ion, Metaphor and Mimesis Southwest is very conscious of its own corporate ‘way of life’. A list is given on its website under the heading ‘culture’ of the desired characteristics of a Southwest person (perseverant, egalitarian, passionate), and these qualities are abstracted into the more general injunctions to be low cost and have high customer service delivery, and the mission statement talks of warmth, friendliness, individual pride and company spirit. So there are clear abstractions here that create a unity and coherence to activities across domains. Throughout this book I have shown how entanglements involve material and conceptual components. In Chapter 2 I described a pebble on a beach that was brought into different assemblies with other things depending on how it was recognized, remembered and owned. In that chapter too I described how the equipmental totality of a thing depended on the different theories about and perspectives towards it. In Chapter 3 I used the quote from Gibson that ‘an affordance points both ways, to the environment and to the observer’ (1986: 129). In Chapter 4 I noted that the maintenance of walls in the Yorkshire Dales depended on expert ideas about organic foods and recent collective nostalgia for a rural way of life. In Chapter 5 I showed how a sail boat had different entanglements, and different affordances depending on the perspectives of sailing, entertaining and protecting the ecosystem of the bay. These ideas about the boat are themselves tied to wider ideas about what is leisure and how the environment should be protected. So entanglements and affordances and functions are always tied to abstractions (ideas, thoughts, words, feelings and senses). These abstractions are hierarchical and nested as noted above, and they often cross domains so that humans seek unities, coherence, metaphor within different realms of experience. Abstractions are general and can often be applied to more than one domain of activity. Their transferability Hodder_c06.indd 120 2/3/2012 12:14:59 PM

Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things

This article evaluates theories of the origins of sex differences in human behavior. It reviews the cross-cultural evidence on the behavior of women and men in nonindustrial societies, especially the activities that contribute to the sex-typed division of labor and patriarchy. To explain the cross-cultural findings, the authors consider social constructionism, evolutionary psychology, and their own biosocial theory. Supporting the biosocial analysis, sex differences derive from the interaction between the physical specialization of the sexes, especially female reproductive capacity, and the economic and social structural aspects of societies. This biosocial approach treats the psychological attributes of women and men as emergent given the evolved characteristics of the sexes, their developmental experiences, and their situated activity in society.

/pdf/a-cross-cultural-analysis-of-the-behavior-of-women-and-men-bntqdibaep.pdf

A cross-cultural analysis of the behavior of women and men: implications for the origins of sex differences.

Preface to the first edition Preface to the second edition 1. The problem 2. The systems approach 3. Structuralist archaeology 4. Marxist archaeology, ideology and practice 5. Archaeology and history 6. An ethnohistoric example: reconsideration of ethnoarchaeology and middle range theory 7. Contextual archaeology 8. Post-processual archaeology 9. Conclusion: archaeology as archaeology Bibliography Index.

Reading the past : current approaches to interpretation in archaeology

Online spaces that enable shared public interpersonal communications are of significant social, organizational, and economic importance. In this paper, a theoretical model and associated unobtrusive method are proposed for researching the relationship between online spaces and the behavior they host. The model focuses on the collective impact that individual information-overload coping strategies have on the dynamics of open, interactive public online group discourse. Empirical research was undertaken to assess the validity of both the method and the model, based on the analysis of over 2.65 million postings to 600 Usenet newsgroups over a 6-month period. Our findings support the assertion that individual strategies for coping with "information overload" have an observable impact on large-scale online group discourse. Evidence was found for the hypotheses that: (1) users are more likely to respond to simpler messages in overloaded mass interaction; (2) users are more likely to end active participation as the overloading of mass interaction increases; and (3) users are more likely to generate simpler responses as the overloading of mass interaction grows.The theoretical model outlined offers insight into aspects of computer-mediated communication tool usability, technology design, and provides a road map for future empirical research.

