One-Day
Workshop with Miriam Stark
Part I: Materiality, the Social Lives of Things, and Kalinga Ethnoarchaeology
Speaker:
Miriam STARK (Professor of Anthropology, University of Hawaiʻi
at Mānoa)
Time: 10:00am-1:00pm, 17 Oct 2016
(Monday)
Venue:
NAH401, Humanities Building, New Asia College, CUHK
Text: Viviane Liu (Part-time
Research Assistant)
On
October 17, the
Anthropology Department invited
Prof. Miriam Stark from the University of Hawaii to give two workshops to CUHK
students. In the first part of the workshop, Prof. Stark talked about “Materiality, the Social Lives of Things, and Kalinga Ethnoarchaeology”.
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| Prof. Miriam Stark |
Prof.
Stark’s talk was largely based on her ethnographic dissertation
and fieldwork done in the Philippines mainly
in the 80’s and 90’s. She began her talk by providing participants
a short introduction and background information on women potters who resided in
a village known as Dalupa,
on the Upper Pasil Basin
in the Phillippines.
Her admiration and
respect for these women were strongly conveyed when she mentioned
all the names of the women shown in her presentation.
She
provided us with an
overview of the history of “Americanist”
/ “Euro-Americanist” approaches in
terms of conceptual framework in archaeology and
how these approaches / paradigms have shaped our thinking regarding
materiality. Since the foundation of Americanist archaeology was initially
based on ethnology
and anthropology, in earlier times it was believed that humans and objects were
intrinsically entwined with each other. This correlation was believed by the
German-American anthropologist Frans Boaz (1858-1942)—the founding father of
anthropology.
In
fact, early American studies regarding the study of objects intensely focused
on culture history and social anthropology. One of Boaz’s PhD students, Alfred
Kroeber (1876-1960), an American cultural anthropologist from the University of
Columbia, had created a diagram to map time and space variations by placing the
same types of objects to mirror the chronological sequence. These diagrams are
still very important foundations for current archaeologists and anthropologists
to document linear sequences of objects in their studies.
From
the 60’s and 70’s onwards, archaeologists no longer followed the culture
history approaches and a new era of approaching materiality had emerged. Known
as “Processual” or “New
Archaeology”, prominent
archaeologists of this “movement” were American archaeologist Lewis Binford
(1931-2011) and British
archaeologist Colin Renfrew (b. 1937). However, epistemological tensions arose
when it came to accepting materiality being an indisputable part of
archaeology. Conflicts occurred between archaeologists who were against
materiality and those who accepted it. Those who opposed thought that this
notion was deemed too
humanistic, hermeneutic and
phenomenological; it didn’t fit into their own definition of “science”, where
empirical data and evidences were the only valid forms of methodology. Prof.
Stark clearly had her own view when it came to the notion of materiality. She emphasized
that archaeologists are materialists
themselves and focus
on work about historical materialism, Marxist’s notions of organization, production
and change
etc.
Though
the majority of
archaeologists were concerned with style, they believed they should accept
notions of materiality. They believed that they should start with style in
order to study function, context and process. However,
the “hyper-social science” people argued
that studying style alone was not scientific enough, instead they should engage
themselves with function; and the two should be separated. This
whole notion/study is also known
as “New Materialism” or
“Evolutionary Archaeology”. But
Prof. Stark believed that function and style should be studied together,
especially when it came to the study of pottery.
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There are mainly two kinds of approaches to deal with materiality in contemporary archaeology: artefact biography as social history, and artefact biography as use-life. The former is based on Kopytoff’s essay on the cultural biography of objects: commoditization as process, as written in The Social Lives of Things (edited by Appadurai in 1986). Kopytoff believed that objects are divided into animate and inanimate objects. Objects with animosity contain agency, potency, which, for example can be seen in a Buddhist ceremony, by, for instance, dressing a Buddhist statute as if it is alive. Inanimate objects, on the other hand, are on the receiving end of the “animosity spectrum”. The belief in animosity in objects are respected and taken into consideration by anthropological archaeologists who focus on the Southeast Asia region in particular. Though many other archaeologists are dealing with less-animate (dead) objects, the study on “style” is still important to questions related to social boundaries, mobility, the production, maintenance, co-residence, interactions, imperialisms of various artefacts based heavily on style as a social process etc.
Using this
approach can be problematic though when it comes to the study of tribal
cultures and their material culture. Prof. Stark drew participants’ attention to
her Kalinga project and argued why an ethnoarchaeology is a more suitable approach
when we deal with tribal people and their objects. The
Kalinga Ethnoarchaeoloical Project
in the Philippines, founded in 1973 by William Longacre, who
(together with Lewis Binford) believed that local people and the natives
were neglected in the studies done by cultural
historians. Longacre believed that he could trace the patterns of post-marital residence
based on clusters of very similar ceramic styles (i.e. ceramic style
variability). This could reflect the tradition and skills that was passed on by
mothers or aunts to (newly-wed) women.
A
case study that Prof. Stark discussed in detail was Dalupa, a village on the
mountains of
the Upper Pasil Basin.
She mainly studied the ceramic
change (primarily focused on utilitarian wares) in
Dalupa and another village throughout the 20th century.
Prof. Stark explained that the women potters were poor and desperately needed
more income. In order to expand their current markets, these women potters had
to become more innovative by, for example, making candlestick holders and
goblets. She also noted that ceramics in different parts of the river valleys looked
different despite they were serving for similar functions.
She
then proceeded to show the importance of style, by pointing out that exquisite
designs known
as tinoktoks could
be found everywhere such as blankets, ceramics and tattoo’s on females. She
also mentioned that it was difficult to ignore the notion of style since these
patterns were related to how the women made the potteries and were reflected in
their vessel forms. This brought us back to her earlier
statement that style and function should be studied together.
And this
all came back to the notion of artefact
biography as use-life. People
might no longer think
about patterns, but these were
basically "encoded" in
the potteries. Though the
manufacturing process of ceramics seemed to
be mechanic, the actual process was institutionalized and was different for
every production group.
Prof.
Stark concluded the workshop by saying that the uniqueness of ceramics did not
only depend on the manufacturing process, style and function, but also on how
these ceramics were being used and justified in public spaces through dances,
which defended and re-enforced a village’s social boundaries, so that everyone
knew where they came from.
Suggested
readings:
Stark,
M. Social Dimensions of Technical Choice in Kalinga Ceramic Traditions. In
Material Meanings: Critical Approaches to Interpreting Material Culture, edited
by E. Chilton, University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, pp. 24-43
Stark,
M., Bishop, R., Miksa, E. 2000. Ceramic Technology and Social Boundaries:
Cultural Practices in Kalinga Clay Selection and Use. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 7(4), pp. 295-331.
