Anthropology Times

Archaeological Research on Style
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 21: 517-536 (Volume publication date October 1992)
Michelle Hegmon
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

This review caught my eye because it was written by a woman in archaeology. It seems I’ve been bumping into the work of Mary Leakey all over the place, so I had female archaeologists on the brain. Michelle Hegmon teaches at Arizona State University. A high school classmate of mine completed her doctoral work in archaeology at ASU. I’ve been wanting to ask my former classmate about her current work. This whole little bit of kizmet may just prompt me to call her up.

Hegmon says that there is enough agreement among archaeologists as to what style is to be able to have meaningful discussions across various theoretical perspectives. She writes that there is basic agreement that “first, style is a way of doing something and second, style involves a choice among various alternatives.” Disagreement comes with discussion of the finer details, but Hegmon’s discussion left me with the impression that disagreements about style are still in some kind of kinder, gentler phase of academic dispute. Though one camp may mostly reject the perspective of another, they each are able to see value and sometimes even analytical usefulness in the rejected view. Or it could just be that Hegmon’s diplomacy is showing.

Hegmon mentions another Annual Review article on style written in 1983 by Stephen Plog titled “Analysis of Style in Artifacts.” I didn’t get a chance to read that one this week. I will read it next week and see what I come away with having read both. I do like the general movement away from considering style simply in relation to patterns of formal variation and toward considering that style also may include cultural and functional components. I look forward to reading what Plog has to add to the discussion of the problems in considering the cultural/functional components when looking at the archaeological record. It’s so easy for bias and wild storytelling to creep in. Hegmon writes of the “long, and sometimes notorious” practice among archaeologists of “correlating styles of material culture and social groups, such as the European Neolithic Beaker Folk and Hohokam Red-on-Buff Culture.” Naming and framing can go a long way toward creating a less than accurate view of the archaeological record. Hegmon writes that “no longer is the association between material culture and living cultures taken for granted. Instead, the archaeological interpretation of cultural identity is an active topic of research.”

Until next week?

Ever yours,

S.