People and Things
James M. Skibo Michael Brian Schiffer People and Things A Behavioral Approach to Material Culture
James M. Skibo Illinois State University Normal, IL USA jmskibo@ilstu.edu Michael Brian Schiffer University of Arizona Tucson, AZ USA schiffer@email.arizona.edu The following chapters are reprinted in modified form with permission from the indicated sources: Chapter 3: Exploring the Origins of Pottery on the Colorado Plateau (with Eric Blinman), Pottery and People (1999), edited by J. M. Skibo and G. Feinman, University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City. Chapter 4: Smudge Pits and Hide Smoking Revisited (with John G. Franzen and Eric C. Drake), Archaeological Anthropology: Perspectives on Method and Theory (2007), edited by J. M. Skibo, M. Graves, and M. Stark, University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Chapter 5: The Devil Is in the Details: The Cascade Model of Invention Processes, American Antiquity (2005) 70: 485-502. Chapter 6: Ball Courts and Ritual Performance (with William H. Walker), The Joyce Well Site, edited by J. M. Skibo, E. McCluney, and W. Walker, University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City. Chapter 7: Social Theory and History in Behavioral Archaeology, Expanding Archaeology (1999), edited by J. M. Skibo, W. Walker, and A. Nielson, University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City. Chapter 8: Studying Technological Differentiation, American Anthropologist (2002) 104: 1148-1161. ISBN: 978-0-387-76524-2 e-isbn: 978-0-387-76527-3 DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-76527-3 Library of Congress Control Number: 2008920067 2008 Springer Science + Business Media, LLC All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY-10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Cover illustration: Colorful Cadenas, courtesy of Nathaniel Hardwick Printed on acid-free paper 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 springer.com
Preface The study of the human-made world, whether it is called artifacts, material culture, or technology, has burgeoned across the academy. Archaeologists have for centuries led the way, and today offer investigators myriad programs and conceptual frameworks for engaging the things, ordinary and extraordinary, of everyday life. This book is an attempt by practitioners of one program Behavioral Archaeology to furnish between two covers some of our basic principles, heuristic tools, and illustrative case studies. Our greater purpose, however, is to engage the ideas of two competing programs agency/practice and evolution in hopes of initiating a dialog. We are convinced that there is enough overlap in goals, interests, and conceptions among these programs to warrant guarded optimism that a more encompassing, more coherent framework for studying the material world can result from a concerted effort to forge a higher-level synthesis. However, in engaging agency/ practice and evolution in Chap. 2, we are not reticent to point out conflicts between Behavioral Archaeology and these programs. This book will appeal to archaeologists and anthropologists as well as historians, sociologists, and philosophers of technology. Those who study science technology society interactions may also encounter useful ideas. Finally, this book is suitable for upper-division and graduate courses on anthropological theory, archaeological theory, and the study of technology. The idea for this book came during a Fulbright sponsored trip to Porto Alegre, Brazil, by Jim Skibo in 2004, and conversations with Adriana Schmidt Dias, Fabíola Silva, Klaus Hilbert, and the participants in the seminar. The seminar was on ceramic analysis, ethnoarchaeology, and pottery use-alteration, but much of the discussion focused on how our theoretical approach to the study of technology contrasts with agency/practice, evolution, and other theoretical models currently in vogue. This led to a discussion between us and the decision to write this book. Although we had been collaborators for over two decades, this was our first coauthored book and we would like to thank the participants of the Fulbright seminar for the provocative conversation that convinced us to embark on this enjoyable enterprise. A number of people commented on the manuscript: Eric Drake, Nathan Hardwick, Vincent LaMotta, Fernanda Neubauer, Charles Orser, Tim Pauketat, Michael Schaefer, and William Walker. Nathan Hardwick also created the wonderful v
vi Preface cover art, Colorful Cadenas. We also thank the editors at Springer, Teresa Krauss and Katie Chabalko, for their interest in this project. Finally, we thank our wives, Becky and Annette, for their unfailing support and love. This book is dedicated to them. Normal, IL Tucson, AZ James M. Skibo Michael Brian Schiffer
