Archaeological Artefacts as Material Culture

Linda Hurcombe

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781136801990
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Sozialwissenschaften
• Categoría: Archäologie

This book is an introduction to the study of artefacts, setting them in a social context rather than using a purely scientific approach. Drawing on a range of different cultures and extensively illustrated, Archaeological Artefacts and Material Culture covers everything from recovery strategies and recording procedures to interpretation through typology, ethnography and experiment, and every type of material including wood, fibers, bones, hides and adhesives, stone, clay, and metals.

With over seventy illustrations with almost fifty in full colour, this book not only provides the tools an archaeologist will need to interpret past societies from their artefacts, but also a keen appreciation of the beauty and tactility involved in working with these fascinating objects. This is a book no archaeologist should be without, but it will also appeal to anybody interested in the interaction between people and objects.

Part I

Deconstruction and analysis

1 Introduction

Artefacts as evidence

We live in a material world. Artefacts – modified objects, tools, used objects and structures – houses, buildings, fences, sheds – are all around us. Our material culture is made up of all of these things and reveals as much about our preferences as any other source of evidence is likely to do, including the written word. Our material culture reveals our spending power, it reinforces our sense of gender and age group, it emphasises the cultural affiliations we hold, and sets them out for other people to see our social status. We have objects that reveal our travels as souvenirs, and objects from the general past as antiques, or our personal past as heirlooms or mementos. Our contemporary world is dominated by material culture. The objects communicate things about us and the society in which we live. All human societies have material culture. The reason we study this material culture of past societies is to use the objects of the past as the means of seeing archaeological societies. They may have left a written record as well but their material culture is always informative. Furthermore the archaeological record of artefacts is immeasurably longer than the history of the written word. The oldest stone tools in the world date to around 2.7 million years ago, but this is just the record of the surviving inorganic artefacts, as many organic items leave few traces. Archaeology deals with the physical remains of the past, but it is about people.

Archaeology has many different kinds of physical evidence, so what do artefact studies contribute? From the earliest development of archaeology as a discipline, they have provided crucial information but the use made of that information and approaches to their study have varied over time along with paradigm shifts within the discipline. It could be said that artefact studies have at times gone out of fashion but they are the very expression of fashion. An artefact is defined as anything made or modified by people, so artefacts are not just ‘things’ but are intricately linked with people’s needs, capabilities, and aspirations. All societies and the individuals within them use objects to define, punctuate, perpetuate, and manipulate their social personae. It would be hard to find out much about past societies and individuals without artefactual evidence. The social clues would be reduced to those based on the biological parameters of race, sex, age, and posture. Language could add to the personal impression, but hair arrangements and body scarification or other physical manipulation (bound feet or heads, elongated necks) are actually artefacts. Clothing and adornments are universal adjuncts to human personae even where the prevailing climate does not dictate their adoption. It follows then that the study of artefacts is fundamental to seeing people in their social contexts. If archaeology is the study of individuals or societies, artefacts are made, used, and discarded by individuals acting within their society. Even an individual seen as an ‘outcast’ is defined in relation to a society. Cross-cultural adaptations and movements are there to be seen. Thus studying the prevailing styles and traits of the artefactual remains of a society is not to reduce everything to ‘norms’, but to define normal parameters, so that the abnormal – the individuals who have chosen to stand out within that society – can be seen archaeologically.

Artefacts form a major category of archaeological evidence, so any archaeological project will look for objects from a past society. These will provide information on the past activities at a site or in a landscape. The objects may themselves give dating evidence or the project will use other forms of archaeological information, such as stratigraphy, to show the relationships in time at a site and thus date the objects. It will also look at groups of objects that occur together, perhaps to show a related set of activities or a set of objects contemporary in time, or synonymous with a particular culture or group within that culture. As much as societies today communicate via objects, so the objects of the past are the means by which we can try and extract information about past societies. All forms of archaeological fieldwork will collect artefacts, whether the projects are the traditional excavation of an activity area, monument or settlement site (one place in time) or a cemetery (with items of personal adornment or goods placed as grave furniture by the living), or broad-scale field surveys across ploughed fields (e.g. prehistoric or Roman sites in areas now intensively farmed), or eroding landscapes (for example ancient fossils and tools in Africa or Asia). The cultural remains will be dominated by artefact evidence. Artefacts thus reveal the particular sequence at a site, and the intensely personal as well as the very general cultural landscape of a people.

It follows then that artefacts and material culture are always going to be at the heart of an archaeological investigation. Anyone who works within archaeology on sites or surveys needs to be able to distinguish an artefact from an unmodified object and to see the sense behind what that artefact can reveal about the society which made and used it. No matter where in the world archaeological work takes place, or whatever the time period that archaeologists are interested in investigating, material culture forms a major category of evidence. This is why this book reveals how archaeologists approach studies of material culture, and the means by which archaeologists extract that encoded social information from the material remains that they excavate or find on field surveys.

