Production Of Material Culture Research Articles

Shell Rings of Power: Gender Relations in Material Culture Production on the Aitape Islands, Papua New Guinea

Shell Rings of Power: Gender Relations in Material Culture Production on the Aitape Islands, Papua New Guinea

The usage of embroideries among the Hezhe in China and the Nanai in Russia. A comparative study of heritagisation processes and their local appropriation

Among the Nanai of Russia, the promotion of the usage of fish skins goes alongside the wider feminine activity of embroidery, known to protect the wearer from evil spirits. In North-East China, the safeguarding of Hezhe crafts, promoted both by UNESCO and the Chinese administration, resulted in the creation of a new type of artefacts made from fish skins. This study shows how cultural policies influence the production of material culture, thereby highlighting the place of each group within a dominating culture (numerically and culturally) and strategies of Indigenous appropriation and agency.

Reexamining Ceramic Standardization During Agricultural Transition: A Geometric Morphometric Investigation of Initial – Early Yayoi Earthenware, Japan

Abstract The quantifiable and reproducible representation of variability in material culture has continued to play a key role in the elucidation of shifting patterns of production organization in prehistoric archaeology. The study of standardization of ceramics has traditionally illuminated on how agents shift means of production to a common goal. However, while geometric morphometric (GMM) approaches to standardization quantification overcome issues of reproducibility faced in traditional literature, the lack of widespread radiocarbon dating in Japan requires adherence to traditional methods of temporal control. This study seeks to extrapolate ceramic standardization in a quantifiable means, while also maintaining temporal control utilizing traditional methods. In a pilot case study of the agricultural transition period of the Yayoi period of the Japanese peninsula (∼900/800 BC–300 BC), results of mortuary vessels show that while a previous model based on visually determined traditional methods assumed that ceramic manufacture was centralized in the Hakata Bay subregion of the northern Kyushu island region; utilizing GMM analysis to extrapolate variable standardization is able to identify a decline in morphological variation, despite increases in population density and potential variability between migrant and indigenous production patterns. These results further illuminate the strong correlation between production intensity and its effect on standardization practices in material culture production, as seen in modern ethnoarchaeological literature.

Ethnobotany of Hyphaene thebaica (L.) Mart. (Arecaceae) in the Afar depressions, Ethiopia

Background: Hyphaene thebaica is a Palm tree or shrub often with dichotomous branching that is predominantly found in an open wet landscape, riverbeds/flood plains, and around river valleys. This study was conducted to document the ethnobotany of Hyphaene thebaica in the Afar depressions, Ethiopia. Methods: A purposeful sampling method was used to select the informants. A total of 80 informants - 20 informants from each district and 15 of them in each district were women. Out of the selected informants 12 of them i.e., three from each district were considered key informants based on the recommendations from the administrators of different hierarchies who are believed to have sufficient knowledge about the plant and communities. The remainder (68 informants) were general informants. Direct matrix ranking was used to rank the preferred use of H. thebaica. Descriptive statistical analysis was performed using OriginPro 2022. Results: Results revealed that H. thebaica has numerous importance as implied by the informants in the Afar communities. These include material culture and Sennan Ari (100%), Doma (45%), and medicinal value (32%). The use preference ranking of the species revealed that material culture and making Sennan Ari were ranked first with 100% of the key informants confirming the information. Conclusions: The present study investigated the indigenous knowledge of the desert Palm, Hyphaene thebaica, and found the plant is multipurpose and is utilized for material culture production, temporary shelter/house (Sennan Ari) making, extraction of an alcohol/liquor, medicinal value, and income-generation. Advancing the material culture production by integrating current knowledge and phytochemical investigation on the alcohol extract and determining its efficacy is recommended. Keywords: Desert palm, Herbal medicine, Hyphaene, Indigenous knowledge, Material culture, Pastoralism

Invisible or ignored: investigating the lack of thylacine‐based material culture in the Australian archaeological record

