Vital Signs: Costly Signaling and Personal Adornment in the Near Eastern Neolithic (2006) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Palaeolithic Personal Ornaments: Historical Development and Epistemological Challenges
Since the 1990s, archaeological publications concerned with Palaeolithic personal ornaments have diversified. This proliferation has resulted in an intense exploration of the multiple roles, whether symbolic, cultural or social, that these items might have played in prehistoric groups. As a result of this process, there is now a broad consensus that these body adornments are important for exploring the origins of cognitive, artistic and symbolic behavior from an evolutionary perspective. This view contrasts with the conceptualization of Palaeolithic ornaments prevalent during the greater part of the twentieth century. At that time, these objects were rarely considered in debates concerning human evolution, art and symbolism. To explain this shift in the understanding of beads, pendants and other similar artifacts, we explore in this paper the history and the epistemology of the concept of ‘ornament’ in the field of Palaeolithic archaeology. In particular, we analyse the factors underlying why the same kinds of objects have been historically described in very diverse ways. We conclude by pointing out some of the epistemological challenges posed by the current revalorization of personal ornaments. Keywords Personal ornaments . Symbolism. Portable art . Technology
Not Just for Show: The Archaeology of Beads, Beadwork and Personal Ornaments [2017]
2017
Beads, beadwork, and personal ornaments are made of diverse materials such as shell, bone, stones, minerals, and composite materials. Their exploration from geographical and chronological settings around the world offers a glimpse at some of the cutting edge research within the fast growing field of personal ornaments in humanities’ past. Recent studies are based on a variety of analytical procedures that highlight humankind’s technological advances, exchange networks, mortuary practices, and symbol-laden beliefs. Papers discuss the social narratives behind bead and beadwork manufacture, use and disposal; the way beads work visually, audibly and even tactilely to cue wearers and audience to their social message(s). Understanding the entangled social and technical aspects of beads require a broad spectrum of technical and methodological approaches including the identification of the sources for the raw material of beads. These scientific approaches are also combined in some instances with experimentation to clarify the manner in which beads were produced and used in past societies. Table of Contents 1: The archaeology of beads, beadwork and personal ornaments. Alice M. Choyke and Daniella E. Bar-Yosef Mayer PART 1: SOCIO-CULTURAL REFLECTIONS 2. Traditions and change in scaphopod shell beads in northern Australia from the Pleistocene to the recent past. Jane Balme and Sue O'Connor 3. Magdalenian “beadwork time” in the Paris Basin (France): correlation between personal ornaments and the function of archaeological sites. Caroline Peschaux, Grégory Debout, Olivier Bignon-Lau And Pierre Bodu 4. Personal adornment and personhood among the Last Mesolithic foragers of the Danube Gorges in the Central Balkans and beyond. Emanuela Cristiani and Dušan Borić 5. Ornamental Shell Beads as Markers of Exchange in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B of the Southern Levant. Ashton Spatz 6. Games, Exchange, and Stone: hunter-gatherer beads at home. Emily Mueller Epstein PART 2: AUDIO AND VISUAL SOCIAL CUES 7. The Natufian audio-visual bone pendants from Hayonim Cave. Dana Shaham and Anna Belfer-Cohen 8. Bead Biographies from Neolithic Burial Contexts: Contributions from the Microscope. Annelou van Gijn 9. The Tutankhamun Beadwork, an Introduction to Archaeological Beadwork Analysis. Jolanda E. M. F. Bos PART 3: METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES 10. A Mother-of-Pearl Shell Pendant from Nexpa, Morelos. Adrián Velázquez-Castro, Patricia Ochoa-Castillo, Norma Valentín-Maldonado, Belem Zúñiga-Arellano 11. Detailing the bead maker: Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) of steatite disk beads from prehistoric Napa Valley, California. Tsim D. Schneider and Lori D. Hager 12. Exploring Manufacturing Traces and Social Organization using Prehistoric Mortuary Beads in the Salish Sea Region of the Northwest Coast of North America. David Bilton and Danielle A. Macdonald
Taking Beads Seriously: Prehistoric Forager Ornamental Traditions in Southeastern Europe
PaleoAnthropology (Special Issue: Personal Ornaments in Early Prehistory), 2019
Ornaments are polysemic objects due to different meanings they convey in human societies—self-embellishment, means of exchange, markers of age and gender, indicators of social status, signs of power, non-verbal means of expression and communication. Beads have a privileged place in shedding light on the origins of modern cognition in human societies. While archaeological approaches to ancient symbolism have often been concerned with behavioral modernity of our species, anthropological studies have underlined the role of ornaments in the construction of personhood, identity, and social networks in traditional societies. Exploring an approach informed by anthropological and ethnographic theory, we discuss Paleolithic and Mesolithic bodily adornments found across southeastern Europe. We present a review of the evidence for long-term regional and diachronic differences and similarities in types of body adornment among prehistoric foragers of the region. Here we look at aspects of cultural transmission and transferability over time. This enables us to reconstruct a series of gestures involved in ornament manufacture and use, and to examine transmissions of technological know-hows, shifting aesthetic values, and demands for specific local and non-local materials, including marine shells transferred across this region over long distances (>400km). This evidence is further discussed by, on the one hand, taking a perspective that draws on emic understandings of ornaments in certain ethnographic contexts and, on the other hand, through a rethinking of the relevance of the structural anthropological mode of analysis championed by Lévi-Strauss.
