Function

The relationship between design, function, and behaviour is explored in this chapter by assessing design features and their affordances against firstly, evidence of use drawn from wear studies of the artefacts that indicate the way they have been used; secondly, both experimental recreations, and the end-products the tools were used to create; and thirdly, archaeological context. In this way, we can examine both the potential of an approach focusing on design features, and also any limitations. I hope to show that affordances are an important source of evidence and provide insights that cannot be gained fromother sources, but that it is important not to take potential affordances at face value, and to interrogate their relationship to likely uses by comparison with other types of evidence. The first method through which possible affordances can be evaluated is through comparison with use-wear. In this way, it is possible to see how ‘proper function’ uses, suggested by practical affordances, compare to evidence of actual use as represented by use-wear. In a previous study, I investigated use-wear in relation to the functional features of Roman spoons (principally cochlear spoons with pointed handles), which I will briefly summarize here. Two principal affordances were evaluated: firstly, the shape of the spoon bowl, and secondly, the capacity of the bowl to hold varying amounts of liquid. I also investigated some other features such as the handle shape. The data, studied through personal inspection of museum objects, were drawn mainly from south-east Britain with some comparative material from the Roman site at Augst in Switzerland which has a very large collection of Roman spoons. Roman cochlear spoons occur in a wide range of well-dated forms, with different bowl shapes broadly succeeding one another chronologically (with some inevitable overlap). Round-bowled spoons are the earliest, found in the first and second centuries AD. Forms with a pear-shaped bowl are found from towards the end of the first century AD to the end of the second century, and forms with a fig-shaped bowl from the mid-second into the third century AD.

Introduction

The physical features of objects have a very direct relationship to social practices. Many of the everyday activities of human living require the use of tools and equipment, and this material culture has developed in close relationship with the human behaviour it makes possible. At the simplest level, artefact features can provide information about what objects were used for and what activities were carried out in the past. Yet they can also tell us much more: about the perceived agency of objects, about past users and their social experience, about cultural change and development in social practice, and about the persistence of tradition and social convention. In this book, I draw on a range of perspectives from design and craft theory. These perspectives were mostly developed in the context of studies of modern objects or those of the more recent historical past. They relate to the practical uses of artefacts, for instance as tools and equipment. These approaches encourage us to re-examine a functional approach to archaeological artefacts. They can be useful in prompting us to ask new questions, and to engage with previously neglected categories of material. I will explore design theory in relation to Roman material culture, in particular, investigating the following areas: (1) The relationship between the form of objects and their actual use/s. (2) How the material properties of objects relate to social experience, behaviour, and cultural traditions. (3) Assumptions about intended users evident through object design. (4) How aspects of production affect human relationships with objects. I hope to both reveal important new aspects of Roman social practice, and help us to better understand the relationships between people, objects, and behaviour that existed in, and shaped, Roman and provincial Roman society. The social function of artefacts as possessions and commodities has been extensively studied in both archaeology and anthropology, drawing on artefact appearance and decorative style and its significance. A definitive volume on material culture summarizes theoretical approaches to artefacts, including object biography, post-colonial theory, globalization, and consumption theory. Such approaches have been influential in Roman archaeology.

Behaviour/Experience

This chapter explores in depth the way in which the affordances of artefacts constrain or enable specific uses and/or experiences. In the first half of the chapter, we will consider a range of objects and materials from this perspective. We have seen from the previous chapter that evaluating use and behaviour from artefact affordances is not always a straightforward process. Affordances may suit a range of functions. Apparently functional features of artefacts may become redundant as the use of the artefact changes. Use of functional features can change even though the features themselves remain the same—for instance if they afford a range of functions. Aspects of artefact form may relate to task efficiency, rather than whether or not a task can be performed, and so may be ignored when quality of performance is less important. Any attempt to study behaviour through artefact design must engage with these issues, and I have chosen to do this mainly through careful selection of objects. Firstly, we can choose artefacts that performonly a very narrow range of functions in normative use, and in which system function uses may be identifiable through wear marks or changes to the artefact. Secondly, artefact forms can be selected that constrain or enforce particular behaviour, or affect experience in a predictable way. Evidence of affordances will also be studied alongside other types of evidence such as visual sources or contextual information. The objects chosen for investigation in this chapter are cone cups, drinking horns, spoons, strigils, styli, locks and keys (including key finger-rings), and dice. Most of these are artefacts that also exist in modern or more recent historical material culture, and while the benefits of this are obvious in terms of comparisons and an understanding of artefact features through direct experience of similar modern items, we will also need to be aware of any assumptions about the performance of artefacts that may be conditioned by modern perceptions of what an artefact is for, and how it can or should be used.

