thoughts on a method for zooarchaeological study … · interpreting household practices barcelona,...

Interpreting household practicesBarcelona, 21-24 november 2007Treballs d’Arqueologia 13 (2007): 5-27

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Abstract: The emerging focus on the structures and practices everydaylife in archaeology allows us to envision the full range of occupations,activities, and actors involved in social and ecological maintenance andreproduction. Despite this, archaeological interpretation still tends to beframed in terms of grand narratives, in which the "story" is about theagency of large-scale processes as they play out in human existence. Thispaper offers some comments on these problems from the perspective of azooarchaeologist analysis, exploring more deeply the articulation of mid-dle-range archaeological theory to practice theory.Resumen: El creciente interés de la arqueología en las estructuras y prác-ticas cotidianas permite contemplar la amplia gama de ocupaciones,actividades y actores que participan del mantenimiento y reproducciónsocial y ecológico. A pesar de ésto, las interpretaciones arqueológicassiguen tendiendo a estructurarse en términos de las grandes narrativas,en las cuales la narración prima los procesos a largo plazo sobre la exis-tencia humana. En este artículo se comentan estos problemas desde unaperspectiva zooarqueológica, explorando con mayor profundidad laarticulación de la teoría arqueológica de rango medio con la teoría de lapráctica y con otras aportaciones teóricas de orden general.Resum: L’interés creixent de l’arqueologia en les estructures i pràctiquesquotidianes permet la contemplació de l’ampla varietat d’ocupacions,activitats i actors que participen en el manteniment i la reproducciósocial i ecològica. Maltrat això, les interpretacions arqueològiques ten-deixen encara a estructurar-se en termes de processos a llarg terminisobre la existència humana. En aquest article es comenten aquests prob-lemes des d’una perspectiva zooarqueològica de nivell mig amb la teoriade la pràctica i amb altres aportacions teòriques d’ordre general.

THOUGHTS ON A METHOD FORZOOARCHAEOLOGICAL STUDY OF QUOTIDIAN

LIFE

Diane Gifford-Gonzalez

Introduction

Household maintenance activitiesare intrinsically social, involvingvarious divisions of labor and sup-porting relationships among themembers of domestic groups andthe larger communities of whichthey are part. Moreover, only a lit-tle reflection will indicate that thesmall maintenance practices ofdaily life – making the morning cupof coffee, collecting and reading thedaily newspaper, or logging on tothe online version, feeding a pet,feeding the children – are them-selves rituals, which make our quo-tidian lives feel safe and secure. AsBourdieu would have it, we struc-ture our new day through thesesmall acts that arise from the struc-tures of everyday life as lived in our

past. The dislocation of these smallpractices, their prevention or post-ponement, is one of the aims of ter-rorism, in its mission to destabilizethe sense of security and normalcypossessed by everyday people, andthereby to discredit the power ofstates of ensure such conditions fortheir citizens. We see about us,regardless of pronouncements andgrand gestures by heads of state,that the common person’s resist-ance to terrorism is to continuethose everyday practices in the faceof heightened risk in doing so.

This paper is an essay, in the senseof “un ensayo,” an attempt, toexplore conceptual linkages withinarchaeological method and theory.My attempt here begins with myfundamental belief that archaeo-

Thoughts on a method for zooarchaeological study of quotidian life

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Henry James repeats an incident which the writer Prosper Mériméedescribed, of how, while he was living with George Sand, he onceopened his eyes, in the raw winter dawn, to see his companion in adressing-gown, on her knees before the domestic hearth, a candle-stickbeside her and a red madras round her head, making bravely, with herown hands the fire that was to enable her to sit down betimes to urgentpen and paper. The story represents him as having felt that the specta-cle chilled his ardor and tried his taste, her appearance unfortunate, heroccupation an inconsequence, and her industry a reproof – the result ofall which was a lively irritation and an early rupture (James in Shapiro(ed.) 1963:157-58).

Adrienne Rich, On Lies, Secrets, and Silence, 1979

logical interpretation must bebased in a verifiable body of evi-dence from which plausible inter-pretations are made. By “evidence,”I do not mean a positivist view of“facts speaking for themselves,” butrather, as Wylie (1992) has insist-ed, that arguments for the occur-rence of past events, everythingfrom the collapse of an economy toinstances of spousal abuse, must bebased upon the existence of inter-pretable evidence upon whichthere is some agreement amongobservers.