Journal of Archaeological Science. Reports, 2024
With the onset of the Near Eastern Neolithic during the 12th millennium cal BP, and thereafter, one can observe growing sedentary tendencies, as well a significant increase in populations and community sizes, all reflected in the Neolithic demographic transition. At that time (and even somewhat earlier in certain areas) a notable tendency for within and between community differentiation was observed, archaeologically visible through the variances in the material remains. A specific domain where this phenomenon can be observed are the easily portable items of adornment. The aspiration for symbolling and signaling at both the community level and the individual served to increase webs of interactions and exchange between communities, sometimes over huge distances. The differences and the similarities actually reflected the degree and intensity of connectivity between the communities far and wide.
BEAUTY AND THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER. Personal adornments across the millennia
2020
The International Colloquium: “Beauty and the eye of the beholder: personal adornments across the millennia” took place at Valahia University, Târgoviște, Romania, between 12 and 14 September 2019. Bearing in mind the complexity of the subject, the participants were invited to discuss a variety of topics, expressing the views of various “beholders” both in the past and at the present moment: their meaning/symbolism within the prehistoric/historical societies (e.g. cultural tradition, social and spiritual organization and exchange systems), raw materials (identification of sources and acquisition), various methodologies of study (technological and usewear analyses, microscopy, SEM+EDS analysis, FTIR and RAMAN spectroscopy, etc.) and experimental approaches (creating experimental reference collections), etc. At the end of the colloquium, following the discussions with our colleagues, it was decided to gather all presentations in a volume while also inviting other contributions dedicated to this topic, in an attempt to capture a broader spatial and temporal image. The result is the present volume comprising 26 studies organized in three major sections related to regional studies on adornments, and their use and presence in everyday life and afterlife. Within one section, papers were organized in chronological order. The papers in the volume cover geographically the whole of Europe and Anatolia: from Spain to Russia and from Latvia to Turkey; it spans chronologically many millennia, from the Middle Palaeolithic to the Iron Age (2nd – 4th centuries AD). The volume opens with ten regional studies offering not only comprehensive syntheses of various chronological horizons (Palaeolithic - Daniella E. Bar-Yosef Mayer, Neolithic/Chalcolithic - Emma L. Baysal; Fotis Ifantidis; Selena Vitezović and Dragana Antonović; Sanda Băcueț Crișan and Ancuța Bobînă; Andreea Vornicu-Țerna and Stansislav Țerna; Roberto Micheli) but also new data on the acquisition and working of various raw materials or specific types of adornments (Columbella rustica shells - Emanuela Cristiani, Andrea Zupancich and Barbara Cvitkusić; wild boar tusk - Ekaterina Kashina and Aija Macāne; canid tooth pendants - Petar Zidarov). The unbreakable link between adornments of the everyday life and those of the afterlife it is also highlighted in some of the contributions. The following section - Adornments in settlement archaeology - includes nine studies, covering the archaeological evidence from specific settlement sites. Many studies focused on the adornments' iconographic designs, meaning, and exchange but also on raw materials, technologies of production and systems of attachment. Chronology-wise, this section brings together the most varied range of ornaments, raw materials and processing techniques from sites in Spain (Esteban Álvarez-Fernández), Turkey (Sera Yelözer and Rozalia Christidou), Greece (Catherine Perlès and Patrick Pion; Christoforos Arampatzis) and Romania (Adina Boroneanț and Pavel Mirea; Ioan Alexandru Bărbat, Monica Mărgărit and Marius Gheorghe Barbu; Monica Mărgărit, Mihai Gligor, Valentin Radu and Alina Bințințan; Gheorghe Lazarovici and Cornelia-Magda Lazarovici; Vasile Diaconu). The last section - Adornments of the afterlife - focuses on ornaments identified in various funerary contexts allowing for a more detailed biography of ornaments through mostly use- and micro-wear studies, in order to reconstruct their production sequence and use life. Raw material availability and their properties, as well as contexts of deposition are also taken into account. In the seven studies of the section, different funerary contexts from Latvia (Lars Larsson), Ukraine (Nataliia Mykhailova), Hungary (Zsuzsanna Tóth) and Romania (Monica Mărgărit, Cristian Virag and Alexandra Georgiana Diaconu; Vlad-Ștefan Cărăbiși, Anca-Diana Popescu, Marta Petruneac, Marin Focşăneanu, Daniela Cristea-Stan and Florin Constantin; Dragoş Măndescu; Lavinia Grumeza) are discussed.