Selena Vitezovic – Archaeotechnology. Studying Technology From Prehistory to the Middle Ages (2014)

Автор: Selena Vitezovic
Название книги: Archaeotechnology. From Prehistory to the Middle Ages (2014)
Формат: PDF
Жанр: Археология
Страницы: 320
Качество: Изначально компьютерное, E-book

Technology is a fascinating material expression of human culture,
commonly regarded as an evidence of human triumph over nature. The human
past was seen as a constant progress from “primitive” to “technologically
advanced”, and even classified after what is thought to be a dominating
technique in a given period (e. g. Childe 1944, see also Greene 2006).
Technological innovations were considered the main, if not the only driving
forces that shape societies and cultures (cf. Pfaffenberger 1988).
Technology, as a conceptual approach to material culture studies,
derived from the Greek word τέχνη, meaning skill, implies all human actions
upon a matter (Inizan et al. 1995: 13). Everything is technological
around us, and this includes not only artefacts, but all structures, buildings,
and even nature modified by human hand (cf. Lemonnier 1992b, Greene
2006). The term technology includes a full range of topics from those related
to individual level (body gestures, embodied knowledge in crafting) to
social and cultural settings of production.
Archaeological studies are indistinguishable from studies of technology;
material remains constitute the core of archaeological evidence,
regardless of the period, region, methodological approaches or theoretical
frameworks, and even studies in beliefs, religion, etc., rely on analyses
of diverse artefacts. Artefacts represent our source for “reading” past
lives – by studying them, we can make conclusion about people who made
them and used them, what their meaning and value were, how they were
used, reused and discarded. They may have both functional and symbolic
roles, and a special meaning for the society or individuals within it, that
may change and/or became more complex over time. During its lifetime,
an object can be used in many different contexts and have diverse, even
contradictory meanings and values. Objects can also be rare and luxury, or
occasional, craft-produced objects, or common, functional, mass-produced
industrial objects; furthermore, one class of artefacts may have examples
of rare, crafted and mass-produced specimens (cf. Caple 2006, Miller 2007).
Ideas from social anthropology had an important influence on the
theoretical advances in studies of technology. The work of Malinowski and
Radcliffe-Brown, for example, showed that a complex social structure was
invariably reflected within objects (cf. Caple 2006). Theories of a French
anthropologist Marcel Mauss, who was interested in how culture (as opposed
to nature) influences and shapes human behaviour, are particularly
important as well. His starting point was that something generally perceived as natural (for example, body posture, way of walking, etc.), was
in fact cultural. The way a person eats, walks, sleeps, even holds and uses
tools, differs, depends on their culture, age and sex. The accent of these
studies is on the impact of a group on individuals, their relationships, as
well as the questioning of the cultural and the natural in human behaviour
(Deliège 2012 [2006]: 82-84, Lévi-Strauss 1982 [1973]: 13-15, cf. also Inizan
et al. 1995: 14).
A wider concept of technology, which goes beyond artefact analyses,
which regards technology as a practice, as ways of doing or making
something, which also includes social and cultural components into the
studies, is more and more accepted by many researchers. Henry Hodges
(1976) distinguished technology from the study of stylistic details of artefacts,
implying that technology was about the process of production rather
than the endpoint (objects).
Ursula Franklin (1992) understood technology as ways of doing
something rather than simply ways of making (creating) something (an
object), so that there are technologies of prayer and of storytelling as well
as of pottery production and weaving, while for Robert Merrill (1977: vi)
technology is “the culture surrounding the actions or activities involved in
making or doing things”. For M.-A. Dobres and C. Hoffman (1999) technology
is “an ever unfolding process”, and their view of technology “stresses
the dynamic, ongoing and socially constituted nature of sociotechnical activities”
(Dobres & Hoffman 1999: 3).
Heather Miller, in her book dealing with archaeological approaches
to technology, defined it as a “set of actions and relationships: from production
itself, to the organization of the production process, to the entire
cultural system of processes and practices associated with production and
consumption” (Miller 2007: 4). Furthermore, she defines the production as
“the actual process of fabrication or creation, including both the material
objects and the techniques and gestures used”, organization of production
as “the organizational arrangement within which production takes place”,
and the technological system as an active system of interconnections between
people and objects during the creation of an object, its distribution,
and to some extent its use and disposal. In other words, technology or technological
systems can be roughly described as processes and practices associated
with production and consumption, from design to discard (Miller
2007: 5).
