complexity? So do we see complexity as being concerned? For example, social hierarchization and social inequality and also economic factors. Or do we have a much broader picture of what complexity might mean? So this is very much concerned with the variability of human material relationships. And it's also concerned with the try to go beyond ethnocentric and eurocentric views. And also due to the lasting critique and also massive critique, I think that many ethno-archological approaches nowadays are very much concerned with integrating reflective approaches. But of course, I'm not saying here that ethno-archology or a notion of archaeology as anthropology is somehow the solution to all our problems. This is indeed not the case. And this can only be one note within this kind of networks of reasoning and interpretation. And because of this very fragmented state of the archaeological remains, we have to use all these different methods, all these different approaches, or effective approaches, diverse theoretical frameworks, but also of course, archaeological science and so on, in order to construct holistic understandings of the past. And now, with giving this kind of broader framework of my theoretical framework, I would like to start and present you the ethno-archological case study, which is situated in Naganand in India. And what I'd like to show you somehow or what I will come up with at the end of this case study is this kind of scheme. And in the following, I will try to explain to you how I came up with this kind of concept, how artificial water sources are embedded in a specific network of meaning in the case of Naganand. But maybe first, a very short introduction. So Naganand is located in the north-eastern part of India. You can see here on the left, the different ethnic groups being presented, not only in Naganand, but also in neighboring states. So maybe you have seen it already on the photo I showed you, it's a mountainous and hilly landscape, and the diversity of ethnic groups is quite high in this region. On the right side, you can see a second map, and here you can see the study area where I'm working in, within the cooperation of the University of Naganand and Keer University. So this area is the southern part of Naganand and the communities which are living there are communities of Angami and Chakasang Nagan. So this is the case study or the context I will be talking about. But before I start with the data itself, so to say I would like to very briefly point towards the fact that indeed, in this kind of scientific background of Naganand, archaeology and anthropology are indeed seen as part of one overall perspective. So what we can see here in this scientific tradition is very much the urge to decolonize archaeological practice, to develop community-based approaches within archaeology and also to connect, for example, for Kloge with archaeology. So this is very much this intermingling perspectives of archaeology and anthropology. But going back to the communities themselves, both Angami and Chakasang communities are actually known to be, or are quite well known for being very egalitarian societies, which of course are characterized by complexity, but also very permeable hierarchies. And the most important social institutions in this kind of context are the clans. So clans are social groups and they are very important for diverse forms of cooperation, but they are also very important for the political structure of the communities. And kids are not an important social group anymore, so this changed a lot, but they are still an important spatial unit and they can be roughly translated as neighborhoods, so to say. But the importance of clans is in many regards still meaningful, so here some things changed, some other things did not change. And with regard to this kind of complexity and permeable hierarchies, it's important to say that some time ago, so nowadays the situation is also changing a lot, but the most important political unit used to be the village council. And the membership within these village councils was based on achievement and age-based authorities, but only men, so no women were allowed in this kind of village council. Despite of this, you can see here the different persons who had access to this kind of council system or also who had political influence and you can see many of the positions are actually concerned with people who are known for having some achievements and who are known for their skills or other characteristics. And with that, I would like to come to the case study of water and to give a very short side note, so to say, on the relevance of freshwater in Naganand it must be said that in many areas of Naganand, water and freshwater is actually a resource of scarcity. So rivers, streams and also springs might be located in quite a distance to the different villages. Wells are always located outside of the village and they are partly exhibited in quite elevated stone platforms. But in the following, I would not talk further about wells or river streams, but I would instead focus on two examples of purely artificial freshwater sources and how they're embedded within the social structure. And the first of these examples is actually concerned with the most important and very basic practice of these mountain economies we can find in this area. So the most important form of economic practice is wet rice terrace cultivation. What you can see here is an impression of different terrace fields within this context of Angami communities. And it's very important to note that within these contexts, all the different fields without exception are always owned by individual persons. So they're owned by either one individual or by an individual household, but they're not subject to collective land ownership. Those are just other areas, but never these fields. And the example I would like to show you as a reason why I'm showing you this kind of terrace fields is that the terrace fields are subject to quite an interesting secondary way of use. So the first or the primary economic context here is of course wet rice cultivation. So the fields are flooded in order to harvest the rice. And after the harvest is done, the water is usually put out of the fields. But as you can see here in the photos, those are taken during the dry