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Frameworks of interpretation: indicators for interaction Besides the means of movement, central to the study of routes and exchange is

Contexts and Frameworks of Research

1.5 Frameworks of interpretation: indicators for interaction Besides the means of movement, central to the study of routes and exchange is

identifying the kinds of evidence that provide indicators for interaction. Here I want to briefly outline the interpretative approaches to material culture and key threads of analysis that will be followed throughout this book. Many varied sorts of commodities (goods, ideas and living beings) were no doubt circulating over large-distances, but the way in which the archaeological record of prehistory was created15 means that such flows cannot be directly ‘seen’ through the extant remains. Various forms of evidence – from direct to indirect, from textual accounts to proxy depictions – must be assembled and interpreted together to form the large picture. As we will see in the following chapters, it is necessary to avoid an overly positivist attitude to the evidence: the majority of the material culture which was exchanged in the past is permanently lost – but this does not mean we should exclude from our analysis of routes and interaction those categories of material which we cannot see directly in the archaeological record. These ‘invisible flows’, as we could call them, were important structuring features of ancient economies. Similarly, certain otherwise ‘visible’ materials may have travelled along paths which are difficult to reconstruct because the data is so sparse. On the other hand, objects that did not individually travel long-distances (such as

15 Mostly as discarded debris from settlements (middens or earlier demolished/abandoned settlements under tells); sporadic but sudden accidental preservations (ship wrecks or volcanic eruptions) or deliberate burials which have either long been forgotten (hoards, flat cemeteries) or have remained only as visible monuments (kurgans).

pottery, architectural styles or technologies), can reveal smaller scale networks (‘pathways’, see Section 3.2.1) through which higher-value materials had to pass, by their greater density of distribution. Thus by bringing together different types of evidence at different scales, and combining multiple overlapping networks of interaction, we can hope to produce a more comprehensive picture of the flow of materials and people during our period of interest.

1.5.1 Visible and invisible flows: materials, people, language

Creating a full list of potential materials that may have flowed along routes of movement between 3000 and 1500BC would be an impossible task16. In the archaeological record, stable inorganic materials tend to be most easily identified (stone/mineral, metal, clay-based items), but the contemporary texts we have from Mesopotamia in particular hint at a vast array of organic and volatile substances in use (animal and plant fibres, edible or ingestible plants or animals, dyes and cleaning chemicals), many of which were apparently sourced from distant locations and along extended commodity chains or trade networks (Moorey 1999; Potts 1997). Both ‘raw’ substances and ‘finished’ goods appear to have been transported.

Whilst the line between ‘raw’ and ‘finished’ is a flexible and culturally-specific construct (cf. ‘the raw and the cooked’, Levi-Strauss 1983), there is some worth in differentiating the two since they imply different things about the level of integration between communities. ‘Raw’ materials (e.g. unworked precious stones) may be exchanged more easily across cultural boundaries without, necessarily, a concomitant transfer of meaning or practices – even if the transfer across that boundary is itself important to the material’s meaning in the new context (i.e. as

‘exotic’). ‘Finished’ objects, which have been transformed significantly (through carving, metalworking or cooking), tend to have been made for a specific cultural context with specific social functions. For example, carved stone vessels (discussed further in Section 4.4.1) were designed, to paraphrase Alfred Gell (1992; 1998), to ‘entrap’ a specific audience. Thus the implication of a very large number of

‘imported’ finished goods or the emulation of such goods or styles suggests a deeper degree of cultural integration. Metals are rather unique, in that they permanently lie in an ambiguous state of ‘rawness’ and ‘finishedness’. Old objects can be easily melted down and recycled and this liquidity has had consequences for metal’s role in human interaction (something which is discussed further in Chapter 5).

Materials or ‘substances’ should also be taken to include people, animals and plants of course. Although it will not form part of the analysis of this study, it should be noted that there is considerable scope for mapping the movement of people through the remains of human bodies through isotopic studies and genetic studies of populations with modern and ancient DNA17. Though such

16 A parallel example from a much later period, namely the Tang era in China, can be found in the form of the vast lists of exotic materials of innumerable type presented to the Tang king and listed by Edward Schafer in his study of the topic, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand (Schafer 1963). Whilst a Bronze Age equivalent might have included a smaller range of items from a more limited catchment, the comparison helps to expand the range of commodities and categories of material that we should be prepared to think about being transported.

