Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T08:37:26.616Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ambiguity, Ambivalence, Multiplicity: A Case Study of Late Pottery Neolithic Ceramic Assemblages from the Southern Levant

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2018

Assaf Nativ
Assaf Nativ*
Affiliation:
Martin Buber Society of Fellows in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mt Scopus, Jerusalem 9190501, Israel Email: assaf.nativ@gmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper presents an experiment. Can a typologically inarticulate assemblage be accounted for by other means? What might such an articulation look like? What prospects would it offer? Focusing on three small late Pottery Neolithic assemblages from the southern Levant, the paper argues that they are typologically inarticulate, primarily because they possess considerable morphological fluidity that is at odds with the segmented structure demanded by this mode of classification. The paper presents an attempt to formulate an account of these assemblages that incorporates their morphological fluidity and ambiguity. Allowing for differential quantitative emphases across the assemblage, it is suggested that certain forms may be specified as types. In turn, the relations among these types are shown to constitute a structural order. Yet the assemblages are also fundamentally ambivalent, both constituting and de-constituting their order and logic. For the types are constituted in relative (rather than absolute) terms and the orderly structures are accompanied by elements that are incommensurable with it. Acknowledging these conflicting qualities, it is proposed that they are multiple, that the one assemblage is several. Finally, the paper explores some implications this understanding of the ceramic assemblages might have for the discussion of temporal development.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Archaeological Journal , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , November 2018 , pp. 629 - 645
Copyright
Copyright © McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, W.Y. & Adams, E., 1991. Archaeological Typology and Practical Reality: A dialectical approach to artifact classification and sorting. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bailey, G.N., 1983. Concepts of time in quaternary prehistory. Annual Review of Anthropology 12 (1), 165–92.Google Scholar
Bailey, G., 2007. Time perspectives, palimpsests and the archaeology of time. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 26 (2), 198–223.Google Scholar
Bille, M. & Sørensen, T.F., 2016. Into the fog of architecture, in Elements of Architecture: Assembling archaeology, atmosphere and the performance of building spaces, eds. Bille, M. & Sørensen, T.F.. New York (NY): Routledge, 1–29.Google Scholar
Blackman, M.J., Stein, G.J. & Vandiver, P.B., 1993. The standardization hypothesis and ceramic mass production: technological, compositional, and metric indexes of craft specialization at Tell Leilan, Syria. American Antiquity 58 (1), 60–80.Google Scholar
Bowker, G.C. & Star, S.L., 1999. Sorting Things Out: Classification and its consequences. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bryant, L.R., 2011. The ontic principle: outline of an object-oriented ontology, in The Speculative Turn: Continental materialism and realism, eds. Bryant, L., Srnicek, N. & Harman, G.. Melbourne: re.press, 261–78.Google Scholar
Clarke, D.L., 1968. Analitycal Archaeology. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Daston, L. & Galison, P., 2007. Objectivity. New York (NY): Zone Books.Google Scholar
DeLanda, M., 2006. A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage theory and social complexity. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Fowler, C., 2017. Relational typologies, assemblage theory and Early Bronze Age burials. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 27 (1), 95–109.Google Scholar
Garfinkel, Y., 1992. The Pottery Assemblages of the Sha'ar Hagolan and Rabah Stages of Munhata (Israel). Paris: Association Paléorient.Google Scholar
Gero, J.M., 2007. Honoring ambiguity/problemitizing certitude. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 14 (3), 311–27.Google Scholar
Getzov, N., Lieberman-Wander, R., Howard, S. & Syon, D., 2009. Horbat ‘Uza: The 1991 excavations (IAA Reports). Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority.Google Scholar
Gilboa, A., Karasik, A., Sharon, I. & Smilansky, U., 2004. Towards computerized typology and classification of ceramics. Journal of Archaeological Science 31 (8), 681–94.Google Scholar
Goodman, N., 1978. Ways of Worldmaking. Indianapolis (IN): Hackett Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Gopher, A., 2012. Village Communities of the Pottery Neolithic Period in the Menashe Hills, Israel: Archaeological investigations at the sites of Nahal Zehora. Tel Aviv: Emery & Claire Yass Publications in Archaeology, Tel Aviv University.Google Scholar
Gopher, A. & Eyal, R., 2012. Nahal Zehora pottery assemblages: typology, in Village Communities of the Pottery Neolithic Period in the Menashe Hills, Israel: Archaeological investigations at the sites of Nahal Zehora, ed. Gopher, A.. Tel Aviv: Emery & Claire Yass Publications in Archaeology, Tel Aviv University, 359–523.Google Scholar
Gopher, A., Sadeh, S. & Goren, Y., 1992. The pottery assemblage of Nahal Beset I: a Neolithic site in the Upper Galilee. Israel Exploration Journal 42, 4–16.Google Scholar
Gorodzov, V.A., 1933. The typological method. American Anthropologist 35, 95–102.Google Scholar
Hacking, I., 1999. The Social Construction of What? Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hamilakis, Y. & Jones, A.M., 2017. Archaeology and assemblage. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 27 (1), 77–84.Google Scholar
Harman, G., 2011. The Quadruple Object. Winchester: Zero Books.Google Scholar
Harvey, D.L. & Reed, M.H., 1994. The evolution of dissipative social systems. Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems 17 (4), 371–411.Google Scholar
