Daily Practice and Material Culture in Pluralistic Social Settings: An Archaeological Study of Culture Change and Persistence from Fort Ross, California

1998 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kent G. Lightfoot ◽  
Antoinette Martinez ◽  
Ann M. Schiff
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Culture Change ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Daily Practice ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Great Promise ◽  
Ethnic Communities ◽  
Social Settings ◽  
Residential Space ◽  
Habitual Routines

This paper presents an archaeological approach to the study of culture change and persistence in multi-ethnic communities through the study of daily practices and based on a crucial tenet of practice theory-that individuals will enact and construct their underlying organizational principles, worldviews, and social identities in the ordering of daily life. The study of habitual routines is undertaken in a broadly diachronic and comparative framework by examining daily practices from a multiscalar perspective. The approach is employed in a case study on the organization of daily life of interethnic households composed of Native Californian women and Native Alaskan men at the Russian colony of Fort Ross in northern California. Recognizing that different opportunities and choices existed for household members in this colonial setting, we explore how they constructed their own unique identities by examining the spatial layout of residential space, the ordering of domestic tasks, and the structure of trash disposal. We argue that trash deposits and middens in built environments, which often accumulate through routinized tasks, present great promise for examining the processes of culture change and persistence in archaeology.

The Story of Storyboards from East Sepik, Papua New Guinea

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-74
Author(s):  
Martin Soukup ◽  
Dušan Lužný
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Field Research ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Cultural Continuity ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Global Tourism ◽  
The Village

This study analyzes and interprets East Sepik storyboards, which the authors regard as a form of cultural continuity and instrument of cultural memory in the post-colonial period. The study draws on field research conducted by the authors in the village of Kambot in East Sepik. The authors divide the storyboards into two groups based on content. The first includes storyboards describing daily life in the community, while the other links the daily life to pre-Christian religious beliefs and views. The aim of the study is to analyze one of the forms of contemporary material culture in East Sepik in the context of cultural changes triggered by Christianization, colonial administration in the former Territory of New Guinea and global tourism.

Unsustainable Capitalism

2001 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-34
Author(s):  
Allan Macinnes
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Culture Change ◽  
Critical Period ◽  
Settlement Patterns ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Important Distinction ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Individual

This paper makes an important, interdisciplinary contribution, to the ongoing debate on the transition from clanship to capitalism. Integral to this contribution is the important distinction between capitalism as an individualist ideology and capitalist societies where individualism is a widespread but not necessarily a universal ideology. His concern is not with the bipolar opposition of landlord and people which tends to dominate debates on the land issue in the Highlands. Instead, he focuses on material culture change in relation to landscape organisation, settlement patterns and morphology in order to examine how social relationships were structured during the critical period of estate re-orientation often depicted progressively as Improvement but regressively as clearance through the removal and relocation of population. His case study on Kintyre is particularly valuable. By scrutinising spatial as well as social relationships Dalglish demonstrates that clanship was based as much on daily practices of living as on an patrimonial ideology of kinship, practices which led the House of Argyll to attempt the reinvention of concepts of occupancy in order to emphasise the importance of the individual over the family through partitioned space.

A true gift of mother earth: the use and significance of obsidian at Çatalhöyük

2011 ◽  
Vol 61 ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tristan Carter
Keyword(s):  
Raw Materials ◽  
Daily Practice ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Central Anatolia ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Raw Material Variability ◽  
Mother Earth

AbstractThis paper reviews 50 years of obsidian studies at Neolithic Çatalhöyük in the Konya plain, central Anatolia. A number of key issues are addressed: (1) the source of the site's raw materials, the means and forms by which the obsidian was introduced to the site and the role of Çatalhöyük in the supra-regional dissemination of these raw materials; (2) the alleged gender associations of certain obsidian goods in the burial record and beyond; (3) a more general consideration of the social significance of the circulation and consumption of obsidian at the site, including the phenomena of hoarding and gifting, plus the important role of projectiles in the creation of social identities and various forms of ritual behaviour, not least the termination of the life of a building/individual; (4) the technotypological and raw material variability through time; (5) the use of obsidian in daily practice and craft-working.

scholarly journals Fundamental Applications of Mathematics in Agriculture and Cultural Heritage in Daily Life of Melanau Tellian, Mukah, Sarawak: An Ethnomathematics Review

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (11) ◽  
pp. 217-227
Author(s):  
Suffina Long ◽  
Yahutazi Chik
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Initial Point ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Daily Practice ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Modern Education ◽  
Learning Mathematics ◽  
The World ◽  
And Mathematics

Mathematics has been measured as a neutral subject and not related to any culture or a society. Learning Mathematics in the modern education system nowadays is an adoption from many parts of the world. This ethnomathematics review is to discover culture and mathematics related to the daily life people of Melanau Tellian in Mukah Sarawak. This study uses a qualitative approach, ethnographic methods and principal such as observation, interview, collecting data and documentation from the fieldwork. The findings showed that the foundation of the Melanau people in Tellian Mukah is essentially based on numbers or Mathematics. It shows in the Melanau’s belief system, social system, traditional games, architecture and in daily practice and tradition. There is a line of relationship between mathematics and culture in this study which can be an initial point for further preservation of Melanau Tellian cultural heritage.

