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FROM VENERATION TO EXPLOITATION
HUMAN ENGAGEMENT WITH THE MINERAL WORLD
Nicole Boivin
At present writing, the power of the mineral world is difficult to ignore. Current global politics are dominated by conflicts that, regardless of stated claims, often have much to do with mineral resources, and in particular oil. Environmental disputes between nations and between corporations and individuals frequently revolve around the destructive effects of mineral exploitation activities and mineral by-products on ecological systems and human health. The age of global, media-perpetuated terrorism is dominated by fears of, amongst other atrocities, the release of radioactive or toxic minerals into urban ecosystems. And in an increasingly abstract and virtual capitalistic world, the price of gold nonetheless continues to serve as an important indicator of the health of the global economy, while diamonds remain important symbols of wealth in ever new social contexts. Minerals remain irrevocably linked to power, wealth and both local and global inequality.
The importance of the mineral world to human societies is nothing new, of course. The first archaeological evidence for mineral exploitation, in the form of Oldowan stone technologies, probably predates even the genus Homo, and observations of chimpanzee tool use would suggest that stone was one of the first materials used by evolving primates for making tools. Another key early technological breakthrough, the invention of pottery, is also related to the exploitation of a mineral resource ā clay ā that has subsequently been heavily used by human societies across the world for many millennia. Indeed, the centrality of mineral-based technologies to human developmental trajectories is acknowledged in the widespread division of prehistoric cultural sequences into stone, copper, bronze and iron-using phases. Minerals were also indispensable in the creation of the pyramids, palaces, tells, megaliths, earthen mounds, ancient mud brick cities and other monumental constructions of the ancient past, as well as the treasures they contain, that continue to amaze and inspire up to the present day.
However, while the importance of the mineral world may span all periods and regions of the globe, understandings of the mineral world clearly do not. While contemporary capitalist societies generally perceive minerals as commodities to be exploited for economic gain (TaƧon, this volume), and, in a related fashion, as passive objects of disembodied scientific enquiry (Frodeman, this volume), pre-industrial societies often take a different view. Within such societies, minerals are frequently symbolically meaningful, ritually powerful, and deeply interwoven into not just economic and material, but also social, cosmological, mythical, spiritual and philosophical aspects of life. In fact, such societies do not even necessarily recognise āmineralā as a distinctive category of matter, to be held in opposition to the so-called āanimalā and āvegetalā realms of living matter.1 Rather than neutral and inert, minerals in a number of societies are animate, and are engaged with on the basis of a worldview that understands all matter to be infused with spiritual energy and ālife-forceā (to use a term employed by TaƧon in this volume).
Nonetheless, aside from passing remarks and occasional tantalising studies, surprisingly little regard has been paid to non-functional aspects of the mineral world in either the anthropological or archaeological literature. While compendiums and detailed studies addressing social and symbolic aspects of human interactions with plants (eg Cloke and Jones 2002; Gosden and Hather 1999; Gremillion 1997; Rival 1998), animals (eg Gosden and Hather 1999; Ingold 1988; Manning and Serpell 1994; Wills 1990), landscapes (eg Ashmore and Knapp 1999; Bender 1993; Scarre 2002; Tilley 1994; Ucko and Layton 1999) and other elements of what Westerners typically define as the ānaturalā world (eg Descola and Palsson 1996; Ellen and Fukui 1996; Ingold 1986; Strauss and Orlove 2003) can now be found in relative abundance, there has until now existed no equivalent volume relating to the mineral world.
This lacuna is all the more surprising in the context of the discipline of archaeology, which as Charles et al (this volume) point out, deals almost exclusively with the minerals found in an archaeological record that disposes of anything less durable. The oversight likely has much to do with theoretical paradigms in archaeology: while processual frameworks may have ignored the symbolic and ideological realms of human experience, post-processual studies have, at least until more recently, often stressed finished artefacts over technological processes and material substance. Focusing on the meanings inhering in symbolic artefacts and spaces, such studies have tended to overlook the materials from which they were created in the first place. Only more recently have some researchers begun to devote significant attention not only to artefacts themselves, but also to the flint, clay, quartz, chert, sand, obsidian, and chalk of which they are composed (eg Bender 1998; Jones 2002a, 2002b; Jones and MacGregor 2002; Owoc 2002; Parker Pearson and Ramilisonina 1998; Parker Pearson 2000, 2002; TaƧon 1991; Thomas 1996, 1999).