season. So what you can see here is that some of the terrace fields are remained in the flooded status or they are flooded again. And this is concerned with this kind of secondary use. So we have after the rice harvest, the breeding of fishes and sweet water snails within these terrace fields. And the very interesting part of the story is actually that I told you that all these fields without exception are individually owned. But as soon as the secondary context is starting, they are simply shifting to a very different framework. They are used in a common way. They are also seen as collective property or perceived as collective property because the individual landowner actually has no right to deny other persons the excess in this framework of fishing activities and so on. Now the second example I would like to show you is the example of artificial lakes and water ponds. These are occurring only in the southern part of Nagaland, among Angami and Mau Nagan. And all these artificial ponds you can see here on the photo are actually commemorative monuments. And they are actually connected to a social institution which is nowadays not done anymore so it lost its importance completely, but for the social structures it used to be the most important institution in the villages, the so-called Feasts of Merit. The Feasts of Merit constitute feasting activities, so a stage system of a minimum of five different feasts which was organized by an individual feast giver. And the whole goal of the aim of this kind of activity was to achieve social renown in status and also political influence by being a member of the village council. Now the different stages of the feasts were actually materialized by different means. You can see it here on the photos on the top. You can see this kind of house horns made from wood symbolizing the lower stages. Then you can see the stones which are usually signifying the highest stages and then there's this very interesting exception, so to say, the ponds which are symbol for the highest stage of the feast. So there are materialization of the last stage of feasting activities and this also explains that there's a differing number of monoliths and ponds because actually only very few people were able to achieve this kind of life task and also begin a new life which is symbolized by water. And in general this kind of activity was very much influenced, so the feasting activity in general was influenced by economic inequality, competition and these factors. And again we have a very interesting circumstance here. So as soon as the ponds were erected and finished, they again shifted into the common framework of the village. They were open to any kind of use by the village community and they were seen as collective property, but just when they were finished. So that you just have kind of an imagination about this kind of feasting system. Here you can see a seventh stage feasting example of Angami Naga communities and you can see here the different stages on the right side. You can see materialization with the artificial ponds at the very end of this whole system. And I already said it was very hard to achieve this highest stage of the feast and this can be explained by the amount of resources needed. So here you can see how many animals had to be slaughtered, how many cattle and pigs had to be slaughtered for each and every feast and this amount of resources was almost never possibly given by only one household. So what happens here is that actually all the time different clan members were somehow cooperating and it was more of a collective enterprise to enable at least some of the clan members to achieve this kind of high status and also the influence which was going hand in hand with that. But both the stones and also the ponds are not only materialization of competition or status and influence they are also a very important part of constructing a social landscape. So here you can see a very typical outline of an Angami and Chakrasang village in which the village is in the center and surrounding the village we have a space of social reproduction in which monumentality is signified by stones or stone and water. And you can see that this kind of social reproduction area is actually an arena of social reproduction but also of competition and cooperation and it's actually somehow connecting the village and the economic areas themselves. And I think what is quite clearly visible with regard to these artificial water sources is that they are characterized by dielectric aspects. So they are both means of social signalling but they are also symbolizing reciprocity. They are both the materialization of economic inequality and common frameworks both competition and cooperation. And in order to put this kind of artificial freshwater sources within a network of meanings three aspects are of major importance. First of all there's the aspect of temporality and this means that a given feature for example the field or pond is possibly a subject to temporal contextualization. It might be embedded in different networks of meaning and action due to a perceived and or actual role which is in turn depending on the temporal context. So with regard to the terrorist fields this means that we have two temporal contextualizations primary and secondary economic contexts. First of all the primary context is related to rice cultivation. The second one is related to breeding of fish and snakes. But most importantly we can see here a very clear change from strictly individual property towards the perception and also used as common land. Secondly there's the aspect of connectivity. So a given feature might be possibly a bridge between different social arenas and the respective connection towards one or the other arena may experience strong or weaker emphasis due to the situational context. So it's actually an expression of different aspects of the social organization. With regard to the artificial ponds this means that we can see there clearly and first and foremost the materialization of feasting activities. So they're influenced by this by a collective action cooperation but also by competition and economic inequality. Therefore they are bridging these very different but also very influential aspects of the social organization. And deriving from these two different the