Shennan, SJ

English

UCL Discovery

Cambridge Archaeological Journalhttp://journals.cambridge.org/CAJAdditional services for Cambridge Archaeological Journal:Email alerts: Click hereSubscriptions: Click hereCommercial reprints: Click hereTerms of use : Click hereCrafting Complexity  Craft and Social Identity, edited by C.L. Costin & R.P. Wright, 1998. (Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 8.) Arlington (VA): American Anthropological Association; ISBN 0­913167­90­8 paperback, US$15 (members), £22 (non­members), vii+182 pp.Stephen J. ShennanCambridge Archaeological Journal / Volume 10 / Issue 01 / April 2000, pp 187 ­ 205DOI: 10.1017/S0959774300230072, Published online: 27 June 2001Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0959774300230072How to cite this article:Stephen J. Shennan (2000). Cambridge Archaeological Journal,10, pp 187­205 doi:10.1017/S0959774300230072Request Permissions : Click hereDownloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAJ, IP address: 144.82.107.38 on 22 Aug 2012197Review ArticlesCrafting ComplexityCraft and Social Identity, edited by C.L. Costin &R.P. Wright, 1998. (Archeological Papers of theAmerican Anthropological Association 8.)Arlington (VA): American Anthropological Asso-ciation; ISBN 0-913167-90-8 $15.00 Members; £22.00Non-members, vii + 182 pp.Stephen J. ShennanCraft production has long been a focus of archaeo-logical interest. Craft specialization has played animportant role in many accounts of the rise of civili-zation and the state. Attempts have been made toreconstruct pre-industrial craft processes. As far asthe craft products themselves are concerned, theyhave always formed the basic raw material of ar-chaeological  study  and  in  recent  years  have  beenaccorded a much more active role than before, asthings that led their own varied social lives and hada profound impact on the societies in which theywere used and circulated. The premise of this bookis that it is now more than time for the makers of theobjects to have a more three-dimensional existence,and to be granted the capacity for agency demanded198Review Articlesby recent social theory, as opposed to being regardedas pre-industrial robots churning out products speci-fied by social norms.If this is to be done, they can no longer be seenas  an  undifferentiated  mass,  but  must  be  distin-guished from one another in terms of such featuresas age, gender, power, autonomy and wealth, all ofwhich can vary between craftspeople even within asingle society and a single craft. One aspect of thisprocess of differentiation is that simple oppositions,like that between attached and independent special-ists, have to be abandoned. Another, perhaps para-doxical aspect, is that in some instances individualcraftspeople come to be recognized as ‘great artists’.This is particularly clear in Reents-Budet’s discus-sion  of  the  painters  of  Maya  polychrome  ceramicvessels. She points out that individual artists andtheir work can be identified not just by their paint-ing styles, but also because their names are paintedon the vessels, together with those of their patrons:‘In other words, here in the Late Classic period, theartist and his patron move from anonymity and jointhe  art  historical  ranks  of  “immortal”  creators’(Reents-Budet, p. 74). Of course, this sort of argu-ment takes us back to the type of approach devel-oped by Beazley for Classical Greek pottery, with itsemphasis on connoisseurship in the investigator, onthe one hand, and the genius of the producer, onlyapparent to the greatest connoisseurs, on the other.In the Classical field this approach is now condemnedas  naïve  and  reactionary,  ideologically  extremelydubious and anthropologically decontextualized. Itwould be a nice irony if such approaches as thatadopted in this book, with its very contemporaryemphasis on the active agency of craft producers,rehabilitated more traditional approaches. Of course,it is no accident that the Maya polychrome vesselpainters who achieved these individualized identi-ties  were  themselves  members  of  the  ruling  élite:aristocrats could be recognized as individuals.But the volume is not just about individuatingthe craft producers. In a rather different vein, Costinmakes the point that crafts and their producers havebeen of central social importance because the craftsthemselves often provide key metaphors for the or-ganization of society as a whole, whether it is theassociation between spinning/weaving and femininegender in Mesoamerica or the symbolic identifica-tion of kings as blacksmiths in parts of Africa.The substantive papers in the volume explore arange of different aspects of the process of craft pro-duction and the identities of the producers.The contribution by Lass looks at crafts in pre-colonial Hawai’i. We learn that craft specialist roleshad a strong hereditary element; that some craftswere  male  and  others  female  —  for  example  themaking of chiefly feathered cloaks — while therewas no strict dichotomy between independent andattached specialists. Some, like the feather-cloak-mak-ers, were essentially attached, and probably workedfull-time, at least for long periods. Others, like ca-noe-makers,  were  occasionally  commissioned  bychiefs. Others still, like bark-cloth-makers, probablyworked part-time and some of their products weresimply taken by chiefs as tribute or taxation. Finally,adze-makers were probably independent specialists.Clark  and  Houston  use  early  ethnohistoricsources from Yucatan for their examination of arti-sans and craft activity among