By “interpretable evidence uponwhich there is some agreement,” Imean those meanings of the evi-dence (counting here both inter-pretations of objects and of pat-terning in data drawn from objectsas evidence) that most archaeolo-gists are willing to accept asstrongly warranted “givens.” By“plausible,” I mean commonlyagreed upon touchstones to whichwe can resort when developingarguments that account forchanges (or lack of them) over timein the human lives we wish tostudy. This area of evaluating plau-sibility pertains to what DavidClarke (1973) called “archaeologi-cal metaphysics.” I believe we are

still in the process of developing aclear understanding of how weevaluate the archaeological dataand interpretations are embeddedin arguments, that is, how and whywe believe some to be plausible andothers less so. This area of inquiryhas largely been overshadowed bydebates over processual versuspostprocessual theory. However,as archaeology moves onward fromthis confrontation –or in the case ofmuch of Europe– in parallel with it,it becomes clear that, when archae-ologists of any theoretical persua-sion make arguments about whatwent on in the past, the plausibili-ty or “truth claims” of specific evi-dence, is absolutely essential to theprocess. The intention of this essayis to focus on such issues, withrespect to studying households,social relations, and gender.

It may be good to specify a bit moreabout my own theoretical leaningsand why I have felt the need todraw from several theoretical andmethodological sources. I writeand speak from the position of azooarchaeologist with stronginterests in building theory andmethod in my own subfield forstudying social relations, includinggender. If only because I view


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human subsistence as intrinsicallysocial, I have long believed that ani-mals and their use by people mustbe viewed in a social matrix.

For some thirty-five years, I haveanalyzed faunas from African siteswith early pastoral livestock(Gifford et al. 1980; Gifford-Gonzalez 2000, 1998). I also havespent time with contemporary pas-toralists, and have read widely onpastoral peoples in various set-tings. In the process, I haveassessed a range of theoretical per-spectives for their utility in think-ing about the issues that concernme. I have found three only partial-ly compatible fields to be useful.First, there is evolutionary ecology(including behavioral ecology),which views human choices andactions over the long term as mak-ing sense in evolutionary terms.Second, there is structural Marxisttheory, which focuses on relationsof social power, of resource controland acquisition, of production anddistribution, on a shorter-termtime scale. Finally, there is femi-nism, addressing other aspects ofdifference and power, and theobserver/interpreter’s position.

My own personal experience com-

pels me to view pastoralists in thecontext of regional ecosystems andthe non-negotiable demands thatthe weather and the herd animalsmake upon these people. Likewise,my own experience compels me tosee pastoral people as actors incomplex political, economic, andideological webs that both mediateand clash with environmentaltrends, and that structure theirchoices in managing their live-stock, households, and social rela-tionships. Finally, I have seen first-hand and read about how men andwomen negotiate their lives fromvery different social positions inpastoralist groups, where age aswell as gender delegates to a per-son specific rights, responsibilities,and limitations.

Sometimes these theoreticalworlds are remarkably compatible,for example, as when behavioralecological and Marxist paradigmstake a fundamentally economicapproach. Both share a concernwith the costs and benefits ofefforts humans exert to achievegoals within a social context, albeitviewed from very different stand-points and calibrated with differ-ent currencies. Likewise, feministand Marxist theory share preoccu-


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pations with power, ideology, andthe position of the viewer/investi-gator, but their commitmentssometimes diverge. Theseapproaches occasionally contradicteach other in troublesome butinteresting ways. I believe that thefriction itself is a context for defin-ing in more detail what is neededto work productively with archae-ological materials.

However, when I resort to thesebodies of theory, what is consistentis drawing perspectives and expec-tations from them and then ofassigning meaning to actualarchaeological materials, withwhich to confront and assess thoseexpectations. This process involvesthe application of what Clarke(1973) called “interpretive theory”and is essential to all archaeologi-cal analysis. I believe this area ismore complex than the term “mid-dle range theory,” which has per-haps become a bit of a catch-all cat-egory, would imply. This essayseeks to explore possible links in asystem of theory and method forunderstanding “maintenance activ-ities” and other socially mediatedactivities, and for addressing thedifficult problem of how to studygender in the absence of cultural or

historic continuities with textuallydocumented groups. I am not heresuggesting new theory andmethod. Rather, I am bringing intojuxtaposition extant ones that thusfar, to the best of my knowledge,have not been explicitly related toone another. My hope is that thisthought-experiment might pro-voke others to consider the possi-bilities of multiple approaches toinvestigating this vital area ofarchaeological research.

