Practicing Identity: A Crafty Ideal?

A. Brysbaert & M. Vetters Mediterranean Archaeology & Archaeometry 10.2 (2010): 25-43.

Abstract

This paper focuses on the materialization of technological practices as a form of identity expression. Contextual analyses of a Mycenaean workshop area in the Late Bronze Age citadel of Tiryns (Argolis, Greece) are presented to investigate the interaction of different artisans under changing socio-political and economic circumstances. The case study indicates that although certain technological practices are often linked to specific crafts, they do not necessarily imply the separation of job tasks related to the working of one specific material versus another. Shared technological practices and activities, therefore, may be a factor in shaping cohesive group identities of specialized artisans. Since tracing artisans’ identities is easier said than done on the basis of excavated materials alone, we employ the concepts of multiple chaînes opératoires combined with cross-craft interactions as a methodology in order to retrieve distinctive sets of both social and technological practices from the archaeological remains. These methodological concepts are not restricted to a specific set of steps in the production cycle, but ideally encompass reconstructing contexts of extraction, manufacture, distribution and discard/reuse for a range of artefacts. Therefore, these concepts reveal both technological practices, and, by contextualising these technological practices in their spatial layout, equally focus on social contacts that would have taken place during any of these actions. Our detailed contextual study demonstrates that the material remains when analysed in their entirety are complementary to textual evidence. In this case study they even form a source of information on palatial spheres of life about which the fragmentary Linear B texts, so far, remain silent.

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