ABSTRACTThere is a distinct lack of information regarding interactions between thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) and Aboriginal Australians. Their depiction in Australian rock art is not unusual, yet only one example of an artefact made from thylacine remains has been recovered from the archaeological record. This absence of thylacine‐based Indigenous material culture is conspicuous, especially since the raw materials such a large mammal provides would be useful and thus their depiction in art but absence from “things” appears significant. To investigate whether substantial opportunity existed for the exploitation of thylacines for the purpose of material culture production, and thus that sampling or cultural factors must instead be at play for their absence from the record, the location of known palaeontological, archaeological and rock art sites related to thylacines were mapped in time and space. Dated contexts are compared to create an overall picture of the overlap between thylacine habitat and human territories. We found that there was a significant period where interaction between this enigmatic animal and First Australians occurred, and, therefore, a lack of contact is not the reason for the near total absence of thylacine bones, teeth and other materials being missing from Indigenous material culture

Review: “The Codex and Crafts in Late Antiquity” and The Codex and Crafts in Late Antiquity, by Georgios Boudalis

“The Codex and Crafts in Late Antiquity,” Bard Graduate Center Gallery, New York, New York (February 23 – July 8, 2018). Georgios Boudalis, The Codex and Crafts in Late Antiquity (New York: Bard Graduate Center, 2018), 200 pages, color illustrations, ISBN 9781941792124, $30 paperback. Small university exhibition spaces, and even small galleries in large museums, can accommodate focused explorations of complex, specialized topics that larger spaces cannot. Without the need to charm broad swaths of the infotainment audience, a scholarly show can delve deep into questions and, as here, open avenues of inquiry. At the heart of this exhibition was the assembling and especially the binding of the codex as it developed during Late Antiquity into the predominant book format that is still in use today. Although a great deal of attention has been devoted to the historical circumstances in which the codex came to supplant the scroll, little attention has been paid to the development of its manufacture.1 This exhibition and its catalogue, based on original research by the curator Georgios Boudalis, Head of the Book and Paper Conservation Laboratory of the Museum of Byzantine Culture in Thessaloniki, reflect current attention to the production of material culture and the burgeoning study of craft.2 The catalogue offers more detailed and fully documented considerations of the categories of evidence presented in the exhibition, an illustrated checklist, a rich bibliography, and an index. In two display areas (an introduction and the main exhibition space), the exhibition charted the adaptation of traditional techniques primarily from textile- and leather-working (Fig. 1).3 Upon entering the second-floor hallway, the visitor encountered a bright display on the ancient development of the codex through such visually striking artifacts as a Classical red figure kylix depicting a schoolboy with a simple codex of tablets encircled by a strap with another strap for a handle (Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund acquisition 17.230.10).4 Overall, the introduction presented variations in formats from paired and …

The dance of the lines: On the rhythms of making petroglyphs

One of the main routes that anthropology has taken to study the production of material culture has been the anthropology of techniques. Although different scholars had recognized several problems and elaborated proposals to overcome them, it is still possible to recognize a temporal, spatial and technical conception grounded on a modern ontology that emphasizes a metronomic, abstract and mechanical understanding of them. To overcome this problem, this article proposes introducing the idea of rhythm into the analysis of the production of material culture. In order to do so, the author first elaborates a rhythmical approach to techniques. After which, the article’s focus falls on the rhythms of making petroglyphs in Cuesta Pabellón, a rock art site located in the Limarí Valley, Chile. The results suggest that rock art production is a rhythmical practice that involves a bodily itineration along different gestures, intensities, pauses, disruptions and spatial orientations which resonate and correspond with the way people produce this element of material culture. It is argued that the production of rock art resembles a way of dancing in which the engraver, the emerging line, and the previous lines made by others enter into the process of correspondences in which rhythms play a substantial role.