Zooarchaeology and DomesticMaintenance Activities

A brief note is necessary hereregarding my use of the word,“zooarchaeology.” This increasing-ly favored in U.K. (Mulville andOutram 2005), North America, andsegments of Latin America(Mengoni 2004), rather than“archaeozoology,” to refer to thearchaeological study of animalsremains. I am most accustomed touse this phrase and am in agree-ment with the argument, advancedby other Anglophone authors, that“zooarchaeology” more clearlyimplies the archaeologicallyfocused nature of our research withanimal remains. In any case, I willuse this term as interchangeable


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with the continental European“archaeozoology” here.

The use of animals obviously artic-ulates with the physical and socialreproduction of domestic groupsand of communities. The mostbanal and pervasive construal ofzooarchaeology in the generalarchaeological literature is that itdeals with a kind of “natural” evi-dence, parallel to archaeobotanicalmaterials, pollen rain, and geologi-cal sediments, non-artifactual, andgermane only to environment orsubsistence. According to thistime-honored model for archaeo-logical interpretation, shared bymembers of culture-historic,processual, and postprocessualcamps, only artifacts, architecture,and space-use can shed light onsocial and symbolic worlds past. However, it has been stressed byseveral workshop participants(Gifford-Gonzalez 1993; Montón2002, 2005) and by others (e. g.Claassen 1991; Hendon 1996; Moss1993), to conceptualize householdmaintenance and subsistenceactivities as outside the realm ofthe social and the cultural is alien-ates a central part of humanendeavor from society and culture.Thirty years ago, in a very different

register and from a very differentperspective, feminist poet andessayist Adrienne Rich (1979),addressed the ideological under-pinnings of a view of “significant”history which excludes the activi-ties normally assigned to women inWestern cultures –childcare andmaintenance activities. Archaeo-logical frameworks that relegatefaunal and floral evidence solely to“subsistence and environment”reveal a particular, and I wouldargue unconsciously androcentric,political economy of archaeology,which refracts the depreciation ofsuch activities by Western soci-eties as a whole.

In reality, the anthropological liter-ature shows that animals are bothfood and, to paraphrase Lévi-Strauss (1963), food for thought.Animals nearly invariably possesshigh symbolic and economic valuein human societies and are the fociof much human attention and ener-gy. They are either highly desiredas living creatures and food, oravoided as both (Tambiah 1969).Among human foragers, farmers,pastoralists, and members of com-plex societies, animals and theirproducts are pivot points of con-flict as well as a major means of


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mediating it. Among documentedhuman societies, access to animalsand animal foods is intenselysocially mediated and subject toeconomic manipulation and, often,of asymmetrical access, determinedby age, gender, or social standing.Ingold (1980) has delineated thedifferences in the extension ofhumans’ allocative power over ani-mals, depending upon whetherthey are wild, when power of allo-cation commences at the death ofthe animal, or domestic, when itbegins at the birth of the animal.Given ethnographic documenta-tion of wide variations in the gen-der of those holding allocativepower over animals in both con-texts, we may imagine that in thepast similar variability would haveexisted. For example, among theNavajo, women own and allocateliving herds of sheep, and amongthe Nunamiut, once the carcassesof prey reach the residential camp,the senior women of householdscontrol the distribution of theirparts (Waugespack 2002).

For zooarchaeologists the problemis not whether animals are woveninto human social relations inimportant ways, but how we mightobtain information about their

place in past social contexts fromthe archaeological evidence.Although we can expect that dif-ferential control of animals, theireffort, and their products existed inthe past as it does now, specifyingwho exercised that control is not asimple matter of applying unifor-mitarian principles. What faces us,now that we have opened up thehitherto closed door to the kitchenand houseyard, is how to writehuman history using these archae-ological documents. The next sec-tion addresses some aspects of the-ory and method relevant to thisendeavour. I seek to maintain a del-icate balancing act in this essay. Onthe one hand, I will explore ways topush the limits in giving agency,and perhaps gender, to personswho lived in archaeologically docu-mented pasts, while at the sameseeking to remain conservative andself-conscious in the application ofplausible “middle-range,” interpre-tive theory.

