Miller Margaret-Louise. Archaeological Approaches to Technology
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188 Heather M.-L. Miller: Archaeological Approaches to Technology
movements in production. However, the speed of the professional produc-
ers’ work was always fast, and this was not true of the nonprofessional
basket makers. Wendrich (1999: 391–393) suggests that the archaeologically-
detectable mark of a professional basket maker would be signs of haste in
the form of small inaccuracies, but with a skill-based regularity to these
small inaccuracies. This detailed research adds significant dimensions to the
archaeological debate about what characterizes “full-time” versus “part-time”
producers, and whether such a distinction is even important for understanding
technological systems. Bril, Roux, and Dietrich (Bril,etal.2000; Roux,etal.
1995) also used innovative ethnoarchaeological and experimental methods to
examine variations in skill, but for craftsmen working with hard stone. They
carried out task experiments derived from psychology with bead-workers who
had different levels of experience in knapping, and analyzed the resulting
products using a pattern-recognition computer program to study the varia-
tions. Their work indicated that ten years of practice were needed to become
“expert” knappers, capable of producing all types of beads. In this case, the
type of bead produced as well as the quality of production was a useful
indicator of skill level.
Archaeological studies of craft specialization and the organization of pottery
production have investigated what types of objects were made, how, and by
whom, as well as where and when pottery was produced and who controlled
the production and distribution. (See Sinopoli 1991, 2003; Costin 1991, 2001;
and Rice 1996b for overviews and further references.) Innovations in the divi-
sion of labor in pottery production, including gender divisions, have occurred
in many societies. Such innovations are sometimes linked to the appearance
of newly invented tools or techniques. This does occur, but far more often
innovations in pottery production and organization come from adapting or
inventing tools and techniques in response to new social and economic con-
ditions rather than the reverse, particularly where pottery production tech-
niques are already well-established. A notable example is the connection often
vaguely made between the invention of the potter’s wheel, “full-time” special-
ization, and a switch from female to male potters. This particular linkage is
based on assumptions and simplifications that are problematical, and the key
issue is actually not the invention of the potter’s wheel, but the shift to mass
production.
First, as is discussed in Chapter 4, and illustrated in Figure 4.5, the term
“wheel-throwing” is often used to refer to the use of almost any type of
turning device in pottery making. Technically, throwing should only be used
to refer to true, pivoted wheels rotating at a rapid speed for a considerable
period of time (Rice 1987: 132–134), but this is not always easy to determine
archaeologically, especially from the examination of a relatively small sample
of pottery. Tournettes can be turned rather quickly, producing marks on
Thematic Studies in Technology 189
the pottery characteristic of fast wheels (see Chapter 4). Second, use of the
fast wheel is almost automatically associated with rapid production of large
numbers of vessels, because of the association that has been noted in numerous
ethnographic contexts between such mass production and use of the fast
wheel, especially use of the fast wheel for off-the-hump production of vessels.
While the fast wheel is frequently used for rapid mass production, it is also
used for other purposes. Potter’s wheels, including classic “fast” kick-wheels,
are frequently used as slow wheels, turned gradually in the building up of
large vessels with coils and smoothing, or to scrape or finish pots made by
wheel throwing or other methods. The care that needs to be taken to avoid
equating any evidence for wheel-turning with mass-production is shown by
the recent careful work by Roux and Courty, summarized in Roux (2003),
that has provided data on the long use of the wheel in the Levant as a slow
wheel or tournette for scraping and careful alteration, prior to its use as a fast
wheel. (While the long use of a slow wheel in the Levant was suggested long
ago by Johnston (1977: 206) based on ethnographic experience, Roux and
Courty provide archaeological evidence.) In addition, there are a variety of
methods used to achieve mass production, including molding, rapid coiling
on a slow wheel, and a combination of methods, so use of wheel-throwing as a
proxy for production scale is extremely problematical, except in very specific
cases where the range of vessels produced in an assemblage are fairly well
understood. Many parts of the world, including the Americas, clearly created
large amounts of pottery and clearly had highly skilled specialist potters,
yet did not employ the fast wheel at all. Third, while mass production of
pottery is typically carried out by full-time specialists, this is not inevitably
the case, particularly where pottery making is a seasonally restricted activity.