the Maya and showhow all-pervasive was craft production and its influ-ence. In this context they emphasize that the distinc-tion  between  craft  production  and  subsistenceproduction is really an unhelpful one: better, theysuggest, to see a contrast between female and malework rather than craft and subsistence. Male andfemale work were complementary: female work in-volving  everything  around  the  house,  male  workeverything away from the house. Spinning and weav-ing were the complement of male subsistence pur-suits such as farming, fishing and bee-keeping. Onthe other hand, textiles were also the key resourcelinking subsistence with the political economy, sincecloth formed a major part of demand for tribute aswell as being a general medium of exchange.Wattenmaker and Wright discuss craft produc-tion in diferent parts of third millennium BC Meso-potamia, emphasizing the wide variety of statusesfor craft specialists. Like Lass, Wright indicates thatthe  attached  versus  independent  contrast  doesn’twork in practice here. Crafts were often hereditary,for example in the case of potters and foresters, butthere was no straightforward equation between craft-ing and social identity because legal statuses weremore important for people’s identities than occupa-tions.Childs’ contribution focuses on traditional iron-workers in the former East African kingdom of Toro.Some master iron-workers, head smiths of lineages,were able to gain local wealth, power and privilege,and some of these, as specialists attached to the royalcourt, achieved even more status and wealth. Butknowledge was not just technical; much of it wasesoteric knowledge associated with rituals, symbolsand  roles  considered  as  at  least  as  vital  as  more‘practical’ skills.Costin’s substantive paper examines weaving199Review Articlesin the Inca empire. She argues that the identities ofweavers varied considerably in terms of such fea-tures as gender, age and ethnicity, and that thesedifferent  categories  of  weaver  produced  differenttypes of cloth. In particular, there was a correlationbetween the amount of control exercised over theartisans and the symbolic significance of the clothproduced.  Thus,  relatively  unsupervised  womenwove plain cloth but it was a category of sequesteredwomen, recruited into state service in childhood andbound by tight restrictions on their behaviour, whowove the elaborate tunics of the nobility. By beingdefined as metaphorical sisters and wives of the rulerthey were given the social attributes necessary toproduce items of the highest significance.Brumfiel’s  chapter on Aztec craft specialistsalso emphasizes that there was no unitary categoryof craft specialists but an enormous range of differ-ent statuses, albeit without the qualitative distinc-tions that Costin finds among the Inca. And indeed,she suggests that Aztec craft specialists had greaterprestige than they did among the Inca and others,perhaps partly because craft goods were extensivelydistributed through the market system; furthermore,since the specialists sold their own products, theyreceived personal credit for the goods they produced.Such differentiation without strong state control isalso seen in Sinopoli’s Vijayanagara example.Finally, Spielmann’s examination of crafting in‘middle-range’  societies  shows  a  different  pictureagain,  identifying  three  kinds  of  craft  specialist.Where ritual performance is relatively open, skilledindependent specialists are found, with the craft of-ten inherited on family lines. Where ritual knowl-edge and performance are paramount in achievingstatus,  ritual  craft  specialists  are  also  likely  to  beritual practitioners. In the last case, where ritual isonly  one  means  of  obtaining  position,  ritual  craftspecialists may not be the practitioners but they arequite likely to be incorporated into contexts such ashouseholds which ritual practitioners control.It is clear that the main lesson of the contribu-tions to this book is that the concept of a unitaryphenomenon of craft specialization is unhelpful andanalytically  misleading.  In  one  sense,  subsistencefarmers are just as much craft specialists as anyoneelse and in Clark and Houston’s Maya study maleversus female labour is a better distinction. In com-plex  states  the  enormous  range  of  specialists  andtheir social identities both within and between socie-ties  defies  easy  categorization.  Interesting  thoughthey are, however, the studies never get much be-yond describing the complexity of their specific situ-ations and as a result the book comes across as arather disparate collection of papers. What we nowneed  to  start  doing  is  theorizing  the  basis  of  thenewly identified axes of variation in terms of socialand economic processes, recognizing the central roleof material objects in all human societies.Stephen J. ShennanInstitute of ArchaeologyUniversity College London31–34 Gordon SquareLondonWC1H OPY

Crafting Complexity:

Craft and Social Identity, edited by C.L. Costin &

R.P. Wright, 1998. (Archeological Papers of the

American Anthropological Association 8.)

Arlington (VA): American Anthropological Association;

ISBN 0-913167-90-8 $15.00 Members; £22.00

Non-members, vii + 182 pp.

Crafting Complexity: Craft and Social Identity, edited by C.L. Costin & R.P. Wright, 1998. (Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 8.) Arlington (VA): American Anthropological Association; ISBN 0-913167-90-8 $15.00 Members; £22.00 Non-members, vii + 182 pp.

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

UCL Discovery