Practice Theory and MiddleRange Theory: Is there a

Relationship?

Bourdieu’s theory of practice offersarchaeologists a valuable concep-tual tool for understanding the


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material outcomes of everyday lifethat form the preponderance ofarchaeological deposits. The con-cept of habitus provides a way ofunderstanding the redundancies,or “patterning,” of evidence inarchaeological sites and samples asthe outcomes of the activities ofeveryday life. We suppose that rep-etitions of acts, either as intention-al, evocative gestures or as unself-conscious, everyday activities, cre-ate the traits “constantly recurringtogether” (Childe 1929: v) thatarchaeologists have long studied. With specific reference to thearchaeology of household and com-munity maintenance activities,practice theory is especially useful.As Hendon (1996:46) puts it:

It is the practice [in Bourdieu’s …sense of the term] of the household –what people do as members of adomestic group and the meaningassigned to their actions – that iscritical to an understanding of house-hold dynamics.” An ever-growingnumber of archaeological studieshave deployed aspects of Bourdieu’swork, while remaining attentive tothe dynamic nature of structure andagency (Joyce 2003; Lightfoot et al.1998; Stahl and Das Dores Cruz1998). Several sophisticated archaeo-logical discussions have reminded

archaeologists that “the structures ofeveryday life” are flexible, subject toimprovisation, and symbolic renego-tiations through the very practices“set up” by the structures of priorexperience (Dietler and Herbich1998; Joyce and Lopiparo 2005; Stahl2001).

From my point of view, two issuesemerge from this broad acceptanceof practice theory as a conceptualtool for understanding archaeolog-ical sites and materials. These maybe phrased as questions. First,what is the relation of the view ofarchaeological materials producedby habitus and the body of theorynormally called middle-range theo-ry? Second, does the perspective onarchaeological materials enabledby practice theory have implica-tions for the construction of his-toric narratives in archaeology?This section discusses the firstquestion, while reserving briefremarks on the second for a latersection.

Middle-range theory, as defined byBinford (1977, 1981); focuses on spe-cific, redundant sets of evidencethat are considered “uniformitari-an” in the sense that they are pro-duced by known processes which


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have consistent outcomes, or “sig-natures,” in many times and places.According to this perspective, mid-dle-range theory is essential forarchaeologically addressing gener-al-level research questions, becauseit permits the reliable assignmentof meaning to evidence. Such mean-ings may implicate human activi-ties, natural processes, or specificemergent processes, such as “popu-lation growth.” It can certainly beargued that, before Binford’s articu-lation of the distinction betweenmiddle-range and general theory,archaeologists were implicitly orexplicitly assigning meaning topatterning in archaeological evi-dence that readily falls under theheading of middle-range theory.For example, many argued andmore accepted that an increase inthe number and/or size of sites perunit time in a specific area reflectspopulation growth. However,explicit recognition and construc-tion of middle-range theory haspermitted a more critical evalua-tion of the “terms of engagement” ofarchaeological data with such gen-eralizations, as well as specificationof the relative strength of the inter-pretive linkages.

Several researchers (e.g. Gifford-

Gonzalez 1991) have stressed thatmiddle-range stipulations of mean-ing are most powerful when theyinclude strong relational analogiesbetween modern “source-side”contexts (Wylie 1989) and thearchaeological evidence. Animalbodies and their constituent ele-ments have been viewed by Binfordand many zooarchaeologists assupremely useful “uniformitarianmaterials” (e.g. Gifford 1981; Lyman1987) that permit us to access thedeep past because they have notaltered in their physical propertiesover many millennia.

Middle-range theory encompassesevidence produced by non-humanactors and processes, such as carni-vore gnawing or subaerial weather-ing. However, the purview of mid-dle-range theory also includesclasses of evidence produced bypeople that are certainly the prod-ucts of habitus. To give a zooar-chaeological example, Binford’sdetailed descriptions of Nunamiutbutchery and meal preparation inNunamiut Ethnoarchaeology (1978)and Bones: Ancient Men and ModernMyths (1981), describe repetitiveactions which are in part driven byregularities in the anatomy of theprey species but which are also


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embedded in Nunamiut expecta-tions and practices of everyday life.Thus, these are simultaneouslyfunctionally and culturally struc-tured activities.