first two aspects is the aspect of plurality. So a given feature might be a representation of different meanings which is context dependent and also might be a specific translation of overarching ideas. And with reference to the artificial water sources in Nagaland this means that we can see the clear temporal contextualization of different sources. We can see how the emphasis on levels of meaning and action is shifting and we can see how different frameworks are of importance here. And to maybe give you a bit of a better visualization about this here's the example of the terrace fields. So here you can see and I'm using my mouse for that. Here you can see the primary context which is the individualized framework in which surplus production, feasting and so on was important but strictly individual context. And then after this context is fulfilled or this purpose is fulfilled we see a shift, a dramatic shift into a collective framework the field is flooded and used for fishing and then afterwards it's simply changing back and this goes on and on so it's actually an ever-ending story so to say. And this is also how I came up with this kind of visualization so this is this kind of network of meanings you can see here already on this very two very basic kind of features so to say. So what we do see is how artificial fresh water is embedded into this two very important aspects of the social organization namely competition and economic inequality and commonality and cooperation. And the materializations of freshwater sources for example ponds and terraces and so on they are somehow moving within the space they are connected to specific actions such as social signalling and the feast of merit. And all these different aspects are moving within this network and are shifting in their importance so to say. So where to go from here? I hope that I established some kind of frame of reference with regard to the artificial freshwater sources in Nagaland and they are indeed what Marcel Mohls calls a total social phenomenon because they are bridging different social arenas and they are subject to shifting temporal contextualizations. Now the next question of course is what is the explanatory potential here and in order to have a look into this further question I would like to have a look into a very different example so we are making a very big shift now into the context of artificial water sources in the early Neolithic. So the context is more broadly related to water use of the use of freshwater by prehistoric communities but more specifically I would like to refer to very a special kind of feature or category I will refer now to wells in the context of the early Neolithic societies of the LBK. And of course now we might ask ourselves why to take this example of course we might say a well simply a well and of course we also know that there might be some depositions but I think what we still can see is how much certain features might be percepted as rather profane and rather clearly contextualized features. So the questions arriving from this perception of a well as a simple well so it means to fetch fresh water and to support the need of a given community for fresh water leads towards questions which are standing in the foreground which are mostly concerned or might be concerned with efficiency and utility. And this doesn't mean that there's not a debate also on other aspect so I have here some examples and there are many more of course of different colleagues who are very much concerned with the question of social and retrofactors which are connected to this kind of feature but still what I would like to try now is to take this kind of frame of reference I tried to establish before and see where how it might help us to gain a more holistic understanding of this kind of special feature and for that I will come in a second into different examples just very briefly maybe the context so the context are the LBK communities the Lena Banke Ramik in the context of Central Europe you can see here the distribution area of these very early the earliest farming communities in what is nowadays Central and Robo Europe here on this map marked in dark green. So these communities are this phenomenon better to put it is dating between 5500 and 4900 BC and it's actually characterized at this party by quite high degree of uniformity throughout this whole quite vast distribution area for example with reference to house construction and also material culture so what we can maybe assume is that there are indeed some overarching ideas which are shared concerning the social organization of these communities and what is very interesting in this kind of context is that at least for the one example of early neolithic communities there is a comparatively high number of wells known from this context so this is why it's very suitable for the example of wells the earliest example of these wells is possibly dating already to the very beginning of the phenomenon of the LBK but we can see very clear peak and construction activities around 5300 and 5100 BC and what I will do now is simply going through some examples of these wells and I would like to check them for this kind of our reference back to these three different aspects I was referencing to with regard to the case study of Nagaland and the first of these aspects is the question of temporology so this is concerned with the question whether these early neolithic wells were subject to temporal contextualization and whether or not they were embedded in different networks of action and I think that we can indeed very clearly see that we have changing patterns of use with regard to the wells so from all these known examples they are actually very diverse patterns visible so some wells are constructed then used and then we have infillings which contains sediment waste so quite clearly which is not used anymore but then we also have different examples for example this exemplar here this is a well of Al-Cherbet and you can see on the left side the construction of this example and in the middle you can see one of the probably two deposition layers and this upper layer of these two layers contains a high high high high high high high high high layers contains a high amount of pottery but not this kind of fragmented pottery but actually complete vessels