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An Essay on Material Culture
Some Concluding Reflections
Kristian Kristiansen
The concept of Culture has been a battlefield between different theoretical regimes in the history of anthropology and archa- eology. Such debates are therefore also a historical barometer of the health and polemic vigour of the disciplines. So far they have often been framed within a conceptual strategy of oppositions, and several schemes have been produced over the years. Lewis Binford, Ian Hodder, Shanks and Tilley, John Barrett all employed this strategy in their polemic works. Some examples may suffice: idealism vs. materialism, normative ideas vs. social function, active meaning vs. passive symbol, practice vs. re- presentation etc. (see Oestigaard, Figure 1, in this volume for yet another example). It has also demonstrated that these battles over the nature of material culture were linked to cyclical changes in dominant theoretical frameworks (Kristiansen 1998, Figure 14 ). As it was always the same pairs of opposition that were employed
- only the positive and negative loading changed – it became increasingly clear that they probably referred to complementary properties of culture and society. From this realisation there has
Material Culture & Other Things during the 1990´s and the early 2nd millennium emerged an increasing interest in coming to grips with the central property of the archaeological record: material culture. From materialism to materiality. Questions of self, social identity and ethnic identity We have over the last 20 years seen a development from a general concern with materialism as a theoretical point of departure to a more focused concern with the active role played by material culture in social practice. Agency has been mobilised as a vitalising ingredient in social strategies (Dobres and Robb 2000), counterbalanced and constrained by practice and tradition (Barrett 1994, I prefer tradition for habitus ). The route towards a more theoretically integrated concern with materiality is marked by an increasing interdisciplinary integration, reflected in the Journal of Material Culture. As stated by Fahlander and Oestigaard: "The huge body of theoretical literature belongs not to a particular discipline anymore, but is shared knowledge among many actors on the scene of the social sciences" (Fahlander and Oestigaard: Introduction, p.5). This development is marked by a number of influential articles and works, such as De Marais, Castillo and Earle (1996). They introduced the concept of materialisation to account for the active role that material culture plays in social strategies and as an active framework in the formation and reproduction of institutions (also Kristiansen 1999, Renfrew 2001). Others have stressed the materiality of lived experiences, the role of bodily experience and expression (Treherne 1995 , Sørensen 1997 , Shanks 1999, Barrett 2000, Meskell and Joyce 2002). We are here encountering the relationship between the formation of the self through a social identity and its dialectical relationship with collective identities (from social groups/classes to polities/ethnicity). These perspectives are explored in articles by Cornell and Johannesen in this volume. It is a welcome revival of an old concept in archaeology and social anthropology.
Material Culture & Other Things While ethnicity undoubtedly played a central role in all human societies as part of a common origin and shared historical identity (tradition), its material expressions have been an underdeveloped field of study, since Hodder’s seminal work (Hodder 1982). It occupies a domain of cultural regularities of a non-evolutionary nature, and is today the focus of theoretical and interpretative controversies. Evolutionary archaeology has adopted a Darwinian theoretical framework of inheritance, transmission and selection to explain behavioural regularities in the tradition of David Clarke (Shennan 2004). It treats culture as a behavioural product with its own identity, whose meaning is only interpreted after the analysis. Culture is thus given a predefined meaning according to the theoretical framework employed (critical discussion in Clark 2000). It further raises the possibility of creating arbitrary and constructed continuities with the potential of ideological and political exploitation in the present (discussed by Normark). In opposition to this historically decontextualised approach a majority of archaeologists wish to begin with a contextualised historical interpretation. Here it has become increasingly clear that material culture form part of complex and sometimes overlapping social and ethnic identities (Figure 1). In the Carpathian tell cultures from the Bronze Age, strong