Chapter 7: Archaeological Theory & Material Culture

Archaeology
1. The scientific study of historic and prehistoric peoples and their cultures by analysis of artifacts, inscriptions, monuments and other remains (excavated).
2. Spending more time investigating the production, distributions, and use of objects and methods to hypothesize their meaning.
Clive Gamble
1. Issue with adaptation and change in systems, concerned with process.
  1. Environmental
  2. Social
  3. Ideological
2. Focus is on explaining how adaptation and variation occur, why some culture don't change
Jeremy Sabloff
1. Archaeological research can help scholars understand cultural change and behaviors=generated material record
2. Archaeology can be use to us in dealing with contemporary social issues and problems
Ian Hodder
1. "interpretive Archaeology"
  1. Emphasis on interpretation
  2. 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
1. All important, leads to an understanding as to how an object was used by the people who possessed it
Andre Leroi-Gourhan
1. "operational chain"
  1. Attempt to reconstruct the way artifacts were manufactured, understand the place technical actvds played in older human societies.
2. Examine the relationship that exist between technology needed to create an artifact an role technologies play in society
3. All artifacts involve decisions made by those who made them
Nathan Schlanger
1. 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
1. Artifacts that archaeologist find and study have been modified by natural or cultural processes after their original manufacturer use and discard
  1. Tracing the history of an object ( creation, owners, uses, modifications) tells us about the object and people who used it.
2. Archaeology should deal with the relationships between human behavior and material culture during all periods and everywhere
  1. Interested in how objects transform over time from the point of discard to the present
Colin Renfrew
1. Cognitive Archaeology: Inferring the way people thought in earlier times by studying material culture that survives from those times.
  1. 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

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Chapter 7: Archaeological Theory & Material Culture

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