so all in all over 10 complete vessels in this kind of layer and you can see also that some of the vessels were already repaired when they were deposited and this kind of practice was taking place quite at the end of the biography of the well but since this kind of composition it's very different and very specific here we can assume that this is reflecting quite a ritual pattern of use sorry but we can also see different temporal contextualization with regards to the question of deposition practices so this is a well of Dalich Proto you can see here that actually two piglets were found within the context of this well and they were not found within this wooden box but they were found within the construction pit of the well and this is quite interesting because this points towards the fact that the deposition of the piglets was safe in place at the very beginning of the lifetime of the well and not at the end so here we have quite different temporal dynamics being at play but we still have this changing or shifting pattern of use probably with that I would like to focus on the second aspect of connectivity so the question whether well as a specific materialization, specific kind of feature might be seen as a bridge between social arenas and in this question I am focusing mostly on the question whether or not that might have been a representation of social inequality or commonality so also two very basic and very important mechanisms in the society and here you can see the site of Niederhülfling so this is the site where several wells were found and some of them are surely dating into LBK context you can see one of those examples in this very nice or very interesting thing here is that the well was positioned or located within very close proximity to a contemporaneous house so you can see the spatial relation between the house and the well is very clear why it might be seen as a representation of social inequality is because a number of houses and a number of wells were found and quite a lot of these wells seem to have been in very close relation to different houses and also seems at least with some caution that it might be the case that the bigger houses were accompanied by single wells while the smaller houses may have been not and if this is really the case then this is I would say is pointing more towards the function of materializing and symbolizing inequality a very different example is the site of Eiter so here we also have an LBK settlement and here you have two wells from the LBK which were probably dating one of the other and you can see a very different kind of spatial layout both wells are marked in red and are positioned in the very center of the village and more importantly they are located in some distance or very clear distance in one case 40 meter in the other case 10 to 6 meter to the next contemporaneous house so they are located in a free space in the center of the village it might have been a subject to sharing activities and common aspects again a different spatial layout so to say this to be seen in the site of Drogstorf here we can see a whole cluster of wells here at least 6 LBK wells maybe due to hydrological reason in proximity to the settlement but not directly added but here is another well again in proximity to the houses but not associated with one single house so again might you have some kind of common framework being at play and this leads towards the last aspect the question of plurality so whether or not we can see context dependence and also altering or different translations of overarching ideas within this kind of feature of wells and I would like to point towards first of all the temporal diversity we can see very clearly being at play here so you can see how we have shifting patterns of views ritual and profane activities going on here but in very different kind of trajectories we can see wells which are constructed in the use for ritual purposes then maybe used then we can see wells which are constructed then used in a profane way so to say and just at the end we have the positions and there might also be examples where the depositions were taking place in between so to say so we can see how different this kind of shared overarching idea that this kind of very elaborate well structures might be a good part or necessary part of village is very it's translated in a very different way and maybe more interestingly even to me at least it's the question of symbolizing different social arena so we can very clearly see that wells might be pointing towards commonality so we can see examples where different houses are sharing a well and in this context I mean sharing in a sense that we can see a combination of autonomy and dependence being at play here but we can also clearly see other examples in which wells are connected to singular houses these examples some caution might date at the very end or later stages of the LBK so in a period in which we can also see social tension arising in different other contexts so all in all I would say it's a very interesting example which is actually showing a lot of diversity and different layers of meaning being united here so it's not a simply profane well which is used as a well but it's indeed something so much more and with that I would like to come to a conclusion and I would like to start this conclusion by rephrasing the question I was asking in the title of my talk so of course it has to be rephrased in a way that we should ask how it is possible to understand the multi-layered character of past human social organization and to me it is time and also necessary to go beyond universal models of social organization and to really talk about what do we actually mean by terms such as complexity social inequality or also chief them so this doesn't mean that we can in no case use this kind of models but we really need to have a closer look and we need to be very specific to talk about which phenomena, which modernizations are we looking at and which kind of social implications are we seeing so which kind of things are expressed within this kind of features and to my understanding an anthropologically anthropologically anthropologically informed ecology is indeed of great help in this rather big task and I would also like to refer to the importance of overcoming dichotomous perception