Contents List of Figures... List of Tables... xiii 1 People and Things: A Performance-Based Theory... 1 Behavioral Archaeology... 4 The Theory... 7 Life History/ Behavioral Chain... 9 Activities and Interactions... 10 Technical Choices... 11 Performance Characteristics... 12 Application... 15 2 Behavior, Selection, Agency, Practice, and Beyond... 17 Evolutionary Archaeology... 17 French School... 20 Agency and Practice... 22 Where the Rubber Meets the Road... 28 Logging Camps and Social Power... 31 Conclusion... 34 3 The Origins of Pottery on the Colorado Plateau... 37 Origins... 37 Theoretical Models... 40 Emergence of Ancestral Pueblo Pottery... 41 Early Ceramic Sites... 43 The Study... 44 Whole Vessel Use-Alteration Traces... 47 Implications... 51 Southwestern Pottery Origins Revisited... 51 xi vii
viii Contents 4 Smudge Pits and Hide Smoking... 53 Grand Island... 53 Gete Odena: Historic Accounts... 54 Gete Odena: Williams Era... 57 Gete Odena: Smudge Pits... 58 Performance-Based Analysis... 60 Performance Analysis of the Features... 61 Other Supporting Evidence... 64 Why Smoke Hides?... 64 Conclusion... 66 5 The Devil is in the Details... 67 General Considerations... 69 The Cascade Model... 71 Illustrating the Model: The Electromagnetic Telegraph... 73 Creating the Prototype... 73 Technological Display... 75 Demonstrating Practicality... 75 Replication... 77 Marketing and Sales... 77 Installation... 78 Use/Operation... 78 Maintenance... 79 Functional Differentiation... 79 Operationalizing the Cascade Model on Archaeological Cases... 80 Applicability of the CTS Construct... 80 Discussion... 83 Implications of the Cascade Model... 84 Conclusion... 87 6 Ritual Performance: Ball Courts and Religious Interaction... 89 Joyce Well Ball Court... 92 Morphology... 93 Excavation... 95 Artifacts... 96 Culberson and Timberlake Ball Courts... 97 The Boot Heel Courts... 99 Ritual Performance... 100 Manufacturing Performance... 100 Use Performance... 101 Primary Functions of Animas Phase Courts... 103 Community Integration... 103 Celestial-Based Fertility Rituals... 103 Integration in the Casas Grandes Interaction Sphere... 104 Conclusions... 105
Contents ix 7 Social Theory and History in Behavioral Archaeology: Gender, Social Class, and the Demise of the Early Electric Car... 107 Behavioral Archaeology and Social Theory... 108 Behavioral Archaeology and History... 109 The Narrative: What Happened to the Early Electric Car?... 111 History and Social Theory: The Electric Car Revisited... 115 Summary and Conclusions... 121 8 Studying Technological Differentiation... 125 Technology Transfer: A Behavioral Framework... 127 Phases of Technology Transfer... 128 Information Transfer... 129 Experimentation... 129 Redesign... 129 Replication... 131 Acquisition... 131 Use... 132 Narratives of Technological Differentiation... 133 The Case Study: Eighteenth-Century Electrical Technology... 134 Electrophysicists... 135 Electrical Demonstrators... 138 Collectors of Electrical Technology... 138 Electrotherapists... 139 Atmospheric Electricians... 140 The Property Protectors... 141 Electrochemists... 142 Discussion and Conclusion... 142 References... 145 Index... 167
List of Figures Fig. 3.1 Interior of vessel with a carbon pattern caused by heating food in the absence of water............................... 48 Fig. 3.2 Vessel with an interior carbon pattern characteristic of wet-mode cooking. The wider band of carbon likely resulted from variable water levels......................... 48 Fig. 3.3 Exterior of a vessel that was used over fire................... 49 Fig. 3.4 Interior of a vessel used to heat food in the wet mode........... 49 Fig. 3.5 Interior of a vessel used to heat food in the dry mode............ 50 Fig. 4.1 The location of the Grand Island and the site of Gete Odena..... 54 Fig. 4.2 Profile drawings of representative smudge pits found at Gete Odena, each showing charred material at the base....... 60 Fig. 4.3 Photos of an Ojibwe woman smoking a deer hide (Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 86, Plate 75).......... 63 Fig. 6.1 Location of the Joyce Well site in southwestern New Mexico..... 90 Fig. 6.2 The rooms excavated at Joyce Well during the 1963 project...... 91 Fig. 6.3 The relative location of the pueblo and the ball court at Joyce Well.......................................... 92 Fig. 6.4 Plan view of the Joyce Well ball court....................... 94 Fig. 6.5 Topographic map of the Joyce Well ball court................. 95 Fig. 6.6 Locations of the Joyce Well, Culberson, and Timberlake ball courts............................................. 98 Fig. 6.7 Plan view of the Timberlake ball court...................... 98 Fig. 6.8 Plan view of the Culberson ball court....................... 99 xi
List of Tables Table 3.1 Obelisk gray vessel forms from the Prayer Rock Caves curated at the Arizona State Museum...................... 45 Table 7.1 A threshold performance matrix for gasoline and electric automobiles, circa 1912....................... 118 xiii