traditions in pottery production distinguish different groups or polities from each other, but several of these ethnic groups, as it were, share a common tradition in metalwork and in the social tradition of tell settlements. How are we to interpret this complexity: it may refer to different levels of political and ethnic identities that can only be properly understood by a complete analysis and interpretation of the societies in their particular historical and cosmological setting. A similar pattern is found in the so-called Tumulus Culture from the Bronze Age in central and northern Europe. Here local identities are expressed in female ornaments, while such local groups share a common burial ritual, burials under a barrow, just as certain types of male weapons display the same interregional distribution. Again we are faced with a complex picture of different types of shared and non-
Some Concluding Reflections shared identities and traditions that also display different gender roles and traditions. Various types of interactions rooted in kinship and alliance systems may account for some part of the variation, while other parts are to be found in an understanding of shared symbolic meanings and a shared cosmological tradition, yet others in technological traditions and their role. With these two brief examples I wish to stress, firstly: that any understanding of the possible nature of prehistoric cultural identities must begin with a careful analysis of patterns of material evidence in time and space. Secondly: such an understanding must be grounded in a contextualised interpretation of the institutions that were responsible for the reproduction of society. Finally, this interpretative framework must be considered against the role and meaning of tradition, including cosmology. These are areas of research that have been badly neglected during the last 20 years of practice and agency based interpretations, leading to a overplaying of creative variation, and a downplaying of shared traditions in a wider time-space framework and their modifying role. Self and social identity, agency and innovation can only be properly understood against a background of tradition and the socialising role of institutions. Archeology as culture history. Reinstituting a contextualised comparative approach. In recent years we have seen a theoretical and interpretative development that favoured local variation at the expense of regional or interregional regularity. It went hand in hand with a critique of general interpretative frameworks and comparative ethnographic works that were considered to be rooted in a modern perception of the world, or even to be immoral (Gosden 1999:9). This rather high-handed dismissal of ethnohistory and comparative culture history went hand in hand with a sympathetic quest for understanding the otherness of the past and a stressing of prehistoric people as knowledgeable agents, who were able to act
Some Concluding Reflections between Marx and Hegel, dressed up in more advanced philosophical concepts. The critique also overlooked the fact that much of the otherness one was looking for in the pre-modern world, such as different conceptions of time, what constitutes humans and their perception of the world, was already to be found in social anthro- pology (summarised in Ingold 2000). This was demonstrated by Gosden in a historically contextualised (and critical) return to social anthropology (Gosden 1994 and 1999, Rowlands 2004, also Fahlander’s article in this volume). However, a comparative ethnohistory and ethno-archaeology were generally abandoned in the 1990´s in favour of a belief in the interpretative, hermeneutic dialogue between the archaeologist and the material evidence as the primary road to knowledge about the past. This strategy privileged the archaeologists as the great interpreter with the (unintended?) consequence of leaving too much room for speculation due to the lack of comparative culture historical correctives. The first question to ask is – do philosophical concepts and modern civilisation critique constitute relevant interpretative para- meters for understanding an archaeological past? Rather than ethnohistorical evidence of the variety of ways in which humans have organised themselves and perceived the world throughout history? And do the two strategies need to be opposed? (see also Oestigaard’s and Kyvik’s articles in this volume) Secondly, can we at all avoid employing universalistic concepts? Ian Hodder discusses this dilemma in his recent book, The Archaeological Process in which he recognises that general claims and universals are unavoidable. In many situations of political oppression they provide the basis for critique and resistance (Hodder 1999:205f.). In other situations, universals can be misused to promote interpretative hegemony. Once again, uni- versals and generalisation are context dependent. By abandoning comparative culture history and ethnohistory post-processual theory has lost a historical corrective to archa- eological interpretation. It has privileged the interpretative role of