Even if we avoid the problem of “full-time” specialization, and refer to craft
specialization as a significant time devotion to the craft by a person with a
relatively high skill and experience level, many specialist potters do not focus
on mass production of many vessels by very rapid techniques, but create a
smaller (but still substantial) number of vessels that require greater skill to
produce. It is the documented use of the wheel specifically for rapid mass
production of a significant percentage of the entire pottery assemblage that is
the key to shifts in production, not the mere invention of a potter’s wheel,
which can be used for a variety of purposes.
In terms of innovation, adoption of the potter’s wheel as a tool for rapid
production of large numbers of vessels may require changes to the entire pot-
tery production system on multiple levels. Throwing on the fast wheel places
constraints on the clays and tempers which can be used, as large particles in
wheel-thrown clay will mar or even tear the pot (Sinopoli 1991: 101), as well
as constraining the shapes which can be easily and quickly made. In some
places the available clays might be ill-suited for fast wheel production, or
190 Heather M.-L. Miller: Archaeological Approaches to Technology
might require more investment in time or innovations in processing to remove
large particles. Changes to firing techniques might be required to allow the
firing of clays without large temper particles. The fast wheel as a tool for
rapid production would be less likely to be adopted in such cases than in
regions where a fast wheel required few changes, as in the regions of the world
with abundant deposits of fine alluvial clay requiring little temper which were
already in use for pottery production, such as Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley,
and China. It is not surprising that these are all areas where throwing on a
fast wheel is adopted relatively early when economic and social conditions were
in place that encouraged specialists to mass-produce vessels.
The final linkage often made, that of the association of the potter’s wheel
with male as opposed to female potters, is based on ethnographic and historic
data, where indeed there are no significant examples of societies with primarily
female potters using the fast wheel. However, I would argue that the associ-
ation between male potters and the fast wheel is less related to the technical
use of the fast wheel itself than to the social and economic conditions encour-
aging its use, as male potters also typically dominate the craft in societies
where large-scale, skilled, and/or professional production of vessels and other
objects is accomplished without the use of the fast wheel, as in the Classic and
post-conquest Maya (Reents-Budet 1998: 73; J. E. Clark and Houston 1998).
Similar associations of male artisans and large-scale professional production
of objects is seen for a wide variety of crafts, even in textile production which
is (cross-culturally) the most strongly female-associated craft besides food
production. The innovation in organization of production that is associated
with the adoption of the fast wheel as a method of mass production is more
precisely focused on increased specialization in the production of each stage of
the production process, not simple male versus female potters. With increased
production scales, pottery production no longer involves one potter carrying
out all the stages of pottery making, from collection of clays to firing of ves-
sels (see Figure 4.3). Instead, with the need for greater production, there is
usually a division of labor between the stages, with the most skilled or experi-
enced potters using the wheel(s), apprentices processing the clay and temper
(which now requires more time and care), and sometimes yet other specialists
painting the completed vessels. This can take place in a factory-workshop
setting, as in porcelain production in China and Europe. However, it can also
take place in a family-based workshop, as is frequently the case in modern
South Asia, where the specialists using the wheel are the older males of the
family, but the specialist painters or the producers of mold-made sections of
the pot are often the female members of the family (e.g., David and Kramer
2001; Rice 1987; Sinopoli 1991). The clay might be processed by women,
men, and/or children, depending on time and availability. The question of
why males so frequently dominate key stages or types of production in these
Thematic Studies in Technology 191
sorts of production situations is one that archaeologists, anthropologists, and
others are still striving to answer. This discussion has been about clarifying
the question, usually a helpful first step.
The central point that reoccurs in studies of innovation and technology is
that much of the innovation in technology is not related to increasing efficiency
or quality, although this happens also, usually in the early stages of a craft’s or
technique’s development. Rather, much technological innovation is associated
with changing social and economic demands and circumstances. This point
is discussed further in Chapters 6 and 7. In the next section I discuss another
aspect of innovation that has only been mentioned in this section; the process
of tradition and the role of technological choice in technological continuity
and change. As van der Leeuw (1993) has remarked for studies of pottery
production, it is important to investigate both the choices made and the
choices not made together, to look for alternatives in the production process
and the technological system as a whole and try to explain why particular
routes have been taken in technological pathways.