Artefacts, tools, manuports, and material culture: defining terms

It is essential to recognise whether an object has been modified by humans, or is simply a fortuitously shaped piece of natural material, and to also appreciate when an object has been used or simply moved by human agency. There are a number of words that archaeologists use which have very specific meanings. Archaeologists discussing objects commonly use the terms ‘artefacts’ and ‘tools’ but these are not synonymous. Archaeological and dictionary definitions state that an artefact is something changed or modified by people. It may be an incidental waste product of making another item, but, if it is modified, it is an artefact and can reveal choices made in the manufacture of other objects which might themselves have been taken away and used. Tools are objects which have been used as implements or instruments. Not all tools need be artefacts (for example a natural pebble makes a good hammer), though in practice most are. One further term for an object of material culture is used by archaeologists but is not commonly found in dictionaries. A ‘manuport’ (e.g. Oakley 1981) is a natural object moved to a new location by people, though it remains unaltered. A beach pebble picked up and used to hammer a wooden peg into the ground is a tool and could be modified by use with tiny fractures in the surface but it is not recognisable as an artefact. If someone picked it up from a beach and took it to use at a site inland it might be possible to recognise it as a manuport but it still might have no discernible traces of modification. If it is used more intensively and becomes worn as a result of usage then technically it becomes an artefact, something altered by people.

A tool is something that is used but it also has to be identified as such archaeologically so, strictly speaking, it needs to show traces of use. In practice archaeologists usually call artefacts ‘tools’ where their shape is distinctive and their purpose as an implement is surmised. A clear example would be a stone scraper or polished stone axe because these objects have recognisable shapes and their surmised use is as implements to do something else. Ceramic vessels are not necessarily thought of as instruments to use on something else so they are more often referred to as artefacts than tools. However some of the objects called tools need not have been used in the ways envisaged. Thus, to be really sure that an object is indeed a tool, one would need to recognise the traces of use from all of the other traces on the surface of an object.

With each of these words there is a consequence about the kinds of things that archaeologists need to be able to do. To identify a manuport, one requires knowledge of what is naturally present in the landscape contemporary to the site and to know whether any natural transport mechanisms, such as seasonal streams, may have affected the site. In other words the background information on the natural objects present in that area is a prerequisite for the successful identification of manuports. In a similar way, recognising an artefact requires an understanding of the natural material and the circumstances of its formation, transport, and incorporation into the archaeological record. Traces of deliberate modification need to be distinguished from natural wear, breaks, or growth patterns. For example, an antler will acquire wear during a deer’s life because it is used in the rut and for browsing. A rounded or worn piece of antler would be an artefact only if it were subsequently altered by humans and recognised as such by archaeologists – for example perhaps the wear traces did not conform to those expected from natural causes. So here the skill that needs to be acquired is that of recognising natural modifications and the original shape of the natural piece of material, from the traces distinguishable as deliberate and due to the action of people.

By recognising artefacts, tools, and manuports, archaeologists can look at what people did in the landscape under study: the taskscapes where they performed certain actions, and left debris from manufacturing processes or from subsistence activities. In all of these ways, material remains enter the archaeological record. This record is also composed of some deliberate depositional acts and also chance loss. An arrowhead may simply enter the record by being lost during its use, whereas objects contained in burials have been deliberately placed into the ground. In their different ways, all of the objects that find their way into the ground constitute the archaeological record for an area. This archaeological record of material remains is the surviving material culture of the past but is not a complete record.

Using words such as artefacts, tools, and manuports immediately suggests that these objects will yield information on the technologies available in a society and the range of tools created and used. This is true; most objects serve a purpose but this is not to say that they are utilitarian. Function is not a simple concept. Objects can perform both utilitarian and social tasks. Clothes keep us warm but they do much more than this. Most people possess a comb, but it is not a true necessity and its functional form may vary according to hair style and texture while the choice of material, colour, and decoration depend upon prevailing fashion, status, and individual choice. Technologies and developments within them and the function of objects are key aspects of artefact studies, but they are not the only ones and there is a social dimension to all artefact studies. ‘An artefact is always active – tying together heterogeneous things, material and human’ (Shanks 1998: 27). It is this that turns the building blocks of artefacts, tools and manuports into material culture.

A keen eye will have discerned a schism in the above discussion. If material culture includes everything made or moved, then the term ‘artefact studies’ seems to reduce this to small objects rather than structures such as houses and monuments or fields and landscapes. In fact material culture does incorporate these: Stonehenge (UK) is a good example of a very large collection of both moved and modified objects (Cleal et al. 1995: plate 7.1 shows the fine tooling on sarsen stone 16, an example of a large artefact). Barrows or huge earthmoving creations such as Serpent Effigy Mound, (Ohio, USA) and the laid-out fields of Bronze Age Dartmoor are also part of material culture. Altered landscapes are part of the diversity of material culture. As ever, there are practical constraints limiting what can be covered in one book and there are different branches of archaeology. Landscape studies tend to incorporate these large-scale aspects of material culture, and this discipline has developed significantly over the last twenty years. Artefact studies, whilst concentrating on the smaller items, does not exclude large items such as boats and logically also houses. It has developed along two paths: the study of material culture and meanings, and the development of scientific techniques of analysis. The application of these to actual objects has at times been piecemeal, and the whole field could do with a renaissance of reintegration. Issues of ‘materiality’ arise (Chapter 6). Pottery, mud brick, and fired brick all start as clay. The term materiality has tended to be appropriated by a highly social approach to material culture, but the raw materials are the basis for all forms of ‘made or moved’ aspects of material culture. Understanding the materials is fundamental to appreciating the choices made by people. Thus, this book has chosen to concentrate on artefact studies as material culture mediated by an emphasis on materials.

