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Conclusion: Selevac in the wider context of European prehistory
Abstract
Tringham, Ruth and Dusan Krstic (1990) Conclusion: Selevac in the wider context of European prehistory. In Selevac: a Neolithic village in Yugoslavia, edited by R. Tringham and D. Krstic, pp. 567-616. Monumenta Archaeologica #15. UCLA Institute of Archaeology Press, Los Angeles.
... − the deconstruction of the building at the end of the lifecycle by means of combustion (Tringham 1992;1994;Tringham and Krstic 1990;Stevanovic 1997;Chapman 1999;Gheorghiu 2005) or via the recycling of the wooden structure. ...
THE INTRODUCTION
A first goal is to present a series of semiotic case studies of the building process
(i.e. as studies of the geometrical forms, in two dimensions or spatial, and of the materials employed), to help the reader understand the importance of the
materiality of the geographic formative contexts, together with the influence of social changes upon the built forms. A second goal is the presentation of the materiality of architecture as a crucial factor in the understanding of the
complexity of the built forms.
THE PAPER
A reconstruction of the prehistoric building techniques could be achieved by the intertwining emic and ethic approaches.
The paper discusses the chaîne-opératoires of wattle and daub technique of building with its social implications for the Chalcolithic
society living in the wetland environment of the Lower Danube, identified from experiments, ethnographical studies and the analysis
of ceramic models.
... Kada se radi o neolitu centralnog Balkana, detaljne analize pojedinačnih tehnologija sa tehnološkog, osim čisto tipološkog aspekta, još uvek nisu potpune, a takođe su i analize višestrukih tehnologija tek na početku. Raniji istraživači vinčanske kulture (na primer, Chapman 1981;Tringham and Krstić 1990) smatrali su vinčanske zajednice nestratifikovanim i samim tim podrazumevali model proizvodnje u okviru domaćinstva, ograničen na sopstvene potrebe, mada konstatuju određenu uvećanu proizvodnju pojedinih dobara. ...
Zanatska specijalizacija podrazumeva da su konkretne zadatke i/ili aktivnosti obavljali samo pojedini članovi zajednice, ili kao glavnu/osnovnu aktivnost ili paralelno sa drugim aktivnostima. Pojava specijalizacije često se povezuje sa kompleksnim društvima, preciznije, njeno se prisustvo podrazumeva uz prisustvo društvene stratifikacije, odnosno, postojanje specijalizacije se negira ukoliko su društva nestratifikovana. Međutim, organizacija proizvodnje različitih dobara i pojava i razvoj specijalizacije znatno su složeniji; postojanje specijalizacije ne može se okarakterisati samo kao prisutno/odsutno, već postoje različiti vidovi i različiti stepeni. Zbog toga se poslednjih decenija pojavila potreba za novim, revidiranim teorijskim okvirima. Tako pojedini autori predlažu nove definicije specijalizacije i organizacije proizvodnje, a posebno se ističu društveni i kulturni aspekti (pored čisto ekonomskih) koji utiču na proizvodnju dobara i tehnološke izbore. Moć i prestižni status u društvu nisu povezani samo za kontrolom resursa i većom količinom materijalnih dobara, već i sa njihovom vrstom – naime, važan faktor za razvoj zanata, pojavu zanatske specijalizacije i za pojavu/povećanje društvene nejednakosti predstavljaju prestižni predmeti. Simbolički značaj i vrednost tokom praistorije pridavani su određenim tehnologijama i predmetima ne samo zbog egzotične sirovine ili drugih cenjenih svojstava (kao što su otpornost i izdržljivost nekog predmeta, ali i neutilitarna svojstva poput boje), već i zbog uloženog truda i veštine u izradu. Takvi prestižni predmeti su onima koji su ih izradili i/ili onima koji su ih posedovali davali ugled i status ili su ih odražavali.
... Pensemos, por ejemplo, en las esculturas-malangan de Papúa Nueva Guinea(Küchler 1988), las casas quemadas de la sociedad Vinča del Sudeste europeo(Chapman 1999;Tringham 1990) o el potlatch de los Kwakiutl en la costa noroccidental de América del Norte(Boas 1920). ...
En este trabajo discutimos los escenarios de clausura colectiva de sitios arqueológicos, indagando sobre prácticas de destrucción intencional de la cultura material. Nuestra perspectiva teórica se distancia de una ‘ontología de la producción’ que interpreta la vida social en función de la transformación de materiales en objetos ‘útiles‘; por el contrario, reconocemos el valor social constitutivo de la destrucción como parte de un proceso objetivante, dinámico y creativo, que siempre está en red con otras prácticas sociales. Los contextos de abandono de La Rinconada (Ambato, Catamarca, Argentina) son estimulantes para analizar el tema; contienen evidencias de incendios, construcciones quemadas/colapsadas y gran variedad de materiales fragmentados. Al respecto, hemos avanzado con metodologías orientadas a discriminar el material destruido antes del abandono, empleando distintas vías de análisis centradas en la cerámica, como termoalteración, fragmentación y dispersión de fragmentos, integradas al análisis contextual y a estudios experimentales. Los resultados ayudan a definir el carácter de ofrenda y sacrificio de ciertos materiales, acorde con nuestra hipótesis de destrucción deliberada como parte del cierre ritual, y abren también la posibilidad de evaluar su rol y magnitud dentro de los procesos de deshabitar y, paralelamente, de reconocer su incidencia en la formación de sitios.
In this Perspective article, I am able to draw the various strands of my intellectual thinking and practice in archaeology and European prehistory into a complex narrative of changing themes. In this narrative, I draw attention to the inspirational triggers of these transformations to be found in works and words of colleagues and events within and outside my immediate discipline. A group of events between 1988 and 1993 disrupted (in a good way) the trajectory of my professional life and provided a convenient anchor around which my themes pivoted and regrouped with very different standpoints. But some trends in my way of working remained constant and contributed, I hope, to a career of cumulative knowledge. Along the way, I show the significance, in terms of my personal intellectual context as well as archaeological practice in general, of my published works as well as more obscure and some unpublished works that are cited here for the first time
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Anthropology, Volume 52 is October 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
Over several decades, we have written extensively about the household as a fundamental organizational unit of the Neolithic society. Starting from our definition of the household cluster at Brześć Kujawski 3 and the detailed analysis of household activities at House 56 at Brześć Kujawski 4, we continue to consider the household as the locus of decision-making and resource allocation even as our thinking has evolved over the intervening years. At the same time, Neolithic households functioned within local concentrations of settlement in which they interacted with other such units. We characterize such local social entities as “hamlets,” adapting the definition used by the anthropologist Frank Cancian to refer to institutionalized alliances of domestic groups in which affiliation is demonstrated through residential proximity. We have studied two such hamlets of the Brześć Kujawski Group: the Osłonki-Miechowice-Konary hamlet and the Smętowo hamlet consisting of Brześć Kujawski and Pikutkowo. We characterize these hamlets to show how they extend our original conception of household-based societies to develop a robust understanding of local Neolithic communities.
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