Conclusion

Over the course of this book, we have investigated a diverse range of Roman material, which has provided a wonderful opportunity to examine relationships between people and things. Not only is the Roman period well recorded in textual sources in comparison to other periods in antiquity, allowing a good understanding of the wider historical context, it also has a relatively long timespan, and very large, well-dated and well-documented assemblages of artefacts, with much potential for further interrogation. All this has made possible a nuanced investigation of the evidence in which we have been able to dissect various different trajectories of artefact development and use, and investigate wider issues of behaviour and experience. What have the case studies in this book contributed to our understanding of how affordances may be studied? In theoretical discussions, it has been suggested that affordances need to be evaluated alongside other sources of evidence such as wear marks, experimental reconstruction, and archaeological context (see Chapter 1). This has been undertaken through the case studies in Chapter 2, which show that comparative approaches of this kind yield a much richer understanding of artefact function and possible variability in use, and of the end products made by particular tools and how these too change through time. In addition, the case studies have demonstrated several aspects of object affordance that need to be carefully considered in any study of functional objects. Firstly, we have learned especial caution is needed in studying artefacts that appear to have similar functions to modern objects. Although the basic identification of such objects tends to be correct, there may be a tendency to project onto these objects exactly the same range of functions that they have in the present, without paying sufficient attention to how the objects themselves, and the conditions in which they existed and were used, are different to those of modern material culture. Here we need an especially close focus on the affordances of particular artefacts, and what they might facilitate that is different from modern uses.

Production and Users

There have been many previous studies of Roman production, most notably with regard to pottery vessels such as Samian, but also examinations of the production methods of other industries such as glass manufacture or bone-working. Most of these studies have entailed the consideration of detailed evidence from production sites such as kilns or furnaces, and the study of part-made objects and the debris that results from the production process. Finished objects have also been studied with a view to reconstructing some aspects of production, particularly the relationship between artefact features such as stamps and particular workshops or production areas. The production process has, therefore, normally been studied either as an end in itself, or as a means to understand provenance and patterns of trade. In this chapter, I take a different approach, focusing instead on the relationship between production processes and user experience. This has of course already been considered in an indirect way in the previous chapters, in which particular artefact features produced by various production methods have been analysed from the point of view of users. Yet as outlined in the introductory chapter, there is also scope for a more explicit consideration of the relationship between users and production processes, particularly in relation to scales of production and issues such as standardization. We can also examine how constraints on production (for instance those that result from the use of specific materials) in turn impact on the finished product, and so on user experience. Firstly, we will examine the production process of dice, and secondly, production methods for some types of glass vessels. The production process of bone dice is well understood since evidence survives of manufacturing waste as well as the finished product. For bone carving in general, the metapodial bones were favoured, as they were relatively straight. Although they were hollow in the centre, they offered a reasonable volume of solid material. Large dice were made from the complete bone, with a hollow core that had to be plugged at either end.

Users

Artefact design is not neutral, but is aimed, whether consciously or not, at different categories of users, as explained in Chapter 1. This chapter will explore design intentions as they relate to different user-groups in more detail, investigating some of the ways artefacts function to construct and maintain social categories, and also how these categories may be resisted or questioned by users. Firstly, we will examine how artefact design relates to the Roman life course, through an exploration of the motifs on finger-rings and the social categories of men, women, and children. Secondly, Roman attitudes to leftand right-handedness may be examined in relation to various items. Thirdly, we will examine some particular types of boxes and their methods of opening, artefacts in which cultural knowledge potentially impacts upon the facility with the objects may be used. In each case, we will consider how the design features may include or exclude certain users and what the implications are for a wider understanding of both Roman social practice, and the role of artefacts in enacting and reproducing social norms and behaviours. Finger-rings, among other personal artefacts, are scaled to a specific part of the body, and through this feature they provide an opportunity to examine how artefacts may have been designed for particular categories of people. Users will need rings with an appropriate diameter that is large enough to fit a particular digit, yet not so large that it risks becoming lost. Finger sizes of course vary according to age and sex, and so provide an opportunity to examine objects designed specifically for women, children, and men. We will focus here on those finger-rings displaying a central motif (usually engraved, although sometimes in relief, or occurring as a modelled form), which exist in large numbers. Most are oval in shape, and they are found in a wide range of sizes, from 9 to 27mm in inner horizontal diameter. Many are gem-set rings, and the gem iconography that they display was remarkably consistent across the Roman Empire, consisting of a range of popular themes such as the principal deities and/or their attributes, personifications, mythological scenes, animals, portraits, and objects.