Abstract
This paper uses the fictional figure of Surmir the Bell Beaker archer and noble man as kind of guide through the archaeological reconstruction of society and culture of mid-3rd Millennium BC in Europe. The life story of Surmir was narrated to bring the reality of life in the Copper Age to the general public (Turek 2017a).
How can we follow the life story of a man we do not know much about in details, whose fate emerges in the hazy contours of fragmentary archaeological record. We do not know his real name, the date or exact place of his birth, or how many years he has lived.
The role model of Surmir is so-called Amesbury archer discovered near the Stonehenge in 2002 (Fitzpatrick 2011) and his hypothetical birthplace was in the foothills of Alps at Sion (Switzerland). His life story is composed of a very torsion-like mosaic that emerges and submerges in the dusk of the Bronze Age.
When examining prehistoric society, we most often focus on issues of social relations and cultural and social processes. The personality of an individual in this evaluation is usually missing.
It is very difficult, if not impossible, to capture the character and the personal fate of a particular person on the basis of a material culture analysis. However, we should bear in mind that even in prehistoric society, individuals have been inducing changes in cultural norms and only then they have been followed by wider social processes (Neustupný 1997).
Therefore, we should not forget about the role of individuals - personalities in the observation of cultural and social processes. Post-processual archaeology even prefers telling stories of the past on the principle of subjective approach and "personal history" (Trigger 1989).
The narrative part of the text (in Turek 2017a) has always been supplemented by the interpretation of archaeological reconstructions and scientific procedures that archaeologists have led us to these conclusions. Here I am presenting part of the narrative about Surmir in order to clarify some important processes in the prehistoric society, as well as to reflect the results of our research in relation to the non-professional public.
In this respect, questions are raised: Are we able to tell a comprehensive life story of someone living in the Copper Age? Are our discoveries relevant to the current public? Are our reconstructions understandable and meaningful. I believe that such a reflection and broad discussion can be useful for our future work and for formulating new questions in our research.