Reviewed by Mark Leney, New College, Oxford, OX1 3RH England, UK
This collection of papers seeks to investigate the
relationship between culture and technology in Africa since the late Pliocene.
In just seven substantive essays and an introduction, the editor has attempted
to draw together an extremely disparate array of research to argue the
point that technology is the product of ìdynamic interaction of social,
ideological and technical factorsî. This seem a rather heavy-handed attempt
to reiterate the dogma of post-modern cultural anthropology (that nothing
meaningful can be learned from the study of artefacts divorced from their
socio-cultural contexts), but the individual papers themselves do not labor
this point. Moreover the lack of any overall conclusion to the volume leaves
readers free to draw their own conclusions about the interaction of technology
and society in a way that is refreshingly free of the veil of verbose deconstruction
commonly found padding the work of the more anthropologically minded archaeologists
(a ëdeconstructioní that reasonably skeptical readers can supply by themselves).
Childsís unqualified use of the words ësocietyí
and ëcultureí while laying bare the plurality of meaning in the word ëtechnologyí
goes to the heart of the whole debate. While we find all three words alternately
convenient and inadequate, the underlying reality is that there are no
independent entities underlying these three terms. There really is no ëtechnologyí
outside socio-cultural contexts. However, to then say that there is no
point in abstracting ëtechnologyí from its cultural underpinnings for the
purpose of analysis, is to make a grave syllogistic error. The papers on
metallurgy that make up the central part of this volume illustrate this
point. The imposition of contemporary metallurgical analyses upon the archaeological
artefacts defines entirely new fields of knowledge, providing real insights
into the mind and milieu of the ancient metalworker. By determining what
we can and cannot know about the raw materials and technical processes
that contributed to the object of study, the interdisciplinary approach
shows that the clash of opinions in the ìtechnology and societyî debate
stems more from the anthropologistsí failure to engage with the possibilities
of technical enquiry than from the insensitivity of specialist analysts
to the cultural context of the material studied.
The end of the volume contains three cautionary
tales about using fine-grained technical analysis of artifacts to investigate
the minds of their makers. Although instructive to undergraduates, one
feels that it was unnecessary, in the context of this volume, to expend
three papers to illustrate the point that the ancient artisan may have
had multiple agendas and multiple skills that are only partially reflected
in the material left to posterity; a necessarily fragmented record that
is inevitably biased towards the taphonomically stable. To present these
points as new and/or important, attacks on positivist methods in the reconstruction
of past societies from their material culture is to topple a straw-man.
I feel sure that everyone can recall instances where researchers have,
understandably considering the investment of time and scholarship, overplayed
the importance of conclusions drawn from highly empirical analyses and
refused to recognize the implausibility of their inferences in the wider
socio-cultural context. But it is wrong to equate such individual errors
with the wrong-headedness of the positivist program as a whole. After all,
the empirical worker is merely advocating a model to explain some of the
patterning observed in material remains. The assumption that there is something
to explain is not inherent to the validity of the approach. If there is
no order, mechanism or rationale behind a perceived pattern, then the model
will not prove a useful one. Nevertheless, the erosion of empirically generated
explanations by the weight of contrary observation only vindicates the
validity of the positivist, model building paradigm. The perception of
intransigence and cultural bias in positivist interpretations of material
culture, so heavily criticised over the last quarter of a century, seems
to stem more from the technophobia and anti-rationalism of such critics
and the fact that empirical analysis appears to allow definite statements
(even if wrong), than from any inherent flaw in positivism. The rebuttal
of these criticisms has been less effective, but then this is probably
because the more extreme proponents of the anti-positivist position tend
to take the view that one can learn nothing about the maker of an artefact
outside itís immediate socio-cultural context, something that might be
phrased as a faux-paradox; ëI know that I am wise in that I know
that I know nothing.í Clearly it is difficult to disabuse someone of this
notion, or even to provide a focused criticism of such a non-viewpoint,
but one does wonder about their position in the discipline in the first
place. The solution seems to be for anthropologists of all camps to be
a little more mature and sophisticated in their dealings with other (sub-)
disciplines. Whilst it would be too much to ask the ìtechnological deterministsî
to stop viewing their opponents as arm-chair theorists, a compromise of
some sorts can be reached by laying aside the idea of culture as an entity.
I am not proposing that all aspects of societal development are mediated
by technological change; however I do feel that some, perhaps many, changes
in social organisation probably are causally linked to shifts in technical
capacity. If one disregards the concept of culture as a unit, there is
no ìtechnology and society debateî. Some aspects of ësocietyí will be closely
bound up with technology and others will be more or less independent. Similarly,
technological diversity may be entirely without consequence for the structure
of the associated society.
Re-reading the papers, one feels that maybe this
is the point that the volume is making, without actually ever articulating
it. Given Childsí closing statement that ìtechnologies must be examined
in their socio-cultural contextsî (my italics), it is surprising to read
in the subsequent papers how much can be learnt from the raw artifacts
even when the socio-cultural contexts are almost entirely obscured. This
is especially true in the papers on the use of fire and obsidian. There
is obviously a need to keep an open mind here, but the majority of these
papers impose a framework of empirical analyses to make what appear to
be reasonable inferences about the nature of the societies and individuals
that produced the material. This apparent paradox, the gulf between the
editorial statement and the accounts given in the papers reveals the nature
of the ìtechnology and societyî issue. It is a debate about misconceptions.
What this volume illustrates very clearly is that the debate arises primarily
from the reciprocal misconception of research methods rather than the nature
of material culture itself.