Thinking Through Material Culture: An Interdisciplinary Perspective
... Context, as a broad term, is central to Kress's understanding of learning. The connection between human beings and their environments has been a subject of lively discussion during the last decades (see for example Knappett 2005). Hutchins (1996: xiii) formulated it as follows: ...
... Even if "learning" in its elementary form may relate to individual interests and aspirations, it is always carried out in a context with all its specific resources, social bonds and beliefs (Björklund Boistrup and Selander 2022); b) the importance of materiality, and of the way different material resources, tools and materials, actually become part of our "normal" interaction with the worldas does the axe for the carpenter, the stick for the blind man or the cell phone and computer for the knowledge worker. This would also include the blurred borders between the body and its surroundings, including the role of performative learning, bodily experience and learning, as well as emotional aspects of learning (Knappett 2005;Lim 2021;Wulf et al. 2021); c) a focus on digital media, and how they may operate with distributed information, games and simulations, and make it possible to use new instruments like VR (Virtual Reality) as a learning resource or AI (Artificial Intelligence) as a resource for new ways of organizing multimodal text-production, toys and games (including a renewed discussion of learning and play as well as of regulative norms (Selander 2008b), and as a resource for the supporting individual learning paths; d) a focus on designs for and designs in learning, and how these are framed in different institutional contexts (Björklund Boistrup and Selander 2022; Dorst 2015; Glawe and Selander 2021;Selander 2015;Selander and Kress 2021). ...
Against the background of a longstanding collaboration between Gunther Kress’s research group in London and my own research group in Stockholm, I reflect, in this paper, on the role of Kress’s ideas in our joint development of a social semiotic, multimodal, and design-oriented approach to learning, an approach which sees learning as performative, and as an activity in which learners create their own learning paths. I first discuss how, for Kress, this path has three elements, the affordances of the learning resources available to the learner, the learner’s ‘interest’ which turns aspects of these resources into ‘prompts’ for learning, and the learner’s active interpretation and transformation of these aspects, the results of which can then be recognized and valued as ‘signs of learning’. However, recognizing learning also needs to take account of the dimension of time, so as to make it possible to assess whether learners have gained knowledges and skills they did not have at an earlier stage. I then discuss the role of context in Kress’s thinking about learning. For Kress, context is another vital aspect of a social semiotic theory of learning. On the one hand, Kress focuses here on the specific, unique contexts in which individual learners create their own learning paths. On the other hand, he recognizes that signs will always carry social and political relations. Reflecting on the dynamic relation between individual learners and the way institutions regulate ways of learning, I discuss both the continued role of institutional learning contexts and their hidden curricula, and the way emerging technologies facilitate individual learning paths and interactive, participatory forms of learning.
... While archaeologists have always worked with 1 It is beyond the scope of this paper to offer a thorough review of material culture studies. There are several resources available to understand its development including Hicks and Beaudry (2010) and Knappett (2005). artefacts, the Material-Culture turn (i.e. the shift to materials occurring in the 1980s in British archaeology and anthropology following a revival of interest for materials across different disciplines, as detailed by Hicks, 2010) opened the potential of material culture for other, and notably social scientists (Schiffer, 2017: Chapter 29). ...
In this overview, we examine some of the ways in which archaeologists have increasingly turned their attention to the contemporary world, focusing not on ancient artefacts but on the material legacies that we ourselves are creating and what they tell us about ourselves, including the impact we are having on planetary and human health. One aspect of this “contemporary archaeology” is the study of modern waste, an area of research often referred to as “garbology.” Originating in the later 1960s, this study of modern waste is typically focused on the plastics that characterise what is now commonly referred to as the Plastic Age, a supposedly more familiar past aligning with both cultural experience and memory. The paper emphasises archaeology’s strong interdisciplinary traditions, particularly in its use of scientific methods, which make it easier for archaeologists to work within interdisciplinary teams and with other stakeholders and with policymakers, these being particularly relevant in studies that focus on the contemporary world. The paper concludes by describing how archaeologists are using these perspectives on the contemporary world to cast their eyes forward to the future.
... Tendo isso em mente, de Merleau-Ponty a Renfrew, percebe-se argumentos que reforçam a ideia de que os humanos pensam por meio da materialidade. Essa acepção é levada a sério e capturada, por exemplo, no título de um livro de Carl Knappett (2005) Thinking through Material Culture. Cole (1998: 136) descreve a escola histórico-cultural russa de psicologia cultural (por exemplo, Vygotsky), em que destacamos a afirmação, "o que chamamos de mente trabalha com artefatos" -outros exemplos são Shore (1996: 34) e Geertz (1973: 76). ...