TECHNOLOGICAL STYLE
In ancient Mesopotamia, traditional ways persisted side-by-side with newer
ways
(Moorey 1994:vi)
STYLE AND TECHNOLOGICAL STYLE
There has been a long tradition of the study of style in archaeology, as is mas-
terfully summarized by Hegmon (1992; 1998). Hegmon (1992: 518) pithily
encapsulates the major approaches to style in archaeology, commenting that
“for Sachett, style bears particularly on time-space systematics, for Wiessner it
has communicative function, and for Hodder it relates to cognitive processes.”
Hegmon’s 1992 article should be read for more details and her extensive
bibliography on archaeological approaches to style, updated and extended to
include the concept of technological style in her 1998 publication. A major
watershed in archaeological approaches to style came from the introduction
by Wobst (1977) of the idea that style not only reflected information, but also
communicated it; in other words, style was an active phenomenon. Recent
approaches to style have also shown that there are a variety of types of style in
objects and behaviors. Sachett and others writing about isochrestic variations
in style are interested in style as choices made between functionally or techno-
logically equivalent alternatives that are characteristic of particular times and
192 Heather M.-L. Miller: Archaeological Approaches to Technology
places. This approach has been heavily applied to technological studies, as
might be expected, and is a major part of most formulations of technological
style, as described below. These isochrestic styles can be socially transmitted
through formal or informal learning processes, and so can reflect historical
traditions and social relations. This time-space conception of style pre-dates
communication approaches, but has been updated to include them, including
what Sackett refers as iconological style, style focused on the expression of
social information (Sackett 1986; Sackett 1990; see Hegmon 1992, 1998 for
earlier references). Weissner focuses heavily on the communication functions
of style, and her exchanges with Sackett clarified both approaches and led
to the recognition of the existence of multiple types of styles in any society
at any particular place and time; indeed, in any one object (Wiessner 1990;
see Hegmon 1992, 1998 for earlier references). Hegmon (1992) sorts out the
many different types of styles that have been identified, and appeals for the
refinement of existing typologies rather than the creation of yet more terms.
Surprisingly, this has been done to some extent, with continued use and
refinement of many of these earlier terminologies, particularly Sackett’s and
versions of Weissner’s terms. Finally, the interest in style as representative
of cognitive processes, as ways of doing and thinking, as Hodder and others
have put it, has also generated much interest in the most recent studies of
style and technology (e.g., articles in Dobres and Hoffman 1999).
Technological style refers to the application of questions about style to the
study of technology, and like style it also has been defined in a number of
ways. It is best known to archaeologists through the writings of Lechtman,
especially her 1977 publication. Earlier formulations of technological style
can be found in a joint paper by Lechtman and Steinberg (1979), written in
1973 but only published in 1979, and itself part of a group of ideas about
style discussed by scholars at the time (Lechtman 1977: 3–4). It is worth
quoting at length from that paper, because it sounds startlingly like “new”
ideas published about technology in the 1990s:
If we claim that technologies are totally integrated systems that manifest cultural
choices and values, what is the nature of that manifestation and how can we
‘read’ it? We would argue that technologies also are particular sorts of cultural
phenomenathatreflectculturalpreoccupationsandthatexpressthemintheverystyle
of the technology itself. Our responsibility is to find means by which the form of that
expression can be recognized, then to describe and interpret technological style.
(Lechtman and Steinberg 1979:139).
Lechtman’s 1977 chapter is the introduction to a group of chapters on tech-
nology and style in a book on material culture and technology (Lechtman and
Merrill 1977), and it is odd that Lechtman’s chapter is so frequently referenced
in recent archaeological literature, and the others seldom are. In this section
I will discuss one of those chapters at some length, Steinberg’s comparative
Thematic Studies in Technology 193
discussion of the technological styles of three different metal working tra-
ditions in ancient Eurasia. Other chapters in this volume are by Leone on
architecture in nineteenth-century American religious utopias, and Adams on
a wide range of ethnographically documented technologies in Indonesia; all of
these publications refer to various studies by Cyril Stanley Smith and others.