A Sensory Update to the Cha\xeene Op\xe9ratoire in Order to Study Skill: Perceptive Categories for Copper-Compositions in Archaeometallurgy

This paper introduces the methodology of perceptive categories through which an empirical analysis of skill is achievable, taking European Bronze Age metalworking as a case study. Based on scientific data provided by the material sciences, in this case compositional and metallographic analyses of Late Copper Age and Early Bronze Age axes, the thresholds to categorise and interpret these data, and organise them in a chaîne opératoire, are centred on the human senses—and thus on metalworking as a craft. This is a pragmatic approach that appreciates scientific measurements of metal objects as essential empirical evidence whilst recognising that a considerable share of these archaeometric data are inapt or too detailed for an understanding of skill. This empirical approach towards skill is relevant to our knowledge of the role of crafts and materials in the past. After all, skill is a fundamental asset for the production of material culture, and a distinct human-material relationship characterised by an intimate form of material engagement.

1500 Years of Pottery: Neutron Activation Analysis of Northern Chilean Domestic Ceramics from Caleta Vitor and Clay Samples from Nearby Valley, Coast and Highland Contexts

This paper presents the findings arising from neutron activation analysis (NAA) of northern Chilean domestic ceramic samples from Caleta Vitor (n = 38) and clay samples (n = 15) from nearby valley, coast and highland contexts. This study presents the first NAA data set of ceramics spanning a temporal period of 1500 years (c.2000 to c.476 bp) from the Vitor Valley as well as the first attempt to use NAA to characterize potential clay sources in the region. On the basis of this study, we argue that the majority of domestic ceramics from Caleta Vitor share compositional similarities with clay samples collected from nearby valleys, allowing us to infer that the Caleta Vitor populations primarily procured their clay for domestic ceramics from local sources throughout a 1500-year period. Thus, despite the fact that there were inter-regional interactions during this period that included the influence of powerful Andean polities, it would appear that domestic ceramics continued to be produced locally, and by implication it can be argued that such interactions did not substantially affect this sphere of material culture production. Further, the apparent continuities in domestic ceramic production allow us to reflect on local decision-making processes throughout the cultural phases considered in this research.

A technological and anthropological study of iron production in Venda, Limpopo Province, South Africa

ABSTRACTThis study investigates the technology and sociology of indigenous iron production in Venda, northern South Africa, within a framework of ethnographies, historical documents and archaeometallurgical analyses. Investigations revealed that indigenous iron production in the study area, like elsewhere in southern Africa, was based on the direct process in which high-grade iron ores were reduced to metallic iron in charcoal fuelled low-shaft furnaces. The technology exploited at the sites under study used high-grade haematite and magnetite ores, which were extracted from open shaft mines within the vicinity of the smelting precincts. Although new furnace types appeared in the mid-second millennium AD, evidence suggests that the technology of iron smelting was relatively stable during the Early (AD 200-900) and Late (AD 1000 to 1900) Iron Ages. Iron smelting in this area was accompanied by rituals and taboos that connected the smelters to the living and the dead. A comparative study of such rituals and taboos with those invested in other categories of practice, such as male initiation, identified notable similarities and differences. This indicates that material culture production and use broadcast ideas and beliefs applicable to both technical and quotidian practices.

Production bias in cultural evolution: An examination of cubic dice variation in experimental and archaeological contexts

Similar artifact function and conformism to social norms are two models commonly proposed to explain why ancient people shared a particular form of material culture. We propose an additional model for explaining such similarity, production bias, which focuses on interactions between raw materials and the production of material culture. By way of modern replication experiments and a survey of ancient examples, we use dice to exemplify production bias and discuss how it can be recognized in the archaeological record. Although there are 15 possible configurations for cubic dice, all of equal function, only three are common in the archaeological record. Replication experiments show that one is the result of production bias, and is differentially produced by novice dice-makers. The other two are the byproduct of conformist cultural transmission processes. A similar result holds for dot patterns, or how dots are placed with respect to one another to represent a particular number.