This paper addresses the archaeological theory about entanglements between things and humans, understanding this relationship as flows of matter, energy, and information. The cultural world cannot be understood as self-evident data; things take part in a long process of interdependence, construction, and transmission of knowledge. The entanglement is composed of conceptual abstractions and bodily resonance, a reverberation between mind, body, and the world of things. Biosociomaterial entanglements relate to the dialectic of dependence and dependency between humans and things. Addressing the entanglement between humans and things allows for more dialogue between the humanities, social sciences, biological sciences, and material sciences in archaeological and anthropological inquiries.
... Den antropologiska utgångspunkten och betoningen av relationen material-människa har länge varit den kanske mest utövade tillämpningen av materialitet, även inom andra discipliner. 25 Så pass etablerat är det perspektivet att det på många universitet utformats egna centra, "Material Culture", eller specifika kurser, "material studies". Forskning inom materiell kultur, för att använda en försvenskning av termen, rör ofta frågor som ställer materialitet i relation till konsumtion och cirkulation av föremål, historiskt såväl som idag. ...
Bland den litteratur som vänder sig till studenter i konstvetenskap och andra bildtolkande vetenskaper finns en mängd texter som behandlar teorier och teoretiska begrepp. Vad som däremot i hög grad saknas, och som studenter ofta efterlyser, är texter på svenska som visar hur teorier och begrepp kan tillämpas i konkreta tolkningssituationer. Serien Teoretiska tillämpningar i konstvetenskap avser att fylla den luckan, där boken Materialitet är den fjärde i serien. Boken introducerar och aktiverar ett begrepp som under de senaste decennierna kommit att ta en allt viktigare plats i humanistisk forskning. Konstvetare – men också arkeologer, antropologer, litteraturvetare, etnologer och andra humanistiska forskare – intresserar sig i allt högre grad för de materiella förutsättningarna för, och manifestationerna av, människors sociala och kulturella liv och utbyte. Men trots sin aktualitet i dagens vetenskapliga samtal kan materialitetsbegreppet te sig undanglidande och svårfångat. Det rör sig hela vägen från de mest handfasta analyser av en kulturell artefakts materiella beståndsdelar, till de bitvis svårgenomträngliga teoretiseringar av föremålslighet, agens och nätverk som brukar sorteras under etiketten ”new materialism”. Boken Materialitet ger emellertid konkreta exempel på hur materialitetsbegreppet kan öppna för tolkningar av viktiga meningslager i konstverk och andra kulturella artefakter. Efter den inledande introduktionen där olika perspektiv och begreppsliggöranden kring materialitet diskuteras gör sex forskare var sin analys utifrån sitt ämnesområde. Kapitlen baseras på ny forskning och är skriva särskilt för denna bok. De olika kapitlen visar tillsammans materialitetsbegreppets mångfacetterade karaktär men låser inte låser fast det vid en definition utan öppnar ögonen för ett flertal olika tolkningsvägar.
... Inom samhällsteorin har man på senare tid använt termen affordances för att beskriva de möjligheter ett föremål kan ha i ett visst socialt sammanhang. 16 Tekannan låter sig användas som en behållare för te. De affordances tekannan erbjuder gör att den utöver te också skulle kunna innehålla kaffe, även om detta inte var avsikten från början, och den skulle också kunna tilldelas ett nytt syfte som ett kärl för andra ämnen, även sådana som inte är vätskor. ...
Bland den litteratur som vänder sig till studenter i konstvetenskap och andra bildtolkande vetenskaper finns en mängd texter som behandlar teorier och teoretiska begrepp. Vad som däremot i hög grad saknas, och som studenter ofta efterlyser, är texter på svenska som visar hur teorier och begrepp kan tillämpas i konkreta tolkningssituationer. Serien Teoretiska tillämpningar i konstvetenskap avser att fylla den luckan, där boken Materialitet är den fjärde i serien. Boken introducerar och aktiverar ett begrepp som under de senaste decennierna kommit att ta en allt viktigare plats i humanistisk forskning. Konstvetare – men också arkeologer, antropologer, litteraturvetare, etnologer och andra humanistiska forskare – intresserar sig i allt högre grad för de materiella förutsättningarna för, och manifestationerna av, människors sociala och kulturella liv och utbyte. Men trots sin aktualitet i dagens vetenskapliga samtal kan materialitetsbegreppet te sig undanglidande och svårfångat. Det rör sig hela vägen från de mest handfasta analyser av en kulturell artefakts materiella beståndsdelar, till de bitvis svårgenomträngliga teoretiseringar av föremålslighet, agens och nätverk som brukar sorteras under etiketten ”new materialism”. Boken Materialitet ger emellertid konkreta exempel på hur materialitetsbegreppet kan öppna för tolkningar av viktiga meningslager i konstverk och andra kulturella artefakter. Efter den inledande introduktionen där olika perspektiv och begreppsliggöranden kring materialitet diskuteras gör sex forskare var sin analys utifrån sitt ämnesområde. Kapitlen baseras på ny forskning och är skriva särskilt för denna bok. De olika kapitlen visar tillsammans materialitetsbegreppets mångfacetterade karaktär men låser inte låser fast det vid en definition utan öppnar ögonen för ett flertal olika tolkningsvägar.
