Style, Society, and Person: Archaeological and Ethnological Perspectives

486 Pages·1995·13.21 MB·English

by  Christopher Carr

Style, Society, and Person
Archaeological and
Ethnological Perspectives
INTERDISCIPLINARY CONTRIBUTIONS TO ARCHAEOLOGY
Series Editor: Michael Jochim, University of Califomia, Santa Barbara
Founding Editor: Roy S. Dickens, Jr., Late of University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Current Volumes in This Series:
THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST AND MESOAMERICA
Systems of Prehistoric Exchange
Edited by Jonathon E. Ericson and Timothy G. Baugh
THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF GENDER
Separating the Spheres in Urban America
Diana diZerega Wall
DIVERSITY AND COMPLEXITY IN PREHISTORIC MARITIME SOCIETIES
A Gulf of Maine Perspective
Bruce J. Bourque
EARLY HUNTER-GATHERERS OF THE CALIFORNIA COAST
Jon M. Erlandson
ETHNOHISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY
Approaches to Postcontact Change in the Americas
Edited by J. Daniel Rogers and Samuel M. Wilson
FROM KOSTEN SKI TO CLOVIS
Upper Paleolithic-Paleo-Indian Adaptations
Edited by Olga Soffer and N. D. Praslov
HOUSES AND HOUSEHOLDS
A Comparative Study
Richard E. Blanton
ORIGINS OF ANATOMICALLY MODERN HUMANS
Edited by Matthew H. Nitecki and Doris V. Nitecki
PREHISTORIC EXCHANGE SYSTEMS IN NORTH AMERICA
Edited by Timothy G. Baugh and Jonathon E. Ericson
REGIONAL APPROACHES TO MORTUARY ANALYSIS
Edited by Lane Anderson Beck
STYLE, SOCIETY, AND PERSON
Archaeological and Ethnological Perspectives
Edited by Christopher Carr and Jill E. Neitzel
A Continuation Order Plan is available for this series. A continuation order will bring delivery
of each new volume immediately upon publication. Volumes are billed only upon actual
shipment. For further information please contact the publisher.
Style, Society, and Person
Archaeological and
Ethnological Perspectives
Edited by
CHRISTOPHER CARR
Arizona State University
Tempe, Arizona
and
JILL E. NEITZEL
University of Delaware
Newark, Delaware
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
On file
Cover design: "The Mask." The left half of the cover design i s an adaptation of a set of
overlaid human and animal images apparently representing one or more masks worn by an
elite member of Ohio Hopewell Society (150 B.C.-A.D. 350) and rendered on a bone. From
the Hopewell site (Chicago Field Museum of Natural History catalog number 56369).
Cover design by Christopher Carr.
ISBN 978-1-4899-1099-8 ISBN 978-1-4899-1097-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4899-1097-4
© 1995 Springer Science+Business Media New York
Originally published by Plenum Press, New York in 1995
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1995
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or
otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher
To Betty, Lorie, and Leonard for sharing craft, life, and spirit
-co c.
To my parents, Jane and Robert E. Neitzel, with much love
and appreciation
-J. E. N.
Contributors
David P. Braun • The Nature Conservancy; Arlington, Virginia 22209.
Christopher Carr • Department of Anthropology; Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287.
Robert E Maslowski • Department of Environmental Planning, United States Army Corps of
Engineers, Huntington, West Virginia 2570l.
Craig Morris • Department of Anthropology; American Museum of Natural History, New York,
New York 10024-5129.
Jill E. Neitzel • Department of Anthropology; University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware 19716.
Stephen Plog • Department of Anthropology; University of Virginia, CharlotteSville, Virginia 22903.
John Pryor • Department of Anthropology, California State University, Fresno, Fresno, California
93701.
Peter G. Roe' Department of Anthropology; University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, 19716.
Beryl Rosenthal • St. Louis Science Center, St. Louis, Missouri 63110.
Jerome A. Voss • Department of Anthropology; Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan
48824-1118.
Dorothy K. Washburn • American Section, University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, Phila
delphia, Pennsylvania 19104.