There is one final definition, that of material culture itself. Artefacts, tools, and manuports collectively make up material culture, so at one level it comprises anything made or moved by people. However, material culture is about more than the sum of its parts, in this case the individual objects. Societies do have sets and subsets of artefacts and tools which vary across time and space but even these grouped objects offer only a reductionist idea of material culture. One view sees culture – and thus, I would argue, also material culture – as ‘man’s extrasomatic means of adaptation’ (Binford 1962: 218, White 1959: 8). This view has the advantage that it conveys a sense of the pragmatic benefits to be obtained from the use of material culture but also places these within a strong social category where benefits or disadvantages are more fluid concepts for individuals and societies. Over and beyond the utilitarian aspects, material culture is about the social significance of objects and the way they can interact to create bold or nuanced meanings. Material culture is thus a set of social relationships between people and things, and above all it is a way of communicating as well as enabling. Language can be seen as a way of describing the world but it is not a passive depiction: words and the meanings of them frame schools of thought and ways of seeing. In the same way the objects that make up material culture influence and shape ways of thinking. If words are about verbal communication, material culture is about non-verbal communication. It is that aspect which allows objects of material culture to communicate information about the past activities and lifestyles of individuals and communities even down to their ways of thought. Many subjects are now engaged in material culture studies, including disciplines which can use existing documentary evidence. In these fields, perhaps because of a need to stress the contribution of non-verbal sources to an understanding of past societies formerly based primarily on texts, the phrase ‘visual culture’ has been creeping into use almost as a synonym for material culture. Visual information is certainly a very powerful communication media which can be processed from a distance: before a stranger utters a word another person can read from their appearance their status, cultural affiliations, gender, and age. However, material culture engages all the senses: ethnic cooking styles can be discerned by smell and taste and styles of vessels, the temperature of a furnace can be heard as well as seen and felt, clothing can be felt, crystals in metal can be heard by bending a bar; it is possible to hear a well-struck flint flake or hear the flaw in a cracked cup or piece of rock; one can feel a dull edge, a handle polished by years of use, the drape of a textile, or when a hide has been well processed; chemical and textural compositions can be tasted and the way a hide or cord has been prepared may be smelt. Thus the term visual culture should be reserved for seen elements of culture but should not be used as an alternative to material culture since the latter acts on all five senses.

The conceptual framework

A major concern of any discipline is to provide a means of communicating ideas, and systems for ordering and making sense of particularistic data. Those studying artefacts need to describe and make sense of the plethora of objects. If all objects were treated as unique – which they are – all discussion would be drowned out by endless description, so each discipline creates categories and gives them names in order to describe and communicate issues with other people. A category might be ‘pottery’ or ‘chipped stone’ or even more specific terms such as ‘scrapers’ or ‘hand axes’, ‘cups’ or ‘storage jars’. Categories divide up the mass of unique objects into those which share common traits but the selection of which traits to use is a subjective one. A classification system is devised and the objects are grouped into humanly created divisions. These units both describe and make common discussion possible, but they do neither neutrally. They add their own influences. To complicate matters further, the archaeologists creating the categories and trying to understand the past system have several world views to consider: the discipline of archaeology (since each discipline has its own schools of thought), the contemporary society of the archaeologist (everyone is influenced by their own society), the other society that they are trying to study (this would also occur for an anthropologist), and, finally, the distance in time which limits access to knowledge about the society studied. This complexity, described as the fourfold hermeneutic (Shanks and Tilley 1992: 107–8), is particular to subjects like history and archaeology and, I would argue, extinct languages such as Latin. To continue the linguistic analogy, it can be likened to one discipline replete with its own specialist terms, being studied by people speaking one contemporary language but whose goal is to investigate another society with both a different language and a more ancient language system. All this adds an extra dimension to the study of archaeological artefacts as material culture and, whilst it is not easy, it is a worthwhile endeavour. Without objects the chronological study range for humankind would be reduced to historic societies alone and of course the physical evidence can often be used to reinforce or contest the written sources.

There are a few other useful concepts when discussing material culture. First and foremost there need to be names to go with the very specific categories of different kinds of cultural object. Archaeologists call these types, usually distinguished by both a kind of material and a particular shape, for example, a polished stone axe (universally understood) or a Folsom point (a particular kind of North American stone arrowhead). Different types combine to form a classification system. There are various purposes behind the way in which archaeologists classify objects. First and foremost a classification system makes sense of the vast array of archaeological material culture. It gives us ‘handles’, names with wh...