Material Culture & Other Things the archaeologists with the danger of developing interpretations rooted in a romantic modern perception of the past. Solid meanings. The power of words and objects The existence of cultural regularities linked to various forms of identity, ethnicity and cosmological traditions of a longue durée, has raised a renewed concern with the role of institutions and the meanings linked to their reproduction through material symbols and through ritual performance and oral tradition. It has become increasingly clear that solid meanings of strong temporal durability can be attached to words and things (Kristiansen 2004 and in press, Odner 2000, Rowlands 2004). It reopens an old discussion about the role and meaning of tradition and of what constitutes tradition (this position is thus in some opposition to part of Normark’s article). But it also re-opens a debate about the role of material culture in transmitting memory and tradition, and in reproducing society (Rowlands 1993 ). From ethnohistory we learn that words (oral tradition) and objects (symbolically loaded objects) had a much stronger social and religious impact in society than we can imagine (Gell 1998). Consequently they were also much less subject to change, and when changes occur it is a result of a social or religious change of meaning. While Ian Hodder demonstrated this symbolic capacity of meaning in material culture in his book Symbols in Action (Hodder 1982), such an approach has been slow to be taken onboard in archaeological case studies. This is regrettable; only archaeology can provide historical evidence of the persistence of long term traditions in social institutions and cosmology, as I shall demonstrate below with an example from the Nordic Bronze Age. Mary Helms has in several books demonstrated the integrated role of myth, wisdom and skilled crafting as constituting a necessary, but not sufficient background for achieving power in pre-state societies. It is well exemplified in her work on ancient Panama, Chiefs in Search of Power (Helms 1979 ).
Material Culture & Other Things According to this I maintain that in conditions of social and political continuity (or displaced continuity), oral tradition was persistent and able to transmit songs, hymns and myths over half a millennia or more without major changes, but rather adding detail from later periods to make the songs comprehensible. Oral tradition is in certain contexts more persistent than literary tradition, as it makes very high demands on correctness. The success of rituals depended on the correct wording of the hymns (Cavallin 2002:215), and bards and druids in pre-literate societies were consequently among the most learned people in history, their education taking up to 20-25 years, as described above. If changes were added to the songs and hymns they were deliberate, not due to lack of memory, which is a modern concept that would have been foreign to any learned druid or bard.^1 Dynastic changes may change the relative structure of heroes and their histories, evidenced in the Nordic realm, where early versions of sagas, such as Beowulf, that survived on the Nordic periphery in England maintained heroic tales that were later marginalised in the Scandinavian centres. The same is probably true of the Iliad and the Odyssey that were maintained, not on the Greek mainland, but at the courts where the fleeing elites survived (Bennet 1997 ). Common to all societies is the recognition of origin, a be- ginning, which refers to a cosmological point of origin, such as the birth of Christ or Muhammad. It underlines a perception of cosmological continuity, a shared heritage, which may be broken only by exceptional circumstances of major historical disruptions and social transformations. In early state societies genealogical lists of kings and ancestors would constitute a time frame that linked mortals and gods together, supported by myth, such as the story of Gilgamesh, an early king of Uruk from the mid 3rd (^1) In Nepal recent work has demonstrated similar patterns of learning among shamans. They share with prehistoric druids and ethnohistoric wise men and great chiefs a learning period of up to 20 years and the subsequent ability to reproduce complex narratives word for word. Christopher Evans has recorded that oral reproductions of the same narratives in Nepal by different shamans are identical with a shared similarity of 99% (Evans in press ).
