T. L. Kienlin, Bronze Age Tell Communities in Context – An Exploration Into Culture, Society, and the Study of European Prehistory. Part 2: Practice. The Social, Space, and Materiality. Archaeopress Archaeology. Oxford: Archaeopress 2020. (original) (raw)

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.