... Uznána byla aktivní role jednotlivých aktérů živé i neživé povahy podílejících se na formování materiální kultury (srov. Barad 2003;Latour 2005;Knappett 2005;Ingold 2007;Olsen 2010;Olsen et al. 2012;Barrett 2014). Studium materiální kultury tímto získalo novou dynamiku -"hmot ný svět" a jeho materiální vlastnosti byly považovány za neustále vibrující, prodchnuté vlastními silami, které jsou v permanentním pohybu (Bennett 2010;Ingold 2011). ...
Článek seznamuje s objektově-ontologickými teoretickými a epistemologickými přístupy, které jsou diskutované především v západoevropských (anglo-amerických) archeologických vědeckých komunitách. Tyto přístupy mají ambici, alespoň to některé z nich prohlašují, stát se novým teoretickým myšlením a radikálně změnit dosavadní pojetí archeologie, zejména studium hmotné (materiální) kultury. Článek rešeršním způsobem popisuje a hodnotí různé přístupy (teorie aktérských sítí, entanglement, symetrická archeologie, nové materialismy, asemblážní myšlení), které studují relační vztahy mezi lidmi a ne-lidmi a zabývají se „věcmi“ jako sociálními a materiálními předměty s vlastní agenturou. Tam, kde je to možné, jsou přístupy vysvětleny na konkrétních příkladech interpretací archeologických pramenů.
... Terms such as "multispecies ethnography" (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010;Smart and Smart 2017), "biosociality" (Ingold and Palsson 2013), "multinaturalism" (Viveiros de Castro 1998), "companion species" (Haraway 2003), and "more-than-human sociality" (Tsing 2013) have begun to dissolve the boundaries between human and nonhuman entities, conflating the immutable dualities of modernist ontologies. At the same time, archaeological applications of new materialist thought such as "symmetrical archaeology" (Normark 2010;Olsen 2012;Webmoor 2007;Witmore 2014), "actor network theory" (Callon 1984;Callon and Law 1997;Knappett 2005;Latour 1993Latour , 2005, "assemblage theory" (Deleuze and Guattari 1987;Jervis 2019), and "entanglement" (Barad 2007;Hodder 2012) have moved beyond an economic/representational binary perspective of materiality by exploring how material things are capable of making demands on humans and influencing human actions. Hence, material objects may also act as essential participants in historical processes generally attributed to human action. ...
Explaining the origins of agriculture is a topic of ongoing debate in anthropology. Traditional explanations have often been categorized as either push or pull models. The former considers the transition as an adaptive response to environmental change, and the latter views farming as a result of cultural innovations. The theoretical debates reflect the traditional dichotomy between materialism and idealism in archaeological research. Yet underlying both approaches is an anthropocentric ontology that privileges humans over nonhumans as the principal agents of historical change. This paper seeks to transcend the limitation through a close examination of the role of nonhumans in the origins of rice agriculture in southern China. Challenging traditional approaches that attribute the rise of agriculture to human interventions on the environment, this paper explores how the active agencies exercised by nonhumans, such as plants and material tools, entrapped humans into a long-term dependence and later into a sedentary lifestyle, eventually leading up to fully agricultural societies.
... Los análisis realizados se complementaron con estudios contextuales que permitieron resaltar las diferencias entre contextos domésticos y no domésticos, al considerar que el significado de un objeto cerámico puede comprenderse en relación con los vínculos espaciales que presenta con otros elementos de la cultura material (Knappett 2005). ...
La alimentación es una actividad estructurante y organizadora de la vida social, en la cual dar y recibir alimentos se convierte en el símbolo de la relación dentro del grupo. En esta oportunidad, se analiza el procesamiento culinario y su consumo en el sector centro-sur de la Quebrada de Humahuaca (norte de Argentina) bajo el dominio incaico (ca. 1430/80-1536 d.C.), en el que se busca identificar los cultivos andinos procesados y consumidos a partir del estudio arqueológico de los microrrestos vegetales. Se realizaron estudios arqueobotánicos de fitolitos y granos de almidón entram-pados en el tártaro dental de dos individuos inhumados en las Tumbas 1 y 2 del sitio Esquina de Huajra. Se identifica-ron fibras vegetales, granos de almidón y fitolitos de cultivos andinos (poroto y maíz). En el caso de los granos de almidón modificados, se pudo describir daños producidos por calor en seco y en húmedo (i.e. tostado, hervido). A estos estudios se sumó el análisis morfofuncional del equipamiento culinario (vasijas cerámicas) hallado en el asentamiento con el fin de avanzar en hipótesis acerca de los modos de preparación/cocción de los cultivos identificados.