Herein, I believe, is a linkagebetween these two disparatelyderived types of theory. Despite thewidely different notions of agencyin processual and postprocessualwritings, the value of analogical setsis accepted, as much in Shanks andHodder’s (1995) “universal materialprocesses” as in Binford’s (e.g. 1981)“uniformitarian relationships,” butthese specific utility of these has sel-dom been clearly articulated in rela-tion to specific arguments. It is fairto say that the plausible meaningsassigned in middle-range theory, thesequences of actions laid out indescriptions of chaînes opératoires(Lemonnier 1986), in Schiffer’s(1987) “beha-vioral chains” or in theanalyses of sequences of actions at agreater temporal and landscapescale, chaînes de travail (Joyce &Lopiparo 2005) are the “anchorpoints” that allow us explore themore subjective aspects of cultural-ly specific practices we encounterarchaeologically.

Why are these “anchor points”?

Although all practice is culturallyand psychologically embedded,some practices are more deter-mined by the exigencies of thematerials than others. Some mate-rials – clays, metal ores, animalbodies, plant structures, etc. -require specific ranges andsequences of handling to producedesired outcomes. These determi-native relationships of practice –when materials dictate humanaction to one extent or another,and sometimes to a specifiabledegree –are important becausethey permit us to delimit other out-comes of habitual practice whichare not, in any obvious way, drivenby the same “uniformitarian” con-straints. In the process, what wecan plausibly know about the deeppast – the challenges any humanbeing would face in handling cer-tain materials, regardless of thedetails how they rise to those chal-lenges – allow us to construct amore densely textured “lived past”(cf. Stahl 2001:19-40).

One might, for example, seek tomore closely specify the materialparameters of each aspect of culi-nary practices, as outlined byMontón (2005), to specify the“material worlds” inhabited by per-


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sons engaged in the procurement,processing, preparation, preserva-tion, and presentation of foods.While no one can ever pretend toinhabit a culturally mediatedworld identical to that of ancientpersons, some of the material con-siderations of the everyday livesthey experienced can be appreciat-ed in some detail. This opens oureyes to the possible trade-offs thatmembers of households must havehad to make in their quotidianexistence, between satisfying basicdemands of the human body, ofanimals and plants under manage-ment, and of materials manipulat-ed, on the one hand, and personalor corporate social projects requir-ing an investment of energy andtime, on the other.

Figure 1 attempts to portray in sim-ple form the “interpretive space”enriched by inferences based uponsuch relational analogies. Thedenser such certifiably “middle-range” sets of analogical relation-ships are, the richer is our sense ofthe practical environment in whichpast persons experienced theirlives. Equipped with a web of suchanalogic relationships, we mobilizebodies theory to explore the possi-bilities of the “interpretive space”

(Wylie 1985). Interpretation isthus not dictated by uniformitarianrelationships, it is enabled by them.The understanding that some suchrelations are the enacted outcomesof everyday practice further enrich-es our interpretation.

From such a standpoint, as Joyceand Lopiparo (2005:369) state,“Recording and analysis [of archae-ological materials] are transformedfrom a description of products ofunexamined action to sequences ofaction that can be recognized astraditional or innovative, inten-tional or unreflective.” Lacking thedirect historic analogies mobilizedby Joyce and Lopiparo in theirMaya research, many archaeolo-gists may feel themselves to be aconsiderable distance from theengagements with material andmeanings. However, I believe thatthe synthetic study of the Vallèsregion of Catalonia by Colomer etal. (1998) represents a permutationof the strategy advocated here, inwhich various forms of evidenceare first analyzed from a chaîneopératoire perspective, then moni-tored over time, when certainclasses of evidence (settlements,levels of agricultural production)are seen to change radically, while


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others remain consistent over longspans of time from Early BronzeAge to Early Iron Age times. Thesediachronic trends are then inter-preted eith an approach that incor-porates aspects of theories of pro-duction and gender.