An entire volume of the Ceramics and Civilization series published in 1985
is about technology and style, including technological style (Kingery 1985).
In short, there was clearly a rich and vibrant community of scholars working
in several fields on aspects of what we would now call technological systems.
While Lechtman’s work is definitely central to the concept of technological
style, it is worrying that other work from this time period seems to have been
dismissed or forgotten in recent summaries of anthropological approaches to
technology, giving the impression that technological systems were discovered
in the 1990s, at least for the Anglophone literature. (See Stark (1998) for a
very brief review of the contrasting history of developments in the Anglo-
phone and Francophone traditions relating to style and technology.) The rich
data and thoughtful conclusions of these earlier researchers are well worth
reading and “translating” into current terminology, directly commenting on
the weaknesses we have moved beyond (such as the generally passive aspect
of style assumed in many of these works), but not ignoring them or we
risk losing valuable insights from the hard-won knowledge of our intellectual
predecessors. The old expression about reinventing the wheel is something
technology specialists might particularly want to avoid.
So what then is technological style? Like style, it has a number of interlock-
ing definitions, including both passive and active non-verbal communication
and the manifestation of cognitive processes, primarily as expressed through
the choices made in the practice of technological processes where alternative
choices exist. In fact, all of these expressions of technological style can be
found singly or together in Lechtman’s 1977 publication alone (respectively,
communication and performance on page 13, attitudes of artisans and cul-
tural communities on page 10, and casting versus forging on page 7). This
indicates the complexities of stylistic expression recognized from this early
period by technology researchers. Lechtman here is primarily focused on the
role of technological style as communication and expression of cognitive pro-
cesses, which is perhaps why this publication has been so popular. Other
works have discussed at greater length the methods of expression of tech-
nological style itself, the actual types of choices made which can and have
been made (e.g., Steinberg 1977; Wright 1993; Ehrhardt 2005; and many oth-
ers, see below). In her own work, Lechtman has focused on a technique of
production (alternative methods of metal surface coloring) as an expression
of technological style in Andean metalwork, more recently elaborating fur-
ther on other technique choices as types of ethnocategories (Lechtman 1999).
194 Heather M.-L. Miller: Archaeological Approaches to Technology
Most studies of technological style have also employed production techniques
or the materials chosen as the means to examine technological style of pro-
duction. The majority of the examples in this section will therefore focus on
production techniques and materials, in large part accessed through archaeo-
metric study of finished and unfinished objects. While these are in no way the
only methods of expression of technological style, they are usually the most
accessible. Technological styles of the organization of production—the order
and location of production stages, or the nature and organization of produc-
tion personnel, for example—involve knowledge of production traditions that
archaeologists do not always have, although there have been a few such stud-
ies. In most cases, the authors have tried to place their studies of technological
style of production or organization of production within the context of the
overall technological system, as defined in Chapter 1.
As noted, technological style is primarily analyzed through the choices
made between approximately equivalent alternative options in technological
production. The choices can be the types of materials used, the techniques or
tools employed, the organization of production stages, the nature and orga-
nization of production personnel, and so forth. Characteristic technological
styles can relate to functional or economic reasons, as well as social and reli-
gious reasons. For example, Hosler’s (1994a; 1994b) well-known research into
ancient Mexican metals found that the choice of materials used was heavily
related to desired characteristics of sound and color inspired by religious and
social beliefs, in an analysis that crosses back and forth between investigations
of style and technological style. Vandiver and Koehler (1985), in contrast,
examined a case where functional and economic conditions were likely the
main reasons for changes in technological style. They provide extensive data
on the development of three separate technological styles of pottery produc-
tion for the same type of object, amphora, from seventh to second century
BCE
Corinth. Vandiver and Koehler (1985) found differences in materials, shapes,
and techniques of working. They conclude that the reasons for the differences
in the styles are likely to be functional differences in use, some of which may
have been communicated by the different shapes, as well as changing access
to raw material and/or changing socio-economic demands.