17 Anthropometric studies that focus on supposed racial and geographical origins of peoples, which are still popular in some archaeological traditions, should, in general, be treated with some scepticism.

Where such studies are useful, however, is in the identification of trends in or individual cases of pathological conditions which may offer clues to health, diet and life-cycle of a community’s members.

techniques have received wide attention in studies of European prehistory, they are only just beginning to be applied to the Near East and other parts of the Old World. In contrast, whilst we know that demographic and other movements must have caused linguistic change and resulted in substantial linguistic flows, at present there seems little hope that we will ever resolve many of the mysteries surrounding the earliest origins of language groups. In our case-study regions/

time-periods, there is very little direct evidence for languages. In Central Asia, written texts do not appear at all in durable materials until the Hellenistic period.

Masson’s suggestion that certain symbols (found on objects such as terracotta figurines) might indicate a kind of nascent written code, along the Indus analogy (e.g. Masson 1968, 182, 184), remains speculative.

In eastern Anatolia/Transcaucasia, the situation is similarly sparse, with the earliest texts dating to the Urartu period (i.e. the first half of the 1st millennium BC). In adjacent regions to the south and in overlapping regions to the west, literate groups were active of course: most locally we can include the Old Assyrian tablets from Kültepe, which date to the 19th or 18th centuries BC and the Hittite texts, which date to the 16th to 12th centuries BC (e.g. Forlanini 2008; Barjamovic 2011). This select group of fossilized documents from Anatolia and the completely invisible record of Central Asia no doubt mask intricate and constantly transforming linguistic landscapes during the Bronze Age (Sherratt and Sherratt 1997). It seems highly likely that, in these transformations, trade and long-distance exchange played an important part. The traditional models of

‘Indo-European’ distribution still remain frustratingly unimaginative however, and the persistence of the perception that language and ethnicity are identical (and that ethnic groups can be identified by pottery groups), unhelpful. Whether it will ever be possible to do much more than give posit speculative models is questionable, but since languages are required and come into being precisely for the exchange of ideas and material culture, we should bear in mind the likelihood that some of the material residues of interaction networks also do reflect linguistic koinai, and that the communities engaged in such networks were unlikely to be simply passive monolingual carriers of language from one generation to the next, but rather active and motivated polyglots.

1.5.2 Technology and style as indicators of interdependence

With moving people also come moving skills and technologies. Much recent literature in the anthropology of material culture and production has focussed on the (human) body as site of dual processes of transformation of both the physical and structural-symbolic worlds (see, for example Warnier 2007) – as behavioural rituals in craft production. This is something that has emerged from a marriage between the chaîne opératoire approach to technological studies (Leroi-Gourhan 1964, 164; cf. Soressi and Geneste 2011), and complementary studies on techniques du corps or bodily praxis (Mauss 1935). Despite the interesting insights these approaches may have for the history of technology, ethnographic accounts, whilst sometimes comparative, still tend to focus on the local dynamics of technologies within particular cultural contexts. From an archaeological perspective, more interesting is the dynamic flow of technologies and skills in space and time and, potentially, across cultural or geographic boundaries.

Tracing the spread of technological innovations has long been an important thread in archaeological research, although often such studies have focussed on seeking the ‘origin’ of the techniques rather than on their consequences for social configurations or significance for the level of integration between communities.

Philip Kohl has argued that in the third millennium BC, there were few barriers to the transfer of technologies except distance, and that ‘innovations’ could easily pass from one community to another. He contrasts this with the modern world-system in which various structural and cultural barriers prevent the transfer of technologies from one region to another, and hence create and maintain economic difference (Kohl 1987b; 2011). The extent of technological transferability during the 3rd millennium, remains relatively uninvestigated, however.