I stress that I am not advocatingthe use of the formal characteris-tics of productive activities to gen-eralize about their social and eco-nomic associations, which wouldbe a misuse of analogy. As has beenstressed by Brumfiel (2006), it isentirely unwarranted to assumethat a given activity, Mesoamerican

weaving in her discussion, is either“timeless” in its gender associa-tions or always in the same struc-tural position in a political econo-my. As Brumfiel elegantly demon-strates, the physical act of produ-cing cloth has varied historically interms of the relation of weavers toeconomic and political power, andweavers have used it differently inresponse to the varied demands ofthose structural contexts.

To sum up, middle-range theoryincludes some types of evidencethat can be assumed to also fallwithin the realm of habitus. The


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Fig. 1. Schematic showing the relationship of “uniformitarian” analogical materials andprocesses to the “interpretive space” of the study of the past, given present knowledge

of material properties, chaînes opératoires, and other forms of relational analogies.

advantage that such “uniformitari-an” properties offer to archaeolo-gists is simply that they help usthink creatively about the choicesthat past people would have had tomake in coping with the demandsof certain materials as they handledthem and ask further questions ofthe evidence. What kinds of ener-getic demands, human, animal,other, does fabrication or use of aspecific material impose? Howmany person-hours are needed?Can the energy and time investedbe broken up into installments, ormust they all be invested at onetime? Is there a better or worsetime of the year to do so? Is there anage below which persons cannotreliably or safely accomplish thesetasks? These are only a few of manyquestions that implicate age, gen-der, the timing and social organiza-tion of labor, and so forth, whichfollow from thinking throughchaînes opératoires.

The Problem of Studying Genderin Deeper Time

Archaeologists interested in thestudy of gender in the lived pastencounter special challenges in theuse of analogy. As Hendon (1996:56-57) has put it:

Modeling the relationship betweenmaterial culture and social construc-tion, however, represents the mostserious challenge for archaeology.Where should we look for analogiesto help us interpret out archaeologi-cal remains? Archaeologists able todraw on visual imagery or historical-ly specific written documentationhave been readiest to talk aboutsocial actors such as male and female,adult and child, and to interpret thecultural system of value that informsdomestic relations… The benefits ofthese sources are not unalloyed, how-ever, and must not discouragearchaeologists from dealing withissues of practice and meaning.

The richest and most detailedarchaeological studies of genderhave indeed been carried out with-in a “direct historic” context, inwhich ethnographic, ethnohistoric,or other textual sources provide arich web of associations of chil-dren, women, men, and, occasion-ally, other genders, such as amongthe Chumash Indians (e.g.Hollimon 1995) with specific socialroles and occupations. Brumfiel’s(e.g. 1991) elegant study of changesin the nature of gendered work,and its impacts of household activ-ities, in Huexotla under Aztec rule


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rests upon Spanish-sponsoredaccounts of such gendered labor,written only a century after theAztec takeover of this outlyingarea. Stahl’s (2001) analysischanges in the lives of women andmen in the Banda chieftancy, asthis polity was affected first by theAsante kingdom, and then byBritish colonial rule, makes artfuluse of evidence to demonstrateshifts in gender roles yet relies onmany continuities of practice tomake such well-grounded argu-ments for social change (Stahl &Das Dores Cruz 1998). Likewise,archaeologists of the southwesternUnited States have used colonialand ethnographic sources to appre-hend what was different in ancientPueblo an gender relations, versusthose in the documented past(Crown 2000; Habicht-Mauche2000).

For those of us dealing with timesbeyond the reach of ethnography,historic sources, visual representa-tions, and other sources of meaningfor archaeological sites and materi-als, the problem is how to exploregender without falling into the trapof essentializing gendered socialroles and everyday practices.Conkey and Gero (1997) note that,

after twenty years’ gender researchin archaeology, some “archaeologyof women” has produced equallyunjustified associations of womenwith certain occupations, activi-ties, and social roles as producedby earlier and equally suspect,androcentric interpretations.Assuming that women werealways potters, weavers, and soforth flies in the face of a key pre-cept of feminist theory: gender issocial constructed and, as such, itis nearly infinitely mutable. Thispoint was also raised by Díaz-Andreu (2005) concerning theassignment of tasks and activitiesto specific genders. Having justreturned from a visit to cousins in asmall village in northern Spain, it isall the more clear to me that “main-tenance activities” are assigned toboth genders in a complex way in“traditional” settings. The commonassociation of household mainte-nance with women may be morethe product of a 20th CenturyEuropean and American view ofboth “households” and gender rolesthan a realistic one to impose onthe past.

