Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.

Accepted Paper:

You are what you make: the metallurgists' case  
Maikel Kuijpers (University of Cambridge)

Paper short abstract:

The paper will address metalworking technology using a chaîne opératoire, explicitly focussing on non-discursive knowledge next to the well studied discursive knowledge. In so doing I will adopt a holistic emic approach to comprehend how prehistoric craftspeople understood their technologies.

Paper long abstract:

Were Bronze Age metallurgists farmers or specialists? A question that I will try to address this question by studying the technology of metalworking. Instead of the rather descriptive approach that tends to be related to archaeometallurgical analyses I opt for a more interpretive perspective in which humans play a major role. This means not placing the object at the centre of the study of technology, but rather the agent. Using a chaîne opératoire I will try to show that (metalworking) technology is by no means an issue that can be studied by solely analysing its end result (i.e. the object). Furthermore, in line with Ingold (1990), I propose to distinguish technology from techniques and tools. In so doing it becomes clear that techniques, or the tacit, subjective, context-dependent "knowledge how" (non-discursive knowledge), is heavily understudied in comparison to those aspect that we see as technology; the explicit, practical, objective, "knowledge that" (discursive knowledge). An argument is made that because of this divide, metalworking is often interpreted as a esoteric and ritual craft (e.g. Budd & Taylor 1995; Kristiansen & Larson 2005).

As advocated by Dobres (2000, 98) separating technology into different heuristic spheres is a conceptual dead end. Technology is made up and inseparably connected by a complex web of amongst others, discursive and non-discursive knowledge, belief systems, social organisation and politics. Hence, although immensely complex, studying technology as this intricate web of relations is, in my opinion, the best way forward. If we want to understand how craftspeople were perceived in prehistory we have to try and understand how they understood their technologies. This rather holistic emic approach might then provide some insight into the identity of the metalworker because "as individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce" (Marx & Engels 1970,42); You are what you make.

Panel S27
Making the Bronze Age: craft and craftspeople 2500-800BC
  Session 1