Tracing Prehistoric Social Networks Through Technology: A Diachronic Perspective on the Aegean

ISBN-13: 9780415896160 / Angielski / Twarda / 2011 / 228 str.

Brysbaert, Ann

Opis

This book presents ten papers about prehistoric Aegean people, technologies, and social networks. The geographical, chronological and methodological approaches employed in all papers weld them together into a single research theme. These papers demonstrate the value and the beauty of employing, to a more or lesser degree, the combined methodologies of chaine operatoire (operational chain) and cross-craft interaction. It is the theoretical underpinnings, though, that move this volume well beyond Aegean boundaries and open it up to wider anthropological and archaeological interests in pre-industrial technologies and their linked-in social networks. This dynamic collaboration resulted in what we hoped for; opening windows on people's past interactions with each other and material worlds, while our contemporary lives intertwined with cross-fertilized ideas, as the unique outcome of our efforts. This volume brings together the expertise of ten people and presents a holistic approach to materials and technology studies on ceramics, orality, stone tools, figurines, music, gender issues, weights, apiculture, leftovers, and warfare.We believe that having teamed up on a search for such past social networks through multiple technologies, we have brought this past somewhat closer to our present.

Spis treści

Introduction. Tracing Social Networks through Studying Technologies. Ann Brysbaert  1. Disentangling Neolithic Networks: Ground Stone Technology, Material Engagements and Networks of Action. Christina Tsoraki  2. ‘Thou Shall Make Many Images of thy Gods’. A Chaîne Opératoire Approach to Mycenaean Religious Rituals Based on Iconographic and Contextual Analyses of Plaster and Terracotta Figures. Melissa Vetters  3. Technologies of Sound across Aegean Crafts and Mediterranean Cultures. Manolis Mikrakis  4. A War of Words: Comparing the Performative Cross-Craft Interaction of Physical Violence and Oral Expression in the Mycenaean World. Katherine Harrell  5. Ke-ra-me-u or Ke-ra-me-ja? Evidence for Sex, Age, and Division of Labor among Mycenaean Ceramicists. Julie Hruby  6. Links of Clay in Neolithic Greece: the Case of Platia Magoula Zarkou. Areti Pentedeka  7. Storage Technologies as Embedded Social Practices: Studying Pithos Storage in Prehistoric Northern Greece. Despina Margomenou and Maria Roumpou  8. Aegean Bronze Age Weights, Chaînes Opératoires, and the Detecting of Patterns through Statistical Analyses. Jari Pakkanen  9. Business as Usual: Cypriot Demand for Aegean Pottery during the Late Bronze Age. Angelos Papadopoulos  10. Technologies of Re-using and Recycling in the Aegean and Beyond. Ann Brysbaert

O autorze

Ann Brysbaert holds an MA and PhD in Archaeology, and a BSc (Hons) in Archaeological Conservation. She has conducted fieldwork in Greece, U.K., Italy, Belgium, Turkey, Syria, Israel, and Egypt both as archaeologist and as archaeological conservator. She currently holds an Alexander von Humboldt Senior Fellowship at the University of Heidelberg, Institut für Ur-und Frühgeschichte und Vorderasiatische Archäologie.

Together with colleagues from Leicester, Glasgow and Exeter she received a 5-year research grant from the Leverhulme Trust for an innovating interdisciplinary project called ‘Tracing Networks in the Ancient Mediterranean and Beyond’. She is especially interested in looking at ancient technologies and materials from an interdisciplinary perspective, combining archaeometric work with social theoretical approaches. She regularly publishes on the theme of painted plaster, cross-craft interaction and craft specialisation, and material culture.