Memory is a fascinating way to approach modern and ancient cultures, as it raises questions about what, why, and how individuals and groups remember. Egyptology has had a major impact on the development of memory studies, with Jan Assmann's notion of cultural memory becoming a widespread model within the humanities. Despite this outstanding contribution of Egyptology to memory studies, remarkably few recent works on ancient Egypt deal with memory from a theoretical and methodological point of view. This Element provides a general introduction to memory, followed by a discussion of the role of materiality and performativity in the process of remembering. A case study from Middle Kingdom Abydos illustrates how memory can be embodied in the monumental record of ancient Egypt. The purpose of this Element is to present an up-to-date introduction to memory studies in Egyptology and to invite the reader to rethink how and why memory matters.
Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards (1831–1892), popular novelist, gifted artist, and intrepid adventurer, is today particularly known for her two illustrated travelogues, Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys: A Midsummer Ramble in the Dolomites (1873) and A Thousand Miles Up the Nile (1876). The first popularised the Dolomite region and the second, led to Edwards founding the Egyptian Exploration Fund (née Society) and becoming a key figure in creating archaeology as an academic discipline. Initially travelling to Italy because of personal disappointment, it is her time there that provides unique insights into a complex, intellectual, and oftentimes unconventional woman who did not allow society’s traditional female expectations to confine her. Edwards’ travel writings and illustrations paint vivid pictures of the adventures of travel for the imperial woman and of an Italy at once picturesque and familiar yet also sublime and unknown. This chapter, by way of Henri Lefebvre, will examine the personal, artistic, and literary landscapes of Amelia B. Edwards in Italy and how they reflect and shape the social and gender concerns of the age.
From its earliest stages on, the rise of computational approaches in the humanities—whether in archaeology, history, or digital humanities more generally—has been accompanied by discussions and critical reflections on the way in which data-driven research methods are informed by the representation of research objects as data structures. Various dimensions, challenges, and characteristics can be roughly divided into three intersecting aspects: the subjectivity of data, their complexity, and their size. Archaeological network analysis as a formal, quantitative method is situated firmly within the tension between these fields, and many authors focus on the application of network research to archaeological data while respecting their complex nature. This paper adds to this growing body of work by focusing on the specificities of a medium-sized data set that offers multiple perspectives on a complex question of social archaeology: the study of intersecting social identities and their materialisation in funeral assemblages, particularly of a collective identity of high status-individuals or “elites”, during the Late Urnfield Period. It offers a mixed-methods approach that centres quantitative results and qualitative contextualization across different scales, and minimises loss of information and context, while transparently disclosing its practices of data selection, pre-processing, and analysis. In doing so, it aims to make the reflective positionings of “slow data” and “slow technology” productive for a methodology of “slow networks”.
In the late prehistoric and early historic periods (2,120–1,250 B.P.) in highland Pang Mapha, northwestern Thailand, the Log Coffin Culture represented a unique mortuary practice characterized by specific cemetery locations and coffin stylistic variations within a localized region of mainland Southeast Asia. Highland peoples practiced these mortuary patterns for an extended period, indicating that specialized cultural practices were passed between successive generations. This article examines the communities of practice of coffin production to understand how this knowledge transmission occurred over roughly 1,000 years. We conducted a quantitative analysis of 202 coffin heads from four river drainages. Similarities of coffin head proportion and carving techniques suggest that highland peoples shared techniques among craft communities in sub-regional watersheds, including the Lang, Mae Lana and Khong rivers, for generations. The difference in head proportion and surface treatment also suggests that producers conceivably adopted some aspects of traditional techniques and developed individual styles.
This article seeks to contribute to the growing scholarship on object-focused Roman histories by expanding the conversation to previously overlooked archaeological finds from Roman Palestine. This case study focuses on “Northern Collar-Neck Lamps,” which have been found throughout Roman Galilee and date to the first two centuries CE. I argue that their distinctive high collar, perhaps designed to reduce spillage, also served as an affordance that invited additional modes of interaction, namely placing a supplemental reservoir for oil – such as a pierced eggshell – over the filling hole. Once set up, this would allow for a slow drip of oil to prolong illumination time without human intervention. This usage is suggested from chronologically and geographically proximate sources, namely early rabbinic literature: Hebrew and Aramaic writings from the first centuries that reference physical details and uses of hundreds of objects and could prove helpful for future material histories of the Roman era.