Frog in the Pond: Gökçeada (Imbros), an Aegean Stepping-stone in the Chalcolithic use ofSpondylusShell

The use of marine shells in the manufacture of bracelets and beads is a well-attested phenomenon of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods of Western Anatolia, the Aegean, and the Balkans. The site of Gökçeada-Uğurlu, located on an island in the Aegean between mainland Europe and Anatolia, shows evidence for the manufacture and use of bracelets and beads from Spondylus and Glycymeris shell. This use of personal ornamentation ties the site into one of the widest material culture production and trade networks of the prehistoric period. This article explores the possible role of, and influences on, an island site within the wider context of long-distance exchange. The life history of shell products is investigated, showing that a bracelet may have gone through processes of transformation in order to remain in use. The article also questions whether there was a relationship between the use of marine shell and white marble from which similar products were manufactured in contemporary contexts. In its conclusions the article addresses the value of materials and of the personal ornaments they were used to make.

Potential Cultural Districts and the Production of Material Culture

Potential Cultural Districts and the Production of Material Culture

On the materials of mats: thinking through design in a Melanesian society

This article examines the selective use of plant materials in design inMelanesia. It explores – through an analysis of pandanus leaf mats inNewIreland,PapuaNewGuinea – how makers select fibres on the basis of their capacity to express social relations to varying temporalities before their natural decay.J.J.Gibson's theory of affordance andDonaldNorman's concept of mapping are critically applied for this purpose. This approach emphasizes how social and temporal relations are condensed into objects, and refocuses anthropological attention towards materials and their affordances in the production of material culture.

Children Playing and Learning: Crafting Ceramics in Ancient Indor Khera

It is only in the recent decade that distinct archaeological studies on children have emerged. One of the ways in which children have been made archaeologically visible has been in the context of craft and learning frameworks where they have been perceived as active agents in the production of material culture. Archaeologically, the work of novice crafters can be discerned through attributes of small size, asymmetrical forms, and other deficiencies in manufacturing techniques suggesting inadequate conceptual frames as well as less developed physical skills. The deposits recovered during the excavations in the northwestern part of the ancient site of Indor Khera have been dated between 200 b.c. and a.d. 300. The excavations have revealed in an early phase a potter's house within and around which several miniature vessels with similar characteristics were found, perhaps the work of children. Further, numerous tiny terracotta and clay lumps indicate that to begin children might have been given small bits of clay to play with. It appears that the ceramic craft may have involved a gradual learning process that included play, observation, and experimentation.

Preserving Intangible Aspects of Cultural Materials: Bonpo Ritual Crafts of Amdo, Eastern Tibet

AbstractAncient and historic products of past technologies exist in the form of material culture and archaeological finds, available for materials analysis. Technical studies and analytical work, coupled with the study of historical texts and archival documents, can help in reconstructing past technologies. But the act of making an object is, by its very nature, also an intangible part of human heritage. Production of material culture may be accompanied by specific rituals, social behaviors and relationships, music, knowledge gained from oral histories, meanings, intents, beliefs, and reasoning processes. For ancient objects, gaining access to these intangible aspects of cultural heritage may be extremely difficult, if not impossible. However, there are many societies where traditional crafts are produced within a context where the intangible aspects can still be recorded. Yet, these opportunities are disappearing at an alarming rate as development and globalization rapidly overtake more and more traditional communities. Documenting intangible data about craft processes can promote fuller understanding of the objects themselves, and aid long-term preservation of both the objects and the processes used to make them. Examples here are drawn from fieldwork conducted in 2007 at a Bonpo monastery (Serling) and nearby villages in the Amdo region of the eastern Tibetan culture area (in Sichuan Province, China). Bonpo practices, which pre-date the introduction of Buddhism into Tibet, incorporate a variety of ritual crafts that are strongly rooted in a complex web of intangible relationships, behaviors, meanings, purposes, and beliefs. This paper focuses on votive clay objects (tsha-tshas) and barley-dough offering sculptures (tormas). Processes encompassing intangible aspects that are explored include the decision to make an object, when to make it and in what form, selection of raw materials, methods for processing the raw materials, fabrication procedures, selection of who will be involved in fabrication steps, where to place the finished object, and whether it will be preserved for the long term or considered to be only a temporary object. Results are placed in the context of larger theoretical issues regarding documentation and preservation of intangible elements of cultural heritage as part of a study of materials and technological processes.

