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Style, Society, and Person: Archaeological and Ethnological Perspectives PDF

486 Pages·1995·13.21 MB·English
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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, ix 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. xi

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Style, Society, and Person integrates the diverse current and past understandings of the causes of style in material culture. It comprehensively surveys the many factors that cause style; reviews theories that address these factors; builds and tests a unifying framework for integrating the theories;
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