If framed in the language of ‘praxeology’, the spread of many types of technological innovations may be better described as the transfer of bodily techniques, through migration, apprenticeship, mimicry or reverse-engineering (i.e. emulation). Given the differential difficulty with which certain innovations can be created in the first place, we should be attentive to the specificity of the techniques in question (see, for example, Rahmstorf 2011). There are differences between different material outcomes (styles, functions) and the amount of technical skill and knowledge required to produce them. There is thus a continuum of intensity of social interaction (emulation, learning, teaching, or migration) required to facilitate the transfer of technology. In a local context, complex skills are passed vertically through apprenticeships and the practice of everyday life, but, for regional interaction, additional mechanisms are required to transmit such knowledge including colleges, travelling craftworkers or gift exchange all of which imply systemic movement of human beings. Such movement need not imply the permanent or unidirectional ‘migration’ which were typically evoked by early twentieth century cultural historians, but could instead include trickle migration (e.g. via the circulation of marriage partners from one village to the next who might bring textile production knowledge), temporary Gastarbeiter exchanging skills for labour (e.g. itinerant metalsmiths), or structured exchange of ‘students’

as part of initiatory procedures. The key point is that structured social institutions that facilitate interaction and skills transfer are normally required: and this will be reflected in the degree of coherence in the material record. Where objects only look like similar nearby items then the integration and interaction must be less, or at least only focused on the consumptive group in a community; where similar techniques of production are applied but objects are stylistically dissimilar, integration and interaction is likely to be higher at the productive level but not at the consumptive one; and finally where both styles and techniques are similar, interaction across both consumptive and productive spheres of community must be high. Once transferred, however, successful techniques can persist for generations, and be retransferred to other regions that do not have direct connections to the originating communities. It is thus difficult to perceive on-going interactions at a supra-regional scale through technical means alone.

The other aspect of technology is of course, ‘style’. Style and technology should not, of course, be considered opposites (i.e. decorative vs. functional). In a praxeological sense, ‘styles’ are also produced by the transfer (learning) of bodily techniques. The effect on the audience should also be considered as part of the

‘technical’ aspect of the process of production. This is what Alfred Gell (1998) argued when he described art-production as a ‘technology of enchantment’.

In this sense, the function of ‘stylistic’ decoration is to act upon the viewer to enchant, persuade and impress. Like other functional characteristics, stylistic characteristics are only valuable if they address the particular social-technical needs of the consuming community. The distinction between ‘function’ and ‘style’

is worth making, however, because it is possible to produce superficially similar looking objects with different bodily techniques. Where it is possible to document it therefore, the transfer of actual bodily techniques suggests more fundamental shifts in social practice, and, of course, in the level of movement, socio-economic integration and exchange between different communities.

Pottery provides a good example to highlight the distinction of ‘style’. In the culture-historical model of cultural change, similarly-styled pottery implied the migration of potters. However, as well as rejecting the ‘pots as peoples’ argument, ever-more-detailed studies of ceramic assemblages have identified differences in production techniques for superficially similar wares that make it very likely that different (and only distantly connected) individuals were involved in production.

This forces us to search for different mechanisms for spreading ‘styles’, perhaps through alternative media. Where techniques are similar, however, it implies a much closer integration. We will return to this again, for example when we discuss the Kura-Arax and related pottery (in Section 5.6.5) and painted pottery wares of the late 3rd and early 2nd millennia BC (in Section 6.6).

1.5.3 Cross-craft interaction: technology, aesthetics and skeuomorphism

Explaining large zones of similar object forms and styles despite apparent local manufacture can often be difficult, but such phenomena must either be a result of frequent contact between technicians across the region, or else they must document the movement of an intermediate medium through which the motifs and surface aesthetics (or ‘epiaesthetics’) are passed. The nature of disciplinary specialism in archaeology means that different materials are normally studied by different specialists. Whilst this is a necessary division of labour resulting from the need for developed expertise and the sheer time needed to process archaeological finds, a collatoral consequence is that the development of objects in each material category is effectively treated as a “closed-system” (Nakou 2007). The cross-craft and cross-technological links between, for example, metals and ceramics, tend to get obscured, and the explanation for a change in one type rarely sought in the other. In fact, ‘stylistic’ influence very frequently appears across material boundaries: motifs distinctive to one media (e.g. textiles, basketry or netting) may appear as patterns on another (i.e. pots); technical features of one media (e.g.

rivets required to hold together a metal vessel) appear on another (e.g. mock rivets in ceramic vessels). The second of these – the mimicry of a feature from another material (e.g. shape) that is technically redundant in the new material – is an example of what is strictly meant by ‘skeuomorphism’. However, the transfer of techniques and styles between media – ‘inter-media flows’ – are likely to be far more complicated than we can easily perceive, flowing to-and-fro in multiple directions. Both ‘skeuomorphism’ and ‘migrant motifs’ are simply different aspects along a spectrum of ‘cross-craft interaction’, which should also include other aesthetic mimicry (including colour, sound, taste).