This book is a response to the need to bring some of these still disparate studies together into a single volume in order to highlight the importance of new ways of addressing both the mineral and material worlds. It also represents an attempt to draw attention to the utility of breaking down traditional disciplinary distinctions that insist on the division of the archaeological record into separate and isolated spheres of study, thus precluding the holistic and integrated study of the substances and materials unearthed by archaeologists. Both the volume as a whole, and the individual studies contained within it, illustrate the complex ways in which the materiality of minerals links together monuments, rock art, technologies and landscapes into a unified story that contradicts traditional archaeological categorisations of the material world (for a related argument, see Parker Pearson and Ramilisonina 1998: 322). In addition, however, the volume also encourages the creation of new artefact categories, or at the very least draws attention to features of the archaeological record that are more usually overlooked by interpretive frameworks, such as visually unimpressive smudges of paint on stone (Robinson), unmodified pebbles and clasts (Saunders), surface textures (Scarre, Robinson), microscopic sedimentary layers (Boivin), and scatters of sand (Saunders) and sediments (Charles et al, Owoc).
Having described what the volume is about, it is important to note at the outset what the volume will not cover. While metals, water and certain biologically-derived materials like phytoliths and ash, and the more durable components of teeth and bones fall, strictly speaking, within the so-called category of āmineralā, the papers in this volume deal with these only incidentally, if at all. The decision to focus predominantly on stones and sediments was primarily practical, and had the aim of making manageable and coherent a theme that otherwise threatened to expand exponentially into ever wider subject areas and material culture realms. However, it was also felt that materials like water and metal present a number of unique characteristics that differentiate them from sediments and soils, and lead to unique sets of issues and symbolic practices (described, for example, in Bradley 2000; Childs and Killick 1993; Haaland et al 2002; Herbert 1993; Hosler 1994, 1995; Jones 2002a; Keates 2002; Levy 1999; Renne 1991; Richards 1996; Schmidt 1997; Saunders 2001b, 2002) that might more profitably form the focus of separate compendiums, at least at the present stage. This decision is supported by certain studies of classification in ethnographic and archaeological contexts. Postgate (1997), for example, has shown that in early Mesopotamian texts, metals were often treated separately from stone, though shells in contrast were identified as stones. He relates this to material properties and production patterns, including the fact that shell was widely used in third millennium Mesopotamia in the same ways as stone, while metal was not (ibid).
It should also be pointed out that, while it does contain ethnoarchaeological studies of material culture use in contemporary societies, and does reference a great deal of ethnographic and ethnohistorical literature, this volume does not include any studies by social or cultural anthropologists. While this omission relates in part to the disciplinary affiliation of the editors, it also reflects to some degree the lack of interest that contemporary anthropology has shown towards material culture. Recent studies of material culture by anthropologists are few and far between, with studies of art constituting a notable exception (eg Coote and Shelton 1992; Gell 1998; KĆ¼chler 1985, 1992; Morphy 1991; Munn 1986; Watson 2003).2
Despite these restrictions, the mineral world theme that is addressed in this volume by archaeologists from a range of backgrounds (as well as one philosopher of science) nonetheless encompasses a diverse array of issues that are arguably of interest to both archaeologists and anthropologists, as well as, potentially, scholars and professionals in a range of other fields, including the earth sciences, the philosophy of science, geography, and environmental studies. The remainder of this introductory chapter will explore some of these issues, drawing upon both the chapters in the volume and the wider archaeological and anthropological literature. More epistemological aspects of the study of the mineral world are addressed in Owocās epilogue, as well as in the chapter by Frodeman.
THE ANIMATE EARTH
Perhaps the most consistent and salient point that emerges from a review of the papers in the volume and the wider archaeological and anthropological literature relating to the mineral world is that, for many people around the world, minerals are alive. While, as indicated above, and emphasised in particular in Brummās chapter, most Westerners may perceive the mineral world as neutral, inert, and devoid of life, people in many other societies do not necessarily recognise such a firm distinction between mineral and non-mineral, animate and inanimate. This blurring of boundaries means that minerals in many societies are attributed with qualities and properties that most people in Western societies accord only to humans, animals, plants and/or the divine. In many contexts, this means that minerals in general, or in some cases certain minerals in particular, are recognised as animate, divine, powerful and/or sacred.
