Topic 10: Reconstructing Culture Flashcards
what are the 5 major types of society categories?
Bands, tribes, chiefdoms, states, empires
What evidence is used to distinguish between society categories?
In general: societies are based on economic, social and political systems!
- size of population
- size of settlement
- sedentariness/territoriality
- subsistence strategies
- monuments and architecture
- evidence of specialization
What are bands? How do we distinguish them?
- smaller groups
- do not have rigid territories, high mobility because they primarily hunted and gathered
- egalitarian, equal society
What are segmentary societies? How do we distinguish them?
- tribes and chiefdoms
- sedentary, small scale pastoralists and horticulturalists
- smaller groups integrated into a larger community
- living permanently or semi permanently in one area
- increase in population means an increased need for political organization, which leads to a rise in inequality
What are states? How do we distinguish them?
- bureaucracy, with a single ruler
- society based on socioeconomic wealth
- large scale permanent settling
- complex road system
- standardization of measures (lbs, currancy)
Why is type of society approach problematic?
- obscures variability
- fails to predict what we might expect archaeologically
- both neglects and reflects cultural institutions that perpetuates inequality
What is inequality? How do we determine if it is present in a society?
- differences in/of status and access to resources within a group
- we can determine it by looking at differences in burial practices, skeletal remains (for signs of malnutrition), houses and goods, distribution of goods
What are the three kinds of equality/inequality?
Egalitarian: everyone in group has roughly same status and access to resources
Ranked: everyone has a different status
Stratified: class system, differences between classes
What is exchange? What does it provide information about?
- exchange is the movement of material culture
- provides information about social organization, subsistence, politics and ideology
3 modes of exchange
- reciprocity (equal exchange, gift giving)
- redistribution (all goods collected and redistributed by a leader)
- market (bartering/trading for goods and services, capitalism)
What is Provenance?
The sources of an object, where the object was made AND/OR what the original sources of the raw materials was.
What is the study of distribution?
- the study of transport (by land, sea)
What are the mechanisms for trade?
- direct access (a person directly goes to the source to procure the item)
- down the line (trading between people for different items)
- freelance/middleman/trader (person who facilitates the exchange of objects)
What do archaeologies of gender focus on?
- how archaeologists study gender
- how archaeologists represent gender
- focuses on the cultural constriction of gender and sexuality
- focuses on challenging ideas that humans have always recognized heteronormativity
- focuses on gender inequalities in the practice of archaeology
How do we look for evidence of children in the archaeological record?
- evidence of play and learning
- representations of art, fingerprints
What is a symbol?
- an object that can be recognized as a depiction/representation of an object in the real world.
What are some of the uses of symbols?
- regulating and organizing relations between humans
- regulating and representing human relations with the supernatural or transcendental world
- as symbols of measurements (units of time, length, weight)
- recording and documenting
- establishment of place through delimitation of territory
- as a way to describe the world through depiction
What is style?
- traits associated with decoration
- culturally dependent and often difficult to analyze
What are materials of prestige value? Why are they important?
- “valuables” in a limited range of materials to which a society attributes a high value
- most have no use at all other than display!
- ex, feathers, shells, jade, gemstones, textiles
How do archaeologists reconstruct group and individual identity?
Major evidence archaeologists use to construct identity are:
- artifacts
- symbols
- nutrition/diet
- mortuary data
What is the archaeology of children and childhood?
- study of children and childhood in the past, as active participants in past cultures rather than regarding them mainly for their effect on adult life
- studies evidence of play, learning, artwork
What are some of the archaeological approaches to art?
- semiotic (meaning of symbols)
- formal (style to determine tradition)
- functionalist (purpose of art)
- processual (how art helps humans adapt to their environment)
- critical (how art reflects/legitimizes/criticizes power)
What is fall-off analysis?
Spatial analysis of artifact distribution, predicts that the greatest quantity should be found near the source for down-the-line exchange, and near central places for redistribution systems.
What are interaction systems?
- how trade can drive cultural change
- as trade networks develop there is an increased need for control of the system
- this can lead a down-the-line system to develop into a redistribution system
What is the hopewell interaction?
- refers to a very large peer-polity exchange network that moved many goods across north america in 100bc-500ad
- widespread exchange of prestige goods accompanied by a symbolic system adopted in each independent region
What is function?
traits association with artifact form
Who was Martin Wobst?
- argued that style has a function!
- differences in styles are used to communicate messages about group affiliations and identities
Who was Polly Weissner?
- worked on african projectile points, showed that style is seen in 2 ways: Emblemic style and assertive style.
What is emblemic style? Assertive style?
Emblemic style: Meant to convey information to other groups of people
Assertive style: meant to convey information about the makers personal identity mostly to the group in which they live
(weissner)
What was James Sachett?
Questions Polly Weissner’s conclusions on style, developed Isochrestic style
What is isochrestic Style?
- choices made between variants that are functionally equivalent
- decisions on individuals are shaped by the traditions within their own community, which had developed its own way over time.
(Sachett)