Archaeologists who accept that allsocieties of anatomically modernhumans structure their social lives


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by age and gender but who rejectgender essentialism, face a pro-found challenge. Rather thanassume that any activity, even thecooking of daily meals, is an intrin-sic property of one gender, wemust treat any such assertion as aresearch question to be studied.The problem is how to proceed sys-tematically, with the aim, to para-phrase Sarah Milledge Nelson(1998:287), not of “finding women”but rather of “discussing gender.” In this connection, the approachthat has been variously called “con-textual” (Hodder 1986), epistemo-logical “tacking” (Wylie 1993,1989), “multiple frames of refer-ence” (Binford 2001, 1987), or sim-ply, “multiple independent lines ofevidence” (Gifford-Gonzalez 1991;Lyman 1994) may be of special util-ity. To frame this as a question, arethere lines of evidence that, inde-pendently of one another, point tosimilar associations of a genderwith an activity? Rather thanassume these associations, wemust stipulate them and make anevidence-based argument.

A major but largely untappedsource of “middle-range” or unifor-mitarian lines of evidence pertai-ning to gender, and especially to

female persons, is evolutionary andreproductive ecology. Simply be-cause archaeologists who take aconstructionist view of gender findsome reductionist behavioral eco-logical “explanations,” as applied byarchaeological colleagues to be dis-tasteful, they should not ignore therich potential of the original stud-ies. Many such studies permitarchaeologists to consider factorsaffecting women’s lives, such as thepositive and negative sides ofincreasing numbers of children onchildcare, time allocation, and workschedules in different of subsis-tence economies (e.g. Bird & Bird2005, 2000; Homewood & Rogers1991; Kramer 2004; Vitzthum 1994;Wienpahl 1984). Because the dayhas twenty-four hours, becausespecific tasks (viz. chaîne opératoire)take time, because a pregnancylasts nine months, because childrenneed a minimal level of nutrition togrow and thrive, because certaintypes of food can only be consumedif intensively processed and cooked,this literature on workload, repro-duction, and household constitu-tion can provide archaeologistswith at least general uniformitarianparameters for studying the lives ofchildren, women, and men in pasttimes.


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My advocacy that archaeologistsseriously consider this literatureshould in no way be interpreted asa statement that, for women, “biol-ogy is destiny.” The ethnographicand historical literature show thatwomen negotiate the physiologicalconstraints of childbearing andchild-rearing quite variably in dif-ferent societies, in concert with awider circle of cooperating per-sons. These arrangements as wellas energetic and workloaddemands, must be appreciated toconstruct textured narratives ofchange or continuity at the house-hold and community level.

Agency, Narrative Structure, andan Archaeology of Everyday Life

Having raised a number of issues ofmethod and theory already, I willonly lightly touch on one final topicthat I must confess is not an area ofexpertise for me, but one of consid-erable concern. This are the impli-cations of notions of agencygrounded in practice theory forwriting archaeological narratives.As stressed by Joyce and Lopiparo(2005), many archaeological narra-tives now focus at multiple scales,beginning with the individual orthe household and moving out-

ward or vice-versa. Such “multi-scalar” approaches acknowledgethat in human affairs, causality -both that which supports continu-ity in practices and that whichencourages change- may reside atany of several levels of scale (Joyce& Lopiparo 2005; Lightfoot et al.1998). Toward the end of his life,James Deetz noted that only bystudying a second colonial enter-prise in South Africa, separated bytime as well as space from theNorth American colonies he hadinitially researched, did he appre-hend the role of global-scaleprocesses in both (Deetz & Scott1995).

