Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Chapter 7: Archaeological Theory &
Material Culture
- Archaeology
- The scientific study of
historic and prehistoric
peoples and their cultures
by analysis of artifacts,
inscriptions, monuments
and other remains
(excavated).
- Spending more time
investigating the
production, distributions,
and use of objects and
methods to hypothesize
their meaning.
- Clive Gamble
- Issue with adaptation and change in
systems, concerned with process.
- Environmental
- Social
- Ideological
- Focus is on explaining how
adaptation and variation
occur, why some culture don't
change
- Jeremy Sabloff
- Archaeological research can help scholars understand cultural change and behaviors=generated material record
- Archaeology can be use to us in dealing with contemporary social issues and problems
- Ian Hodder
- "interpretive Archaeology"
- Emphasis on interpretation
- Showed the limits about
what we know about the
past, and highlight
interpretations are
possible from same
object, depending on
point of view from
observer
- Context
- All important, leads to an
understanding as to how
an object was used by
the people who
possessed it
- Andre Leroi-Gourhan
- "operational chain"
- Attempt to reconstruct the way
artifacts were manufactured,
understand the place technical
actvds played in older human
societies.
- Examine the relationship that exist between technology
needed to create an artifact an role technologies play in
society
- All artifacts involve decisions made by those who made them
- Nathan Schlanger
- Technology is a social activity, archaeology must consider the social and cultural roots and the entire web of actions that generated artifacts
- Vincent Lamotta & Michael Schiffer
- Artifacts that archaeologist find and study have been modified by
natural or cultural processes after their original manufacturer use
and discard
- Tracing the history of an object (
creation, owners, uses, modifications)
tells us about the object and people
who used it.
- Archaeology should deal with
the relationships between
human behavior and material
culture during all periods and
everywhere
- Interested in how objects
transform over time from the
point of discard to the present
- Colin Renfrew
- Cognitive Archaeology: Inferring the way
people thought in earlier times by
studying material culture that survives
from those times.
- Interested in the
way humans use
symbols and in the
social relations that
are needed for
them to use
symbols and
communicate with
one another