Pre-Colombian Mesoamerica Childhoods

2022 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Health Conditions ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Specificity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Realm

Research on pre-Columbian childhood refers to all those studies that consider the different evidence and expressions of children in Mesoamerica, prior to the Spanish invasion in the 16th century. Archaeology, understandably by its very focus, has been one of the most prolific disciplines that has approached this subject of study. Currently, archaeological research focuses on highlighting the different social experiences of the past (or multi-vocality) of social identities, such as gender and childhood, and its relationship with material culture. In addition, archaeologists recognize a modern stereotype that considers children as passive or dependent beings and therefore biases childhood research in the past. Consequently, it is necessary to critically evaluate the cultural specificity of past childhood since each culture has its own way of considering that stage of the life cycle. Another problem, in the archaeological study of childhood, is to consider that children are not socially important individuals. It has been said that their activities are not significant for the economy or the social realm of communities and societies of the past. From archaeology, there exists a general perception that children are virtually unrecognizable from the archaeological record because their behavior leaves few material traces, apart from child burials. It has been since feminist critiques within the discipline that the study of childhood became of vital importance in archaeology to understand the process of gender acquisition through enculturation. This process refers to the way children learn about their gender identity through the material world that surrounds them and the various rituals that prepare them to become persons. Thus, the intent of recent studies on childhood has been to call upon archaeologists to consider children as social actors capable of making meaningful decisions on their own behalf and that they make substantial contributions to their families and their communities. In this sense, studies on pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican cultures have focused at the most basic sense on identifying the presence of children in the archaeological record or ethnohistoric sources. Its aim has been to document the different social ages that make up childhood, the ritual importance of Mesoamerican children, funerary practices, and health conditions marked in children’s bones as well as the different material and identity expressions of childhood through art and its associated material culture.

Material Culture and Daily Life

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
CATHERINE HEZSER
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
The Social ◽  
Interdisciplinary Framework ◽  
Early Byzantine

This chapter evaluates the use of rabbinic literature in the study of Jewish daily life and material culture. It explains that one of the main problems associated with research on material culture and daily life is the establishment of a proper relationship between rabbinic literary references and archaeological data, between text and object. It suggests that these problems can be resolved by approaching the issues on the basis of a historical-critical study of rabbinic sources in a broad interdisciplinary framework, which takes account of archaeological research within the Graeco-Roman and early Byzantine context and which uses tools, methods and models developed by the social sciences.

scholarly journals Original faglighed

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Haandbæk Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Educational Policy ◽  
Day Care ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Daily Practice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Learning

Denne artikel handler om, hvordan pædagogisk faglighed bliver til i daginstitutionens daglige liv i en tid præget af en uddannelsespolitisk læringsdagsorden. Formålet med artiklen er at afselvfølgeliggøre læringsdagsordenen og vise, hvordan der er flere og potentielt konfliktuerende rationaler på spil og undersøge, hvordan disse påvirker og rammesætter nye muligheder for pædagogisk faglighedsdannelse. I artiklen kortlægges 4 stærke og konfliktuerende rationaler, der tilsammen danner et spændingsfelt, inden for hvilket pædagogerne må erobre og skabe faglighed. Jeg præsenterer disse rationaler som 4 rationalefigurer – hhv. Strategen, Praktikeren, Idealisten og Pragmatikeren – og viser dernæst, hvordan de imaginært forsøger at tale deres forskellige rationaler frem i pædagogernes handlinger. Artiklen er baseret på ph.d.-afhandlingen ”Originale pædagoger. Daginstitutionspædagogers faglighed(er) i lyset af en insisterende læringsdagsorden”.This article Original professionalism explores how pedagogues create professionalism in daily life of day care within an educational policy organization increasingly committed to learning. The purpose of the article is to analyze and deconstruct the political learning agenda. As a result of the analysis 4 powerful and conflicting mindsets are identified forming a field of tension in which the pedagogue must create professionalism. In the article I present these mindsets as 4 imaginary figures of reason, the Strategist, the Practician, the Idealist and the Pragmatist, and demonstrate how they try to promote their different logics in the daily practice of the pedagogues.

TRAVELLING WITH THE POTTER'S WHEEL IN THE EARLY BRONZE AGE AEGEAN

2020 ◽  
Vol 115 ◽  
pp. 59-104
Author(s):  
Maria Choleva
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Linear Diffusion ◽  
Craft Knowledge ◽  
Technological Tradition ◽  
Technological Study ◽  
Comparative Examination ◽  
Shed Light

By adopting the chaîne opératoire approach as a dynamic theoretical and methodological framework for studying ancient technologies, this paper investigates the modalities behind the appearance of the potter's wheel in the Aegean during the Early Bronze Age II (c. 2550–2200 bc). Based on the comparative examination of ceramic assemblages from different Aegean sites, an extended technological study has been carried out in order to track the earliest wheel-made pottery and reconstruct the craft behaviours perpetrated by the use of the potter's wheel across the Aegean. The paper presents the results of this multi-site study and aims to (a) trace out the wheel-based technological traditions, (b) explore the contexts of the learning and transmission of the new tool, (c) shed light on the connectivity among Aegean and western Anatolian communities that enabled the transfer of the new craft knowledge, and, finally, (d) bring into view the mechanisms behind its emergence and appropriation. By considering technologies as representing an entire social system of knowing, perceiving and acting on the material world, it will be argued that the spread of the potter's wheel in the Aegean does not reflect a moment of linear diffusion of a technological innovation, adopted thanks to certain techno-functional advantages. Instead, it discloses the resilience of social identities and values embedded through the practical engagement of individuals in the production of their material culture. The potter's wheel, in fact, emerges as a socially and culturally mediated practice, specific to small groups of potters trained within a technological tradition of Anatolian origin, performing their craft in the Aegean socio-cultural milieus. Furthermore, its transfer reveals a multidirectional and dynamic crossing of material cultures that designated a navigable world where traditions, objects and people travelled, mixed and merged in unpredictable ways.

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