Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T08:24:53.188Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Materiality of Signs: Enchainment and Animacy in Woodland Southeastern North American Pottery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Neill J. Wallis
Neill J. Wallis*
Affiliation:
Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611 ([email protected])
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Archaeological examinations of symbolic meaning often have been hampered by the Saussurean concept of signs as coded messages of preexisting meanings. The arbitrary and imprecise manner by which meaning is represented in material culture according to Saussure tends to stymie archaeological investigations of symbolism. As an alternative, archaeologists recently have drawn on Peirce’s semiotic to investigate how materiality is bound to the creation of meanings through the process of signification. This study examines how the symbolism expressed in pottery of the Middle Woodland period southeastern United States, Swift Creek Complicated Stamped and Weeden Island effigy vessels, might be better explained as icons and indexes that were enlisted to have particular social effects. Examining the semiotic potentials of these objects helps explain their apparent uses and the significance of alternative representations of the same subjects.

Resumen

Resumen

En repetidas ocasiones los estudios arqueológicos sobre el significado de símbolos han sido obstaculizados por el concepto Saussureano que define los signos como mensajes codificados con un significado preexistente. De acuerdo con Saussure, la manera arbitraria e imprecisa por la cual cierto significado se encuentra representado en la cultura material tiende a bloquear las investigaciones arqueológicas que estudian objetos simbólicos. Como alternativa los arqueólogos han comenzado a basarse en la semiótica de Peirce, con el fin de investigar de qué manera la materialidad está ligada a la creación de significados a través del proceso de creación de signos o significación. En este estudio se examinaron piezas de alfarería del sur oriente de los Estados Unidos, provenientes del periodo medio Woodland, de los complejos estampados Swift Creek y esfinges representadas en vasijas Weeden Island. El objetivo es demostrar que los símbolos expresados en dichas piezas podrían ser interpretados como iconos e índices que fueron establecidos para efectos sociales particulares. Por medio de la investigación del potencial semiotico de estos especímenes es posible explicar sus presuntos usos, así como la significación de representaciones alternativas de los mismos objetos.

Type
Articles
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 78 , Issue 2 , April 2013 , pp. 207 - 226
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by the Society for American Archaeology.

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

References Cited

Anderson, David G., and Mainfort, Robert C. Jr 2002 An Introduction to Woodland Archaeology of the Southeast. In The Woodland Southeast, edited by David G. Anderson and Robert C. Mainfort, Jr., pp. 1–19. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.Google Scholar
Bauer, Alexander A. 2002 Is What You See All You Get? Recognizing Meaning in Archaeology. Journal of Social Archaeology 2:37–52.Google Scholar
Boas, Franz 1955 Primitive Art. Dover, New York.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre 1977 Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre 1984 Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Brose, David S., and Percy, George W. 1974 An Outline of Weeden Island Ceremonial Activities in N.W. Florida. Paper presented at the 37th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Washington, D.C. Google Scholar
Brown, Linda A., and Walker, William H. 2008 Prologue: Archaeology, Animism and Non-Human Agents. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 15:297–299.Google Scholar
Broyles, Bettye J. 1968 Reconstructed Designs from Swift Creek Complicated Stamped Sherds. Southeastern Archaeological Conference Bulletin 8:49–74.Google Scholar
Chapman, John 2000 Tension at Funerals: Social Practices and the Subversion of Community Structure in Later Hungarian Prehistory. In Agency in Archaeology, edited by Maria-Anne Dobres and John Robb, pp. 169–195. Routledge, New York.Google Scholar
Chase, David W. 1998 Swift Creek: Lineage and Diffusion. In A World Engraved: Archaeology of the Swift Creek Culture, edited by Mark Williams and Daniel T. Elliott, pp. 48–60. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.Google Scholar
DeMarrais, Elizabeth, Gosden, Chris, and Renfrew, Colin 2004 Introduction. In Rethinking Materiality: The Engagement of Mind with the Material World, edited by Elizabeth DeMarrais, Chris Gosden, and Colin Renfrew, pp. 1–7. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques 1976 Of Grammatology. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques 1978 Writing and Difference. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Dwyer, Peter D. 1996 The Invention of Nature. In Redefining Nature: Ecology, Culture and Domestication, edited by Roy Ellen and Katsuyoshi Fukui, pp. 157–186. Berg, Oxford.Google Scholar
Gell, Alfred 1975 Metamorphosis of the Cassowaries. Athlone, London.Google Scholar
Gell, Alfred 1992 The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology. In Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics, edited by Jeremy Coote and Anthony Shelton, pp. 40–67. Clarendon, Oxford.Google Scholar
Gell, Alfred 1998 Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Clarendon, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giddens, Anthony 1984 The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. University of California Press, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Gosden, Chris 2005 What Do Objects Want? Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 12:193–211.Google Scholar
Hally, David J., Beahm, Emily, Berg, Sarah, Bigman, Dan, Colaninno, Carol, Steere, Ben, Smith, Karen, and Snow, Frankie 2009 Characterization of Swift Creek Vessel Assemblages. Paper presented at the 66th Annual Meeting of the South eastern Archaeological Conference, Mobile.Google Scholar
Hawkes, Christopher 1954 Archaeological Theory and Method: Some Suggestions from the Old World. American Anthropologist 56:155–168.Google Scholar
Hodder, Ian 1986 Reading the Past. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Hodder, Ian 1988 Material Culture Texts and Social Change: A Theoretical Discussion and Some Archaeological Examples. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 54:67–75.Google Scholar
Irvine, Judith T. 1989 When Talk Isn't Cheap: Language and Political Economy. American Ethnologist 16:248–267.Google Scholar
Joyce, Rosemary A. 2007 Figurines, Meaning, and Meaning-Making in Early Mesoamerica. In Image and Imagination: A Global Prehistory of Figurative Representation, edited by Colin Renfrew and lain Morley, pp. 107–116. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Joyce, Rosemary A. 2008 Practice in and as Deposition. In Memory Work: Archaeologies of Material Practices, edited by Barbara J. Mills and William H. Walker, pp. 25–39. School for Advanced Research Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico.Google Scholar
Keane, Webb 2003 Semiotics and the Social Analysis of Material Things. Language and Communication 23:409–125.Google Scholar
Keane, Webb 2005 Signs Are Not the Garb of Meaning: On the Social Analysis of Material Things. In Materiality: Politics, History, and Culture, edited by Daniel Miller, pp. 182–205. Duke University Press, Durham.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keane, Webb 2006 Subjects and Objects. In Handbook of Material Culture, edited by Christopher Tilley, Webb Keane, Susanne Kuchler, Michael Rowlands, and Patricia Spyer, pp. 197–202. Sage, London.Google Scholar
Keane, Webb 2010 Marked, Absent, Habitual: Approaches to Neolithic Religion in Çatalhöyük. In Religion in the Emergence of Civilization: Çatalhöyük as a Case Study, edited by Ian Hodder, pp. 187–219. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Knappett, Carl 2002 Photographs, Skeuomorphs and Marionettes: Some Thoughts on Mind, Agency and Object. Journal of Material Culture 7:91–117.Google Scholar
Knappett, Carl 2005 Thinking Through Material Culture: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno 2005 Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Net work-Theory. Oxford University Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Lele, Veerendra P. 2006 Material Habits, Identity, Semeiotic. Journal of Social Archaeology 6:48–70.Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, Claude 1963 Structural Anthropology. Basic Books, New York.Google Scholar
Malinowski, Bronislaw 1922 Argonauts of the Western Pacific. Routledge, London.Google Scholar
Mauss, Marcel 1970 [1925] The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. Translated by Ian Cunnison. Cohen and West Ltd., London.Google Scholar
Meskell, Lynn 2004 Object Worlds in Ancient Egypt: Material Biographies Past and Present. Berg, New York.Google Scholar
Meskell, Lynn (editor) 2005 Archaeologies of Materiality. Blackwell, Maiden, Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Milanich, Jerald T. 2002 Weeden Island Cultures. In The Woodland Southeast, edited by David G. Anderson and Robert C. Mainfort, Jr., pp. 352–372. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.Google Scholar
Milanich, Jerald T., Cordell, Ann S., Knight, Vernon J. Jr., Kohler, Timothy A., and Sigler-Lavelle, Brenda J. 1997 Archaeology of Northern Florida, AD. 200–900: The McKeithen Weeden Island Culture. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.Google Scholar
Miller, Daniel 2005 Materiality: An Introduction. In Materiality, edited by Daniel Miller, pp. 1–50. Duke University Press, Durham.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, Daniel 2009 Stuff. Polity, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Miller, Daniel (editor) 2005 Materiality. Duke University Press, Durham.Google Scholar
Moore, Clarence Bloomfield 1902 Certain Aboriginal Remains of the Northwest Florida Coast, Part II. Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 12:127–355.Google Scholar
Moore, Clarence Bloomfield 1903 Certain Aboriginal Mounds of the Florida Central West-Coast. P. C. Stockhausen, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Moore, Clarence Bloomfield 1907 Moundville Revisited, Crystal River Revisited, Mounds of the Lower Chattachoochee and Lower Flint Rivers, Notes on the Ten Thousand Islands, Florida. Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 8:337–476.Google Scholar
Moore, Clarence Bloomfield 1918 The Northwestern Florida Coast Revisited. Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 16:515–579.Google Scholar
Pauketat, Timothy R., and Alt, Susan M. 2005 Agency in a Postmold? Physicality and the Archaeology of Culture-Making. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 12:213–236.Google Scholar
Peirce, Charles S. 1955 Logic as Semiotic: The Theory of Signs. In Philosophic Writings of Peirce, edited by Justus Buchler, pp. 98–119. Dover, New York.Google Scholar
Pluckhahn, Thomas J. 2010 The Sacred and the Secular Revisited: The Essential Tensions of Early Village Societies in the Southeastern U.S. In Becoming Villagers: Comparing Early Village Societies, edited by Matthew Brandy and Jake Fox, pp. 100–118. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.Google Scholar
Pluckhahn, Thomas J., and Cordell, Ann S. 2011 Paste Characterization of Weeden Island Pottery from Kolomoki and Its Implications for Specialized Production. Southeastern Archaeology 30:288–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollock, Donald 1995 Masks and the Semiotics of Identity. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 1:581–597.Google Scholar
Preucel, Robert W. 2006 Archaeological Semiotics. Blackwell, Maiden, Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Preucel, Robert W., and Bauer, Alexander A. 2001 Archaeological Pragmatics. Norwegian Archaeological Review 34:85–96.Google Scholar
Ricoeur, Paul 1971 The Model of Text: Meaningful Action Considered as Text. Social Research 38:529–562.Google Scholar
Ricoeur, Paul 1974 The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics. Northwestern University Press, Evanston.Google Scholar
Ricoeur, Paul 1976 Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. Texas Christian University, Fort Worth.Google Scholar
Sears, William H. 1952 Ceramic Development in the South Appalachian Province. American Antiquity 18:101–110.Google Scholar
Sears, William H. 1956 Excavations at Kolomoki: Final Report. University of Georgia Press, Athens.Google Scholar
Sears, William H. 1962 The Hopewellian Affiliations of Certain Sites on the Gulf Coast of Florida. American Antiquity 28:5–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sears, William H. 1973 The Sacred and the Secular in Prehistoric Ceramics. In Variations in Anthropology: Essays in Honor of John McGregor, edited by Donald Lathrap and Jody Douglas, pp. 31–42. Illinois Archaeological Survey, Urbana.Google Scholar
Snow, Frankie 1998 Swift Creek Design Investigations: The Hartford Case. In A World Engraved: Archaeology of the Swift Creek Culture, edited by Mark Williams and Daniel T. Elliott, pp. 61–98. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.Google Scholar
Snow, Frankie, and Stephenson, Keith 1998 Swift Creek Designs: A Tool for Monitoring Interaction. In A World Engraved: Archaeology of the Swift Creek Culture, edited by Mark Williams and Daniel T. Elliott, pp. 99–111. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.Google Scholar
Sonesson, Goran 1989 Pictorial Concepts: Inquiries into the Semiotic Heritage and Its Relevance for the Analysis of the Visual World. Lund University Press, Lund.Google Scholar
Stephenson, Keith, Bense, Judith A., and Snow, Frankie 2002 Aspects of Deptford and Swift Creek on the South At lantic and Gulf Coastal Plains. In The Woodland Southeast, edited by David G. Anderson and Robert C. Mainfort, Jr., pp. 318–351. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.Google Scholar
Stoltman, James B., and Snow, Frankie 1998 Cultural Interaction Within Swift Creek Society: People, Pots, and Paddles. In A World Engraved: Archaeology of the Swift Creek Culture, edited by Mark Williams and Daniel T. Elliott, pp. 130–153. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.Google Scholar
Strathern, Marilyn 1988 The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia. University of California Press, Berkeley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, Julian 1999 An Economy of Substances in Earlier Neolithic Britain. In Material Symbols: Culture and Economy in Prehistory, edited by John E. Robb, pp. 70–89. Center for Archaeological Investigations Occasional Paper No. 26. Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.Google Scholar
Tilley, Christopher 1991 Material Culture and Text: The Art of Ambiguity. Routledge, London.Google Scholar
Tilley, Christopher 1999 Metaphor and Material Culture. Blackwell, Oxford.Google Scholar
Wallis, Neill J. 2011 The Swift Creek Gift: Vessel Exchange on the Atlantic Coast. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.Google Scholar
Wallis, Neill J., and O'Dell, Amanda 2011 Swift Creek Paddle Designs from the Florida Gulf Coast: Patterns and Prospects. Florida Anthropologist 64:187–205.Google Scholar
Washburn, Dorothy K. 1995 Style, Perception, and Geometry. In Style, Society, and Person: Archaeological and Ethnological Perspectives, edited by Christopher Carr and Jill E. Neitzel, pp. 101–122. Plenum, New York.Google Scholar
Washburn, Dorothy K., and Crowe, Donald W. 1988 Symmetries of Culture: Theory and Practice of Plane Pattern Analysis. University of Washington Press, Seattle.Google Scholar
Willey, Gordon R. 1949 Archeology of the Florida Gulf Coast. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections Vol. 113. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Google Scholar
Williams, Mark, and Elliott, Daniel T. 1998 Swift Creek Research: History and Observations. In A World Engraved: Archaeology of the Swift Creek Culture, edited by Mark Williams and Daniel T. Elliott, pp. 1–11. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.Google Scholar
Wobst, H. Martin 1977 Stylistic Behavior and Information Exchange. In Papers for the Director: Research Essays in Honor of James B. Griffin, edited by Charles E. Cleland, pp. 317–342. Anthropological Papers No. 61. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.Google Scholar
Zedeño, Maria Nieves 2009 Animating by Association: Index Objects and Relational Taxonomies. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 19:407–17.Google Scholar