The potential for such cross-craft interaction is particular high when there are overlapping technologies (or rather bodily techniques) between what we tend to identify as separate crafts: the best example of this is of course the overlap of pyrotechnical skills required to work metals or fire clay. Pottery is, of course, one of the best materials in which to identify skeuomorphism or features from other crafts. Clay is a uniquely plastic material, in the sense that it can take on many different forms, colours and ‘materialities’ (patterns, reflectivity, feel to touch, sound, weight) which mimic other materials. Indeed in the absence of the constellation of materials we call ‘plastics’ today18 – which are used in a similar skeuomorphic manner – it is difficult to find a similarly chameleonic material to match clay in the ancient world. Additionally, ceramic objects or fragments survive extremely well in the archaeological record, because they were generally low value, difficult to recycle and not prone to decomposition, and thus were more often deposited in the ground, either as broken waste (on settlements or middens) or as symbolic avatar for its metal, stone or other equivalents (particularly in graves) to be found by archaeologists. Indeed, pottery may often provide the only surviving evidence for similar objects in different media that have not survived, and thus offer clues to patterns of consumption and flows of those materials, which would otherwise remain hidden.

The recognition of skeuomorphism has a long pedigree in the history of archaeology: many of the discipline’s earliest practitioners and theorists were concerned with and discussed freely the ‘skeuomorphic’ aspects and origins of pottery designs (including J. Evans, Childe, A. Evans, Mallowan: see e.g. Childe 1915; Schachermeyr 1955). Interest in such inter-craft connections has continued sporadically since (e.g. Vickers 1985; McGovern and Notis 1989; Vickers and Gill 1994; Knappett 2002; Nakou 2007), though because of the difficulty of

‘proving’ skeuomorphism in the absence of prototypes, these approaches are often treated circumspectly or even with downright distrust (see, for example, R. M.

Cook 1987). A healthy scepticism towards particular claims for skeuomorphism is always necessary of course, but too often critique arises from an essentialist assumption of material categories. Instead such scepticism should start from an assumption of the ‘unboundedness’ of materials, and accept the possibility for varying intensities of ‘influence’ between them, based on synergies of function, form and decoration but also technique and bodily praxis.

An emphasis on cross-craft interaction and on the ‘unboundedness’ of material categories is an important theme in this book. Cross-craft interaction reminds us of the importance of the social role of materials rather than their abstract archaeological categorization. Pottery in particular appears to offer ways to examine the circulation of otherwise ‘invisible flows’ through ‘inter-media flows’: indeed, the distribution of such pottery seems likely to index aspects of the flow of the materials they reference. Because of this, the reader should not be surprised to find pottery discussed in chapters nominally devoted to stone, metal or textile (as skeuomorphs and proxies); metal jewellery discussed under textiles (as adornment); or metal discussed under stones (as weights).

18 The defining feature of this material is often forgotten now it has become so ubiquitous – despite its giveaway name. The complex interaction between plastic jewellery and the precious jewels they tend to mimic could provide a fascinating insight into modern value systems (particularly moral values in clothing, dress and class).

1.5.4 Value, aesthetics and colour ‘symbolism’

Related to this focus on cross-craft interaction will be a sustained thread of the analysis devoted to value systems as indicated through material culture. By ‘value systems’ I refer to the way in which communities promote certain material qualities over others as inter-agent identities are negotiated. This will involve discussion of colour (for example in the form of consumption of coloured stone); the deposition of apparently ‘valued’ material (such as metals) in deliberate contexts;

or the development of patterns (particularly in cloth) to differentiate people and maintain elite status.

Much of this could be argued to return us to the question of the emergence of elites in the 3rd millennium BC (discussed above), and the ways in which they established and maintained their status, but to do so would be to re-inscribe the bias of the archaeological record. We must therefore try to pick out competing and alternative value systems (both elite and ‘ordinary’) and value systems that

Much of this could be argued to return us to the question of the emergence of elites in the 3rd millennium BC (discussed above), and the ways in which they established and maintained their status, but to do so would be to re-inscribe the bias of the archaeological record. We must therefore try to pick out competing and alternative value systems (both elite and ‘ordinary’) and value systems that