Steinberg (1977) similarly compares types of production methods for three
different groups of vessels, examining bronze drinking vessels associated with
funerary drinking rituals in three different societies. He notes that the Shang
Chinese bronze vessels were cast in very intricate, complex piecemolds, with
designs and techniques that are highly skeuomorphic (imitating one material
with another) of work in clay. The Phrygian Anatolian vessels were also very
skillfully made but with a quite different aesthetic, outstanding examples of
finely raised vessels whose simple forms deceptively mask the skill required
for their extremely uniform, even raising. The Late Bronze Age vessels from
Thematic Studies in Technology 195
Central Europe were also fabricated rather than cast, but rather than smooth,
perfect raising, they are often a bit mis-shapen, raised too quickly and pleated
or torn where insufficiently annealed. Their rivets, edges, and seams are all
apparent and sometimes a bit sloppy. Steinberg uses these three very different
production styles as insights into the working conditions and status of the
metal workers who employed them. One of the most interesting aspects of
Steinberg’s study is his interest in going beyond technology styles of pro-
duction methods, to look at how the production methods might have been
influenced by the technological style of production organization in each case.
He suggests that the Shang Chinese and Phrygian Anatolian metal workers
were probably patronized by high-level elites in a highly stratified society,
and worked under more permanent conditions than the Central European
metalsmiths, who may have been somewhat itinerant and who were proba-
bly also producing a broader range of objects (including armor) for a larger
group of less-stratified, less exacting elites. Their techniques and the quality
of their work would accordingly be rather different. In other words, Steinberg
moves beyond categorizing metal working traditions as produced by “highly
skilled” or “low-quality” workers to examine what it was about the social
or economic conditions that made particular qualities of work acceptable or
not. The ancient metal workers are clearly very much alive for Steinberg, and
he describes the techniques and products through the eyes of a craftsperson
rather than a consumer, but the eyes of a craftsperson who is very aware of
the desires of his or her consumer.
TECHNOLOGICAL TRADITIONS:METAL AND
BONE WORKING IN NORTH AMERICA
A similar interest in comparing metal working traditions is found in the work
of Ehrhardt (2005) and Anselmi (2004), both of whom are interested in
the metal working traditions of eastern and mid-continental North America
around the time of European contact, both employing archaeometric analysis
of metal objects as well as archaeological and ethnohistoric data where avail-
able. Ehrhardt (2005) examines the large assemblage of metal artifacts and
debris (“scrap”) from a Late Protohistoric (1640–1683
AD/CE) Illinois village
site in Missouri now called the Iliniwek Village, that has been identified as
the historically described site of Peouarea. Anselmi (2004) concentrates on
metal objects and scrap from a number of early contact Wendat (Huron)
and Haudenosaunee (Five Nations) Iroquoian archaeological collections from
northeastern North America in the Early (1480/1500-1614
AD) and Mid-
dle (1614-1690
AD) Contact Periods. Both are dealing with times of grow-
ing contact with European missionaries and traders in these two regions.
196 Heather M.-L. Miller: Archaeological Approaches to Technology
Both provide fascinating information from small bits of corroded metal as they
use patterns of production and consumption to understand the technological
style of production for these two groups, as they interact with and procure
metal objects from Europeans. Similar studies have been carried out by Leader
(1991) for the Calusa of Florida. Anselmi’s (1994) work examines multiple
sites and native groups over more than one time period, and so is able to
further show differences in the degrees of adoption of tools and techniques
by different native groups over time.
Ehrhardt (2005) draw on the work of Franklin et al. (1981), who described
an overall North American approach to copper working that was based
on fabrication of native copper (working without melting, as defined in
Chapter 4), in contrast to metal working traditions in most of the world which
employed smelting and melting of metal ores as well as fabrication. The same
is true for North American traditions of iron working in the Arctic, as noted
in Chapter 4. To use my terminology from Chapter 3, metal working in North
America was thus an extractive-reductive, not a transformational technology.