Robert L. Young • Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Texas, Arlington, Texas
76019.
vii
Preface
The beauty of the human condition is to be found wherever awareness and balance of its multiple
dimensions transcend the veils of singular perceptions and paradigms. Only through experiencing
and integrating many poles is the richness of the whole approached. So it is with the study of material
style or any other mark of our humanity.
This book was conceived and is written in this light. The primary aim of this book is to integrate
many of the diverse current and past understandings of material style. Twelve ethnologists, archaeolo
gists, and artists combine efforts here to inventory and describe the essential factors that cause material
style. The authors also review, define appropriate bounds for, and integrate theories that pertain to
those factors, and build and test some new theoretical frameworks. Consideration is given to causal
processes at multiple organizational scales, including the ecological-evolutionary, technological,
sociocultural, social-psychological, personal behavioral, personal psychological, depth-psychological,
and physiological scales. The various expressions of some of these processes in egalitarian and
hierarchically organized societies, and in media and through crafting techniques of many kinds, are
explored. Also, the manners in which different ranges of processes map to different kinds of stylistic
traits is theorized and illustrated.
At some intuitive level, the recent drive in archaeology to include the uniqueness of context,
history, and meaning in research on style-and the archaeological record in general-is an attempt to
know again the peoples we study and to approach our humanity. The detached and splintered views of
the human that positivist archaeologists took during the 1970s through the 1980s have rightly become
unsatisfying by themselves. The trend to embrace the unique is continued in this book in a tempered
way Many chapters emphasize the contextual and historical-specific nature of expression of the
processes that cause material style, and the correlations between process and form. Attention is given
to "on-the-ground" behaviors and ideas in addition to "general processes," and to the individual in
addition to society and the ecosystem. Thus, in this book, no universal, decontextualizing theory of
style is built or thought possible or desirable. However, multiple theories of style, which pertain to
different contexts and causal factors, are integrated systematically with each other. And a middle-range
theory and analytic strategies that assume the context-specific nature of rules and regularities are
offered. In this way, as always, when awareness of both the whole and the particular and their dynamic
is maintained, "information" is more easily transformed into intuitively satisfying "appreciation."
Anthropology becomes both a science and a humanity.
In investigating the complexity of style and the multiple views that are necessary to understand it,
this book lays a philosophy and attitude for approaching style. It is concluded that to be a skilled
analyst of style, the researcher should be a whole anthropolOgist-one who is broad-minded and
capable of evaluating a very wide range of causal factors, from the ecological to the psychological. The
researcher should also be willing to cross disciplinary lines into biology, material science, psychology,
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x Preface
and art when making interpretations. When limited by either paradigm or discipline, the potential for
appreciation is compromised.
This book's path toward a balanced and integrated approach to style began in part as an extension
of Carr's earlier professional and advocational work in quantitative archaeology and art. During the
1980s, Carr investigated how quantitative archaeological research might be made more logically
consistent and accurate by explicitly bridging certain archaeological theories, quantitative techniques,
and data structures to each other. A primary aspect of this work was enumerating the archaeological
variables that are relevant to particular kinds of processes. Stylistic variables and processes were
among those to which the most effort was given to systematize their interrelations. The unified,
middle-range theory of artifact design presented in Chapter 7 developed from that effort. Carr's focus
on style and the building of this theory, in tum, rests on his personal inSights into crafting processes
obtained through some twenty years of art training and work with many media.
With the development of a schematic framework for integrating theory on material style, Carr
joined in research, thought, and writing with other archaeologists, ethnologists, and artists to broaden
and test it. Kathleen Hinkle, Kathryn King, Robert Maslowski, John Pryor, Beryl Rosenthal, and Carr
gave the unified theory tough cross-media tests through their analyses of prehistoric fabrics, cordage,
basketry, cold-hammered metal ornaments, and carved wooden face masks. The results of most of
these analyses are reported in Part III of this book. David Braun, Jerry Voss, and Beryl Rosenthal
provided very essential concepts to the unified theory through their discussions with Carr about these
analyses, their own research, and style in general.
