Archaeology

Papers of the Thematic Symposium, eighth Annual Meeting of the Society for Historical archaeology

Charleston, South Carolina, January 7-11,1975

Leland Ferguson

Editor

Special publication series, Number 2 PUBLISHED AND REPRINTED BY

The Society for Historical Archaeology JOHN D. COMBES, EDITOR, 1977

J.W. JOSEPH, JOURNAL EDITOR, 2012

HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE IMPORTANCE OF MATERIAL THINGS

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I'd like to preface this paper with the sincere request that it not be taken too seriously. One of the lessons that I think Fm learning as I advance into the sunset toward senior citizenship is that the most important thing in life is not to take it deadly serious, because all you do is get yourself into trouble. Still, in all, I think that buried within the morass of things I have to say are a couple of points that might at least bear thinking about, and maybe they deserve a bit of extended consideration.

About the title—I think I have an international reputation as the worst title writer in the world. I simply cannot produce them. Anyone who calls something “The Doppler Effect in Archaeological Chronology: In Consideration of the Spatial Aspects of Seriation/' (Deetz and Dethlefsen 1965) complete with colon, should be shot. But? I figure starting from there, there's nowhere to go but up, so Leland and I kind of put the title of this paper together. The first half of this title is a statement of subject; the second half asks a question. Obviously, there are a number of answers to this question, which we have all considered. Yet it is possible that we have not completely appreciated the range and diversity and the concomitant importance of material culture to the study of human behavior, now and in the past.

A cursory review of traditional definitions and concepts tells us that material culture and artifacts are vaguely synonymous. "They are the products of man's technology,” or "all those things made by man,” or "they are referred to as cultural material rather than material culture/' Of course all these considerations have their value, but we must look for the definition or definitions that will have the most value to archaeologists.

As archaeologists we must deal with artifacts and consider their subterranean context. From this perspective material culture is culturally patterned data which provide the archaeologist with insights to life in the past. Viewed in this fashion, the difference between archaeology and material culture is one of scope. Archaeology is the discipline or subdiscipline, and material culture —that is artifacts—is the set of most culturally sensitive data available. Such a view of the relationship between material culture and archaeology is from within, so to speak； and certainly all historical archaeologists and most probably most, if not all, prehistorians have a more catholic view of material culture than that above. However, among the other precincts of anthropology, material culture is not ranked as important to the student of the human species, simply because the folks are there too, and one can go directly to the behavior being studied without going through the screen produced by the material culture in between.

Certainly the questions asked of material culture by most ethnographers and ethnologists are of a very different order and emphasis than that asked by archaeologists. 'Tots and pans” courses are considered relatively unimportant in most universities. The real "substance" of anthropology is more likely to be sought in courses in structural anthropology or kinship algebra. Perhaps to anthropologists, material culture has been as the elephant to the blind man. Each encounters a different part and reacts dififerently in accordance with the precise circumstances of the contact.

Possibly a modest and tentative redefinition of material culture is in order. Perhaps through redefinition the elephant can better be perceived for what it truly is. Consider material culture as that segment of man's physical environment which is purposely shaped by him according to culturally dictated plans. This definition will more than comfortably accommodate all which we have considered as material culture thus far： Siberian fish hooks, office buildings, banjos, Freaky cereal and the little band of plastic Freakies which dwells in the box, the box, standing rib roast, apple pies, jumbo jets, step ladders, Venus figurines, and a number of other objects too numerous to mention here. But what of topiary work or perennial borders of flowers? This query is not quite as silly as it might seem at first. These things differ from those mentioned above in that they are living. Nevertheless, when we cut a privet, or shape a dwarf pine tree, we are modifying real world material according to a set of cultural plans.

Now, with animate beings the problem of endowing them with a culturally dictated form is a bit more complex. Yet, this is not to say that there are not a great number of ways whereby man also shapes the animate sector of his environment, including himself, in culturally ordained ways. The end result of this kind of modification is just as much material culture as is our beloved shell edged pearlware or a Pomo basket. Of course, a number of examples may come to mind of material culture formed by alteration of the human physique. Such things as scarification and tatooing are worked on living people, but much of the design could equally be applied to paper or wood. Of a very different order is the way man uses his physique alone or in the company of others to accomplish various tasks and follow the set of culturally prescribed rules in doing so. This range of cultural phenomena has been extensively studied, but not studied as material culture. Kinesics is concerned with the obviously cultural manipulation of the individual by himself, but it seems inescapable to view this too as material culture. Perhaps less obvious is the range of behavior which is covered by the study of proxemics; yet here too is a case of arranging a sector of the environment, in this instance people, according to a set of cultural rules.

At this point, one might object that there is a significant diflference between a person kneeling in prayer, material culture by the definition above, and a harpoon. After all, once the prayer is ended the individual assumes another form; but the harpoon will remain a harpoon indefinitely, perhaps for millenia. Yet the ephemeral nature of the phenomena seems spurious criteria fbr definition. A simple illustration of this is a piece of rope being used by a Boy Scout

in passing his tenderfoot knot-tying test. The same rope can be folded into sheep shank, half hitch, and bowline. Each is a piece of material culture enduring perhaps only for seconds.

I have suggested elsewhere (Deetz 1967) that technologies may be divided into additive and subtractive categories. Additive technologies involve the aggregation of raw materials, such as quilling a basket, and are in theory at least, infinitely expandable. Subtractive technologies are those which involve material removal such as carving or stone work, and artifact size is a function of the size of the parent block of stone, wood, bone, or other substance. To these, we might add another category, manipulative, in which neither adding nor removing of materials is involved, but only the reshaping of the constant mass. Examples of manipulative artifacts include blown glass, oragami, the knots mentioned above, as well as the endless variety of ways in which man uses his body to communicate；, to work, and to play.