A metaphysical question, in thesense of David Clarke’s (1973) useof the term, emerges: what consti-tutes a satisfying narrative, onceone acknowledges that so much ofthe archaeological evidence is con-stituted by repeated acts of quotid-ian living? In developing our multi-scalar narratives, does one skipover the sameness and look for dis-junctures, because that is what his-tory has been about, traditionally?Do we feature the micro-scaleaccount of past lives and underplaythe effects of regional or global-scale processes on local lives? Does


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one privilege, as most archaeolo-gists have previously, a simplifiednarrative of “prime movers,” at themost general level, processes suchas climate change or commoditymarket collapse, or –in the case ofsome postprocessual narratives–enduring cultural mindsets thatwork themselves time humanagents through long spans of time?Is history as qualified in our pres-ent archaeological analyses stillabout large-scale causes? Is it“thick description” at the locallevel? What is its narrative struc-ture? What does “continuity” inmaterial practices mean? Is itactively produced or unconsciouslyenacted? Certainly, one probablydoes not wish to write narrativesthat resemble Andy Warhol’s filmof the Empire State Buildingthrough twenty-four hours, thefilm itself being twenty-four hourslong. However, how do we sort outeveryday practice and narrative?

Conclusion

On the surface, the study of main-tenance activities appears to be astraightforward enterprise.Archaeological animal bones, plantremains, hearths, broken pots, dis-carded tools for processing daily

meals and keeping the householdabound, and sometimes architec-ture, as well. However, even theterm “household” should be quali-fied and used with circumspection(cf. Hendon 1996; Wilk 1989;Yanagisako 1979). Likewise, facilelinking of specific tasks with ageand gender classes may say moreabout our own cultural contextthan it does about that of theancient people studied. Archaeo-logists with lacking direct historicanalogies drawn from documen-tary evidence, representations, andthe like confront special chal-lenges, but they are also usuallymore aware of the dangers of over-extended and simplistic formalanalogies. The problem of imputinggender to specific activities,chaínes opératoires, or social rolesis especially difficult in situationsthat lack cultural continuities withdocumented groups.

I have argued that the conceptualand methodological tools exist forapproaching such challenges in thestudy of social relations in the past.I have advocated constructingresearch frameworks thatacknowledge that humans’ mainte-nance activities are structuredwithin habitual yet variable prac-


21

tices, and that some of theseinvolve materials that respond tomanipulation in uniformitarianways. Moreover, I have endorsedthe view that aspects of humanphysiology structure human actionbut that, far from biology uniform-ly dictating destiny, these con-straints are negotiated variably indifferent societies. When prac-ticed from a critically self-con-scious viewpoint, I think the prac-tices outlined here can be consid-ered a form of the archaeologicalhermeneutic advocated by Hodder(1991). The more or less uniformi-tarian aspects of materials andbiology serve as the guarantors ofthe “guarded objectivity” Hodderdelineates as part of the self-con-scious process of interpretation.This process is precisely the terraindescribed by Wylie in her 1992 dis-cussion of the role of “evidentialconstraints” in archaeologicalinterpretation.

I have also suggested that, asarchaeologists work through theseissues, they attend to the implica-tions of approaches focused on “thestructures of everyday life”(Braudel 1981) for the nature of his-torical narrative, as has Stahl (1999and 2001).

As a final point, I suggest that, inattending to the role and study ofmaintenance activities, it is well torecall the other part of Braudel’sbook title, “le possible et l’impossi-ble.” By this, and in contrast toBraudel’s meaning, I refer toarchaeologists and their projects.When exploring the possibilities ofstudying the lived past, we musthonestly accept “the limits of thepossible” with archaeological data.I do not advocate a defeatist posi-tion, but rather echo the point thatBruce Trigger raised in severalchapters of his recent book (2006):if the information needed toanswer a certain question is lack-ing, archaeologists should admitthe problem and move on to otherquestions that they can answer. Aswe approach these challenges, maywe have the insight and thecourage to do so.

Acknowledgments

It was an honor to be asked to par-ticipate in a conversation amongdistinguished scholars of severalintellectual traditions in the work-shop, “Interpreting householdpracices: reflections on the socialand cultural roles of maintenanceactivities,” and I wish to thank the


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organizers of the Sandra Montón,Paloma González Marcén, andMarina Picazo, as well as the spon-sors of the event for their generousinvitation. I thank as well all par-ticipants for a fascinating andenjoyable set of sessions. I am espe-cially grateful to Liz Brumfiel forsuggesting that I read her paper onweaving and also Marga SánchezRomero for sending me her articlesand book, Arqueología y Género, afterthe conference.

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