Paper short abstract:

The cultural-evolutionary explanation for technological (as an instance of cultural) change has been widely used to study and interpret archaeological artefact typologies. However, the key concepts of this explanation, those of mutation, adaptation and especially , tend to thwart enquiries into how technological practice is carried out and consequently make it difficult to understand how cultural change actually happens. An alternative explanation, drawing on archaeological and anthropological experiment, the sociology of apprenticeship and embodiment, and the ethnography of craft, suggests that technological practice is intrinsically dynamic and gives rise to change of itself. This paper discusses some key technological changes of the ancient world, the shift from shell-built to frame-built boats in the Mediterranean and the emergence of the technique of glassblowing.

Paper long abstract:

Some investigations into archaeological artefact typologies and ancient technologies subscribe explicitly to a cultural-evolutionary explanation of change (understood as one which is a 'cultural analogue of the genotype', as the Panel statement puts it.) We can also find some of the key concepts used in this explanation, those of mutation, adaptation, and above all transmission, implicitly at work in many other less overtly evolutionary studies. The problem with this approach is that these concepts inevitably reduce technological traditions to inert and rather inscrutable bundles of knowledge. This tends to short-circuit enquiries into technological practice (as one instance of how culture is 'done') and consequently prevents us from understanding how change actually comes about. This paper will discuss this problem using specific examples from archaeological research in different fields including ancient Mediterranean boat-building and glass working technologies. I will then consider an alternative approach: looking at technological traditions as examples of a specialised social teaching and learning process, one which is intrinsically dynamic - that is to say, which of itself gives rise to change. This approach draws on studies in the sociology of embodiment, on ethnographic accounts of craft boatbuilding practice, and on my current PhD project, funded by the Rakow Foundation in Corning NY, which is an apprenticeship in the making of core-formed glass vessels. I will show how this alternative approach can provide more satisfying points of departure into key innovations such as the transition from shell-built to frame-built ships and the emergence of the technique of blowing glass.