Recent palaeogeographical reconstructions for the past 400 ka provide solid evidence for the occurrence of subaerially exposed landmasses over the northern and central Aegean during the glacial lowstands of the Middle Pleistocene, i.e., from at least Marine Isotopic Stage (MIS) 12. These former terrestrial environments, which now lie underwater, connected Western Asia to Europe via the Greek mainland, offering opportunities for settlement and dispersal to hominin groups. The Aegean dryland would constitute the extension of the Balkan refugial zone over the NE Mediterranean, hosting variability-rich resources and protected niches during extreme climatic phases. In spatial terms, a whole new arena for the Lower Palaeolithic (LP) research is now revealed at the crossroads between Africa, Europe, and Asia. Understanding the interaction between hominins and this newly revealed, former terrestrial landscape in the deep past has proven to be quite challenging due to the dynamic nature of the Aegean region. Despite these challenges, through Geographical Information System (GIS)-based suitability analysis and predictive modelling, we can begin to formulate a better understanding on the nature of this interaction. This chapter will present an interdisciplinary approach, integrating archaeology, palaeoenvironments and palaeogeography within an affordance-based GIS framework, to explore further the potential of the palaeolandscape and the hominin response to it. Predictive modelling based on suitability and landscape legibility led to the identification of potential trans-Aegean corridors of opportunity for dispersal and occupation zones during the Early and Middle Pleistocene. This work is hoped to instigate future LP research and renew interest in the Aegean by fostering a new cycle of discussion on the biogeographical importance of the wider NE Mediterranean during the early settlement(s) of the European continent.KeywordsLower PalaeolithicAegean submerged landscapesHominin dispersalAffordances
The aim of this chapter is to make a strong case for the adoption of a radically different approach to the archaeology of the senses. This is an approach that focuses not on what is sensed per se (or any ingenious mapping or digital representation of such) but instead the emergent affects that may have arisen in any given sensory encounter, and the impact(s) of such on the assemblage of individuals, things, animals, environments, landscape elements, memories, expectations and anticipations (to name but a few) that were bound up within it. This is not to say that we should abandon attempts to, for example, delineate, visualise, map and analyse what could be seen, heard or smelled. Instead, it is to stress that such efforts should always be treated as a means-to-an-end and never taken as definitive end-products. In the discussion that follows, we build the theoretical framework needed to effect such a re-orientation, drawing upon affect theory and notions of relational capacity and affordance. We then go on to demonstrate the value of this through a case study involving the mapping and exploration of visibility and foreground the unique (yet largely untapped) interpretative potential of virtual, mixed and augmented reality approaches to move beyond mere representation, to instead evoke affects directly.
Hiding from war, violence, and persecution in a secret, confined place affects the subjectivity of the occupants. The hideout’s material properties and the hiders’ silence to avoid detection enter deep into their lives. This co-constitution of subjectivity and hiding becomes manifest in their affects, feelings, and emotions, as will be illustrated by an analysis of Anne Frank’s lived experience of hiding for two years from Nazi persecution. She and her fellow hiders maintained a regime of silence in the secret annex of a canal house in Amsterdam to prevent their discovery and deportation. The hideout’s material and social restrictions created a subjectivity of hiding that devalued Anne Frank’s existence as a human being.
Emerging consensus among enactivist philosophers and embodied mind theorists suggests that seeking to understand mental illness we need to look out of our skulls at the ecology of the brain. Still, the complex links between materiality (in broadest sense of material objects, habits, practices and environments) and mental health remain little understood. This paper discusses the benefits of adopting a material engagement approach to embodied and enactive psychiatry. We propose that the material engagement approach can change the geography of the debate over the nature of mental disorders and through that help to develop theoretical and practical insights that could improve management and treatment for various psychiatric conditions. We investigate the potential role of Material Engagement Theory (MET) in psychiatry using examples of aetiologically different mental illnesses (schizophrenia and dementia) in respect of their shared phenomenological manifestations, focusing particularly on issues of memory, self-awareness, embodiment and temporality. The effective study of socio-material relations allows better understanding of the semiotic significance and agency of specific materials, environments and technical mediations. There is unrealised potential here for creating new approaches to treatment that can broaden, challenge or complement existing interventions and practices of care.