Synchronous with this research, Jill Neitzel independently began her own studies of style and
complex societies. Her studies emerged from the seminal and exciting intellectual environment that
crystallized in the Department of Anthropology at Arizona State University during the late 1970s and
early 1980s. Under the chairmanship of Fred Plog, faculty members and graduate students in the
department produced a stream of new and often controversial ideas.
Many of these ideas pertained to the complexity of prehistoric Southwestern societies and the
stylistic patterning of their ceramics. Neitzel wrote her dissertation on the regional organization and
ceramic style distributions of the Hohokam in south central Arizona. Later, through her work on the
distributions of pottery styles in the northern Southwest, she came to appreciate that previously
applied models of stylistiC patterning, which were derived from egalitarian societies, were not
applicable to the prehistoric societies of the Southwest if they were hierarchically organized. She began
her own investigations of stylistic patterning in complex societies.
Further theory development and integration was spurred by two symposia on style, which
Neitzel and Carr chaired in 1985 at the Society for American Archaeology annual meeting in Denver.
These were respectively entitled "Stylistic Patterning in Regional Systems of Interaction" and "Cross
Media, Technological, and Social Approaches toward a General Theory of Artifact Style." The two
symposia complemented each other and spurred our collaboration on this volume. Some of the
authors of chapters in this book participated in these symposia. Authors were selected for the different
theoretical perspectives on style that they command and the different processes and media into which
they have first-hand insight. Some have been key participants in recent debates about style; others are
younger researchers who have attempted to resolve various issues with fresh data and ideas. Through
the detailed planning, discussion, and reviewing of the chapters, all of the authors contributed
significantly to the scope and integration of theory presented here. This book is very much a group
effort.
We hope that the philosophy, theoretical framework, and examples in this book will help to
broaden and balance future style research. We invite the reader to play with, as well as evaluate, our
ideas and, in so dOing, to help wed the ways of the arts and sciences in understanding material style as
one aspect of our humanity:
CHRISTOPHER CARR AND JILL E. NEITZEL
Acknow ledgments
The editors are most thankful for the vigor and flexibility of the contributors while the chapters were
planned, themes were suggested, and specific topics were distributed among them. Our extended
discussions were thought-provoking and essential to the integrated view of style presented here. We
also thank several anonymous reviewers, Michael Jochim, and Eliot Werner for a number of
suggestions that helped to clarify our ideas and their presentation. A special thanks is also owed to
Trudy Brown for her thoroughness and patience throughout the production process. We especially
appreciate the work of Marsha Schweitzer, who entered and reformatted much of this book on the
computer.
I, Christopher Carr, would especially like to thank Jerry Voss, David Braun, Beryl Rosenthal,John
Pryor, and Peter Roe for their key ideas, and also for making this experience a playful intellectual
adventure as much as an endeavor. I also give my heart-felt thanks to my art teachers and friends, Lorie
Otis Thomas and Leonard Madura, for the technical training and the love and spirit of art that they
shared with me. I am very thankful also for the academic stimulation and personal support that Jill
Neitzel gave me through the years of our work on this book and for her strong editorial hand, and for
Geof Clark's consistent encouragement and belief in this project. To my mother, Betty, I return with
thanks the love, peace, and joy that she allowed me to discover within, through her skillful crafting of
my scientific and artistic sides.
!,Jill Neitzel, would like to thank Loretta Reinhardt and Rosamund Vanderburgh for sparking my
initial interest in material style; Gary Feinman, Jeffrey Hantman, and Fred Plog for encouraging me to
pursue this topic in my dissertation; and Chris Carr for challenging me to broaden my ideas about
style beyond Southwestern ceramics. I also acknowledge the Smithsonian Institution for the Post
doctoral Fellowship and the American Museum of Natural HiStory for the Boechenstein Postdoctoral
Fellowship, which supported my work on this volume. As always, my deepest gratitude is owed to
Willett, Rueben, Judson, and Hannah Kempton. By just being themselves, they have enriched my life
throughout the course of this project.
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