Information Overload and the Message Dynamics of Online Interaction Spaces: A Theoretical Model and Empirical Exploration

This book offers the first detailed comparative study of the seven best-documented early civilizations: ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, Shang China, the Aztecs and adjacent peoples in the Valley of Mexico, the Classic Maya, the Inka, and the Yoruba. Unlike previous studies, equal attention is paid to similarities and differences in their sociopolitical organization, economic systems, religion, and culture. Many of this study's findings are surprising and provocative. Agricultural systems, technologies, and economic behaviour turn out to have been far more diverse than was expected. These findings and many others challenge not only current understandings of early civilizations but also the theoretical foundations of modern archaeology and anthropology. The key to understanding early civilizations lies not in their historical connections but in what they can tell us about similarities and differences in human behaviour.

http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam034/2002074052.pdf

Understanding early civilizations : a comparative study

Contributors Preface I. Introduction Introduction: Craft and Social Identity Cathy Lynne Costin II. Dimensions of Artisan Identity Crafts, Chiefs, and Commoners: Production and Control in Precontact Hawai'i Barbara Lass Craft Specialization, Gender, and Personhood among the Post-conquest Maya of Yucatan, Mexico John E. Clark and Stephen D. Houston Craft Production and Social Identity in Northwest Mesopotamia Patricia Wattenmaker Crafting Social Identity in Ur III Southern Mesopotamia Rita P. Wright Elite Maya Pottery and Artisans as Social Indicators Dorie Reents-Budet III. Crafting and the Social Order Crafting Cultural Identity in Hunter-Gatherer Economies Kenneth E. Sassaman Social Identity and Specialization among Toro Iron Workers in Western Uganda S. Terry Childs Housewives, Chosen Women, Skilled Men: Cloth Production and Social Identity in the Late Prehispanic Andes Cathy Lynne Costin IV. Avenues to Presige and Power The Multiple Identities of Aztec Craft Specialists Elizabeth M. Brumfiel Ritual Craft Specialists in Middle Range Societies Katherine A. Spielman Identity and Social Action among South Indian Craft Producers of the Vijayanagara Period Carla M. Sinopoli Index

Craft and social identity

Introducing the methods of archaeoclimatology, the authors measure the relative locus of the monsoons, the intensity of winter rains and the volume of water in the rivers in the Upper Indus, in the region of Harappa. They also note the adoption of a multi-cropping agricultural system as a possible strategy designed to adjust to changing conditions over time. They find that around 3500 BC the volume of water in the rivers increases, and the rivers flood, implying annual soil refreshment and the consequent development of agriculture. By contrast, from around 2100 BC the river flow begins to fall while the winter rains increase. This time-bracket correlates nicely with the brief flourishing of Harappa. The locally derived evidence from Harappa combined with the Beas survey data provide a model for understanding the abandonment of settlements in the Upper Indus and possibly the wider civilisation.

/pdf/water-supply-and-history-harappa-and-the-beas-regional-13w7wla72z.pdf

Water supply and history. Harappa and the Beas regional survey

Recent discussion of the effects on society of long-distance exchange has brought the once generally accepted view of early Mesopotamian society as "statist" under heavy fire. There is now broad consensus that by Early Dynastic III there were widespread exchange systems in which the production of commodities played an important role and that by that time individuals were engaging in exchange for personal gain. These important new insights have had the effect of pushing into the conceptual background the role of the central societal institutions. Despite their import, however, it is inappropriate to single out any one factor in attempting to delineate the transformative forces of a social formation. Early Mesopotamian exchange should be approached as part of the changing complex of social relations of production that characterized Mesopotamian society. I suggest that the modes of production characterizing Mesopotamia were quite different from the modern capitalist mode; that centralized production with pub...

Trade, Women, Class, and Society in Ancient Western Asia [and Comments and Reply]

During the Ur III period in southern Mesopotamia, artisans were engaged in the production of crafts that required enormous technical skill and yet craft production appears not to have been an avenue to prestige and power. This paper draws on archival records from artisan workshops and literary sources to demonstrate the intricate fusion of a powerful political ideology and a rigidly controlled economy in which rulers legitimated their authority at the same time that they suppressed the mobility of craft producers. The establishment of a wide range of economic, social and legal differentiation was based on a state strategy designed to promote efficiency and to achieve control of artisan production. Craft producers during this period negotiated their social identity in a variety of domains that were legal, kinship, ethnic and gender based.

https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/ap3a.1998.8.1.57

Crafting Social Identity in Ur III Southern Mesopotamia

Comment: The Fiber Revolution: Textile Extensification, Alienation, and Social Stratification in Ancient Mesopotamia, Joy McCorriston

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