This study examines seascape depictions on pottery, including seafaring and sea creature scenes, from the 1896–9 excavations at Phylakopi on Melos, held in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. This analysis demonstrates that seascape scenes varied in character through time and were typically associated with vessel shapes connected to the pouring of liquids between Early Cycladic (EC) III and Middle Cycladic late and were later focused on basins. A focus on seafaring is evident in EC III, while later the iconographic focus on the sea concentrates on sea creatures. An iconographic interest in the sea, alongside that of birds and floral depictions, is suggestive of an interest in living forms that inhabit different places to humans (i.e., non-domestic) with different corporeality to humans. This research contributes further to the growing debate on human–animal/plant relationships and ontologies in the Aegean Bronze Age. The Green OA accepted version can be found here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10457373
Transformation processes that affect past societies can be complex and difficult to understand when observed at larger scales, especially when many factors are involved. Furthermore, researching transformations can often become reductive, with too much focus on only some factors or aspects of past societies, to the detriment of others. This has been the challenge of large-scale socio-environmental projects of recent years, including our own.
In order to address this issue, this chapter develops a model of the anatomy of transformations that is built upon four main pillars. The first pillar is DPSIR (Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response). Originally used in ecological studies, DPSIR provides a flexible framework that allows us to recognise how societies and ecosystems affect one another in a dynamic manner. Within the DPSIR framework, a second pillar based on theorization allows us to contextualise human behaviour at different scales, for example, through practice theory or cultural evolutionary theory. The third pillar presupposes that human societies are built on meaning and uses semiotics to help us uncover the semantic dimension of past transformations. Finally, the fourth pillar is emergence, which conceives of transformations as diachronic processes in which ecosystems and societies develop new properties based on their interaction.
This anatomy has the aim of assembling different aspects of socio-environmental and archaeological research in order to produce a comprehensive picture of past transformations. At the same time, this overall framework is open-ended, which both makes it possible to adapt it to different chronological and geographical circumstances and allows adopters to add or remove elements as they see fit.
How do the senses shape the way we perceive, understand, and remember ritual experiences? This book applies cognitive and sensory approaches to Roman rituals, reconnecting readers with religious experiences as members of an embodied audience. These approaches allow us to move beyond the literate elites to examine broader audiences of diverse individuals, who experienced rituals as participants and/or performers. Case studies of ritual experiences from a variety of places, spaces, and contexts across the Roman world, including polytheistic and Christian rituals, state rituals, private rituals, performances, and processions, demonstrate the dynamic and broad-scale application that cognitive approaches offer for ancient religion, paving the way for future interdisciplinary engagement. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.
The study of plaster vessels, white ware, from the Late Neolithic Southwest Asia (7000–5000 cal BC) is an untapped source that can provide us with valuable insights into the earliest development of pyrotechnology and Neolithic society. This plaster material is not well known and has not been involved in many studies. Using a symmetrical approach for the case study of plaster ware at Tell Sabi Abyad in Upper Mesopotamia, this article argues that it is crucial to acknowledge materiality in the study of these vessels. The ware resembles pottery in shape, typology, and basic function but is far from it material-wise and in its chaîne opératoire. The material plaster is also often misunderstood and associated primarily with architecture. Therefore, plaster ware stands at the crossroads between being observed as a copy of ceramics and being recognized as portable architecture. This article calls for an interdisciplinary approach, balancing the exact sciences of archaeometry and the theory of materiality. It will also address problems concerning terminology; it proposes replacing the term white ware with “plaster ware” as the most appropriate title for this ware because it can be better understood by a wider audience outside the discipline.
Nous vivons et nous pensons à l’intérieur d’un monde fait de choses fabriquées et de choses trouvées. Pourtant, les recherches psychologiques se sont peu intéressées à la relation entre la cognition et la culture matérielle : l’influence diachronique des choses dans la vie mentale humaine et leur potentiel de transformation demeurent peu étudiés. La plupart des psychologues considèrent les choses comme externes et passives, comme les objets sans vie auxquels se rapportent la conscience, la perception et la mémoire humaines. Au contraire, cet article soutient que les choses sont importantes pour la psychologie humaine et que leur rôle doit être pris en considération. Bien que les choses passent généralement inaperçues, elles sont tout sauf insignifiantes : elles jouent un rôle dans l’évolution de la vie cognitive. Nous pensons « avec » et « à travers » les choses, pas simplement « à propos » des choses. Les choses occupent l’espace intermédiaire entre l’esprit et la matière. La théorie de l’engagement matériel fournit un moyen de décrire et d’étudier cet espace intermédiaire où le cerveau, le corps et la culture se confondent.
Studies on languaging in the field of enactive linguistics and contemporary biosemiotics have made it possible to pose in a novel way some problems of a philosophical nature, problems to which the more classical approaches in the sciences of language (structuralist, generative, enunciative, and cognitive) have failed to give satisfactory answers.
