Craft Specialization and Social Evolution

Craft Specialization and Social Evolution
Author: Bernard Wailes
Publisher: UPenn Museum of Archaeology
Total Pages: 264
Release: 1996-01-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780924171437

V. Gordon Childe was the first scholar to attempt a broad and sustained socioeconomic analysis of the archaeology of the ancient world in terms that, today, could be called explanatory. To most, he was remembered only as a diligent synthesizer whose whole interpretation collapsed when its chronology was demolished. There was little recognition of his insistence that the emergence of craft specialists, and their very variable roles in the relations of production, were crucial to an understanding of social evolution. The interrelationship between sociopolitical complexity and craft production is a critical one, so critical that one might ask, just how complex would any society have become without craft specialization. This volume derives from the papers presented at a symposium at the American Anthropological Association meetings on the centenary of Childe's birth. Contributors to the volume include David W. Anthony, Philip J. Arnold III, Bennet Bronson, Robert Chapman, John E. Clark, Cathy L. Costin, Pam J. Crabtree, Philip L. Kohl, D. Blair Gibson, Antonio Gilman, Vincent C. Piggott, Jeremy A. Sabloff, Gil J. Stein, Ruth Tringham, Anne P. Underhill, Bernard Wailes, Peter S. Wells, Joyce C. White, Rita P. Wright, and Richard L. Zettler. Symposium Series Volume VI University Museum Monograph, 93

Rethinking Craft Specialization in Complex Societies

Rethinking Craft Specialization in Complex Societies
Author: Zachary X. Hruby
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2007
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

The contributions to this volume are introduced via a critical review of terms and concepts used in craft production studies today. Recent detailed contextual and technological analyses of artifacts from all aspects of complex societies have revealed interesting patterns that are difficult to conceptualize using a purely economic framework. Furthermore, interest in practice theory, and sociocultural theory in general, has shifted some foci of archaeological investigation toward the social aspects of production and specialization.

Social Evolution

Social Evolution
Author: Vere Gordon Childe
Publisher: Cleveland : World Publishing Company
Total Pages: 208
Release: 1963
Genre: Prehistoric peoples
ISBN:

Archaeology at the Millennium

Archaeology at the Millennium
Author: Gary M. Feinman
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 512
Release: 2007-09-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 0387726101

In this book, internationally distinguished contributors consider hot topics in turn-of-the-millennium archaeology and chart an ambitious agenda for the future.

The Affect of Crafting

The Affect of Crafting
Author: Uzma Z. Rizvi
Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2018-10-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1789690048

The Affect of Crafting' presents an interrogation of materiality and crafting, a consideration of the situatedness of the technological practice of crafting itself, and the forms of relationships that exist between all things transformed in the act of crafting: bodies, minerals and landscapes.

Economic Representations

Economic Representations
Author: David F Ruccio
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 637
Release: 2008-05-16
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1135975396

Why is there such a proliferation of economic discourses in literary theory, cultural studies, anti-sweatshop debates, popular music, and other areas outside the official discipline of economics? How is the economy represented in different ways by economists and non-economists?In this volume, scholars from a wide variety of disciplines and countrie

Housework

Housework
Author: Kenneth G. Hirth
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2010-02-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 144433669X

Households are, without question, the most important social units in human society. They are interactive social units whose primary concern is the day-to-day well being of their kith and kin. Households reproduce themselves and provide their members with the economic, psychological, and social resources necessary to live their lives. Although households vary enormously in size and organization, they are the fundamental social settings in which families are defined and cultural values are transmitted through a range of domestic activities and rituals. Despite their many functions, it is the range and productivity of their economic activities that determine the success, survival and well being of their members. Households are the primary production and consumption units in society and provide the vehicle through which resources are pooled, stored, and distributed to their members. Survival and reproduction is their business and the work they do determines their success.

The Evolution of Ceramic Production Organization in a Maya Community

The Evolution of Ceramic Production Organization in a Maya Community
Author: Dean E. Arnold
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2015-02-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1607323141

In The Evolution of Ceramic Production Organization in a Maya Community, Dean E. Arnold continues his unique approach to ceramic ethnoarchaeology, tracing the history of potters in Ticul, Yucatán, and their production space over a period of more than four decades. This follow-up to his 2008 work Social Change and the Evolution of Ceramic Production and Distribution uses narrative to trace the changes in production personnel and their spatial organization through the changes in production organization in Ticul. Although several kinds of production units developed, households were the most persistent units of production in spite of massive social change and the reorientation of pottery production to the tourist market. Entrepreneurial workshops, government-sponsored workshops, and workshops attached to tourist hotels developed more recently but were short-lived, whereas pottery-making households extended deep into the nineteenth century. Through this continuity and change, intermittent crafting, multi-crafting, and potters' increased management of economic risk also factored into the development of the production organization in Ticul. Illustrated with more than 100 images of production units, The Evolution of Ceramic Production Organization in a Maya Community is an important contribution to the understanding of ceramic production. Scholars with interests in craft specialization, craft production, and demography, as well as specialists in Mesoamerican archaeology, anthropology, history, and economy, will find this volume especially useful.

Handbook of East and Southeast Asian Archaeology

Handbook of East and Southeast Asian Archaeology
Author: Junko Habu
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 761
Release: 2017-12-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1493965212

The Handbook of East and Southeast Asian Archaeology focuses on the material culture and lifeways of the peoples of prehistoric and early historic East and Southeast Asia; their origins, behavior and identities as well as their biological, linguistic and cultural differences and commonalities. Emphasis is placed upon the interpretation of material culture to illuminate and explain social processes and relationships as well as behavior, technology, patterns and mechanisms of long-term change and chronology, in addition to the intellectual history of archaeology as a discipline in this diverse region. The Handbook augments archaeologically-focused chapters contributed by regional scholars by providing histories of research and intellectual traditions, and by maintaining a broadly comparative perspective. Archaeologically-derived data are emphasized with text-based documentary information, provided to complement interpretations of material culture. The Handbook is not restricted to art historical or purely descriptive perspectives; its geographical coverage includes the modern nation-states of China, Mongolia, Far Eastern Russia, North and South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and East Timor.

Ban Chiang, Northeast Thailand, Volume 2A

Ban Chiang, Northeast Thailand, Volume 2A
Author: Joyce C. White
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2018-09-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1931707448

The emergence and adoption of metallurgy is one of the seminal topics of investigation in the history of archaeology, particularly in the history of archaeological research in Southeast Asia. The site of Ban Chiang, Thailand, is a central site in debates surrounding the chronology and significance of early metallurgy in the region. This book is the first in a series of four volumes that review the contributions of Ban Chiang and three related sites in northeast Thailand excavated by the Penn Museum to an understanding early metallurgy in Thailand. As the study of archaeometallurgy is a complex topic that draws on numerous technical and social science disciplines, this introductory volume presents in several chapters the background needed to assess the metal and related evidence presented in the subsequent volumes in this series. A history of perspectives on the role of metals in ancient societies generally and Southeast Asia, specifically, is provided. Other chapters debunk the conventional paradigm for understanding metals and society and provide current theoretical perspectives and new paradigms for the study of ancient metals. The geological basis for the presence and location of metal ore resources in the region is reviewed. The final chapter presents a technical overview of ways material properties of ancient metals may be studied. While providing a background to the study of metals at Ban Chiang, the volume also reviews, synthesizes, and repositions the method and theory for the study of archaeometallurgy generally. Thai Archaeology Monograph Series, 2A; University Museum Monograph, 149