Franklin, et al. (1981) also discuss regional and temporal variation based
on other aspects of production, that is, regional and temporal technological
styles. (Following Franklin, et al. (1981), Ehrhardt (2005) uses a terminology
of primary and secondary ‘techniques’ that I will not employ, as it is close but
not quite the same as the way primary and secondary ‘stages of production’
are commonly used in most discussions of metal working, as represented by
Figure 4.11.) Working as they are in situations of cultural contact, Ehrhardt
(2005) and Anselmi (1994) explore the large-scale differences between the
European and North American metal working traditions, but also provide sig-
nificant data about the similarities and differences between the two regional
technological traditions, that practiced by the Illinois in the mid-continent
Mississippi river drainage and western Great Lakes, and by the Iroquoi in the
northeast, to the east of the Great Lakes.
As detailed in Martin (1999), pre-contact metal working in North America
was centered on the plentiful supply of native copper available in the Great
Lakes region, which was widely traded in the Great Lakes and Mississippi
River drainage regions, although Ehrhardt (2005: 59, 69) references studies
showing use of native copper deposits from elsewhere in North America as
well. Copper was not smelted or melted, but was hammered and annealed
into sheets and objects from at least 3000
BCE, with sheet production a major
part of the production system after the earliest period. Joining only involved
cold-working methods, primarily metal riveting or nonmetal adhesives or
binding. Metal pieces were cut using groove-and-snap methods, as was also
done in stone working. Some groups made elaborate “cutout” shapes from
copper sheet by incising the shape on one side of the sheet, then grinding
through the raised projections on the other side, notably the Hopewell people
Thematic Studies in Technology 197
(200 BCE to 400 AD/CE) and later the Mississippians and participants in the
Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (from 900
AD/CE up to European contact
in some areas) (Martin 1999; Ehrhardt 2005; Anselmi 2004).
Ehrhardt (2005) describes the changes in technological style for the Illinois
with European contact as primarily affecting methods of cutting and joining,
while processing methods of forging or shaping by hammering with annealing
remain essentially the same, with no interest in melting or casting. However,
they no longer create their own sheet from copper lumps, but procure copper
and brass already in sheet form from their European contacts. Cutting is now
accomplished by shearing with scissors or snips of some kind, or possibly iron
knives, based on the characteristic burr marks and folding patterns seen in
the metal objects and discards. The cutting method used for a few examples
of jagged tears is not clear, but there is almost no evidence for groove-and-
snap or even bend-and-snap cutting, nor the more elaborate grinding method
described above for cutouts. Although no such tools were found, it appears
that the Illinois adopted European shearing tools for cutting, unless it is
possible to achieve a shearing burr with a single blade knife; this would
be a useful topic for experimental replication and analysis. The other major
forming techniques are rolling or bending and perforating; rivets are not used,
and only seldom are edges regularly smoothed or traded sheets thinned.
In contrast, Anselmi (2004) found a stronger continuity in the traditional
North American methods of cutting in the Iroquoian materials. Although in
close contact with Europeans and procuring metal and other objects through
European trade, including sheet metal in the form of kettles as well as iron
blades, European tools such as scissors or snips were not as commonly used,
except by one group, the Mohawk. Instead, there is abundant evidence for use
of groove-and-snap cutting followed by grinding of edges to smooth them,
techniques typical of the earlier general North American tradition also found
in stone working. This difference is particularly interesting as the Iroquoian
groups and the Illinois were fashioning much of the European copper and
brass into very similar ornamental objects, such as rolled beads, tinkling cones
(rolled cone-shaped pendants), and flat pendants. In both cases, the majority
of metal objects are ornaments, although there are a good number of both
formal and expedient tools found in the Iroquoian assemblages, increasing
in abundance through time. Anselmi (2004) also examined metal artifacts
made in European settlements at around the same time, and found clear
evidence for the use of typical European metal working techniques, with
the European assemblages showing significant statistical separation from the
Iroquoian assemblages. This continuation of the traditional cutting method
in the Northeast is rather surprising as one might posit the likelihood of
new, more efficient techniques being adopted along with the new materials.
However, Anselmi (1994) does also find increasing adoption through time