A noção de agência tem sido usada com frequência na Arqueologia há mais de trinta anos. Durante este período, os significados e os usos do conceito de agência foram apropriados e transformados a partir dos paradigmas das diferentes linhas interpretativas arqueológicas. Contudo, muitas vezes, tais usos carecem de discussões teóricas e explicitações didáticas claras sobre as origens, princípios e modelos da noção de agência. Recentemente, o conceito de agência tem sido subsumido a uma revisão e debate teórico e metodológico cada vez mais intenso na área dos estudos da cultura material e tornou-se ponto central no processo de entendimento das sociedades do passado por meio do estudo relacional entre pessoas, materialidade e campos de ação. Este artigo visa apresentar e discutir o desenvolvimento da noção de agência, seus fundamentos e parâmetros aplicados aos estudos da cultura material. Iremos explorar teoricamente o conceito no campo da Antropologia visando entender como seus pressupostos alcançaram a Teoria Arqueológica e fornecer alguns instrumentos e recursos didáticos para a adoção e a aplicabilidade dos usos e significados da agência material.
Der Beitrag propagiert eine neue Form des historischen Schreibens für die Archäologie, eine subjektlose Erzählweise. Zunächst beschreibe ich die unterschiedlichen Diskurse, die sich in der deutschen Archäologie entwickelt haben. Auffällig ist dabei eine dem Deskriptiven huldigende Einstellung, die ich als »Katalogismus« anhand postkolonialer Überlegungen zu Archiven kritisiere. Ich vergleiche diese beschreibende Verfahrensweise mit Erzählstrukturen im historischen Bereich, wo eine gewisse Lebendigkeit gefordert wird. Ich argumentiere, dass die in der Archäologie vorherrschende »Fiktion der Faktizität« nicht durch die in der Literatur übliche Einfügung fiktiver Subjekte überwunden werden sollte. Vielmehr sollten wir eine Erzählform finden, die dem uns zur Verfügung stehenden Material entspricht. Dieses ist fragmentiert und lässt handelnde Individuen oder gar deren Namen nicht erkennen. Hingegen kennen wir das Material ausgezeichnet in seinen optischen, haptischen, olfaktorischen und anderen Qualitäten. Diese Ausgangsbasis passt exzellent zu den Prinzipien des französischen nouveau roman der 1950er Jahre, wie er von Alain Robbe-Grillet und anderen theoretisiert wurde. Mein Plädoyer ist daher, diese ins Postmoderne weisende Erzählform für die Archäologie nutzbar zu machen.
In this paper, we argue that the sociopolitical trajectory of Bronze Age of Crete was characterized by the progressive but intentional manipulation of an enduring collective ethos, notably in the organization of gatherings and feasts. These key practices, meant to ensure cohesion, took place within a larger social organization of which the constituents were formed by corporate groups that we interpret as “houses.” We also argue that the nature of these houses changed over time. This process is particularly evident in the varying contexts in which these gatherings took place, with differences in terms of scale and origin of participants and variations in the balance between base-driven and imposed practices. We highlight that a landscape initially dotted with small local communities, connected through kinship bonds and shared practices at the microregional level, was progressively transformed into a homogenous, all-embracing ideological structure, which pervaded society and constituted the backbone of its hierarchical organization. Legitimized and mobilized within a religious system with clear political overtones, this process resulted into a supra-regional, global network that can rightfully be called “Minoan.”
The use of laurel in Apolline divination at Delphi has been a prominent area of interest in academic debates over the possible influence of drugs on prophets. Previous analyses revealed the absence of chemicals in the bay capable of altering the human consciousness. In this paper, I argue that the laurel did nevertheless have the power to influence the Pythia’s mind through its cognitive impact on divinatory practices. The methodology pursues a cognitive approach that considers the object affordances and the human neural response. The paper concludes that, despite the modality being different from the one proposed in the past, the laurel had a strong impact on divination.
Scholarship often treats the post-Roman art produced in central and north-western Europe as representative of the pagan identities of the new 'Germanic' rulers of the early medieval world. In this book, Matthias Friedrich offers a critical reevaluation of the ethnic and religious categories of art that still inform our understanding of early medieval art and archaeology. He scrutinises early medieval visual culture by combining archaeological approaches with art historical methods based on contemporary theory. Friedrich examines the transformation of Roman imperial images, together with the contemporary, highly ornamented material culture that is epitomized by 'animal art.' Through a rigorous analysis of a range of objects, he demonstrates how these pathways produced an aesthetic that promoted variety (varietas), a cross-cultural concept that bridged the various ethnic and religious identities of post-Roman Europe and the Mediterranean worlds.