Some Concluding Reflections millennium BC. His adventures (with his "twin" brother Enkidu) evolved into a heroic and mythological prototype about the relation between humans and gods, the meaning of life and how to become heroic and wise. It was translated and preserved for more than two thousand years throughout the Near East, as part of a common cultural heritage. It thus transcended its original cultural context and became part of a larger cosmological context that was shared by the societies of the Near East and the east Mediterranean during the Bronze Age and early Iron Age, who in turn incorporated part of it in their local myths and tales. It thereby exemplifies how shared traditions and local cultures coexisted during the Bronze Age, being part of what I have called the Bronze Age world system. The beginning of a new cosmological time in the North was marked by a major social transformation around 1500 BC that introduced a new, shared, Nordic tradition in metalwork, a new chiefly culture that reshaped the landscape and the settlement and a building program of monumental barrows for the local chiefly elites (Kristiansen 1998). Within a brief period of 200 years it resulted in the construction of tens of thousands of barrows, which even today dominate the landscape in many regions in southern Scandinavia. The adoption of the spiral style was a conscious choice to signal that the ancestors of the Nordic Culture originated in Minoan and Mycenean culture, whose institutions they had selectively adopted and recontextualized during the preceding generations. By 1500 BC, in an explosion of creativity, the new social order was materialised into a new cultural order that persisted for nearly a thousand years in unbroken tradition, yet incorporating new rituals and symbols along the way. Central among these was the instituion of the Sun Maiden and her twin brothers, linked to and supporting the institution of twin rulers. In the Nordic Bronze Age where oral traditions constituted the medium for preserving cosmological and mythical tradition, material culture helped to preserve memory. The barrows were gradually developing into mounds of chiefly ancestors, where selective members of the lineage would be buried in secondary
Some Concluding Reflections visualization had a strong stabilising effect, and made it easier to sustain heroic and religious memory as it was evidenced in the landscape. Fig 2. The symbolic materialisation of the institution of Divine Twins during the Nordic Bronze Age, lasting 1000 years.
Material Culture & Other Things Interpretative fields of meaning. Constructing conceptual relations Following from this I propose that particular local practices can only be understood against an established background of shared traditions in time and space. To get there we need to unwrap contextual studies of their localised interpretative constraints. No society is an island. Furthermore, meaning can be established only by employing comparative culture-historical and ethnohistorical evidence. We cannot dream up new interpretations that we have no concepts for. No divine, interpretative Being can replace the theoretical labour needed to formulate interpretative concepts. It may help us to open a door to new perceptions of the past, but once the door is open, we realise that the room is empty. We therefore need to contextualise, theoretically and historically, our most commonly employed interpretative concepts each time we start a research project. We need to fill the room with interpretative furniture. As has indeed been done in several of the works mentioned. But, more often, concepts such as agency, memory or power, are applied in a rather unreflecting way, as if their meaning is already understood or will be revealed solely through archaeological interpretation. But each historical epoch and context, whether local or global, demands theoretical redefinition and conceptual adjustments to account for its historical and cosmological traditions and particularities. There is no universal Self or Being. This is exemplified in Alfred Gell’s book Art and Agency (Gell 1998). He defines agency as being social and relational. That includes also material objects and art, which are ascribed agency once they are immersed into social relationships. This is exemplified by case studies of religious idols and style. Animation, divinity and power can thus be ascribed to specific objects that have undergone special rituals and/or are decorated in a certain way. The observed practice of interchangeability of agency and power between humans, animals and objects in ethnohistorical contexts can be meaningfully understood only by applying a particular, contextualised definition of agency. In this way Gell
Material Culture & Other Things Fig 3. Conceptual relationship between practice and social institutions, traditions and material worlds. In Figure 3 , I have exemplified the dynamic relationship between those factors that should always be considered in a study of practice, performance and agency. It is more than a checklist though, as it suggests that the middle field of everyday routines, practices, performances and decisions are always in a dynamic relationship to tradition and institutions. And indeed, that these institutions themselves are constituted by practice. One can then in the continuing work develop more specific models, or return to Figure 3 in order to evaluate the impact of the three worlds of institutional practice, perhaps by adding some quantitative parameters if possible.
Some Concluding Reflections Fig 4. Integrated dynamic relationship between social institutions and tradition and their relation to material culture, symbolic meaning and its materialisation. In figure 4, I have made an attempt to exemplify the dynamic and dialectic relationship between some of the concepts from Figure 3. This figure exemplifies the more specific relationship between institutions and their materialisation, and how traditions are mainly linked to the material world of symbolic meaning, while institutions and social practice are more closely linked. This is, of course, a hypothesis that can be developed only through further case studies. It suggests, however, that solid meanings of oral tradition and rituals and material meanings are intimately related, whereas institutions may employ these meanings in new ways to
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