so for example the example of LBK Wells in my opinion showed that this kind of this differentiation between profane and ritual is actually maybe not really important and also not really relevant in this kind of example so it might be actually part of one and the same thing at the end and what my own research in this kind of recent context in Nagaland for example showed me is how even the most profane and most simple features such as a terrace field might actually be filled with a multitude of meanings which are at interplay here and they are expressed by different means by temporality and contextuality and this is all for me it's about the choices of the agency of the communities which are subject to our own research and with that I hope that I might have raised some questions for you and I would like to thank you very much for your attention. Thank you for this fascinating talk to put it together so things go far away but obviously water is the brackets in this and the way how communities interact and have a competition still working together at the same time there are still applause and for your lecture and while we wait for the first questions from the floor maybe a question from me regarding Nagaland you describe this multi stage of feasting the feast of merit and when they slaughter the pigs and the cattle and I immediately this can't be Hindu, this can't be Muslim you know connected and then I know of the Nagaland of course that they have head hunting so this is also so there are the savages in the mind of the other religions what kind of you never mentioned religion but what kind of religion would they themselves say they have just there? I mean it's a bit of a it's not the easiest topic to be totally honest so they themselves call it an missed religion but it's very much also influenced by the whole process of Christianization so they are themselves referring towards this kind of path with this different form of religion as a dark period rather and then the advent of Christianity as being the light bringing into the societies but there's also some enemies communities and what I can say about this religious context is that it's actually also very diverse so actually in each and every village it's a bit different but it's of course not savage so it is of course connected to this kind of social institutions of head hunting as well so that was of course done in the past but also the feasting activities but it's of course not a savage religion but it's a very diverse form of any missed views on religion yeah still it's still applause but no question really let's see that whether that's yeah maybe just thank you all for this very nice feedback yeah that's great yeah so for the LBK wells you demonstrated kind of the three phases the building phase which could be somebody looking for more merit might be getting people to build it and then it could be the use which might be communal and then and then you showed the position phase in the end when you have the whole vessels go in and actually the bell is not used anymore so it's from that there is a question Maria how do you suggest to understand LBK wells as total social facts perhaps in relation to other for example natural water sources yeah that's of course very interesting so I mean I would understand them as total social facts because I think that we can see how this very different kind of dynamics of society is different institutions maybe all implications are coming together that's why I would understand them as a total social fact and in relation to other sources I would do so because it's quite clearly that I think at least in some examples that it's a question whether they were even necessary so this is how we can see that here quite clearly some kind of maybe believe that this was something you should also have was also coming into play so it was not only necessary or something so we can see how they were kind of supplementing the natural water sources which were also there so the rivers and streams and the springs and so on and the example for example also shows that there were simply not enough for the whole village I mean two wells for or even one well for the whole village is not really sufficient so this is how I would see it it's somehow used in addition but I think that it was also used because it was a means to which was close to the village close to the people and which could indeed be used but in this very different ways so that's how I would see it in this kind of example I hope that this answer is a question Yeah, that was Alexander Gramstadt answer asked that. Here from Katharina Bottich, are there more examples of ritual deposits around wells after they abandoned? Yeah, so we have I mean I don't know the exact number now out of my head but they are a number of wells so it's not only the examples I showed both in LBK context we have different wells in which we have this kind of deposition layers but then we also have different other examples of in the realistic wells where quite clearly some deposition practices are also happening but the problem here very much is of course to differentiate this kind of ritual deposition from simply dumping your sediment waste into the well so that's of course a problem that I admit but this is also why I'm still struggling a bit with this kind of dichotomous perception of profane versus ritual so it's quite a complex question but it's happening I mean not totally irregular in the sense that it's over the half or something but it's happening again and again Yeah, again Hickenbotten is remarking that well is necessary it's a great time server and maybe just for cooking and drinking or other purposes or kind of daily cleansing cleansing prior to certain activities I could contribute from a late iron age in Basel we have actually wells in a late iron age settlement and the settlement is pretty close to the Rhine so people don't need the water they dig the wells for other reasons and the wells are in the end field not only with household material and possible rubbish but they also serve as graves so we have skeletons in them animals and whole people and this is very much ritual and not throwing away I think we really have to see this importance of any kind of feature or part of the society which can somehow develop us in certain contexts I mean