The introduction, “Caring about Things,” makes a case for why archaeology should be understood as the “discipline of things.” It sets out a definition of things, sketches the rudiments of a symmetrical archaeology, and lays out the structure of the -book.
In this book, Claudia Glatz reconsiders the concept of empire and the processes of imperial making and undoing of the Hittite network in Late Bronze Age Anatolia. Using an array of archaeological, iconographic, and textual sources, she offers a fresh account of one of the earliest, well-attested imperialist polities of the ancient Near East. Glatz critically examines the complexity and ever – transforming nature of imperial relationships, and the practices through which Hittite elites and administrators aimed to bind disparate communities and achieve a measure of sovereignty in particular places and landscapes. She also tracks the ambiguities inherent in these practices -- what they did or did not achieve, how they were resisted, and how they were subtly negotiated in different regional and cultural contexts.
This paper introduces a new approach to the study of Paleolithic minds. It is developed on the basis of the phenomenological concept of intentionality: the mind's central characteristic of being about or directed at something. In phenomenology, the world is considered not qua fact, but qua appearance, as a correlate of the mind's intentional activity. Both world‐appearance and the mind's directedness are further considered from a first‐person viewpoint, and in a scaffolding fashion, with more complex acts disclosing new types of objects or aspects of them. This paper develops a framework for applying intentional analysis to minds of the past. This way, the subjective “world‐having” of past subjects can be systematically reconstructed in a manner consistent with the empirical data available. This discloses a new field of inquiry that thus far has not been clearly grasped, even though the questions belonging to it are everywhere recognized as being of the greatest importance to the discipline. The intentional analysis of the scaffolding of acts and what they disclose can help to clarify essential concepts in cognitive archaeological debates, and to better understand the evolution of the hominin mind.
Archaeologists have long admired the naturalistic animal art of Minoan Crete, often explaining it in terms of religion or a love of the natural world. In this book, Andrew Shapland provides a new way of understanding animal depictions from Bronze Age Crete as the outcome of human-animal relations. Drawing on approaches from anthropology and Human-Animal Studies, he explores the stylistic development of animal depictions in different media, including frescoes, ceramics, stone vessels, seals and wall paintings, and explains them in terms of 'animal practices' such as bull-leaping, hunting, fishing and collecting. Integrating zooarchaeological finds, Shapland highlights the significance of objects and their associated human-animal relations in the history of the palaces, sanctuaries and tombs of Bronze Age Crete. His volume demonstrates how looking at animals opens up new perspectives on familiar sites such as Knossos and some of the most famous objects of this time and place.
The “science of old things,” archaeology is marked by its care, obligation, and loyalty to things, from ancient cities in the Mexican heartland and megalithic monuments in Britain to the perfume jars of the ancient Greek city-state and Leica cameras. This book seeks to understand the diverse practices that arise through this disciplinary commitment to things.
Modern archaeology has amassed considerable evidence for the disposal of the dead through burials, cemeteries and other monuments. Drawing on this body of evidence, this book offers fresh insight into how early human societies conceived of death and the afterlife. The twenty-seven essays in this volume consider the rituals and responses to death in prehistoric societies across the world, from eastern Asia through Europe to the Americas, and from the very earliest times before developed religious beliefs offered scriptural answers to these questions. Compiled and written by leading prehistorians and archaeologists, this volume traces the emergence of death as a concept in early times, as well as a contributing factor to the formation of communities and social hierarchies, and sometimes the creation of divinities.
Modern archaeology has amassed considerable evidence for the disposal of the dead through burials, cemeteries and other monuments. Drawing on this body of evidence, this book offers fresh insight into how early human societies conceived of death and the afterlife. The twenty-seven essays in this volume consider the rituals and responses to death in prehistoric societies across the world, from eastern Asia through Europe to the Americas, and from the very earliest times before developed religious beliefs offered scriptural answers to these questions. Compiled and written by leading prehistorians and archaeologists, this volume traces the emergence of death as a concept in early times, as well as a contributing factor to the formation of communities and social hierarchies, and sometimes the creation of divinities.
Modern archaeology has amassed considerable evidence for the disposal of the dead through burials, cemeteries and other monuments. Drawing on this body of evidence, this book offers fresh insight into how early human societies conceived of death and the afterlife. The twenty-seven essays in this volume consider the rituals and responses to death in prehistoric societies across the world, from eastern Asia through Europe to the Americas, and from the very earliest times before developed religious beliefs offered scriptural answers to these questions. Compiled and written by leading prehistorians and archaeologists, this volume traces the emergence of death as a concept in early times, as well as a contributing factor to the formation of communities and social hierarchies, and sometimes the creation of divinities.
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