A number of anthropological and archaeological studies stress the animate qualities of stone, for example. Brummās chapter highlights examples of stones that grow, get pregnant, and have souls and a gender in Australia and New Zealand. In Melanesian societies, ethnographers have recorded examples of stones believed to walk around, dance, light fires, transmit and cure disease, speak, procreate and kill (Kahn 1990; Roe and Taki 1999). In many societies across the world, as amongst the Chumash people of coastal California described in this volume by Robinson, certain stones are believed to contain mythic or other beings who were turned into stone, and who in some cases can on occasion change back into their human form (eg Brady and Prufer 1999; Hedges 1993; Kahn 1990; Roe and Taki 1999; TaƧon and Ouzman 2004; TaƧon 1991).
In his chapter, Saunders notes that this belief in the possibility that culture heroes can shift between human and stone forms is key to understanding why mountains, rock outcrops, and human modified stone and stone constructions have often held such significance for Andean peoples, in the past and right up to the present day. This type of conceptualisation is also central to Australian Aboriginal perspectives on the landscape, which is believed to embody the actions of Dreamtime Ancestral Beings. For Aboriginal peoples, notable geological features of the landscape are often understood as the final resting places of such Beings, where they turned into stone (TaƧon 1991; see also Brumm, this volume). Accordingly, the modification of stone by humans can sometimes be seen not so much as a creative activity, but instead as a release of entities already residing within the stone (Jones and White 1988; TaƧon and Ouzman 2004).
The animate qualities with which clay and earth are attributed are often similar, though not identical, to those just described for stone. While many traditions cross-culturally hold that clay is the material from which the first humans were made (see Boivin, this volume), it is the divine rather than human qualities of earth that seem more often to be emphasised (eg Barley 1994; Gosselain 1999). Stones may contain the spirits of ancestors or heroic individuals, but earth is the embodiment of a divine, all-encompassing creative force. Thus, for example, Brady and Prufer describe how for many Mesoamerican and Amerindian groups, the earth has traditionally been understood as a sacred and animate entity (Brady and Prufer 1999). For the Qāeqchi, the Earth God is the central deity amongst many, and is associated with rain, fertility and abundance (ibid). Parker Pearson and Ramilisonina (1998: 311) similarly note that for the Merina of Madagascar, the earth was considered so sacred that even the king could not build his house from it. Saunders observes in his chapter that the conceptualisation of the earth as a sacred, female, living entity is widespread across the whole of the Americas.
This personification of earth as female is another common pattern, and contrasts with the male spirits that are frequently understood to dwell within stone (see also TaƧon 1990, 1991: 204). The notion of an Earth Goddess or Earth Mother is found in such diverse parts of the world as Africa (Barley 1994; Gosselain 1999; Lovell 1998), India (Boivin 2001; Jain 1984; Kinsley 1986), Australia (TaƧon 1991; Watson 2003) and the Americas (Saunders, this volume; Sillar 1996). Such a conceptualisation likely derives from the fertile qualities of soil, and the fact that, as the Aboriginal narrator in TaƧonās chapter emphasises, all things ultimately derive from the earth (see also Lovell 1998 and Watson 2003). According to the Earth Diver myth discussed in this volume by Charles et al, and common to a range of cultures in Europe, Asia and North America, the world itself only comes into being when an animal dives into the sea and finally successfully brings some soil to the surface, which expands to create the land.
The sacredness that is attributed to the creative powers of earth (which is sometimes just soil/clay, but at other times the entire lithosphere) explains why transgressions of it often demand special behaviour, rituals, and offerings (Burton 1984; Jain 1984). Robinsonās chapter, for example, describes how inappropriate behaviour amongst native California Chumash while mining minerals from the earth could have disastrous consequences. In some cases, obtaining the right to take from the earth even demands sacrifices (eg Barley 1994). Sillar (1996), for example, notes that human sacrifices in the form of children were annually made by at least one Andean community of potters to appease the mountain deities who controlled their clay mines. The children were sealed alive within deep-shaft tombs (ibid). Saunders, in his chapter, describes how gold and silver mining in Inka times were accompanied by rituals that involved petitioning the mountain to yield its mineral wealth. Mining into mountains perpetuated a āritual encounterā that linked together the upper and lower worlds of Inka cosmology.
The use of tunnels into the ground to interact with Earth deities or spirits is also a common pattern across many cultures. For the Maya, for example, caves are considered points of access to the dwelling places of important deities and ancestral spirits (Brady and Prufer 1999). Accordingly, items originating in caves, like speleothems, are considered powerful, and are used in rituals and ceremonies (Brady et al 1997). For the indigenous people of the Highlands of Irian Jaya, caves, crevices and holes in the ground are considered sacred because they are the places where life emerges (Hampton 1999). Across Mesoamerica, caves are similarly closely associated with rain and fert...