Diverse concepts have been developed, and probably the most important
contribution to the study of technology was the work of André Leroi-
Gourhan (1964, 1965, 1971), who created the concept of chaîne opéra
toire (see also Lemonnier 1992a). This is an analytical tool for studying the
mode of creating, using and discarding an artefact, starting with raw material
acquisition, mode of manufacture, final form, use (including caching,
breaking and repairing) up to final discarding, with the main goal of reconstructing
the organization of a technological system and of describing and
understanding all cultural transformations that a specific raw material had
had to go through. It is a chronological segmentation of actions and mental
processes required in the manufacture of an artefact and its maintenance
in the technical system of a prehistoric group (Inizan et al. 1995: 14, cf. also
Sellet 1993). The concept is not only about reconstructing the algorithmic
sequence of operations in creating one object, but it is a complex analysis
of operational chain within one society, which includes the analysis of technological
choices. The analyses of technologies today include a variety of
different approaches, most of them putting the emphasis on cultural and
social aspects of technology.
Methodology also went through significant changes, especially in
the field of interdisciplinary and experimental work. Studies of diverse artefacts,
such as stone, flint or metal, cannot be imagined without careful
identification and detailed analyses of raw material origin. Interdisciplinary
researches became particularly emphasized by the processual archaeology
since the 1960s, and today they constitute an integral part of almost
every archaeological research, regardless of the chronological period. They
are irreplaceable for the determination of raw material origins and can also
contribute to identifying diverse transformative processes certain raw material
had undergone.
Experimental and ethnoarchaeological studies also constitute a
very important segment of technological studies. Although present in archaeological
research since its early days (e.g., Martin 1910), they are more
diverse, more common and more scientifically based since the mid-20th
century. Again, processual archaeology and its demands for scientific rigor
contributed greatly in developing new methods, but the work of soviet archaeologist
Sergei A. Semenov has the most prominent place in the history
of experimental archaeology, due to the diversity of research questions he
dealt with and the wide range of chronological periods and materials he
covered (Семенов 1957, 1968, Semenov 1976; cf. Korobkova 2008 for an
overview, also Skakun & Longo eds. 2008 for an overview of current research
in this field).
Most archaeological technology studies focus on an individual technology
– flint knapping, metallurgy, etc. Archaeologists usually classify
technologies into “crafts” or “industries” based on material or end-product type: clay (pottery) production, metal working, basket making, stone object
(lithics) production, woodworking, textile manufacture. Such material
groupings are very useful from both the theoretical as well as a practical
perspective, however, they may be counterproductive sometimes (cf. Miller
2007), or better put, the study should not end with analyses of a single technology
only. Although this is necessary for a deeper understanding of particular
technologies, given the complexity of the topics, a wider approach
is needed, namely a multiple technologies perspective (Lemonnier 1992b,
1993, see also Inizan et al. 1995).
All techniques in a given society refer to one another – they can
share the same resources, same knowledge, same tools, same actors. Moreover,
some techniques use the products of others, as well as the existence of
operational sequences or technical principles in common, creating multiple
relations of interdependence, which gives them a systemic character. All
technologies have systemic aspects, and we can talk about technological
systems in the same way as, for example, ethnologists talk about kinship
systems. Technological systems can be analysed on three levels. Firstly, we
can discuss how these five components interact with each other to form a
technology. Secondly, if we consider all the technologies of a given society,
we can analyse how they are interrelated. And finally, the third level of discussion
is the relation between technologies and other social phenomena.
Analyses of multiple technologies, therefore, can expand the range of studied
cultural phenomena and at the same time provide a better understanding
of a given culture and society (Lemonnier 1992b, 1993). This book is a result of a session organized at the XXXVI Annual
meeting of the Serbian Archaeological Society, held in Novi Sad, from 30th
May to 1st June 2013. The aim of the session was to promote the technological
perspective on different aspects of material culture and to encourage
multiple technology studies. Papers include studies on artefacts from stone
(M. Lopičić, D. Antonović, D. Rajković et al., V. Dimitrovska), bone (C. Beldiman
et al., D.-M. Sztancs et al., S. Vitezović), clay (I. Atanasova, J. Vuković,
V. Bikić) and metal (M. Radivojević et al.), but also include more complex
technologies, such as constructions of thermic structures (A. Đuričić), the
making of mosaic substructures (G. Jeremić) and water supply systems (T.
Mihailović). Also, studies cover a large time span, from Late Palaeolithic/
Mesolithic to the Middle Ages