Ethnoarchaeology in Action

Nicholas, David; Kramer, Carol

doi:10.1017/cbo9781316036488

Cited by 349 publications

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“…Groundbreaking work by Arnold (1988Arnold ( , 1991, David and Kramer (2001), David et al (1988), Deal (1988Deal ( , 1998, Rice (1987), Rye and Evans (1976), and Shepard (1980), among others, have demonstrated the value of technology and ethnoarchaeological research in understanding ceramics recovered from archaeology. For a long time within the African continent, ceramic studies have focused mainly on typology, either due to the expense of laboratory procedures involved in conducting technological investigations or the failure to pose relevant social questions on existing archaeological assemblages.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ceramics, Ethnohistory, and Ethnography: Locating Meaning in Southern African Iron Age Ceramic Assemblages

Pikirayi

Lindahl

2013

Afr Archaeol Rev

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For ceramics to be relevant in the Southern African Iron Age, archaeologists must broaden their theoretical base to include social and other contexts when interpreting material culture items such as pottery. Pottery remains critical in understanding cultural dynamics in the region for the past two millennia, but current usage is narrow in scope. Using ethnohistorical data and archaeological examples from South Africa and Zimbabwe, we argue that pottery provides valuable information on the region's Iron Age, if archaeologists address the social meaning of ceramic assemblages. Ceramic production among rural communities provides the basis on which a wide range of social issues are discussed and used to critique pottery recovered from archaeology. Ethnography suggests that ceramic assemblages are context specific, and archaeologists are cautioned against making generic statements on the basis of similarities of vessel shape and decoration motif.Résumé Pour faire en sorte que la céramique contribue aux études de l'Âge du Fer en Afrique australe, l'interprétation archéologique doit prendre meileure mesure des différents contextes dans lesquels évolue la poterie. La poterie joue un rôle critique dans la compréhension des dynamiques culturelles de la région au cours des deux derniers millénaires, mais elle demeure limitée dans son usage. Sur la base de données ethnohistoriques et d'exemples archéologiques tirés d'Afrique du Sud et du Zimbabwe, nous soutenons que la poterie peut fournir des informations précieuses sur l'Âge de Fer régional si les archéologues s'attachent à examiner la signification sociale des assemblages céramiques. La production potière dans les communautés rurales nous permet de traiter un large éventail de questions sociales et de formuler une critique de la poterie issue de I. Pikirayi (*) Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Pretoria, Pretoria 0038, South Africa e-mail: innocent.pikirayi@up.ac.za A. Lindahl Laboratory for Ceramic Research, Department of Geology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden e-mail: Anders.Lindahl@geol.lu.se 1 l'archéologie. Nos données ethnographiques suggèrent que les assemblages céramiques doivent être traités dans leur contexte propre, et mettent les archéologues en garde contre les explications générales sur la base de similarités morphologiques et décoratives.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ceramics, Ethnohistory, and Ethnography: Locating Meaning in Southern African Iron Age Ceramic Assemblages

Pikirayi

Lindahl

2013

Afr Archaeol Rev

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“…'Ethnoarchaeolgy is neither a theory nor a method' (David and Kramer 2001, 2) and we only distinguish an ethnoarchaeological study from any other ethnography by the fact that it explicitly addresses archaeological concepts. Almost any ethnography can inform archaeological interpretation, but its relevance is only made clear by making interpretative links between archaeological data and the examples or concepts reported by the ethnographer.…”

Section: The Use Of Analogy and The Role Of Ethnoarchaeologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Using the present to interpret the past: the role of ethnographic studies in Andean archaeology

Sillar

Joffré

2016

World Archaeology

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Within Andean research it is common to use ethnographic analogies to aid the interpretation of archaeological remains, and ethnographers and archaeologists have developed shared research in technology, material culture and material practice. Although most of this research does not follow the detailed recording methods of spatial patterning envisioned in earlier formulations of ethnoarchaeology, it has had a profound effect on how archaeology in the region has been interpreted. This paper uses examples from the study of pottery production to address earlier debates about the use of ethnographic analogy, discusses the dangers of imposing an idealised or uniform vision of traditional Andean societies onto earlier periods ('Lo Andino') but stresses the benefits of combining ethnographic and archaeological research to explore continuities and changes in cultural practice and regional variations.

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“…Bourdieu 1977;Foucault 1979;Giddens 1979;1984) have been brought to bear on the study of archaeological data for more than three decades (e.g. David and Kramer 2001;Dobres 2000). A dominant concern among these studies has been with technology and charting innovation, change, and continuity.…”

Section: Practice: Text As Process and Outcomementioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction: Developing an approach to writing as material practice

Piquette¹,

Whitehouse²

2013

Writing as Material Practice: Substance, Surface and Medium

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Scope and ImpetusThis book grapples with the issue of writing and related graphical modes as forms of material culture. The diverse case studies are unified and underpinned by the notion that writing is fundamentally material -that it is preceded by and constituted through the material practices of human practitioners. From this vantage point, understandings of things that are written must therefore go beyond study of textual meanings and take account of the material worlds in which writing is inextricably embedded. In aligning along this common theme, analytical and interpretive priority is given, not to the linguistic and semantic meanings of graphical marks, but to their physicality and the ways in which this relates to creators and users. Covering a temporal span of some 5000 years, from c.3200 bce to the present day, and ranging in spatial context from the Americas to the Near East, the papers bring a variety of perspectives which contribute to both specific and broader questions of writing, its meaning and significance. As such, these case studies also contribute to an emerging discourse (below) on 'writing' and 'materiality' . They also contribute to the development of contextualising paradigms equipped to cope with the complexities of graphical cultures in relation to the people who created and attributed meaning to them through a diverse array of individual and wider social practices.While an increasing emphasis on materiality has characterised many fields of archaeological research over the last 20 years, studies of writing have lagged behind in this respect. The main reason is a long established and difficult-to-shift disciplinary division between archaeology and philology, in which the philologists -often brought in by archaeologists as technical experts whose interpretations are hard to challenge -have had the upper hand. This has led to an emphasis on the content of inscriptions and other writing, concentrating on languages, scripts and the semantic meanings of texts. These studies not only neglect materiality, which is our focus here, but they also tend to neglect context (both the specific archaeological context of the artefact, and the broader cultural and historical context into which written surfaces fit). Studies of content, context and materiality are all necessary for a holistic study of writing and many of the papers in this volume, while concentrating on material aspects of writing, do also deal with the meaning of the texts being studied and the contexts of their production and use. Our concern with the question of writing artefactuality was prompted by methodological problems arising out of our own research on ancient writing (e.g. Piquette 2007;forthcoming;Whitehouse 2008;2012). Our interest in exploring writing materialities cross-culturally is also inspired by the work of several scholars who also challenge the traditional disciplinary division between archaeology and philology (e.g. Moreland 2001;2006; cf. Bottéro 1992;. "Textaided archaeology" (Hawkes 1954; see also Little 1992) an...

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Ethnoarchaeology in Action

Cited by 349 publications

References 0 publications

Ceramics, Ethnohistory, and Ethnography: Locating Meaning in Southern African Iron Age Ceramic Assemblages

Ceramics, Ethnohistory, and Ethnography: Locating Meaning in Southern African Iron Age Ceramic Assemblages

Using the present to interpret the past: the role of ethnographic studies in Andean archaeology

Introduction: Developing an approach to writing as material practice

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