Xerente Ethnoarchaeology: the construction of organization and space use model of the villages Porteira and Rio Sono.

Este artigo apresenta os resultados da pesquisa de mestrado intitulada “Organização e uso do espaço em duas aldeias Xerente: uma abordagem etnoarqueológica” Tal pesquisa teve como objetivo formular um modelo de organização e uso do espaço a partir de estudos realizados em duas aldeias Xerente, localizadas na Terra Indígena Xerente, estado do Tocantins, Brasil. O procedimento básico foi a busca de inter-relações existentes entre cultura material, comportamento e cultura, quando foram observadas, descritas e mapeadas as estruturas e áreas de atividade de cada uma das aldeias, relacionando estes espaços à cultura material produzida, seus respectivos atores e períodos de utilização. A análise do conjunto de dados obtido resultou na construção de um modelo Xerente de uso do espaço, considerando não apenas os aspectos identificados como homogêneos entre as aldeias estudadas, mas também os aspectos diferenciadores, de forma que o modelo abranja, igualmente, as variações intrínsecas à forma de ocupação Xerente.

FIKSE OG TRIKSE, ORDNE OG MIKSE! Etnografisk Kongosamling i tre epoker

While doing fieldwork in the Democratic
 Republic Congo (1982-83) the author
 assembled a collection of objects from the Efe
 (Mbuti Pygmy) and neighbouring Lese Dese
 cultivators of the rain forest. This collection
 was to contribute to the permanent African
 exhibition of the Ethnographic Museum of
 the University of Oslo, Norway. Secondly,
 it was directed primarily at objects which
 reflected the daily life of the inhabitants of
 the area so as to contrast to the collections
 of weapons, religious objects and emblems
 of power made by Norwegians in the epoch
 of the Congo Freestate and the early Belgian
 Congo (1885-1918). If given the chance to
 collect in this region again, the author would
 delve into the fascinating and humorous
 strategies applied by the bricoleurs of the
 large cities of the Congo. The two existent
 and the hypothetical collection may not
 be so different after all. Seen in a historic
 perspective, all collections attest to material
 and social strategies for survival and to
 strategies for making life beautiful and
 pleasant. Congolese producers have had
 various sources of inspiration and broad
 frames of reference for their invention and
 production of material culture.

Learning How to Make the Right Pots: Apprenticeship Strategies and Material Culture, a Case Study in Handmade Pottery from Cameroon

For more than half a century, archaeologists have focused their research on understanding the mechanisms underlying the making of human cultures. Thus, many have analyzed various aspects of culture hoping to identify not only how traditions are set and perpetuated, but also how innovations occur. As a result, research on material culture and style embraces other disciplines of study and integrates every aspect of society. Style, for example, is no longer reduced to a surface attribute that primarily marks the boundaries of ethnic groups. Technological, social, psychological, and religious parameters surrounding material culture are understood to be a part of style and to influence the production of material culture. This article presents research among Cameroonian potters concerning the learning processes specific to ceramic production. This kind of study helps to identify the social and technical factors that condition teaching and learning procedures. Ultimately, it attempts to demonstrate the existence...

Discontinuing Traditions: Using Historically Informed Ethnoarchaeology in the Study of Evros Ceramics

Ethnoarchaeological studies of pottery primarily focus on the ethnographic present, often disregarding the role of history in the production of material culture. This paper integrates information from historical sources and ethnographic interviews to better understand stylistic ceramic change. Beginning in the 1920s, undecorated pots largely replaced decorated pottery in the region of Evros, Greece. I argue that historically informed ethnoarchaeology provides the key to documenting and understanding the concomitant changes in the social context of pottery production and consumption and the distribution of material culture.