there are also other examples at least I know one example from Neolithic context which also was taken place on top of a well so to say in such too far away in terms of time and with reference to ABK wells I think the closest proximity to rivers and other surface water sources is 200 meters and sometimes the wells themselves are 200 meters apart from the village so I think it's at least not only about convenience of course it's practical to have a well in your village but I think this is certainly not the only aspect which is important here and with regard to cleaning activities actually the well of Al-Cherbet it's very clearly showed that they regularly cleaned the well so there is a layer on the bottom which is showing that all the waste so pots which were falling into the well simply because that happens of course they were actually taken out of the well so it's I think this is also an argument why not all of this kind of deposition layers are somehow just in this kind of profane mode but we can clearly see that they were kept in a good shape I'm watching out for a question maybe one more thought coming back to Nagaland and the ponds was this also was this like a well, a freshwater reserve or very different uses and it was at least sometimes used for fishing again so that fish is breeded there because as I said the rivers are sometimes very far away so that's a problem why this kind of fishing activities is not that easy sometimes in Nagaland and but the problem with the ponds in special I was talking someone told me that the problem is that they have a lot of mosquitoes of course and it gets polluted very easily so whether or not it can be really used so it's hard to maintain them in a state that they can be actually used for fishing for example but they were still used as a place to simply be so it's a very special place because this kind of ponds are not in a natural sense natural lakes and so on are not scattered all around so that's also why it's an important place to gather and so on welcome yeah we have a Katalina Portage quickly points out that with heavy rains rivers and streams are not usable for drinking water while wells were reusable and Alexander Anders answering to Katalina in Holger, Hungary, 5th century 5th millennium BC linear NLN there must be a culture I don't know we have the same dual use of well well for freshwater and which are depositioned more than 100 years so this is really a pattern this is in prehistoric Europe it's very so that it could be also kind of closing a well like burying a house burying a whole settlement there were such rituals that we don't really understand today anymore yeah and this kind of behavior of course makes sense in many regards I mean if a community decides to build up a well and construct this kind of really sometimes they're elaborate structures it might be a good reason to somehow have this kind of position practices and so on and we also might see it at the end to close this kind of lifetime of a feature but for me really the most important part is to stop this thinking that we need to put it into one context only because we see it so often in archeological features that are used in so many different ways yeah yeah what I find fascinating what we need to do more is this going out of Europe and looking at these cultures and especially in India which still have the megalithic traditions and they can be much more I know an example from Tamil Nadu where you have megalith type partly serving as burial grounds which are still in use in the early medieval period so they have longer traditions and some of them are still live and to me this is also concerned I heard it also in a session today and I like it a lot that we also have of course some responsibility as scientists who are speaking about the major part of the human past so I think we need to be very careful that we involve many different views on the world and how things might be done and how people tend to organize themselves there's this huge diversity we can also see today in any kind of context I'm not only speaking about some recent context but also nowadays of course I think it's very important that we always try to broaden our understanding or to do somehow just so to say to the case studies we're working with and really trying to keep an open mind and to me this kind of acrobatical approaches are really big help in that but this doesn't mean that I'm saying this is an explanation for everything of course but to me it's really a help to try to step beyond my own kind of socialization my own understanding from outside this is wonderful I can't see questions coming at the moment so we are coming to the end of the conference and I would like to thank you very much and especially also our volunteer and the secretariat who helped us to make this possible and of course the scientific committee the executive board but then also the many people who joined us here online while we had such a big cultural break since the beginning of the year everything changed we had to change we have to think about how we do keel next year everything but he's got us thinking and I'm so happy we are here together and can discuss and try to make it possible but it's not so easy at the moment so thank you for everyone joining Sunday evening so it's very nice of course just thought that there's another question change is the change of the ritual and communal use of the terraces in Nagaland regulated by special personalities or is it a natural change so it's more of a natural change so I mean there's no personality or not at least a single personality who could decide this so there's a village council there was this kind of village council nowadays not it's fading somehow and it's important but that village council wasn't tired to take decisions but in general it's quite simple when the appeals are chosen they are chosen and then they are used in this kind of communal way but there's no strict regulation to this and this is a behavior which is really a pattern so it's also in other regards for example someone decides to erect a stone on the terrors field there's also no one regulating this kind of placement of stones so you can basically erect it on any kind of property so there are specific ways to cut off this kind of individual ownership kind of concepts wonderful