The proxemic use of the human body as a unit of material culture may go beyond simple considerations of what is usually called cultural space, to the entire range of ways in which man, in numbers, creates culturally patterned phenomena. In this case, the people may become involved as components of a set of larger systems, and the individuals perform much tihe same function as individual, unmodified grass stems in the foundation of a coiled basket. Highly structured examples of this class of material culture are parades or rituals involving large numbers of individuals. The Catholic High Mass before Vatican II is a striking instance involving kinesic, proxemic, and even larger scale patterns. The complex and often bizarre configurations performed on football fields during halftime such as a band forming the word “OHIO” is? as far as Fm concerned, just as much material culture as an arrowhead.

Less structured and correspondingly less obvious examples of this phenomenon include communities and families. If we can accept the culturally patterned assemblage of family members within a household as material culture under the definition offered above, then it becomes obvious that a whole range of data normally in the domain of the ethnologist should also be considered from the material perspective. The same applies to the disposition of these family units into aggregates called communities. One definition of an archaeological assemblage is simply the material remains of a community. However, we must remember that communities are composed of people. In reality, the community and the archaeological assemblage are one. The living component of the assemblages, subassem- blages, and artifacts identified in archaeology may only be ignored at our peril,

A shovel does not excavate by itself, but is attached to a shoveler who shovels in a manner dictated by his culture. His motor habits are learned and culturally determined, and it is probably fair to say that both shovel form and shoveler form must be understood. For instance, seventeenth century shovels cannot be used with the same motor habits we use with modern shovels. Likewise, dwelling houses are used by dwellers, and while the form of the house is dictated by the number of and relationship between the dwellers it must, in turn, also impose a structure upon them. The relationship between the human and inanimate components of these systems is not a one way street. Behavior is reflected in material culture to be sure, but material culture, especially as it is considered here, is reflected in behavior as well.

Deetz • Material Culture and Archaeology—WhatJs the Difference?

In the realm of language, I have suggested elsewhere (Deetz 1967) that material culture in the traditional sense and language are homologous, as well as analogous to each other. If this is so then it is no surprise that all the structural and syntactic analyses of language have such ready application to artifacts. The homology is derived simply from the fact that the physical form of language is that of a modified substance. The substance is air and the modification is in the size and shape of the vibrating air mass and the frequency variations imparted to it by the vocal cords. This class of culturally shaped substance can neither be seen nor touched, but it is as much a part of mans culturally modified physical environment as is a brick schoolhouse. I suspect that if linguists had been able to stack their words on tables like potsherds ? the insights they have developed concerning the structure and syntax of lan-

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HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE IMPORTANCE OF MATERIAL THINGS

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guage may well have been much slower in developing. Whether such is the case or not? the linguists were the first to demonstrate the precise structural form of a patterned cultural phenomenon, and even though the terms "formeme" and "fiacteme” are rather atrocious in their etymological bastardization, this does not detract from what I believe to be their reality in an homologous as well as analogous sense. Likewise, efforts to apply the techniques of linguistics to more .complex material configurations, when they have succeeded, owe part of their success to the same homology. It has been suggested that people and their language can be accommodated under a somewhat revised and more general definition of material culture.

There is always the danger in broadening definitions to such a point that they lose their precision. Years ago, I made up a semi-facetious definition of culture that I actually thought was rather good, only to have a student point out that it also defined a spiral nebula, God, and an ant hill. In this case, however, such a generalization is not indicated, and yet, many other cultural phenomena not normally thought of as material culture do fall promptly within the bounds of this definition. Consider, for example, animal domestication. To the extent that the form of these animals has been dictated by cultural preference, we can see domestication as a process of material culture production. This may not apply too directly to animals such as the dogs that lived among North American Indians, but in the case of a color coordinated living room complete with white cat and black dog, the process seems disturbingly complete. Also, as we learn more of the complexity of human genetics and its code, we can expect a time to come when purposeful alteration of the human body will be effected. When this happens yet another dimension of the use of the body as an artifact will have emerged.

As we consider the way in which a simple change in the definition of material culture broadens its applicability, it becomes increasingly clear that as archaeologists we have been laboring under a needless burden for these many years. All of those behavioral scientists have really been poaching on our domain, but we haven't reacted since we didn't know where the property line was. One thing about these poachers—they use some very effective weapons. So, whether we decide to evict them or not, their arms should be incorporated into our analytical arsenal. Claude Levi-Strauss has a delightful way of turning things upside down for a better look at them, as indicated in one of my favorite passages from his writing, Tristes Tropiques (1970), second chapter, and I quote, “The fact that my first glimpse of British University life was in the neo-Gothic precincts of the University of Daka in eastern Bengal, has since made me regard Oxford as part of India that has got its mud, humidity, and super abundant vegetation under surprisingly good control.” Perhaps in a similar manner we have inverted the relationships between material culture, archaeology, and the rest of anthropology. The time may have arrived to inform our fellow anthropologists that the poor cousin, material culture, has at last come into its true place in the order of things. This new order would hold the study of material culture to be the proper study of man. Its subdisciplines would include ethnography, ethnology, and archaeology. Anthropology departments would be material culture departments, and as we expand and define our jargon, we may soon be asking, “Is the study of material culture a science?n

Department of Anthropology

Brown University

Deetz, James

1967 Invitation to archaeology. American Museum Science Books, New York.

Deetz, James and Edwin Dethlefsen

1965 The Doppler effect and archaeology： a con

sideration of the spatial aspects of seriation.

Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 21 (3)： 196-206.

Levi-Strauss, Claude

1970 Tristes tropiques. Atheneum, New York.