Hawkes, C., 1954. Archeological theory and method: some suggestions from the Old World. American Anthropologist 56 (2), 155–68.Google Scholar
Hermon, S., Niccolucci, F., Alhaique, F., Iovino, M.-R. & Leonini, V., 2004. Archaeological typologies - an archaeological fuzzy reality, in CAA 2003: Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology, eds. Fischer-Ausserer, K., Börner, W., Goriany, M. & Karlhuber-Vöckl, L.. (BAR International series S1227.) Oxford: Archaeopress, 30–34.Google Scholar
Karasik, A. & Smilansky, U., 2011. Computerized morphological classification of ceramics. Journal of Archaeological Science 38 (10), 2644–57.Google Scholar
Kerner, S., 2010. Craft specialisation and its relation with social organisation in the late 6th to early 4th millennium BCE of the southern Levant. Paléorient 36 (1), 179–98.Google Scholar
Krieger, A.D., 1944. The typological concept. American Antiquity 9 (3), 271–88.Google Scholar
LaCapra, D., 1999. Trauma, absence, loss. Critical Inquiry 25 (4), 696–727.Google Scholar
Latour, B., 2000. When things strike back : a possible contribution of ‘science studies’ to the social sciences. British Journal of Sociology 1 (51), 107–23.Google Scholar
Latour, B., 2005. Reassembling the Social: An introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Latour, B., 2013. An Inquiry into Modes of Existence: An anthropology of the moderns. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lucas, G., 2005. The Archaeology of Time. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lucas, G., 2012. Understanding the Archaeological Record. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lucas, G., 2015. Archaeology and contemporaneity. Archaeological Dialogues 22 (1), 1–15.Google Scholar
Lyotard, J.-F., 1991. Phenomenology. Albany (NY): State University of New YorkPress.Google Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, M., 1963. The Structure of Behavior. Pittsburgh (PA): Duquesne University Press.Google Scholar
Murray, T. (ed.), 1999. Time and Archaeology. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Nativ, A., 2017. No compensation needed: on archaeology and the archaeological. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 24, 659–75.Google Scholar
Nativ, A., in press. On the object of archaeology. Archaeological Dialogues.Google Scholar
Nativ, A., Shimelmitz, R., Agha, N., Ktalav, I. & Rosenberg, D., 2014. Hanaton: interim report on a Neolithic-Chalcolithic settlement in the Lower Galilee. Journal of the Israel Prehistoric Society 44, 117–47.Google Scholar
Niccolucci, F. & Hermon, S., 2002. Estimating subjectivity of typologists and typological classification with fuzzy logic. Archeologia e Calcolatori 13, 217–32.Google Scholar
O'Sullivan, T., Hartley, J., Saunders, D., Montgomery, M. & Fiske, J., 1994. Key Concepts in Communication and Cultural Studies (2nd edn). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Olivier, L., 2011. The Dark Abyss of Time: Archaeology and memory. Lanham (MD): Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Olsen, B., 2010. In Defense of Things: Archaeology and the ontology of objects. Lanham (MD): Altamira Press.Google Scholar
Pétursdóttir, Þ., 2012. Small things forgotten now included, or what else do things deserve? International Journal of Historical Archaeology 16 (3), 577–603.Google Scholar
Pétursdóttir, Þ., 2013. Concrete Matters: Towards an Archaeology of Things. PhD thesis, University of Tromsø.Google Scholar
Pickering, A., 1995. The Mangle of Practice: Time, agency and science. Chicago (IL): University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Pickering, A., 2011. Ontological politics: realism and agency in science, technology and art. Insights 4 (9), 2–11.Google Scholar
Polanyi, M., 1958. Personal Knowledge: Towards a post-critical theory. Chicago (IL): University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Polanyi, M., 1966. The Tacit Dimension. New York (NY): Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Read, D., 1974. Some comments on typologies in archaeology and an outline of a methodology. American Antiquity 39 (2), 216–42.Google Scholar
Roux, V., 2003. Ceramic standardization and intensity of production: quantifying degrees of specialization. American Antiquity 68 (4), 768–82.Google Scholar
Sokal, R.R., 1974. Classification: purposes, principles, progress, prospects. Science 185 (4157), 1115–23.Google Scholar
Sørensen, M.L.S., 1997. Material culture and typology. Current Swedish Archaeology 5, 179–92.Google Scholar
Sørensen, M.L.S., 2015. ‘Paradigm lost’ – on the state of typology within archaeological theory, in Paradigm Found – Archaeological Theory: Present, past and future, eds. Kristiansen, K., Šmejda, L. & Turek, J.. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 84–94.Google Scholar
Sørensen, T.F., 2016. In praise of vagueness: uncertainty, ambiguity and archaeological methodology. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 23, 741–63.Google Scholar
Spaulding, A.C., 1953. Statistical techniques for the discovery of artifact types. American Antiquity 18 (4), 305–13.Google Scholar
Tattersall, I., 2014. Recognizing species, present and past. Evolutionary Anthropology 23 (1), 5–7.Google Scholar
Wagemans, J., Elder, J.H., Kubovy, M., Palmer, S.E., Peterson, M.A., Singh, M. & von der Heydt, R., 2012. A century of Gestalt psychology in visual perception: I. Perceptual grouping and figure-ground organization. Psychological Bulletin 138 (6), 1172–1217.Google Scholar
Witmore, C., 2014. Archaeology and the new materialisms. Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 1 (2), 203–24.Google Scholar
Wylie, A., 2002. The typology debate, in Thinking from Things: Essays in the philosophy of archaeology. Berkeley (CA): University of California Press, 42–56.Google Scholar
Yannai, E., 2006. En Esur (‘Ein Asawir): Excavations at a protohistoric site in the coastal plain of Israel (IAA Reports). Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority.Google Scholar
Ziman, J., 2000. Real Science: What it is, and what it means. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar