The ceramic industry of Deneia: crafting community and place in Middle Bronze Age Cyprus, 2010 (original) (raw)
Related papers
The deconstruction of ethnic identities has shattered how we understand the social landscape of the ancient Mediterranean. As cleansing as this deconstruction has been, it has left a gap in our ability to analyse social entities at an intermediate scale between households and states. In this context, the concept of communities emerges as a productive framework. Communities are social entities that are enacted through interactions and presuppose a sense of commonality, cohesion and belonging that attenuates internal social differentiation. This perspective invites archaeologists to explore complex social dynamics through a lens that can be applied to the material record, and this session hopes for papers that combine theoretical rigour with empirical analysis. Potential topics include, but are not limited to, different forms of communities – e.g. ritual communities or communities of practice – and their relationships with other entities such as families, groups or the state. Papers may explore how “practices of affiliation” (W.H. Isbell), such as drawing cultural boundaries, referring to a common past, and sharing experiences from everyday encounters to festive events, fostered communities. Similarly, the role of emotions and the senses, for example in feasts and funerals, but also the significance of space and place, provide rich avenues for exploration. Other themes include community cohesion, resilience or transformation in scenarios of intercultural contact, as well as moments when community identity and membership were contested from within the community, but papers could also challenge humanist notions by exploring “more-than-human communities” (O.J.T. Harris) that bring together people, animals and things.
This is the second part of a study on Bronze Age tells, and on our approaches towards an understanding of this fascinating way of life drawing on the material remains of long-term architectural stability and references back to ancestral place. Focusing on a rather specific way of organising social space and a particular materiality as a medium of past social action, this is also a study with wider implications for the study of European prehistory and theoretical issues of archaeological interpretation. Unlike the reductionist macro perspective of mainstream social modelling, inspired by aspects of practice theory outlined in this book, the account given seeks to allow for what is truly remarkable about these sites, and what we can infer from them about the way of life they once framed and enabled. The social is never a static given, but is situated in space and time where it constantly unfolds anew. The stability seen on tells, and their apparent lack of change on a macro scale, are specific features of the social field, in a given region and for a specific period of time. They come about as the result of social life unfolding in a specific way, and not another, that leaves the total nexus of practices and the material arrangements that together make up human sociality seemingly unchanged in outward appearance. In a community thus favouring tradition over change, norms and shared ends not only link and orient actions into practices, as they always do, but may effectuate the broadly speaking unchanged persistence of traditional practices and discourage deviation by social actors, without ever reducing them, of course, to mere dummies. Similarly, the material world that is always both the outcome of action and structures that action in the context of organised practices, by virtue of its longevity and apparent givenness may come to prefigure the social future in likenesses of the past more consistently than is otherwise the case. The social process, however, will always be fundamentally open and indeterminate, as social actors do have agency and intentionality in pursuit of their notion of a life well accomplished. Both stability and change are contingent upon specific historical contexts, including traditional practices, their material setting and human intentionality. They are not an inherent, given property of this or that ‘type’ of society or social structure. For on our tells, it is argued here, underneath the specific manifestation of sociality maintained, we clearly do see social practices and corresponding material arrangements being negotiated and adjusted. Echoing the argument laid out in the first part of this study, it is suggested that archaeology should take an interest in such processes on the micro scale, rather than succumb to the temptation of neat macro history and great narratives existing aloof from the material remains of past lives.
Building upon the chaîne opératoire approach, this chapter approaches technology through the concept of networks of action as an entangled practice. It is suggested that an emphasis on cross-craft interaction and networks of action between people, materials and places provides an opportunity to transcend the analysis of traditionally separated materials and move towards an understanding of how people were drawn into social networks during the construction of the realities of their everyday life. Furthermore, it was argued that ground stone technology, due to its implication in the different stages of the chaîne opératoire of many other material categories (cf. Wright 2008), is well suited to the study of 'network of entanglements' (Hodder 2004). These ideas were explored through the analysis of the large ground stone assemblage from Late Neolithic Makriyalos. Using as a case-study the chaîne opératoire of edge tools, stone and shell ornaments, the interactions afforded by the different crafts were explored. Thus, it was argued that interplay between crafts is evidenced in the raw materials used (stone), the techniques employed (especially grind-ing) and the tools utilised (grinding and percussive tools). These interactions entailed the sharing of knowledge regarding sources, material properties and techniques of working, which was enabled by daily contexts of interaction within the Makriyalos habitation area. The exploration of the entanglement between people, places and materials allows us to understand how these objects were caught up in the broader webs of social relations and shows the manner in which stone-working and other crafts materialised cultural attitudes and valuations.
2023
This volume substantiates the island of Cyprus as an important player in the history of the ancient Eastern Mediterranean and Near East, and presents new theoretical and analytical approaches. The Cypriot Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and Bronze Age are characterised by an increasing complexity of social and political organisation, economic systems, and networks. The book discusses and defines how specific types of material datasets and assemblages, such as architecture, artefacts, and ecofacts, and their contextualisation can form the basis of interpretative models of social structures and networks in ancient Cyprus. This is explored through four main themes: approaches to social dynamics; social and economic networks and connectivity; adaptability and agency; and social dynamics and inequality. The variety and transition of social structures on the island are discussed on multiple scales, from the local and relatively short-term to island-wide and eastern Mediterranean-wide and the longue durée. The focus of study ranges from urban to non-urban contexts and is reflected in settlement, funerary, and other ritual contexts. Connections, both within the island and to the broader Eastern Mediterranean, and how these impact social and economic developments on the island, are explored. Discussions revolve around the potential of consolidating the models based on specialised studies into a cohesive interpretation of society on ancient Cyprus and its strategic connections with surrounding regions in a diachronic perspective from the Neolithic through the end of the Bronze Age, i.e. from roughly the seventh millennium to the eleventh century BCE. Dynamics and Developments of Social Structures and Networks in Prehistoric and Protohistoric Cyprus is intended for researchers and students of the archaeology and history of ancient Cyprus, the Aegean, and the Eastern Mediterranean. Teresa Bürge is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Universities of Gothenburg and Bern and at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Her research focuses on the Bronze and Iron Ages in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant, in specific pottery and pottery provenance studies, economy, trade, and exchange of goods as well as depositional practices, ritual, and cult. She has co-directed the Swedish excavations at Hala Sultan Tekke, Cyprus, and is the expedition's ceramic expert.
Introduction: Connecting multiple approaches to social structures and networks
Dynamics and Developments of Social Structures and Networks in Prehistoric and Protohistoric Cyprus, 2023
This volume substantiates the island of Cyprus as an important player in the history of the ancient Eastern Mediterranean and Near East, and presents new theoretical and analytical approaches. The Cypriot Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and Bronze Age are characterised by an increasing complexity of social and political organisation, economic systems, and networks. The book discusses and defines how specific types of material datasets and assemblages, such as architecture, artefacts, and ecofacts, and their contextualisation can form the basis of interpretative models of social structures and networks in ancient Cyprus. This is explored through four main themes: approaches to social dynamics; social and economic networks and connectivity; adaptability and agency; and social dynamics and inequality. The variety and transition of social structures on the island are discussed on multiple scales, from the local and relatively short-term to island-wide and eastern Mediterranean-wide and the longue durée. The focus of study ranges from urban to non-urban contexts and is reflected in settlement, funerary, and other ritual contexts. Connections, both within the island and to the broader Eastern Mediterranean, and how these impact social and economic developments on the island, are explored. Discussions revolve around the potential of consolidating the models based on specialised studies into a cohesive interpretation of society on ancient Cyprus and its strategic connections with surrounding regions in a diachronic perspective from the Neolithic through the end of the Bronze Age, i.e. from roughly the seventh millennium to the eleventh century BCE. Dynamics and Developments of Social Structures and Networks in Prehistoric and Protohistoric Cyprus is intended for researchers and students of the archaeology and history of ancient Cyprus, the Aegean, and the Eastern Mediterranean. Teresa Bürge is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Universities of Gothenburg and Bern and at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Her research focuses on the Bronze and Iron Ages in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant, in specific pottery and pottery provenance studies, economy, trade, and exchange of goods as well as depositional practices, ritual, and cult. She has co-directed the Swedish excavations at Hala Sultan Tekke, Cyprus, and is the expedition's ceramic expert.
Community – finding the middle ground in studies of prehistoric social organisation.
Community as a term is much-used, if poorly defined, within papers on British prehistory, displaying a variety of more-or-less explicit physical or emotional connotations. This paper looks at sociological and anthropological work on ‘community’ to see how an unambiguous concern for the fundamental attributes of community can enhance our narratives of life in the Iron Age. The community is constructed from an individual’s interaction within a number of interconnected cross cutting structural groups that creates a shared affinity between participants. Communal identities are in turn central to the creation of individual identities and provide the basis for social practice. In turn it is crucial to biological and social reproduction as well as economic production, making it a fundamental unit of society. The current ascendant model of Iron Age social organization focuses on the independent household as the primary unit of social analysis. This paper will highlight how this focus on a largely independent unit, inhibits our understanding of a variety of larger-scale social interactions which constituted key aspects of life in the Iron Age. It explores how a landscape approach, mapping activities spatially and functionally, can be used to investigate community through movement and interaction between structural groups. Finally it reviews evidence from the Earliest Iron Age midden sites in the Vale of Pewsey to show how a community framework can be used to create a more nuanced understanding of the historical conditions of life.